$12 Billion Per Month

CNN is reporting today that according to a recent congressional committee report the total economic impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is estimated to reach $1.6 trillion by 2009. The figure -- which includes the cost of borrowing to pay for the war, higher oil prices, and the cost of caring for wounded veterans -- is nearly double the $804 billion in direct war costs already requested. The committee calculated that the average cost of both wars for a family of four would be $20,900 from 2002 to 2008. The cost for a family of four would go up to $46,400 from 2002 to 2017.

The Democrats, who seemingly don’t care enough about the cost of the war to actually cut off financing, nevertheless made some small squealing noises when confronted with the reality that $12 billion per month is being paid to support our aimless wandering in the Iraqi desert. It is noteworthy that Dennis Kuchinich stands alone among the Democratic candidates running for president who is advocating an immediate withdrawal. While Kucinich has about as much of a chance at being elected President as I or Politicalspazz do, there is another Democrat with a better shot at the oval office who understands that cutting off Congressional financing for the war has to be the first step in any discussion of pulling out. John Edwards position is rather simple yet eminently reasonable. According to Edwards, “[w]e have to take the next step and cap funding to mandate a withdrawal. We don't need debate; we don't need non-binding resolutions; we need to end this war, and Congress has the power to do it.” The power, yes, the will, no.

Ten Days That Shook The World

Ninety years ago today, Bolshevik revolutionaries seized power in Russia. NPR chose to commemorate the event by broadcasting a story on the murderous excesses of Josef Stalin and the heavy handed tactics of the Soviet government. As usual, Soviet rule was equated with communism and dismissed as an anachronistic philosophy with no modern appeal. The USSR was clearly not a communist state, at least not in any way that Marx would recognize. As I understand the term, communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production.

Under Stalin, the Communist Party of the USSR adopted the theory of "socialism in one country" and claimed that, due to the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism", it was necessary, to build socialism alone in one country, the USSR. This line was challenged by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution" stressed the necessity of world revolution. (For his defense of the revolution, Trotsky ended up being murdered with an ice pick while in Mexican exile in the late 1930s).

Marxist critics of the Soviet Union, most notably Trotsky, referred to the Soviet system, as "degenerated" or "deformed workers' states," arguing that the Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal. They called for a political revolution in the USSR and defended the country against capitalist restoration. Others, like Tony Cliff, advocated the theory of state capitalism, which asserts that the bureaucratic elite acted as a surrogate capitalist class in the heavily centralized and repressive political apparatus.

Wow, the Patriot is getting bored. This reminds him of interminable political lectures by the League for The Revolutionary Party that he sat through in college. Anyway, the October Revolution (November in the Gregorian calendar) overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and gave the power to the Bolsheviks. It was followed by the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922.
The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists coming along for the ride. The Bolsheviks viewed themselves as representing an alliance of workers and peasants and memorialized that understanding with the Hammer and Sickle on the flag and coat of arms of the Soviet Union. The rest, as they say, his somewhat distorted history.

New Directions?

Happy Election Day; go vote in your local elections, they’re the only ones that mean anything. For some reason the Patriot has been content lately to sit on the sidelines and watch the country convulse on its own. One bright spot in the firmament has been the lawyers rioting in Pakistan over the suspension of constitutional freedoms. If only the lawyers in this country went out into the streets over Lynn Stewart and the Patriot Act. Unfortunately they were too busy either over billing their corporate clients or chasing ambulances (depending on their ideological bend) to be bothered.

I’m thinking of taking this blog in an entirely new direction. I just don’t know what it is. There is exactly one year to go before the Presidential election and I can’t stand the idea of writing about politics for another 365 days. I mean, the very thought of it makes me sick, especially when one considers the candidates. The only one I’d consider voting for right now is Kucinich, and that’s because he’s married to a hot 29 year old and admits seeing flying saucers. The other Democratic contenders are just different shades of fascism-lite. Even Edwards, who’s star is setting fast, can’t seem to distinguish himself from Margaret Thatcher, um, I mean Hillary Clinton and Obama-been-forgotten.

There is so much else going on in the world, isn’t there? Does anyone want to hear about anything other than the evisceration of our civil liberties? Please? Maybe I can go back to reviewing restaurants, music and books, or start talking about comparative philosophical systems. I’m going to mull it over for a bit and then get back to you all.

But before I go, here’s a bit of depressing news from the boggie-down-Bronx. As the Patriot predicted over a year ago, law enforcement has been quietly attempting to expand the definition of terrorism to encompass ordinary crime involving Americans. (Disclosure: Most of the following is a paraphrase of the NY Times story.)

As you may or may not know in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, 36 states enacted laws that would guarantee harsher sentences to people convicted under state law in terrorism cases. Gov. George E. Pataki signed New York’s law within six days of the attack. These laws were political PR pandering, pure and simple, since how often do you think the feds would give up jurisdiction and allow a state government to prosecute a terrorism case? Nevertheless the application of New York’s law had an unfortunate effect on Edgar Morales, a 25-year-old recreational soccer player and gang member who fatally shot a 10-year-old girl and wounded a second man outside a christening party in 2002.

Mr. Morales was a construction worker and a member of the St. James Boys, a gang formed by Mexican immigrants to protect themselves from being assaulted and robbed by other gangs in the west Bronx.

The Bronx District attorney, Robert Johnson, decided to try Morales under New York’s terrorism statute in order to get a tougher jail sentence. Johnson explained that just as racketeering laws aimed at mobsters have since been used in other crimes the terrorism charge fit because Mr. Morales and his gang had terrorized Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the west Bronx for years through violence and intimidation. The jury deliberated for four days after testimony ended last Thursday, but despite their disagreements on other elements of the case, jurors said yesterday they had concluded very early that Mr. Morales was guilty of terrorism.

“When you fire a gun into a crowd, whether you hit your intended victim or not, you scare people, you make them fearful for their lives, and that’s why, in my opinion, the terrorism charges applied,” said an apparently marginally educated juror who identified herself only by her first name, Linnea.

Another juror said she had been hesitant about using the terrorism statute against Mr. Morales when prosecutors presented evidence, but once Justice Michael A. Gross told them on the trial’s final day that terrorism was defined as an act meant to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” her reluctance dissolved.

The prosecution of Morales under the terrorism statute understandably freaked out the libertarians and the lefties.

Timothy Lynch, of the Cato Institute said the New York law and others like it had no place being used to prosecute gang members. “Lawmakers were told after Sept. 11th that we needed new laws, and it’s become kind of a bait-and-switch, because lo and behold, they are not being used against Al Qaeda, they’re being used against ordinary street crime,” Mr. Lynch said.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union,, also criticized the terror application in the trial. “Without commenting on the manslaughter and attempted murder convictions, the pile-on of a terrorism charge is indeed a matter of concern,” she said. “The law was pitched as New York’s way to protect itself against Al Qaeda and the like. No matter what horrific crimes were committed against the Mexican-American community, that’s not terrorism.”

Robert Johnson might be the first DA in New York to use the anti-terrorism law in an ordinary criminal prosecution, but I’ll bet you my plane ticket to Gitmo that he won’t be the last.

Here Come Those Santa Ana Winds Again

The Patriot is cruising at 35,000 feet on his fifth trip to California in as many weeks. This incessant jetting around the country has put a serious crimp in my blogging schedule and many events of note have passed by without a mention here. I’m not one for making up lost time and rehashing old events. Apparently the Democrats are still unable to mount anything approaching an opposition to the fascist juggernaut. One only need look at their apparent lack of concern over Judge Mukase’s statement at his confirmation hearings that he thinks the president should be able to ignore federal statutes with which he disagrees to be reassured that things are business as usual in Washington.

Constant travel, while interesting on some levels, is nevertheless quite stressful. My Continental flight was an hour late taking off from Newark this morning and it is a near certainty that I’ll miss my connecting flight to San Luis Obispo. The gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach will no doubt remain until my sprint through LAX in what is sure to be a vain attempt to get to my hotel in time to catch up on the three weeks of work that have been piling up on my desk. At least the sushi is reasonable on the central California coast. I can only hope that I get out of the state before the wildfires reach north from Santa Barbara and cut off my escape route.

In brighter news the Patriot was recently informed that access to this blog has been cut off at various military installations due to its subversive content. I guess all those impressionable young officers of character can’t be exposed to too much thinking outside the box lest they hesitate before dropping their payloads on Iraqi villages while the mighty eagle spreads democracy around the Middle East. I’m not prone to paranoia, but I have also been informed by anonymous sources with ties to the intelligence community that the government is quite vigilant at monitoring blogs that they consider subversive. I’m not really surprised. I’m also not particularly concerned. This is the same government that set up the TSA to function as the vanguard against terrorism in American skies. Wait, maybe I should be concerned.

Everyone who has ever taken a civics class as part of their education knows that the true test of freedoms is how they are treated in a time of crisis. What civics class never taught is how a manufactured crisis like the “War on Terror” can be used to strip away constitutionally guaranteed freedoms in the name of consolidating power in the executive branch. The intelligence services have decades of experience manipulating public opinion and they have lately had the willing support of a complicit mainstream media. We are witnessing such a manipulation of public opinion in the current demonization of Iran. The stage is once again set for military action based on false evidence and flimsy justification. There is no will to stop it, and no way to keep it from happening, especially when since the silent coup d’etat has already happened.

It's Tea Right Here In Berkeley

Ok kids, the Patriot is in Berkeley California, land of the unrepentant deadhead. I will admit that noodling around UC Berkeley has made me a bit nostalgic for my own college days. I have had a few interesting experiences since I’ve been in town, although nothing that quite compares to being stabbed in the gut while buying drugs during the heyday of the crack epidemic. Perhaps an unfair comparison some 20 years on. Mostly I have been wandering the streets looking for whatever it is that makes Berkeley celebrated among intellectuals and stoners alike. Can’t say that I found too much to distinguish this town from college towns back east. Ultimately, Berkeley is much like every other college town, albeit with a liberal California overlay; vegetable powered cars, the smell of calitas rising up through the air, that sort of thing. The students here look like students everywhere, except here they are more prone to driving their parent’s aging Volvos rather than the IRocs sported by my better groomed friends from Jersey. This is also a very diverse community; equal opportunity panhandlers from post dead tour refugees to people in actual need of food. Those of you who know me know that I am a very pro-California person of late but, dare I say it, I prefer the honest fakeness of the south to this contrived hippie nonsense of the north. This confuses the Patriot. Perhaps I need to spend some more time parsing what is real and what is artifice here on the left coast. I welcome comments from readers who actually live here.

More Santa Monica At Dawn

I was here for less than 24 hours and spent most of my time running up and down the bike path; 13 miles in all. You see so much more of a place while running or biking. These were taken during this morning's run. I'm at LAX waiting for a plane to San Francisco. No rest for the wicked.

Santa Monica at Dawn

Still a Nader Raider

(This posting is dedicated to my friend Lee who gives me shit about Nader and the 2000 election whenever we go out drinking).

Greeting fellow freaks! The Patriot is traveling for work once again and finds himself in Santa Monica California at the Fairmont. Quite a nice hotel actually. On the plane ride out here I had occasion to watch the documentary about Ralph Nader that came out earlier this year, An Unreasonable Man, and I recommend it highly, especially to those who think that Nader cost “us” the 2000 election. Bashing Ralph Nader has become popular sport among the institutional democrats who can’t seem to get it through their heads that their arguments about why Gore lost (won) in 2000 have nothing to do with Nader and everything to do with their centrist strategy. Dare I say that the Democrats failing to put up a fight against the Republican agenda over the last six years proves Ralph’s point that the difference between the parties is minimal at best? Nah. For those of you who drank the Carvell cool-aid nothing I can say would change your minds. Nevertheless, I ask you to consider the following: Nader did not work for the Florida Secretary of State, the Palm Beach County Election Commission, the Al Gore campaign committee, or the United States Supreme Court. Yet, he has become a scapegoat among Democrats for Al Gore’s loss. These diehard Democrats are averse to looking at the failings of their candidate. If Gore had won Tennessee, he would have had the necessary Electoral College votes to have won the election and the Florida results would have been irrelevant. There’s no moral ground for claiming that Nader took any votes away from the stumbling, pandering Gore, who, like Kerry four years later, campaigned as though the only votes he had to “earn” were Republican votes. Gore in fact WON not only the national vote but the state of Florida as well, despite the bogus ex-felon purges, the hanging chads, the “Jews for Buchanan” and the Nader vote. According to a recount commissioned by a consortium of major newspapers, who of course buried the story, Gore would have won Florida, and thus the battle for electoral votes, if he had commissioned a statewide recount. Despite everything, he got the most votes. He just didn’t have a the balls to go to the mat against Bush. If he really thought so much was at stake for the Country, why didn’t he make use of every opportunity available to him to keep Bush out of office?

The fact of the matter is that Nader’s support overall brought voters to the polls who never would have gone there in the first place. Also, EVERY third-party on the ballot in Florida garnered enough votes to throw the election to Bush, but the Democrats, in typical fashion, decided that the left wing of the party was responsible and should be roundly punished. This is quite convenient because it draws attention away from that annoyingly loud sucking sound, recently identified as the DNC drawing on the tit of corporate money.

And then there’s this (excerpt):

“Sixty-two percent of Nader's voters were Republicans, independents, third-party voters and nonvoters.

Had Nader not run, Bush would have won by more in Florida. CNN's exit poll showed Bush at 49 percent and Gore at 47 percent, with 2 percent not voting in a hypothetical Nader-less Florida race.

Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, Bill Clinton's Arkansas and traditionally Democratic West Virginia; with any one of these, Gore would have won.

Nine million Democrats voted for Bush, and less than half of the 3 million Nader voters were Democrats.

Ninety thousand African Americans were illegally and intentionally stricken from the voter rolls in Florida under the guise of felon disenfranchisement.

The 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision stopped the vote counting that favored a Gore victory.”(editorial comment: Gore had other avenues to challenge the decision which he declined to take advantage of)

And let’s not forget 2004. Kerry cravenly conceded to Bush while the enormous irregularities in the Ohio vote were being contested by the Greens and Libertarians, and said not a word about the disenfranchisement of untold numbers of would-be (mostly Democratic) voters nationwide that probably cost him the election. Yet he managed to wage a vicious, resource-wasting campaign of harassment to keep Nader, and his message, off the ballot in as many states as possible. It’s the only fight Kerry won.

This will become relevant when the chicken littles go running to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008, the most conservative Democrat in the history of the party. VOTE GREEN in 2008. What have the Democrats done for you lately?

Jack-August 07

Happy 8th Month Little Dude

Jack and Daddy Sometime In July, I Think

I'll put up a few newer pics soon. The boy has gotten considerably bigger since then.

Congress shall make no law ...abridging the freedom of speech

Jack is 8 months old today and he becomming a fine young fellow. His daddy is very proud. The Patriot has been thinking of retiring for a while. Kick up his heels and leaving the angry blogging to those with more time and energy. I can’t quite bring myself to pull the plug though. Especially when Bush is still up to his old capitalist running dog tricks. Last week he came out against the State Children's Health Insurance program which would essentially double -- from 4 million to 8 million -- the number of children covered because it was “too expensive”. Now no one likes to beat up on the Democrats more than yours truly, but even I had to hand it to Sen. Robert Byrd who aptly pointed out that the president has freely spent over $378 billion of our treasury in Iraq, so his protestation that $8 billion needed to fund the Children’s Health Insurance is too expensive rings a little hollow.

The Senate voted 67-29 Thursday night to expand the program, although for some reason Democrats Joseph Biden and Barack Obama did not vote. Maybe they were busy.
In local news, the trial of William Talen, a/k/a Reverend Billy got under way in New York Supreme Court his week. Mr. Talen, leader of the “ Church of Stop Shopping” was arrested June 29 during a protest against the city’s new permit requirements for the monthly Critical Mass bicycle rally and proposed restrictions on photographers and filmmakers in public places. He was charged with two counts of second-degree harassment, and stands accused of following a group of police officers while repeatedly reciting the 40-odd words of the First Amendment through a megaphone, which, as the Times described it, was “the kind commonly used by cheerleaders”.

In her opening statement he prosecutor told Judge Tanya Kennedy that Mr. Talen’s offense had been to shout the familiar lines beginning with “Congress shall make no law” while standing three feet from the officers, and ignoring their requests to stop. The prosecutor said his behavior was “obnoxious” by any standard. (The Patriot thinks that if obnoxious behavior is elevated to the status of a crime most New Yorkers would run afoul of the law on a regular basis.) His lawyers, Norman Siegel and Earl Ward, told Judge Kennedy that the law defined harassment as engaging in a course of conduct that is not only “alarming” and “annoying” but “which serves no legitimate purpose. Mr. Siegel argued that there could hardly be a more legitimate place than a protest rally to recite the First Amendment, with its lines barring Congress from “abridging the freedom of speech” and guaranteeing the rights “of the people peaceably to assemble.” Way to go Norm.

I feel kind of bad for the ADA who was told by her superiors to take this piece of shit to trial. If any case cries out for an outright dismissal it’s this one. Unfortunately the Manhattan prosecutor’s office has been charged with the responsibility of protecting the people from dangerous liberals reciting parts of the Constitution in public. Might start people thinking about their rights, and we can’t have that now can we?

Here's a Surprise

Two hours ago a Republican filibuster in the Senate shot down a bipartisan effort to restore the right of terrorism suspects to contest their detentions and treatment in federal courts by using a writ of habeas corpus.

The 56-43 vote fell short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote on the amendment to the Senate's annual defense policy bill. The measure did garner the support of six Republicans, a small victory for its supporters, but couldn’t snag Lieberman. Six Republicans -- Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar, John Sununu and Gordon Smith -- joined every Democrat in voting for cloture on the habeas corpus provision. Joseph Lieberman voted no.

As you may recall, last year's Military Commissions Act, which suspended the writ of habeas corpus for terrorism suspects at the military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other “off-shore” prisons.

When Democrats won Congress in November, liberal activists and civil libertarians naively assumed the new Democratic majority would quickly tackle address the excesses from President Bush's "war on terror," including the suspension of habeas corpus rights, wiretapping without court warrants, and the maintenance of the offshore prison in Guantanamo Bay. None of those constitutionally suspect laws have been reversed. Indeed, last month, our allegedly DemocraticCongress extended and expanded the administration's wiretapping program for six months.

Rather than bother activists appearing at meaningless speeches by ex-presidential candidates, the brownshirt cops who administered an electronic spanking to Andrew Meyer should take their Taser and be sent to wander around the halls of Congress, shocking some sense into the idiots who think the Constitution is a document of convenience and can be messed with like corporate financial statements.

Martial Law

I was reading an excellent Nat Hentoff article on Civil Liberties in the Village Voice yesterday and I realized that no matter how vigilant one is about tracking the steady stream of bullshit emanating from the White House and Congress, it is very easy to miss things if you aren’t paying close attention. In a column titled, “As our civil liberties disappear, where are the Democrats?” (great title by the way) Hentoff reminded me exactly how freaky and scary these Republi-fascists have become in the last six years, and exactly how little the dems have done to stop them:

“Last year, buried in the 591-page Defense Appropriations Act—as civil- liberties watchdog John Whitehead and others have reported—the Republican-controlled 109th Congress, doubtless at the Bush/Cheney administration's behest, inserted a provision that (in Whitehead's words) allows the president "to declare martial law and use the military as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition' " that undermines public order. (Emphasis added.)

How much due process would these military-police roundups of suspected internal enemies give those prisoners? And how long will that military power be in effect domestically?
Has Geoffrey Stone forgotten James Madison's warning: "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty"?

Let’s see, which Democrats crossed the isle to vote for this piece of shit? Surprise! Almost all of them. This bill the House of Representatives by roll call vote. The totals were 407 Ayes, 19 Nays, 6 Present/Not Voting. The Senate vote was even more of a disgrace, 98 Ayes, 0 Nays, 2 Present/Not Voting. Your opposition party at work folks. I wonder if Halliburton is getting the contract to build these concentration camps?

A Daily Quote or Two

Here is an excellent article from Margaret Kimberly posted on the Smirking Chimp. Highlights follow:

“Denial is not a river in Egypt, it is a toxic and dangerous force, leading to delusional and illogical behavior. Believing that the Democratic party will act in a different manner than it has been is truly delusional. The political process has done nothing but abandon the American people to terror committed by their government.

The only hope for America is mass dissent… The first step in activating those people who are willing to act is to first tell them the bitter truth. Cooperation with the system, including the Democratic party, is a recipe for continued warfare, loss of civil liberties and increased corporate power.

It makes no sense to beg John Conyers to begin an impeachment investigation. The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee knows that the constitution demands it. Like every other politician he understands but one thing, the loss of his job. Conyers must face a challenge when he runs for re-election next year and he must not be alone.”

Yes dear readers I’ve said t before, its time to put pressure where pressure is due and run Reid, Pelosi and all the other mini Chamberlains out of Congress before we lose the country completely.

Patraeus Betrayed Us

So what is there to say really about the dog and pony show being put on in Congress this week that hasn’t been said already? The fact that Field Marshal Patraeus is willing to get up in front of the nation and regurgitate the spin which has been spoon fed to him by the White House speaks volumes about his character and about what it takes to rise to the top of the armed forces. I guess he’s been taking private lessons in reputation sullying from Colin Powell in his spare time. Ultimately Patraeus’s performance isn’t too surprising; the military gets its marching orders from the civilian leadership and can hardly stand up in Congress and tell the truth about the state of things in Iraq. This would reflect badly on the Commander in Chimp. Nor is it really surprising that the Democrats have been muted in their criticism of the general. Half the democratic interviewees spent precious soundbite time distancing themselves from Move On’s “Patraeus/betray us” campaign. (More on this in the next post). No, what surprises even me is how soft the mainstream media has been in reporting on the General's obvious misstatements, half-truths and outright falsehoods about what is going on in Iraq. It's as if Patraeus's uniform has rendered him immune to any discussion in the press about his motivations. Did the media learn nothing from Oliver North draping himself in the flag in the 1980s when testifying before Congress at the Iran-Contra hearings? Apparently not. Can't attack the generals, it would mean we aren't Supporting Our Troops!

One thing clear to anyone listening even half-heartedly to the news is that no matter what we liberal bloggers and the rest of America want, it is inescapably clear that we will remain in Iraq in full force through the end of the Bush presidency. Moreover, according to a Fox News report this morning, "'everyone in town' is now participating in a broad discussion about the costs and benefits of military action against Iran, with the likely timeframe for any such course of action being over the next eight to 10 months."Rock on fascists, rock on.

Get This Party Started

How many of you all thought that when field marshal Patraes delivers his report to Congress next week on the effects of the surge, the Democrats would be presented with a golden opportunity to hammer the administration on Iraq and demand troop withdrawals which they would take full advantage of? Show of hands. Anyone? Anyone? Right. According to the Washington Post today, our spineless boot lickers in Washington are planning on throwing in the towel before they even hear what our American Rommel of the shifting sands has to say about the pacification of Baghdad. According to the Post, “Democratic leaders have signaled they are open to a more bipartisan approach to Iraq that would force the Bush administration to begin publicly planning for troop withdrawals but would stop short of requiring a firm timeline.”"Clearly, we don't have the numbers to override the president's vetoes, as has been clearly demonstrated," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), "nor do we expect to for a long time." That’s the spirit! If we can’t override a veto, why even express our discontent? After all only 4000 Americans have died in this bullshit exercise. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) even said that he could drop his demand for a firm troop withdrawal next spring to win GOP votes. Of course it has nothing to do with votes and everything to do with political will.

As Salon notes in the War Room “Do the Democrats have the numbers to override Bush's veto? No, Hoyer's probably right about that. But the fact is, Bush can't fund the war himself, or at least not for very long. At some point, he needs an affirmative vote from Congress, giving him the funds to continue. And if Congress won't give that to him without a timeline, well, at some point, Bush, not Congress, would have to be the one who blinks. Will that happen? Of course it won't. But it won't be because the Democrats lack a veto-proof majority. It's because too many of them lack the courage of their convictions; they'll say that the war is going badly -- maybe even that it's "lost" -- but they won't take the political risk of saying, "We're not going to pay for it anymore."

The Democrats have betrayed the voters who gave them the majority last November and they should be punished. By punished I mean replaced by other representatives who will actually go to Washington to do the people’s work Moveon.org is currently testing the waters by circulating a survey among its members asking whether they would support funding primary challengers running against conservative Democrats next November. I think that is as good a place as any to get rid of these useless Republicrats and replace them with actual hardcore left-wing anti-war liberals. I invite you all to meander over to moveon and maybe drop a dime or two in the kitty so we can get the party started, so to speak.

Weapons of Mass Deception

Sorry for the gap between postings kids. Jack's been sick and work pretty busy. I hope you all will forgive me. Speaking of forgiveness, will I be forgiven for enjoying the spectacle of Senator Craig twisting in the glare of public humiliation? Apparently the Senator is rethinking his resignation from the Senate and looking to withdraw his guilty plea, all on the advice of some rather high-priced lawyers, including the attorney who recently represented Michael Vic, the erstwhile NFL star and dog killer. I still think Craig's as good as gone. I saw an interview with Dan Bolton on McNeil Lehrer and he was pretty adamant when he said the White House thought the Senator was doing the right thing by resigning and that in time, the Senator himself will realize that.

Something else in the news this morning caught my attention. A few days ago New York was in a tizzy because someone discovered some nerve gas, purportedly taken from an Iraqi chemical weapons plant, lying around in a file cabinet at the UN. Further investigation revealed that the substance found at a UN weapons inspectors' office last month appears to be a non-toxic solvent.

The material was originally found Aug. 24 at a UN office in midtown Manhattan. The material, from a bombed-out Iraqi research facility, was in inventory files with a label that indicated it could be phosgene, a chemical substance used in the First World War.But it wasn’t phosgene, was it? . “If it turns out to be something that was mislabelled, we'll need to find out why it was mislabelled," said a UN official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yes, by all means let's find out why innocuous solvent was mislabeled as a WMD in the run up to the first gulf war, although I wouldn’t expect that the investigation into this “mislabeling” will go very far. What this tells me is that the plan to invade Iraq and depose Sadam Hussein based on manufactured evidence extends as far back as the first Bush administration. The fruit doesn’t fall too far from the tree does it? Of course Dick Cheney was the defense secretary under Bush I so the fact that there was phony WMD evidence around in 1991 isn’t really all that surprising.

Quote(s) of the Day

This gem is from a Joe Bageant essay on the American Hologram and how the American consumer machine can turn anything into a commodity:

"Healthful organic foods and hemp fiber clothing were once merely a holistic hippie thing, but we've see them endure, even grow. And become expensive, of course. (Organic foodwise, I just bought a quart bottle of lemon berry juice with echinacea for nearly eight bucks, though I doubtlessly screwed up it's healthful benefits by mixing it with cheap Aristocrat vodka -- $9 a half gallon. I named the drink "The Echinacean Whore.") And hemp fiber clothing is a low-cost, practical solution to dozens of ecological problems. Just the other day I saw a $60 pair of hemp fiber, bibbed play shorts for the morally superior baby. Market capitalism can co-opt virtually any low-cost alternative and sell it right back at ridiculous prices."

And this from the same essay, on the problem with mass media, specifically television:

"Deploying 250 million televisions which absorb 11 years of the average America's lifespan, the hologram regulates the nation's neurological seasons. Football season is delivered with its competitive passions, political election seasons, Christmas shopping season, but especially marketing seasons. It regulates the national mood, stirring our patriotic passions during wars and anxious vigilance against the threat of unseen terrorists who look absolutely normal. Together, we live within a media-generated belief system that functions as the operating instructions for society. It shows us how successful people supposedly behave, invest, and relate to each other. Through crime shows, it demonstrates what happens to us if we don't behave. It shows us who we should hate (Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, for starters). Anything outside of its parameters represents fear and psychological freefall."


Haha. "The Ecinacean Whore." The whole essay can be found here.

Republican Family Values

So, yet another self-hating gay Republican Senator was nailed with his hand in the cookie jar the other day. Larry Craig, the junior Senator from Idaho was arrested playing footsie with an undercover police office in a bathroom stall in the Minneapolis St. Paul airport back in June. He pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct on Monday. The CNN story can be found here.

The disgusting part of the story isn’t what Craig was doing in the bathroom stall. Hell, the Patriot doesn’t care who or even what Republican Senators decide to have sexual relations with on their own time. And maybe the diversion of a sexual encounter in an airport bathroom helped the man reduce some tension caused by waiting in a 2 hour line to get through security. Hell, flying sucks these days and everybody knows it. No, the truly disturbing part of this story is that Craig was one of the most ardent senators when it came to pushing so-called “family-values” issues while all the while he’s been trolling airport men’s rooms for blow jobs. Craig is a morality crypto fascist; a conservative who believes that the government should stay out of the financial markets but install a camera in your bedroom. Craig's voting record has earned him top ratings from social conservative groups such as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council. He has also supported a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In 1996, Craig also voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition to same-sex marriages and prevents states from being forced to recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples legally performed in other states. Talk about self-hating!

The other chuckle to come out of this story is that Craig now regrets his guilty plea and claims he was railroaded into it because he didn’t have the advice of a lawyer. How a Republican Senator can say that kind of thing with a straight face is beyond me. The tough-on-crime Republican party has tried to do away with the right to counsel for years from their assault on Miranda to their gutting of the Constitution. How quick the little rats are to run behind the tattered document when it’s their own sorry ass in the sling.

Gonzales Has Left The Building

So the Democratic majority is savoring their non-victory now that Alberto Gonzales has followed Karl Rove into the annals of history. Along with some empty chest beating about continued investigations, the democratic leadership in the house and senate are falling all over themselves taking credit for running Alberto out of town on a rail. Chuck Schumer stated that , "no one thought Alberto Gonzales was up to the job" saying that "we need someone who will put rule of law first." Admirable sentiments which make the lack of a filibuster at the time of the Attorney General’s confirmation all the more puzzling. Edward Kennedytalked with fellow lawmakers about a possible filibuster of the nomination but the idea that was dropped when Democrats could not muster the 41 votes needed. In fact Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., urged his colleagues not to filibuster but to generate as many "no" votes as possible to send a message to the White House. Gonzales was ultimately approved on a 60-36 vote, so it bears remembering that six democratic senators crossed the isle to support him. These six are probably as responsible as anyone for our current Constitutional crisis. In case anyone forgot their names, the six senators were Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Joe Lieberman (?-CT), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Ken Salazar (D-CO).

Several Democratic Senators expressed surprise about Gonzalez’s evasive non-answers while testifying at the Congressional hearings about the fired US attorneys a few months ago. This is also curious because of the comments some made at the time of his confirmation. According to an article at commondreams.org, “While Gonzales came across as modest and affable [at his confirmation hearing], he infuriated the panel's Democrats by giving what they said were evasive answers about his role in crafting the torture policy.

"He simply refused to say without equivocation that the president is not above the law," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. "The Judiciary Committee and the American people deserve to hear whether the next attorney general agrees that the president has the power to disobey laws as fundamental to our nation's character as the prohibition on torture." Indeed. The failure of the Democrats to filibuster Gonzalez confirmation led directly to the current climate of warrantless searches, torture, unchecked police power and the evisceration of the Constitution. Where was the opposition party? They are even more culpable because they knew he was a bastard from the get go and still did nothing to stop his appointment. Moving on.

It’s clear to anyone paying attention to the goings on in Washington that Rove’s departure opened up the flood gates for a mass exodus of Bush’s political hack appointees who are no doubt thinking about where they’re going to land in the private sector after the ship finally goes down in November of 2008. According to CNN, after Rove's resignation, senior administration officials said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten had told senior aides that if they intended to stay after Labor Day, they should plan to remain for the rest of Bush's term through January 2009

The rumor in DC today is that Michael Chertoff is being considered to replace the departing Gonzales. Here’s hoping he doesn’t treat the DOJ the way DHS treated New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. It is typical of the Bush administration to reward fuck-ups with promotions and medals (George Tenet anyone?) Even I think that Bush is going to have a hard time coming up with anyone who truly wants to be associated with the Department of Justice after the damage it has done to the rule of law.

T For Texas

Hi kids. The Patriot is still in Texas. I had a great steak last night in the old-town part of Dallas but other than that I haven’t been out of the hotel. There are almost as many steak houses here than there are bodegas in New York. I’ll try to get to Dealy Plaza today and provide a full report once I’ve solved the Kennedy assassination. In the meantime, here is an excellent argument why you shouldn’t hold your annual beer festival anywhere near a zoo. Silly Serbians:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/08/20/bear.death.reut/index.html

Don't Mess With Texas

This week the Patriot finds himself in Dallas Texas at a mediation in the old, and I do mean old, Adam’s Mark hotel. A stately old grand dame of a hotel, the Adams Mark hasn’t been redecorated since approximately the time of the Kennedy assassination. A certain sort of genteel poverty graces the halls of the old hotel; it isn’t shabby so much as tired, very, very tired. It is also enormous. I have a room on the 26^th floor, across from the Presidential Suite, with a view of Hwy 35 East. The hotel has 38 floors and thousands of feet of conference space. The décor is Texan, by which I mean a bastard hybrid of cowboy, Indian and Mexican. The staff glides around in Tuxedos and is much too polite. A hotel is a hotel, I suppose, but what kind of hotel has no wireless network in their conference rooms? A very old, tired hotel in downtown Dallas, that’s what kind of hotel.

I was reading a copy of the Dallas Morning News last night and the first two stories in the Metro section caught my eye right away as they both epitomize the Texas of my feverish nightmares. The first story entitled, “Beefed Up Bible Study” was about a BBQ restaurant owner who serves up a helping of fundamentalist nonsense aside his Texas short ribs, much to the delight of the yahoos who cram the stuff into their faces on Sunday nights. The second story was about how the Dallas prosecutor’s office has been repeatedly accused of hiding evidence from defense attorneys in order to secure death penalty convictions over the last few years. To me this epitomizes the concept of Texas justice.

I’m also hoping to visit a sight of more murder and mayhem before I run back screaming to New York. By this I mean a visit to the Texas Book Depository and the grassy knoll.

Debt Slavery

The current melt down on Wall Street, largely fueled by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, got me to thinking about the availability of easy credit and the inability of anyone drowning in their debt to do anything about it.

The news media rarely give any explanation for why Americans have been racking up debt at rates heretofore unseen in American society, leaving one to infer that the debt explosion is some sort of inevitable by-product of today's moral and economic climate. Nah. All that debt was made possible by one small change in the laws of consumer finance which transformed centuries of economics in a hot instant. In 1978, the Supreme Court interpreted ambiguous language in a little-known federal statute and opened the door for banks to "export" interest rates from one state to another. For example, a bank with lending operations in South Dakota -- where the interest ceiling was 24 percent, could now issue loans at 24 percent interest to a family living in New York (where the max rate is about 12%) without worrying about their corporate officers ending up in Riker’s Island perched next to loan sharks who collected overdue debts by breaking kneecaps. This set the stage for the explosion of the credit card industry and the availability of huge amounts of credit. The problem with all of that available credit is that people were quickly overextending themselves (by paying things like medical bills) and declaring bankruptcy, thus depriving poor little companies like MBNA of their minimum monthly payments and 27% interest payments. (In fact, nearly 90 percent of individuals filing for bankruptcy this past year had been felled by a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup, or by some combination of all three.) The solution the credit card companies came up with was to push for reform of the bankruptcy law. They achieved their goal in 2001. It is noteworthy that the bankruptcy bill could not have passed Congress without bipartisan (read, Democratic) support.

Americans in the 21st Century have become little more than debt slaves on a capitalist plantation. Up until a few years ago if you got in over your head you could declare bankruptcy and get a fresh start. No longer. The credit card industry, lead by MBNA and assisted by none other than Senator Hilary Clinton, effectively put an end to American’s ability to reboot their financial lives with a Chapter 7 filing. Of all the despicable things the Senate Democrats have done ion the last six years, and there have been many, none has had and will have such a devastating effect on the middle class than the passage of that bankruptcy bill. As thousands of overextended homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes and still remaining mired in debt for years, the credit card industry is raking in massive profits from jacked up interest rates and over limit penalties.

The industry authored bill to “reform” the bankruptcy system was first introduced when Bill Clinton was in the White House. Then First Lady Hilary Clinton convinced the President that the bill would devastate poor and middle class families if it were signed into law. A lame duck at the time, Clinton vetoed the bill in October of 2000.

In the spring of 2001, the bankruptcy bill was reintroduced in the Senate, essentially unchanged from the version President Clinton had vetoed the previous year. This time freshman Senator Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the bill. When the bill came up again in 2005, she missed the vote because her husband was in the hospital, although she indicated she would have opposed it. I call bullshit on that excuse. It is no coincidence that Senator Clinton received $140,000 in campaign contributions from banking industry executives in a single year, making her one of the top two recipients in the Senate.

Lest anyone forget, the following Democratic Senators voted for the version of the bill that ultimately passed and was signed into law by President Bush: Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware), Sen. Tom Carper (D-Delaware), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota), Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana), Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico), Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), Sen. Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota), Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii), Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vermont),Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas), Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida), Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colorado), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan).

Here’s a little diversion for the readers. The Oracle of Starbucks will tell you secrets about your personality when you enter your usual coffee order into their algorithm and click the submit button. Sort of a twisted caffine influenced horoscope. My usual order these days is a double shot vanilla latte. Behold the Oracle's wisdom:

Personality type: Ass-clown

You tell people that you're an executive at your company. You think that your repeated references to being "addicted" to caffeine make you seem intriguing and dangerous. People think you're a sucker because you spend 60% of your annual income at Starbucks. Everyone who drinks vanilla double shot latte ends up addicted to crack.

Also drinks: Zima

Can also be found at: Karaoke bars

I’d have to say that’s about 50% accurate, although the last time I had a Zima was in 1986. Have fun with it.

Iraq

Yesterday 200 people were killed in Iraq when successive truck bombs went off in northern Iraq. 200 people. People with families and lives and hopes and dreams and everything else that makes up the human condition. Dead because of our meddling in an area of the world we don’t belong. The lead story on CNN? A crooked NBA referee takes a plea in a basketball gambling case. No dead Americans, no story. The Iraq story? If you can find it, note that it blames the attack on al Qaeda in Iraq, an entity that came into existence only after the United States invaded. It is easy to say that the blood of every man woman and child killed in that country is on the hands of George Bush and his evil Christian cohorts in the White House. The reality is that their blood is on the hands of every indifferent American who’s support of the troops extends to placing a yellow ribbon manufactured in China on the back of their SUV.

Messianic Militarism

So Rove is packing up his black bag and leaving town, having accomplished pretty much everything he set out to when he goose-stepped into the White House with his faux cowboy boss in 2000. The mainstream media is taking his departure rather well and has actually been running creepily laudatory stories about his career in politics. The Republicans now have a permanent majority, in ideology if not in numbers. Can anyone argue that the political atmosphere in this country hasn’t tacked hard to the right since Bush took office?

After recently finishing Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting With Jesus, the Patriot has gotten his panties in a twist about fundamentalist Christians again. Every time I try to ignore them they keep traipsing, uninvited, back into my life. For example, lately a very annoying man on the Staten Island Ferry has taken to preaching the gospel at the top of his lungs on the 7:45am boat. That asshole is lucky I’m a free speech absolutist or I would have tossed him over the side days ago.

Over the last six years, fundamentalist Christians have been allowed to set the terms of the debate on a host of social issues in the media and their positions are reported with due consideration, as though believing in the rapture is the most normal thing in the world. The fall out from this sort of acceptance is that speech is banned, abstinence is taught in the schools as sex education and even papers as supposedly liberal as the New York Times are publishing “debates” about intelligent design and evolution. Lest we forget, 79% of Americans surveyed in 2004 by Newsweek believe that as the Bible says, Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, without a human father. Curiously, a mere 63 percent of Americans believe the Bible is literally true and the Word of God. I guess this means that 16% of those that don’t believe the bible is the word of God make an exception for the part about the virgin birth.

When broken down into different demographics, the poll somewhat unsurprisingly showed 77 percent of Republicans believe in the literal truth of the Bible as do 59 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of those not affiliated with either major party. These numbers are not encouraging for the rationalists among us who would rather base our middle-east foreign policy decisions on something other than the Book of Revelations. Which brings us, somewhat circuitously, to the concept of Christian Zionism.

Christian Zionism is a belief among some Christians that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy. Christian Zionists also believe that Christ cannot return to earth until certain events occur. The Jews must return to Palestine, (done) gain control of Jerusalem (not yet), rebuild a temple, and then we all must engage in the final, great battle of Armageddon, after which the righteous will be brought up to heaven and the heathens (including, one assumes, any Jews left hanging around after the conflagration) sent off to push heavy stones around with the devil. Which Christians believe in this nonsense, you might ask? Well, I hate to break it to you but, well, lets just say that the Bush administration’s foreign policy is heavily influenced by the writings of a cave-dwelling hermit who had apocalyptic visions some 2000 years ago.

So while Rove took great pains to court the fundamentalist Christians, who are, after all, the largest voting bloc in the Republican Party, he chose to ignore the danger of coddling messianic militarism. This may well end up being Rove’s true legacy. Granting unprecedented political access to Christian Jihadists and allowing them to govern-from the oval office-using the Bible as a roadmap.

A Blog Recommendation For You

Hey!
I want all of my loyal readers (and disloyal readers too-Distraction, I’m talking about you,) to go check out my friend’s blog here:

http://dreamingawake-cls.blogspot.com/

Dreamingawake contains the “[u]nedited (mostly) musings of a professional editor, sleep-deprived mother, political junkie, and wannabe foodie.” The writing is top notch, and there are great food porn pictures. Because the author is a professional editor you won't find as many misspellings and incorrect verb tenses as you do here. Should make it easier on the eyes. Come on, do it now before you forget.
-P

Happy Weekend

So the Patriot is coming off a couple of rough weeks folks, although nothing as rough as what my poor friend Crackass has gone through, what with the feds tossing his apartment and all. I learned a very important lesson this past week. First and foremost, the principal danger at a picnic isn’t ants, stinging insects or boring conversation. No, the most dangerous thing at a picnic is mayonnaise that has sat in the 100 degree heat for several hours before it makes its way, in the innocent guise of macaroni salad, into your body. Mark my words, nothing will ruin your day, and possibly your week, more than that seemingly innocent emulsion of raw eggs and oil after it’s been exposed to the Virginia sun on a summer’s day. The Patriot learned this the hard way. Feeling somewhat at ill sorts, I took an early boat home last Monday where I promptly passed out in a delirium, only to be prodded awake by a broom-wielding seaman several long minutes after the ferry had docked in St. George’s. A restless night followed, consumed with dreams and hallucinations the like of which the Patriot hasn’t seen since the 1986 Dead shows at the Meadowlands (and they were good shows).

Nevertheless irrespective of bad mayonnaise, the engine of Capitalism grinds on. This week there must have been some serious sand in the gears. The sub-prime mortgage market led the stock market on a wild ride which had the Patriot, who is heavily leveraged in emerging markets, gnawing on his fingernails every time he checked his etrade account. That’s the price one pays for betting on the vagaries of globalism without someone on the inside pulling the strings for you. The bids are rigged my friends. Bush and his corporate masters make money because they know all the players. The markets move when they tell the markets to move. As Political-spazz noted in a posting a few months ago, the day before 911, trading on United Airlines stock was through the roof. They knew what was going to happen. The rest of us are chasing chump change. Might as well go to Vegas, get drunk and at least have a few good stories when we come home hung over and broke. Wall Street bleeds slower but its still a bleed. Alright my brothers and sisters, peace out and see y’all next week.

Surveillance Redux

For the record, 16 Democratic Senators and 41 Representatives crossed the isle to vote for the expansion of warantless surveillance before skulking away to their summer vacations. Slate had a good take on how this abdication of leadership in the face of the White House’s red-baiting compromises the so-called “opposition” party’s stance on other important issues like Gonzalez’s complicity in the firing of US Attorneys:

“There is virtually no way to reconcile Sen. Mark Pryor's, D-Ark., claim that Gonzales has "lied to the Senate" and needs to go with his vote to expand the reach of our warrantless eavesdropping program. And how can one possibly square Sen. Dianne Feinstein's, D-Calif., claim that the AG "just doesn't tell the truth" with her vote to give him yet more unchecked authority? You either trust this AG with the power to listen in on your phone calls or you do not

With this FISA vote, the Democrats have compromised the investigation into the U.S. attorney scandal. They've shown themselves either to be participating in an empty political witch hunt or curiously willing to surrender our civil liberties to someone who has shown—time and again—that he cannot be trusted to safeguard them. The image of Democrats hypocritically berating the attorney general with fingers crossed behind their backs is ultimately no less appalling than an attorney general swearing to uphold the Constitution with fingers crossed behind his own.”

Amen. There is no legitimate reason to support the Democrats in the 2008 Congressional elections if the leadership is planning to continue to operate in this manner. While a third-party presidential candidate has little chance of prevailing, serious consideration should be given to supporting your local Green party candidate for whatever seat he or she happens to be running for.

Same Shit

The Patriot apologizes for the dearth of postings of late but what with a heavy travel schedule, the Zalewski family reunion and a bout with spoiled mayonnaise there has been precious little time to rant and rage about the sorry state of the union. The Times had a story yesterday about Bush signing a law which provided a broad expansion of the warrantless wiretap program. The law was largely authored by the White House and somehow made its way through a democratically controlled Congress without too much hand wringing or public comment.

Previously, under the FISA Courts (set up by the Dems in the late 1970s), a secret Court reviewed evidence and issued warrants to various agencies authorizing wiretapping of American citizens where the national security was ostensibly at risk. Essentially a rubber-stamp for the FBI, FISA rarely declined to issue a warrant where one was requested by the Justice Department. Under the new law, provided that the government is targeting a foreigner talking to a US citizen, no warrant is needed.

The new law expands the eavesdropping powers Bush claimed he had the right to exercise with his Terrorist Surveillance Program in two major ways. First, the law requires telecommunications companies to make their facilities available for government wiretaps, and it grants them immunity from lawsuits for complying. Second, Bush has said his original surveillance program was restricted to calls and e-mails involving a suspected terrorist, but the new law has no such limit. Instead, it allows executive-branch agencies to conduct oversight-free surveillance of all international calls and e-mails, including those with Americans on the line, with the sole requirement that the intelligence-gathering is "directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." There is no requirement that either caller be a suspected terrorist, spy, or criminal. Government officials are apparently unhappy that details of the wiretapping program were leaked to the public. I wonder why?

As Walter Pincus reports in the Washington Post today, "senior government officials" say Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell will design the procedures for using the new surveillance powers Congress has approved and determine whether the administration is complying with them. Doesn’t that make you feel better about the program?

While the Patriot isn’t surprised at this expansion of the secret police’s powers under this fascist administration, he is pissed at the Democrats complicity at bringing the law to the president’s desk. In what has become an all too familiar scenario of the lawmakers putting their own interests over the Country’s, a number of Democrats in the apparently had doubts about the new law but they caved under threats from the president to force congress to stay in session until they created a version of the law to which he could agree. God forbid the Democrats miss their summer vacation. I mean, warrantless wiretapping isn’t that important compared to missing out on a couple of weeks on the Cape.

As Time Grieve noted in Salon’s War Room today, “The authority granted by the surveillance legislation expires after six months, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she wants to see it rewritten even before then. But here's a question: If Democrats in the House and the Senate found it impossible to resist giving the Bush administration surveillance powers it didn't already have, are they really going to be comfortable taking those powers away once Gonzales and McConnell can start claiming -- while keeping the details under seal, of course -- that the new powers are already working to stop terrorist attacks?” Good question. I think I know the answer.

Kalifornia Here I Come

Once again the Patriot finds himself in California, except this tine his is staying in the bosom of California Wine Country, just north of Santa Barbara in San Luis Obispo. Soon after disembarking from a 10 hour plane trip, I went for a trail run through the hill country, followed by some excellent beef carpaccio (all due apologies to my vegetarian friends, but the Zinfandel cried out for raw meat), and a stroll down Main Street, followed, in turn, by a tasting at a local wine store that only sells California wines, all from the local area. Everything I tried was magnificent, but special praise is reserved for the 2005 Babcock Classic Rock Cuvee which almost made me weep it was so full of flavor. The wine is from 85% Estelle fruit. Highly recommended if you can find it. I bought a bottle, but the odds of it making its way back to Staten Island are decidedly slim.

Today's Quote and a Recommendation

"Take away America's Wal-Mart junk and cheap electronics and what you have left is a mindless primitive tribe and a gaggle of bullshit artists pretending to lead them."-- James "Mad Dog" Howard

That quote comes at the beginning of the best article/essay I have ever read on what is wrong with America in the 21st Century:

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/02/welcome_to_midd.html

Here's a sample:

"Joe Bageant's little inner voice is like everyone else's. Whenever I shudder at the condition of the republic, whenever I feel its utter absence of community, it scolds me and tells me I am crazy: Nothing is wrong. This is merely the way things are. It has always been this way. You cannot change that. You expect too much. Look at your wife. She's not upset. She wonders why you cannot just go ahead and be happy. What you see around you is normalcy. Take care of your own family. Relax. Buy something. And I do too. Which is why I own nine guitars, though I can only play one at a time, and even then not very well. The voice made me do it. I was bored.
Bored plus anxious. Hell, I could lose my job. I could lose everything. And if I lost my job I would indeed lose everything. Social status, family, the accumulated net worth of a lifetime. Which, believe me, ain't much after two divorces and a run-in with cocaine.

Adding to the anxiety is the lack of evidence that the world needs you or me at all. In this totally commoditized life we are dispensable. Everything is standardized. It really doesn't matter who grows our food or makes our clothing. If we don't make it, it someone else will. If we don't buy it, someone else will. Some other faceless person will step forward to fill in our place. The same goes for the engineers who created this computer and the same goes for your own job. The machine rolls on. With us or without us. "

Of Donkeys and Asses

The Democratic leadership in Congress is sorely trying the patience of the activist wing of the party. While the Patriot gave up on the boot lickers about a week after the mid-terms (when Pelosi took impeachment off the table), the rest of the base has seemingly been content to be strung along by a series of empty resolutions and emptier promises. One of the few Democratic senators who bucks the trend of complacency is Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold. Feingold has been calling for the (figurative) heads of Bush and Cheney since mid-March 2006, when he proposed a resolution to censure the administration for their illegal wire-tapping program. Due to the fall elections and the Democrat’s unnatural fear of being seen as soft on terror he received no support from the rest of the and was actually attacked by others in the party for wasting the Senate’s time with such partisan blather. This past Sunday on Meet the Press Feingold showed that he is still in temporary possession of his backbone unlike the rest of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate. While talking to Tim Russert, Feingold proposed another course of action because Bush and Cheney “have committed impeachable offenses with regard to this terrorist surveillance program.” Unfortuately, Feingold is advocating something less than impeachment. Rather, he suggests that the House and Senate pass a series of resolutions “that make sure that the historical record shows the way they have weakened our country, weakened our country militarily…[and] weakened our country's fundamental document, the Constitution.”

Pretty tame stuff, but more than anyone else on the left side of the isle is suggesting. I guess if there are historians sifting through the Congressional Record 100 years from now they’d duly note that Congress at least put up some sort of a fight before it was completely neutered as a body by unrestrained executive power. One would think at the very least the Democratic leadership would want to go on record as opposing warrantless surveillance of American citizens. One would think. Yet the response from Pelosi and Reid has been muted, to say the least. Reid said he wouldn’t support the resolution because the Senate “has better things to do”. I’d love to know what Senate business is so important that it trumps saving the Republic. More changes to the bankruptcy law? Creating debtors prisons, perhaps? Digby, posting in the War Room on Salon notes that, “In case anyone's wondering, the latest poll on the question of impeachment had 46 percent in favor of impeaching President Bush and 54 percent in favor of impeaching Vice President Cheney.” Why is Reid so resistant to passing a resolution when it appears that almost ½ the country would send Bush and Cheney to jail if they had half a chance? The easy answer is that he is in the pocket of his corporate masters just like the rest of them.
In related political news, Cindy Sheehan has reappeared on the scene, throwing down the gauntlet squarely at the feet of Nancy Pelosi and challenging Pelosi to either begin impeachment proceedings or run the risk of losing her seat to, well, Sheehan. The mass media predictably ridiculed Sheehan’s plans but the bloggers as usual had the correct take on things. This past Sunday, in an article titled "Impeachment Question Divides Democrats," the Politico's Dan Gerstein analyzed the Sheehan/Pelosi clash, calling it indicative of an "existential conflict within the Democratic Party.” He continues: "Many progressive activists are incredulous at the inability of the congressional leadership to end the war, move big pieces of their agenda and (not least of all) defenestrate The Decider. Their frustration is starting to boil over." If you ask me it ain’t boiling over fast enough. It’s time to turn up the heat.

Class Warfare

I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Joe Bageant’s book Deer Hunting With Jesus (Dispatches from America’s Class War) , which purports to explain why the Democrats have lost the redneck vote in the south and why said rednecks continue to vote Republican despite the fact that doing so is clearly not in their economic interests. In that respect the book is a little like What’s The Matter With Kansas, although that book takes a more academic approach to analyzing the issue. Bageant returned at age 59 to the small Virgina town where he grew up, Winchester, and his book is a collection of his observations on how badly the working-class is being exploited by the petty Republican bourgeois that runs that town and others like it all across the South. He also comments on the strategy of the Republican Party operatives who have made a science of infiltrating and manipulating local governments and spreading propaganda and rumor about the so called liberal elite. I’m not sure why I never encountered Bageant before; his writing is akin to Hunter Thompson’s best political analysis and he has apparently been at this for years. Here’s a sample from an essay posted on his web site (link is on my links list) which takes the media to task in a way the Patriot greatly admires:

“We have all assembled our identities from the prepackaged and highly processed consumer media spectacle that now constitutes the American experience, mixed and matched personality ensembles from synthetic experiences and products, all of it purchased at the same globally franchised company store, all of it within the context of our own particular tribe of consumer cultism and commodity fetishes. It's vapid, it's absurd. But it's all we've had to work with from the birth, consumer culture derivatives of consumer culture derivatives. It's a long way back to the Greek classics or even de Toqueville from the Da Vinci Code and Oprah. And an even longer way back to pre air conditioned life and black and white TV, if you know what I mean. Our estrangement from such things as an entire afternoon of quiet reflection or even the most common discomforts or simpler amusements has not been chronological. Thanks to technology, it has been quantum and exponential, developing in all directions simultaneously. Bondage though it is, nobody wants out. Not really. It's like sex. It feels good as along as you don't do too much thinking about it. In fact, few of us can conceive of an "outside." And the miniscule number of people who can imagine there being something beyond "society of the spectacle" find it a fearsome thing. They worry about possibly living without HBO while half the world wipes their asses with their fingers.”

Great writing! Americans have become so complacent and lazy that they are easily manipulated by shiny trinkets. Consumer cultism is pervasive and the urge to consume is overpowering. How else to explain the proliferation of Hummers on the highways during the middle of a war in the middle east ? How else to explain that people believe that they are supporting the troops by placing a yellow magnet on the back of their SUV, a magnet which was probably made in China in a factory that used to be in America? How else to explain why Americans have rolled over and let their country be jacked by crypto fascists with nary a whimper. We don’t care, as long as we have enough stuff to keep us endlessly distracted.

Free Land For Free People

A criminal court judge struck a victory for civil rights yesterday when he ruled that the NYPD improperly viewed images on a suspect’s cell phone without first obtaining a warrant. Photographs and videos stored on the cell phone camera of a man charged with groping a woman on a subway were excluded by Judge Anthony Ferrara in a written decision issued yesterday. I haven’t read the decision, but I find it interesting that it was released several days after a plan to flood downtown Manhattan with massive numbers of surveillance cameras was revealed to the public.

While one has (in theory) the constitutional right to be secure in one’s person and things from warrantless search or seizure, the Courts have ruled that there is no expectation of privacy when one is traversing public streets. Anything you do on those streets can be videotaped and used against you in any subsequent criminal prosecution. Of course if you are looking for that camera footage to exculpate a client or bolster an alibi, good luck. The NYPD usually refuses to release that information without a subpoena, and even then evidence has a mysterious way of disappearing inside the monolithic One Police Plaza.

In a somewhat related matter, I was watching a documentary the other night called Commune. With the slogan “Free Land for Free People,” the founders of the Black Bear Commune in Northern California cajoled money from rock stars and movie idols (James Coburn was a big contributor) and bought a rural, abandoned gold mine in Siskiyou County where they set about creating a utopian community.

Of course the group soon discovered that although they all agreed that American society, mired in materialism and consumerism was toxic, each person had a totally different idea of what utopia might look like. Despite some very rocky years Black Bear flourished and is still in existence.

I was watching this movie against the background of a lot of recent thinking about how it is possible to raise a child with values in a society that has completely abandoned the very principles upon which it was founded. The paranoia that has crept across this country since 911 is something that I never thought I would see. Fascist governments everywhere quickly learn the lesson that people who are afraid become docile and are easily manipulated. The government has become quite adept at keeping the citizenry in a constant low grade state of fear. When the people are afraid they are a lot more likely to accept surveillance cameras, not to mention the disappearance of their civil liberties.

So to have a child to whom the post 911 mindset seems normal is an odd thing. My first thought is to find my own Black Bear Commune and wait until the shit storm blows over before he internalizes all of the negativity. But the government is distrustful of communes because there are no televisions there. No easy answers.

Up Up and Away

You amateur aviators out there might be entertained with this story from CNN. Apparently a gentleman named Kent Couch spent last Saturday afternoon flying his lawn chair around the state of Oregon. Couch was trying to emulate the flying skills of Larry Walters -- who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Couch took a 9 hour 163 mile flight last Saturday, taking off from his back yard and landing in a farmer’s field 193 miles away. He brought a few snacks and a parachute in case he had to bail out. Apparently his previous flight ended in an unanticipated skydive when he shot too many balloons with his BB gun in an effort to control his altitude. Who say’s Americans are no longer capable of great things?

Apparently in this little stunt has been turned into a full-fledged sport called "Cluster Ballooning". The idea is not, ahem, rocket science. What you do is attach a bunch of big-ass helium balloons to a harness, release some ballast when you want to go up and pop the balloons when you want to come down. The method seems hardly scientific enough to ensure gentle rises or soft landings. Nevertheless, cluster balloon, ah, aficionados, have their own website which asks the (one would imagine) infrequently asked question, "Have you ever dreamed of being carried into the sky by a giant bouquet of colorful toy balloons?" Those of you who have in fact asked such a question may find the answer there.

Here We Go Again

In yet another example of the impotency of Congress and the arrogance of the chief executive, George Bush has decided that the White House will not comply with Congressional subpoenas directing two top former aides to appear for testimony before Congress. These aids were to give testimony about circumstances surrounding the firing of nine Federal prosecutors last year.

Bush has consistently invoked the doctrine of executive privilege to circumvent Congress and he has faced few if any repercussions. The best the Democrats could come up with was a moderately worded letter that was sent to Bush’s counsel Fred Fielding complaining that the President was acting in bad faith. Fielding rejected the letter in his own statement expressed concern that the Democrats were overstepping Congressional authority (!). Pat Leahy continued the cascade of Democratic mediocrity with his own weakly worded statement: “I hope the White House stops this stonewalling.” You hope the White House stops this stonewalling? Why on earth would they do that? They know that there is no day of reckoning in their future. They know that Congress is basically incapable of acting on anything other than its donor’s interests.

The Republicans may have stripped the people of the protections afforded by the Constitution and they will be remembered for it. The Democrats will be judged more harshly by history because they had opportunities galore to take action to stop this runaway administration and they did nothing. The Iraq war, the “Patriot” Act, domestic surveillance, indefinite detention without legal recourse, the suspension of habeas corpus, the evisceration off environmental standards, the nomination and confirmation of Alito and Roberts, all presented our so-called opposition party with opportunities to engage the administration. And…nothing.

Assuming the American experiment survives the next 50 years, I wonder what our Chinese speaking grandchildren will make of the fact that at the turn of the 21st century our government was taken over by fascists and oligarchs and we did nothing to stop it.

Diving on the Iberia

The Patriot spent this past week-end engaging in his favorite non-blogging activity; wreck diving. Yesterday morning I boarded the Jeannie II out of Sheepshead Bay for a 1.5 hour trip to the wreck of the Iberia which lies some 3 miles off the southern shore of Long Island. The Iberia was sunk in 1888 after a part of its stern was sheared off after a collision with the Cunard liner Umbria in heavy fog. She was carrying 28,000 crates of dates from the Middle East when she was sent to the bottom and the crates holding those dates are common artifacts still occasionally brought to the surface by intrepid divers. If you get a nice one, it makes a great souvenir with the name of the long gone shipping company Arnold & Cheney. Coincidentally the old address of Arnold & Cheney is 159 Water Street, right across the street from where I currently work. Unfortunately conditions were such that I was unable to do much searching for artifacts on this trip.

The Iberia is a popular dive site because of its inshore location and relatively easy depth. (About 65 feet) Visibility, however, tends to be poor, as it was yesterday, and can drop to zero if you or another diver are careless and stir up the silty bottom. We were careless and stirred up the silty bottom. Visibility was, at best, six feet. A light was essential, although for the most part completely useless. Also no matter what you were taught in your first scuba class, clearing your mask with 52 degree water is an invitation to a complete ice cream headache brain freeze freak-out. That shit is COLD.

Before embarking on the dive I was somewhat concerned about something called “task overloading.” This occurs when a diver has too much new or unfamiliar equipment to occupy their attention which leads to a loss of focus and lead the diver to make mistakes. For example, yesterday I was diving with a pony bottle for the first time (a redundant air system involving a second tank and regulator) and it was my first dive of the year in cold water in my 7mm wetsuit. My dive light was also new as was the way I had it rigged to my buoyancy compensator. This doesn’t seem too complicated on the surface but believe me it is a lot to concentrate on at once when you are actually in the water and depending on your gear for survival. Task overloading is not such a concern in the warm water of the tropics where the sun still streams brightly into the depths and you can see 100’ in every direction. However, the murky cold waters of the North Atlantic are much less forgiving; mistakes can easily be made and those mistakes can be fatal rather quickly.

Conditions for yesterday’s dive were less than ideal. The water was cold, the wreck is festooned with old fishhooks and fishing line that can easily snag a fin or tank, the visibility was atrocious and the wreck was encrusted with very sharp coral. It was also fairly dark; every time a cloud passed over the sun on the surface, it became impossible to see more than three feet without a light. I was diving with two other divers I met on my Key Largo trip; both are relatively experienced and have no real issues with their buoyancy or equipment. Unfortunately, none of us brought a wreck reel so we had to navigate along the wreck without any reference to the location of the anchor line besides our compasses which are not dependable on a metal wreck. (A wreck reel holds a spool of nylon line that you tie to the anchor line of the dive boat where it connects to the wreck. You then unspool the line as you explore the wreck, and reel it in to find your way back to the anchor line.) The absence of a reel meant that we were all a bit nervous about venturing too far from the anchor line, even though we did it anyway.

In general yesterday’s dives were a great learning experience and I am hoping to do quite a bit more wreck diving this summer. Next time I’ll bring a reel and seriously consider purchasing a dry suit to ward off the onset of hypothermia. Believe me this sport is more fun than it sounds.