I'm Baaack.....

I’m back. I really would rather not be, but every time I read the paper or watch the vapid “reporters” on CNN hold forth on important topics like the “staycation” and the second Phil Specter trial, I start frothing at the mouth and my left eye starts twitching. I think holding in all of my anger at the fascist oligarchs running this country is going to start causing me health issues. So, it’s back to ranting and raving on the internet for me.

A random survey of the morning papers produced one item of immediate interest. In a spectacular victory for the 911 terrorists, the City of New York is now completing its transition to a police state with its plan to scan and archive the license plates of every car that crosses into Manhattan through the tunnels and over the bridges. The invasive program is desperately needed in order to “strengthen the city’s guard against a potential terror attack,” according to the NYPD’s chief spokesman. (I suppose it should pass without mention-but I’m going to mention it anyway- that such a plan, had it been in effect on 9/11, would have done nothing to deter the hijackers who flew the planes into the Towers. After all, they didn’t fly the freaking planes through the Holland Tunnel, did they?)

The plan to take snapshots of the subversive bumper stickers on your minivan is part of a much larger operation with the Orwellian name “Operation Sentinel”. The backbone of this plan is the integration of various frighteningly intrusive new technologies with the goal of encasing Manhattan in a web of surveillance. In addition to photographing and scanning the license plates of cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels, and using sensors to detect the presence of radioactivity, data on each vehicle “including its time-stamped image, license plate imprint and radiological signature — would be sent to a command center in Lower Manhattan, where it would be indexed and stored.” (NY Times). Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, flush with Homeland Security dollars that would arguably be better spent on classrooms and improved transportation infrastructure, “has been urging the creation of a London-style surveillance system for the financial district that relies on license plate readers, movable roadblocks and 3,000 (!) public and private security cameras below Canal Street, all linked to a coordination center called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. The goal, according to Kelly, is to save the financial center from a possible disruptive terrorist attack. From what I’ve seen of the economy lately, I’m more inclined to think that the people need to be protected from the financial center rather than the other way around.

Operation Sentinel is also part of the NYPD’s 39 page vision for security at the 9/11 site. Call me crazy, but I kind of remember that right after 9/11, before the country went completely mad, the thinking of designers and politicians alike was that the public space that would rise on the ashes of the World Trade Center site should reflect the angels of our better nature; wide pedestrian spaces, a vibrant streetscape, etc. I am forced to admit that the current plan, with a dozen guard-booths to control pedestrian traffic and placing the entire area of the former WTC within a security zone in which only specially screened taxis, limousines and cars would be allowed through barriers staffed by police officers, to be much more reflective of the small-minded, paranoid, mean-spirited, war-mongering fascists we have become in the last seven years.

It's good to be back.

Mission Accomplished

Well my friends, the Patriot has had a good run over the course of the past two years but I think it’s time to pull the plug. From the day I started hacking away at this blog in 2006 to the present day my life has changed in ways that would have seemed inconceivable to me then. The country has also gone through a lot of changes, very few of them positive ones, and whether we survive with our principles intact is a very open question in my mind.

I have decided to continue to blog, although postings on politics and political ideology will take a back seat to comments on the far more frustrating (yet rewarding) job of parenting little Jack Becket. I invite you all to stop by the new blog, “Who’s Your Daddy” www.whosyourdaddie.blogspot.com and have a look around. The blog will primarily be concerned with, “Meditations and musings on being a single dad in New York. “ What this means exactly isn’t quite clear to me yet. Stay tuned. And thank you, dear readers, for your support over the last two years. It has been a real treat foaming at the mouth with all of you.

"You should not have to have your penis fall off to get medical treatment from the government."

Very true. Unfortunately, it happens occasionally:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031408G.shtml

WTF?

Now I don't care that Spitzerwas sleeping with hookers, although to do so on Valentine's Day seems the height of bad taste when you are married and have three daughters waiting at home with heart-shaped cards and all that. What I do care about is how cavalierly he was shuffling money around and how his outsized ego seemed to warp his capacity for critical thinking. Did he really think that noone was watching? The man made a lot of enemies and all of them were lined up waiting for him to fuck up in some way. The hubris! I never really liked him personally; he was a bully and abused his office as attorney general, even though the net result of his prosecutions was generally positive for the people of New York. But he is also a lawyer, and the State Bar takes a dim view of lawyers who commit felonies. In fact, upon conviction they are instantly disbarred. Spitzer is familiar with what charges one can bring down on the heads of high priced call girl agencies through his moralistic crusade against them while he was attorney general, so he must have been aware that he was in violation of the Mann Act when he was arranging for Kristin to hop on the 5:39 Amtrak to DC. (The same train, incidentally, that I used to take home when I was commuting from to Philadelphia a few years ago). He also must have known that "stacking" your financial transactions to avoid raising the attention of the IRS is also a felony. This incredible lapse of judgment makes me question whether he is suffering from some sort of mental illness. The Republicans will have some fun with this one, but they probably shouldn't get out the knives until they find out who clients 1 through 8 were. What a flameout. See ya Spitzer.

Police State, Useless Congress, The Usual Stuff

I haven’t posted in a while. Mostly this is because I have not had any time, but it’s also partly because I have come to realize that living life is more interesting than writing about it. So what’s new? Things have been slow at work and I’ve taken a step back from distance running. I’m back to 5 miles per day for 6 days per week. I found that when I was running 10 on Sunday and continuing my weekly mileage I was pretty sore and I was also shoving a fair amount of high calorie food into my face because I was constantly hungry. As a result, despite getting my mileage up around 40 a week, I was incrementally gaining weight. This was not the result I hoped for so I’m circling in a running holding pattern until I can figure out when to up the mileage to better prepare for the Long Island ½ Marathon in May. The runner’s term for what I’m doing is accumulating “junk miles,” but I never liked the term. Holding pattern is more descriptive.

So, what has the government been up to lately? Let’s see, the Democratic controlled Congress is circulating a draft of its FISA bill which essentially gives Bush everything he asked for. The current draft does not contain telecom immunity (solely for temporary strategic reasons), but incorporates every substantive warrantless surveillance provision of the Rockefeller/Cheney bill passed by the Senate. The bill was drafted by Pelosi and Reyes, may they rot in hell, and is expected to be signed by the President without any complaints. Your opposition party at work in the Brave New World folks.

What else? Well, the Washington Post is reporting that the DOJ has created a domestic intelligence system set up through computer networks which will gather together broad new categories of behavior of Americans, from the suspicious to the innocuous. Federal authorities hope that The National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. DEx will become a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine enormous caches of local and state records for the first time. But wait, doesn’t this violate our constitutional privacy rights? The answer is it depends on what your definition of “privacy” is:

"As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information. . . . "

You can trust us, we’re from the government! Remind me again why I should care who wins this election.

Stuff White People Like

Probably the funniest blog in the history of the internet. A sample from #60, "The Toyota Prius".

"Over the years, white people have gone through a number of official cars. In the 1980s it was the Saab and the Volvo. By the 1990s it was the Volkswagen Jetta or a Subaru 4WD stastion wagon. But these days, there is only one car for white people. One car that defines all that they love: the Toyota Prius.

The Prius might be the most perfect white product ever. It’s expensive, gives the idea that you are helping the environment, and requires no commitment/changes other than money.

The Toyota Prius gets 45 miles per gallon. That’s right, you can drive 45 miles and burn only one gallon of gasoline. So somehow, through marketing or perception, the Prius lets people think that driving their car is GOOD for the environment.

It’s a pretty sweet deal for white people. You can buy a car, continue to drive to work and Barak Obama rallies and feel like you are helping the environment!"

LOL!!

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

William F. Buckley

So William Buckley kicked the bucket today. Was he a smart man? Indubitably. Was he a charismatic man? Verily. I even agree with many of his libertarian views. A good leftist need look no further than the National Review for a principled stance on the drug war and on the dangers of giving the government too much power to search and seize. From a speech Buckley gave to the New York State Bar association against the “war on drugs” in late 1995:

“I came to the conclusion that the so-called war against drugs was not working, that it would not work absent a change in the structure of the civil rights to which we are accustomed and to which we cling as a valuable part of our patrimony… I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.”

I might also mention that he was outspoken in his opposition to the Iraq war. However, I do not agree with Buckley on a great deal. The idea, for example, that people with HIV should be tattooed on their forearms as a warning to those who would share needles with them is the sort of thing that makes one’s stomach turn. (He recommended a similar tattoo on the rear ends of people with AIDS to, as he put it, “prevent the victimization of homosexuals.”) Nevertheless, compared to the current crop of Neo-Cons who lay claim to his legacy without possessing his intellectual acumen, he was a giant and a worthy adversary.

Perhaps the best tribute I have read thus far is from leftist author and blogger Rick Perlstein who used Buckley as a source for his book on Barry Goldwater. One excerpt:

“He did the honor of respecting his ideological adversaries, without covering up the adversarial nature of the relationship in false bonhommie. A remarkable quality, all too rare in an era of the false fetishization of "post-partisanship" and Broderism and go-along-to-get-along. He was friends with those he fought. He fought with friends. These are the highest civic ideals to which an American patriot can aspire…”

See ya Bill. Your type of conservative is hard to come by these days.

Nader Redux

Nader is in the race. This causes me a host of philosophical and practical problems. I’m not quite ready to jump ship yet, but I have been carefully considering Obama’s stance on a variety of issues and find them wanting. Granted, he is probably the most progressive candidate one can expect, but this isn’t such a great allocade when one considers the sorry state of progressive politics in America. On the issues, Ralph and I have no disagreement. Ralph Nader takes these stands: Adopt single payer national health insurance. Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget. No to nuclear power, solar energy first. Aggressive crackdown on corporate crime and corporate welfare. Open up the Presidential debates to legitimate third party candidates. Adopt a carbon pollution tax. Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East. Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law. Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax. Put an end to ballot access obstructionism. Work to end corporate personhood. Obama supports, well, none of those things.

What does it mean to be a progressive? What does it mean to be a leftist? These are not simply meaningless philosophical questions. Obama is probably the best we can expect from the Democrats. He’s no JFK, but even Nader himself called Obama "a person of substance" and "the first liberal evangelist in a long time". Unfortunately, when you look at his positions, he stands for, at best, incremental change. I feel like that isn’t enough. It only took the Republicans seven years to destroy the economy, eviscerate the constitution and trash America’s reputation in the world. They certainly weren’t holding back on their agenda for the sake of political expediency. I don’t know. Maybe I am so disenchanted with the inherent corruption of the political system that I cannot get beyond the fact that these great media driven personality contests that are trotted out for public consumption every four years have very little to do with things that concern average Americans. Presidential elections aren’t about issues; they are about money and personality. Issues tend to bore the media. Plus, well, we know who controls the media. Corporations are perfectly happy to allow us to wallow in ignorance as long as we are spending money to buy their products. Some days I feel like a human ATM. But I have questions. I want to know why are we the only western democracy without government sponsored universal healthcare? Why is no one running for president talking about that? How come the war in Iraq isn’t being debated? Why isn’t Obama demanding the repeal of the Patriot Act and coming out strongly against warrantless wiretapping?

Silver Lake Park, Staten Island

Saturday in the park. We finally got a decent snowstorm, although it still doesn't seem as substantial as the ones I remember when I was a lad. Nevertheless there was a good sledding hill...

Not Dogs and Soysages

A week-end in the mountains is a wonderful prescription for a long list of society induced stress related ailments. Despite the unseasonably warm weather, the Patriot was even able to get in a day of skiing at Plattekill, a small family ski resort in the Catskills. The trails certainly didn’t rival anything in Colorado, or even Vermont, but the Mountain had one virtue which made the skiing the equivalent of what you would find at a much better situated resort-daycare. What an enlightened concept. I have always had an affinity for the Catskills. I have camped and hiked all over the park at one point or another since I was in high school and I like the fact that the place (with a few exceptions like Woodstock) hasn’t been overrun by yuppies. Unfortunately there is a large development project slated for Bellayre which will probably forever change the air of gentle sleepiness that hangs over the smaller towns.

I was watching CNN the other day and they were playing video taken by an undercover animal rights activist of workers in a slaughterhouse kicking and tasering cows that were too sick to walk on their own into the killing chute. It was a pretty gruesome sight. Workers also sprayed water with high intensity hoses up the cattle’s up noses, and rolled them with forklifts in attempt to get them to stand . The abuse was probably motivated more by economics than any sadistic impulse on the part of the workers. Federal rule prohibits the slaughter of non-ambulatory disabled ("down") cattle for human consumption. If the cow can be tortured into walking into the slaughterhouse under its own power then it isn’t a down animal and can be made into McDonald’s ¼ pounders. If it has to be dragged to the killing floor then it’s basically worthless and has to be sold as dog food.

I am not an animal rights activist and although I was a vegetarian for 10 years, over the last several years incorporated small amounts of meat, including beef, into my diet. My personal belief, supported by science, is that man is an omnivore. However, I also believe that eating low on the food chain is a wise choice for a variety of ecological and health reasons. When I do eat meat I try to obtain it from reputable sources like local farmers and try to ensure that the animals were raised humanely. Unfortunately this is not always possible, so I suppose I have to accept responsibility for helping create the demand for factory farmed meat. It should not be surprising to anyone that scenes such as those played out in the video result from treating animals as commodities.

I confess that watching the mistreatment of sentient beings like those cows has gotten me to reconsider how much suffering I want served up with my potato and side salad. The first precept mandates that Buddhists refrain from taking life. The fact that American’s are several steps removed from the actual killing seems a flimsy rationale for ignoring the reality that a demand for meat causes the death of sentient beings. Not to mention the fact that the process that eventually results in meat under cellophane at the grocery contributes greatly to the immense suffering of human beings due to the unsustainable demand on the earth’s resources and the contribution of factory farming to the pollution of the world’s drinking water. Perhaps a first step to turning around America’s unsustainable lifestyle should be a decrease in meat consumption. How to sell it to the public is quite another question.

Amerian Unreason

Why are Americans so stupid? Perhaps more importantly, why are they so proud of their ignorance? Author Susan Jacoby probes the issue in her new book, “The Age of American Unreason.” Jacoby is hardly the first social commentator to address the subject; a number of books have been written lately which lament American’s growing hostility to rational thought, but Jacoby has cast her gaze over the land and sees a perfect storm of ignorance that has been brewing for quiet some time.

According to her observations, at this point in our history anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. The blame can be laid at the feet of our failing public educational system as well as religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science. She cites a disturbing statistic that nearly two thirds of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution. Two thirds!

A good review of Jacoby’s book can be found here.

The Matrix

My friend Joe Bageant has been living in exile down in Belize for a little while. His most recent essay is a thoughtful (and very, very funny) indictment of American consumer culture and its lack of sustainability. Unfortunately, Americans are not known for their selfless nor are they prone to naval gazing, which explains why the Dalai Lama quipped a few years ago that Americans had “perfected Samsara”. All of our electronic diversions and digital entertainment have left us bloated and lethargic, in a state of complete delusion and almost willful ignorance about the dangers posed by a rapidly increasing world population and dwindling resources. Here’s Joe:

“Mainly though, aware Americans are watching and waiting for someone else to make an important move. Guts are nonexistent in Americans these days, programmed out of us during the posh captivity of the "cheap oil fiesta" that drove our grotesque and brief civilization. Still, if ever there were a time to show some guts, it's now. Not by protesting ­ -- which has become a security state supervised liberal pussy sport -- but by giving up the material life, the consumer life. Damned near all of it. Including all those leftie and alternative books from Amazon -- sitting on our asses reading and drinking green tea just because we can afford to is just another type of inaction and consumerism. It's the only real act of protest possible by the prisoners of our consumption driven monolith. True, you'll be just one iPodless and carless little guy throwing a single stone at the United States of Jabba the Hutt. But assuming you're still capable of any kind of life after the stellazine mind conditioning we've all been administered for past 40 years, I've got folding cash that says you will own your life in a way that seemed previously impossible. Hanging onto or chasing the bling is over with anyway, as dead as the economy. The Olive Garden and Circuit City are still open, true, but only because the hair and nails still grow on Jabba's corpse. Would somebody please quit pretending he's alive and yank the feeding tube?”

Yanking the feeding tube. A great visual that conjures up images of Neo in the Matrix after he swallowed the red pill.. We are all like little Neos, safely wrapped in our cocoons being pumped full of food while our warmth and humanity is being harvested to feed our machine overlords. Except in our reality our overlords aren’t machines (unless you consider the system of international capitalism to be a machine), our overlords are our own greed and complacency. Unless enough of us wake up and swallow the red pill, our planet is fucked and all of us along with it.

Dongshan’s Heat and Cold

“A monk asked Master Dongshan, “Cold and heat descend upon us. How can we avoid them?” Dongshan answered, “Why don’t you go to the place where there is no cold or heat?” The monk continued, “Where is the place where there is no cold or heat?” Dongshan said, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. When hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.”

It is freaking freezing in New York today; 10 degrees this morning when I went out to the car. Today is one of those few days of the year when wearing a large puffy down jacket is acceptable, fashion be damned. The wind came roaring up the coast like an angry dragon last night, bringing the sub-zero temperatures from somewhere west of the Jersey state line. Jack and I were awakened a few times during the night by gusts that shook the house down to the foundation. I am generally ambivalent about the weather. Winter is cold, summer is hot. To accept this idea and then to complain about this state of affairs seems kind of crazy. But, come on, 10 degrees?

I ran 9 miles yesterday in much better weather. I was supposed to head up to the Bronx to run the Bronx ½ marathon, but this would have required getting up at an ungodly hour and making all manner of complicated arrangements so I decided to just continue my tour of industrial Staten Island that I started on last week’s run. I was running with an i-pod and listening to a dharma talk given by John Daido Loori Roshi, the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper New York. Zen Mountain Monastery back in the early 1990s and always felt attracted to Loori’s teaching style. The inscription at the door of Zen Mountain Monastery reads: Only those concerned with the questions of life and death need enter here. A reminder, no doubt, that life is short and opportunities to penetrate the great matter quickly slip by, like the rest of earthly phenomena. To paraphrase Nyogen Senzaki, like a lightning flash or a dewdrop. Ephemeral, fleeting.

One thing that did not feel ephemeral or fleeting yesterday was my 9 mile run through the Staten Island hills. At about mile 6 I was so intent on listening to Loori expound on the Dharma that I tripped on a cracked sidewalk on Bay Street and fell on my ass. Well, hip more than ass. Such are the risks of running in an urban environment without paying attention to where your feet are going to land. Zen practice and running are all about paying attention.

Staten Island is a place of many micro-environments. On yesterday’s run I passed by the mansions of Todt Hill, the Staten Island Ferry drydocks and the Alice Austin House, all within 5 miles of one another. There was a long stretch by the Staten Island Homeport that was extremely industrial and grimy. Staten Island never quite got accustomed to the concept of zoning so it is not unusual to find beautiful Victorian homes snugly nestled next to busy auto body shops. I try not to discriminate between the ugly and the beautiful; its all about non-duality and acceptance, right? Still, I much more enjoy running along the curve of the shoreline by the ferry terminal where I can watch Manhattan shimmering in the distance across the harbor than through the industrial wasteland over by the Homeport where I’m dodging stray dogs and the occasional crack addict. I guess I have a little way to go with my understanding of the universe.

Is it the weather that is cold,

Or is it the person that is cold?

Think neither cold nor heat.

At that moment,

Where is the self to be found?

Today

So I went out for a long run on Sunday. This is a typical thing that I do every week-end, but this particular Sunday it was a bit more challenging since I was recovering from Jack’s party, which started early and ended late. Still, I managed to get in 8 miles by patching together a route that included both Snug Harbor and the Staten Island Ferry terminal pathway. Buying a Garmin Forerunner has completely changed the quality of my week-end runs. The Forerunner is a GPS device that you wear on your wrist and it accurately logs your distance and pace, thereby untethering you from your established running routes and eliminating the need to run circle after circle around the perimeter of your local park. Thanks to this little device, I have rediscovered the fun part of running; just heading down the road and exploring without worrying whether I’m covering a set distance in a certain period of time.

The treadmill has been wearing me down lately, as has the grey, non-winter we’ve been having here in the Northeast. I feel like Jack and I have been spending too much time inside in front of the television when there is so much else I could/should be doing. But it is a challenge to leave the house once I get home from work, and where does one go on Staten Island in the dark anyway? I miss the summer-time walks Jack and I used to take around Silver Lake Park every night. I guess cabin fever is setting in. Our local rodent weather prognosticator Staten Island Chuck says winter will be over soon, but how much faith can you put in a ground hog? At least the sun is staying up a little longer these days. As of today I have 23 miles in for the week, and Mitt Rmoney has been sent packing back to whatever hole he crawled out of . I suppose spring is really just around the corner.

Obama for President

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. I suppose as a registered Democrat and erstwhile political blogger I should weigh in on who I’m thinking of jerking the lever for tomorrow. Those of you who are regular readers of this blog know that I have devoted a considerable amount of space excoriating the Democrats for their feckless, chicken-little like behavior in the face of the Bush administration’s assault on the constitution. I still think that the Democratic leadership is about as useless as tits on a bull, but the thought of four more years of trickle-down economics, electronic snooping and military expenditures of $12 billion per month in Iraq make sitting this election out an unreasonable option. Since Obama and Hillary are essentially the same politically, the only way to distinguish them is by their character. This is a contest that Obama wins hands down. Hilary Clinton has spent this entire election cycle lying about almost everything. Her “35 years of experience” really translate into one year of volunteer work at a non-profit, followed by 15 years at a corporate law firm and 8 years of hiding Easter eggs on the South Lawn of the White House. How this qualifies the woman to be the standard-bearer of the party of Franklin Roosevelt is beyond me. Yes, she’s smart. Yes she would probably be a neutral enough President, but her triangulation on every issue and her tendency to vote with the herd in the Senate make me think that she has no core values that she believes in enough to fight for. Her vote for the Iraq war was pure political pandering and her vote for the Patriot Act inexcusable. She is also probably the only figure alive who can get the Republican base off their hillbilly asses and into a voting booth. She is, quite frankly, a liability to the party as a presidential candidate.

Obama, on the other hand, has a short track-record in the Senate. This will make him less susceptible to the Rovian slime machine, drug use not withstanding. He also possesses a certain physical and psychic appeal that transcends the issues. He spouts exactly the kind of empty feel-good platitudes that Americans find so endearing in a politician. He also looks really good on TV and he sure sounds confident. He is, in a word, electable. For whatever reason he is able to excite masses of people in a way that John McCain just can’t seem to pull off. (McCain’s closest traveling companion these days is the phlegmatic Joe Lieberman. Need I say more?)

So it is with a small glimmer of hope for the future that the Patriot endorses Barack Obama in the New York primary. The politics of hope should trump the politics of fear any day.

Kids and Bars

I have been really enjoying reading a blog I discovered recently whose author discusses issues relating to running and Zen practice. Check it out. Jack and I have been recovering from some sort of a nasty virus that was causing us to manifest illness this past week. It kept me from the starting line of the NYC ½ marathon and made life challenging for a few days. It is interesting, and somewhat frustrating sitting up with a sick child in the middle of the night when you also have a fever. Fortunately we’re both on the mend and I have decided to run the Bronx ½ marathon on February 10th.

I was reading Gothamist yesterday and stumbled across an apparently contentions debate about whether children should be allowed to accompany their parents into upscale bars in New York City. The particular bar in question was the Union Hall bar located in Park Slope Brooklyn, whose owners recently raised the ire of besotted parents everywhere when they instituted a stroller ban at the bar. This is an issue that could only arise in a place like Park Slope, where over privileged children and their yuppie parents often run head on into over privileged single yuppies with no children. The parents are put out because not everyone thinks their beautiful intelligent children are beautiful or intelligent; and the singles are put out because being surrounded by children reminds them that they are getting older and should probably be doing something other than sitting on a bar stool in Park Slope in the middle of the day drinking over-priced beer.

Presumably the parents of these children are meeting other parents to knock back a few pints while their kids frolic around amidst the mid-day drinkers and soggy beer napkins. I was pretty surprised by the venom expressed by the childless tipplers who seemed to see the presence of children in a bar as somehow representative of the decline of western civilization. I wonder if this seeming hatred for children, out of all proportion to the wee ones impact on their immediate surroundings, is a narcissistic trait particular to New Yorkers. I lived in Philadelphia for a while and most bar/restaurants in the better neighborhoods always had a stroller or two parked in front and no one seemed unduly upset by a parent reading the paper and having a pint on a Saturday afternoon. I suppose the air of entitlement that pervades neighborhoods like Park Slope is to blame. I mean, paying $1,000,000 for a one bedroom apartment would sure put me in a bad mood. Really, it’s not the kids at fault here, it’s the self-centered childless adults who apparently never learned to play well with others.

One

Happy birthday little dude! Over the course of this past year you have brought me many beautiful moments. The sound of your laughter reminds me that it is still possible to see the world with the wondering eyes of a child. Your daddy loves you very much.

Forever Young

Becky would have turned 40 today. The very idea would have appalled her to no end, but I still wish she was here so I could listen to her complain about it. It is hard to believe that an entire year has gone by since we celebrated her 39th birthday by having dinner at Devi near Union Square where we mostly talked about what to name our little friend whose arrival was (correctly) thought to be imminent. I wrote about the actual dinner in some detail for a blog posting. You can read it by clicking here. It has been a difficult year for those of us left to struggle on without her, but life, as they say, goes on. I take some solace in the fact that even in her absence, Becky has taught me a good deal about many things, including what it means to be a good father. She was many things in her life, but a teacher first among them. She taught both by example and by getting you to look at yourself in a way that somehow brought your hazy confusion about your life into tight focus. She was clearly one of the most unselfish people to ever walk this earth and gave of herself constantly. A true bodhisattva. So, I would rather celebrate the day of her birth than spend undue time thinking about the day she was taken from us. I think she would agree. Happy birthday my dear. You are missed.

Running and Music

I confess that I have been running with an I-Pod lately, which I never did years ago, mostly because they hadn’t been invented yet. When I was training for the Buffalo Marathon I remember trying a few runs with a Walkman, but giving it up because a 90 minute cassette tape only lasted for around 10 miles. The I-Pod is a great tool for the distance runner, and may offer a competitive advantage to those who wear it while racing. According to a recent article in the Times, studies have shown that listening to music during exercise can improve results, both in terms of being a motivator and as a distraction from negatives like fatigue. The most effective music seems to be that which clocks in at around 120-140 beats per minute, which coincidentally happens to be the roughly the heart-rate aerobic zone of a 40 year old male.

I started running to music much more frequently around a year ago. That's when I started running on my lunch hour-on a treadmill-and without some sort of distraction I would have gone stark raving mad. I am a little worried that I’ve been relying too much on the music lately and that it gives me an artificial sense of my running ability, not to mention that any pretension of running as moving Zen is lost when you’re bopping down the road boogying to the Grateful Dead. I try to mix it up and play some ragas and some eclectic eastern influenced music to restore my sense that I am doing something more meditative than dancing. Bhagavan Das’s “Now” is particularly effective as a focusing tool. When I'm in a more natural setting or somewhere unfamiliar, I eschew the music and just tune into my surroundings. I remember a great 7.4 mile run in Berkeley up Strawberry Canyon, surrounded in white fog that had come streaming in through the Golden Gate, where I felt like my ego disappeared and I had become one with the State of California. An interesting feeling I must say.

Running and Zen

It’s a pretty cold day here in the Northeast. I doubt we’ll reach anywhere near 30 degrees today and this morning was downright brutal. It was so cold when I went out to warm up the car that I wore a big puffy down jacket and still felt the chill. Yesterday it was somewhat warmer, which was a good thing since I decided to run 10 miles in preparation for the Manhattan ½ marathon, scheduled for next Sunday. It was the first time I ran 10 miles in quite a while and I’m relieved to report that I accomplished the run with minimal discomfort, despite the fact that there was a stiff cold wind blowing and I was underdressed for the temperature. Staten Island is also a pretty hilly place which also presents its own set of challenges. I had forgotten the feeling of bliss associated with runs lasting longer than one hour. The first five miles is the hardest, after that the run begins to flow and is remarkably effortless except for minor aches and pains. Increased alpha waves and endorphins together really make for a winning combination. I think if I can knock off the ½ next Sunday I’ll keep up the long runs and try to run a full marathon in the spring. After all 40 is the new 30 and I ran my last full marathon when I was 30 so what the hell.

Japanese Zen Buddhist monks practice a style of walking mediation known as kinhin. Practitioners walk clockwise around a room while holding their hands in shashu (left fist closed, while the right hand grasps the left fist). During this particular type of walking meditation a step is taken after each full breath. It is a rather slow way of getting around the room, but it works out the kinks in the legs common to long periods of sitting meditation. I have always thought of running as a faster, more fluid type of walking mediation; a running meditation, if you will. Running in the streets of Staten Island certainly requires total concentration. As a byproduct of this intense concentration I find that on the longer runs, solutions to problems that seem intractable when pondered during the working day often have a way of bubbling up from my subconscious. One can see the parallels to the instantaneous enlightenment experience of Zen. In any event, running keeps me sane and the longer I run, the saner I tend to get. Which is a good thing.

Judicial Activism?

There is an excellent article in Salon today which pretty much deconstructs the right wing-nuts approach to the rule of law in this country. I find it amusing how so many of them declare themselves "strict-constructionists" without having the slightest idea of what that means. They wouldn't know a tort from a contract case, but that doesn't stop them from holding forth on the legal system. Unfortunately for the conservatives, desiring an outcome in a case doen't mean that outcome is legally correct. Here's an excerpt, the link follows:

"The systematic erosion of the rule of law in America has many aspects, and one significant one is that conservatives have been trained that they have the right to have judges issue rulings that produce outcomes they like, and when that doesn't happen, it means the judicial process is flawed and corrupt. Put another way, those marching under the banner purportedly opposed to "judicial activism" have been taught that they are entitled to have courts ignore the law in order to ensure the outcomes they want.

What else could possibly explain how someone can be convinced that they are in a position to condemn a judicial ruling without bothering to learn anything about the laws and legal issues in play? Hence: Bush should be able to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants and any judge who rules that -- under the law -- he can't, is guilty of "judicial activism." They've been trained to believe they're entitled to have judges give them the outcomes they want, and when that doesn't happen, that alone is grounds for proclaiming that the courts and judges are not just corrupt, but illegitimate."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/15/kucinich/

"A few more whacks of the ice axe in the firm snow, and we stood on top."

A true giant among men, Edmund Hilary, the first man to successfully climb Mount Everest died at his home in New Zealand yesterday. At 11:30 on the morning of May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, 29,028 feet above sea level, the highest spot on earth. After his ascent in May of 1953, Hilary devoted the rest of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through the Himalayan trust, which he founded and to which he had given much of his time and energy. Through his efforts he had succeeded in building many schools and hospitals in a fairly remote region of the Himalayas. He was the Honorary President of the American Himalayan Foundation, a United States non-profit body that helps improve the ecology and living conditions in the Himalayas.

A New Blog

Check out my friend Marty's photo blog. There are some very cool pictures of various California things:

http://mjcphoto.blogspot.com/

Spiritual Materialism

The Patriot has been a lazy blogger lately. This is especially inexcusable in light of the elections, but my interest in politics has taken a back seat to the day to day drama of raising a toddler. Jack will be a year old in three weeks. I can’t believe an entire year has gone by since he was born. I have an entirely new relationship with the passage of time since Becky left us. Whole months go by effortlessly. Some days I struggle to remember what year it is. I don’t know if this is merely the downside of turning 40 or whether my relationship with the physical structure of the universe has actually changed. I suspect the former.

I was reading an essay by Sharon Salzberg , a Vipassana meditation teacher who said that raising three children taught her more about Buddhism than meditation ever could. I have found this to be true. Any time I sit down with the intention of reading a sutra or meditating, the little being whose care I am charged with reminds me that there is so much more to the world than my own ego. He is constantly teaching me lessons in humility and selflessness. I have looked for a teacher of the Dharma for a long time. Imagine my surprise to find him literally sitting in my lap. My little bald monk with wisdom of the ages.

I have decided that 2008 will be the year of conscious living. Whatever I do I will do it with awareness and compassion. I am trying to cultivate these qualities and the only way to do so is to live them. This is the goal of the Vipassana school of Buddhism. One brings about awareness by the simple and direct practice of moment-to-moment mindfulness. This awareness leads us to accept more fully the pleasure and pain, fear and joy, sadness and happiness that life inevitably brings. When caring for an 11 month old child you have to be mindful constantly. Failure to maintain full awareness could potentially result in your little Buddha sticking a paper clip in an electrical outlet and experiencing enlightenment of an entirely different variety.

In the future this blog will be less about politics and more about Buddhism, although the Patriot is mindful that too much writing about spiritual development has the potential to lead to Spiritual Materialism; the failure to let go of ego clinging in the development of an understanding of spiritual and related areas. Frankly, I am sick to death of politics. Namaste.

Excerpt From My Book

I'm thinking of writing a little self-help book on exercise and fitness for lazy people. Here's what I have come up with thus far:

In 2007 I lost 40 pounds and went from a size 40 waist to a size 34. My resting heart rate is in the upper 50s, my blood pressure is well within normal limits and my cholesterol is also normal. I will be turning 40 years old next week. Contrast this with my physical condition a year ago-constant pain in the knees and feet, borderline high blood pressure and out of control eating habits. How did I manage to achieve this miracle of self transformation? In a word, running. I have always been a runner, but as of a year ago my routine had dwindled to a paltry 12 miles per week and I shuffled through my 3 milers at a pace in excess of 12 minutes per mile. Back in the 1990s I was much more serious about getting my miles in and consequently I was in far better shape. Then came three years of law school followed by another six years in the stressful yet sedentary position of a trial lawyer. This perfect storm of stress and lack of movement wrecked havoc on my health and caused me to regain the 50 pounds that I had lost way back in 1993.

When my wife Becky died last January I knew I was going to have to embrace something other than a bottle of cabernet to get me through the tough times. What I decided to do was get back into my life and back out on the road. I also adopted a largely vegetarian diet and started counting calories. Not obsessively, but I engaged in what can best be described as “conscious eating”. I considered everything that I was going to put into my mouth very carefully and I simply wouldn’t eat something unless I knew what it’s effect on my weight loss goals was likely to be. By mid February I was up to 20 miles per week. By mid-march 25-30. My speed began to increase as the weight came off. For rapid results there is nothing like running on a treadmill because you know exactly how far you are going at what pace and in what amount of time. This helps you maximize the benefit you receive from the time spent training, an important factor if you train on your lunch hour like I did. The additional benefit from running on your lunch hour is that you have less time to eat lunch. Rather than wander around lower Manhattan stuffing my face with whatever ethnic cuisine struck my fancy, I was grinding out 5 miles on the treadmill at Gold’s gym, listening to music and sweating out the morning’s aggression. Far from tiring me out, the daily runs energized me and kick-started my afternoons they way no cup of coffee ever could.

Are treadmills boring? They sure are. I was lucky enough to find a gym whose machines looked down from their perch on the second floor over a lively scene on John Street in downtown NYC. Watching people scurry about their business on their lunch hours provided hours of amusement. I also for the first time started running to music. My I-pod was a constant companion and turned potentially boring slogs into something akin to dancing at a Dead show.

People who know me are generally surprised that I have anything approaching the discipline needed to actualize a weight-loss routine. The big secret is that it hardly takes any discipline at all and you don’t have to turn into a teetotaling monk to see great results. I still drink too much red wine and smoke an occasional cigarette, but I have reordered my priorities to put my weight loss goals first. If I run 30 miles in a week, I have absolutely no problem going out on Saturday night and painting the town red. After all, I earned it.

Quote of the Day

Revolution is about consciousness, about rebelling against one's own state conditioned consciousness in favor of the unique one bequeathed us by the very evolutionary process that gave us the killer ape gene, which has proven so handy a tool in the hands of the state.
-Joe Bageant

Ho, Ho, Holy Crap Another Year Has Flown By

These are the dog days of the holiday season. The no-mans land between Christmas and New Years that nobody really knows what to do with. I’m at work, but not working. I imagine this is the case for almost everyone except teachers, college students and those unfortunate workers who can’t carry over their vacation time into next year. I suppose now is as good a time as any to start contemplating New Years resolutions. For the last several years I’ve tried to pick some sort of challenge to make sure I end the year better than I began it. For obvious reasons I took last year off, although Jack certainly challenged me in ways I couldn’t have expected last January 1. Many thanks little buddy; I learned a lot about life from you this past year.

The two years prior were consumed with getting scuba certified and continuing my scuba diving and training and even this past year with all the insanity I managed to lose 40 pounds and pick up my running to a point where I have started to really enjoy it again. So what to do in 2008? I have been thinking of a number of activities from getting a pilot’s license to going for a walk up Mt. Fuji in Japan, but nothing has really struck me as THE thing to do. I suppose the decision is weightier since I will be turning 40 next week, although I don’t ascribe much meaning to the passage of time. I really have no control over it so why bother. Maybe Great White shark diving? That would be interesting. Perhaps I’ll clean up my diet and run another marathon-it’s been 10 years since the last one-but I hate to chain Jack into a baby-jogger for 15 mile runs on Sunday mornings. The possibilities are really endless.

I think I will settle on a few rather pedestrian goals-eat a good vegetarian diet, run a ½ marathon in the spring, and plan on taking one killer trip this year to do something spectacular. I’ll let you all know what I’m thinking later in the week. I hope everyone had a nice Christmas.

Happy Holidays

Ethanol

The Patriot wishes all of his regular and not so regular readers a happy holiday season. I regret that posts have been few and far between lately, but I have been getting acclimated to a new job which leaves little time for bitching and moaning about the state of the union. Yet there is always something to bitch about, isn’t there? Some statistics: Every year, Americans travel some 3 trillion vehicle miles. We consume about 140 billion gallons of gasoline along with 40 billion gallons of diesel. Even the most die hard willfully ignorant among us can’t imagine that the earth has the ability to withstand a rate of oil consumption like that for very long, not to mention the effects on the environment of burning all of that crap. The government’s response to the impending disasters posed by a dwindling fuel supply and global warming was to pass an energy bill that raises the fuel-efficiency standard for new auto fleets to 35 mpg by 2020, a 40 percent increase from today's 25 mpg. To this I have no objection, but the bill also relies much too strongly on ethanol as the fuel of the future. As Salon reports in an article on the energy bill, “Biofuels from most food crops or from newly deforested lands do not provide a significant net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions -- and some may cause a net increase. Most life-cycle analyses show that corn ethanol has little or no net greenhouse gas benefit compared with gasoline because so much energy is consumed to grow and process the corn.” Moreover, even when the United States attempts to solve it’s own energy problem it ends up screwing over someone else. The Economist points out the amazing statistic that "the demands of America's ethanol program alone account for over half the world's unmet need for cereals."

So with all the reasons not to use ethanol, why does the bill mandate that the U.S. increase the use of renewable fuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022, of which 15 billion can be corn-based ethanol? The easy answer is that we got sidetracked on our way to discovering how to efficiently extract from cellulosic sources, such as crop waste and switchgrass. Unfortunately for all the havoc our current biofuel use is having on national and global food prices, ethanol use must, by law, increase to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, a jump of some 50 percent from current levels.

I am sure there is a hidden nefarious reason why the administration is pushing this. I’ll do a little more digging and report back what I find.

Let It Snow, Etc.

Consuming season is in full effect here in the New York area. The Patriot and his money took advantage of the overhyped ice storm and made a trip to the Satan Island Mall yesterday. Despite living on Staten Island for three years, I never did any Christmas shopping here before this year. It was easier to drift out of my office building down by the Seaport and get whatever I needed without leaving Manhattan, often without leaving a ten block radius of where I worked. Working in the Meadowlands offers few shopping options other than the Walmart at exit 15W and the outlet mall at 13A. I was in no mood yesterday to do battle with half the suburban rabble in the Garden State so I headed back to the Island thinking, correctly as it turned out, that most folks were sitting home glued to their televisions thinking that they were in the middle of bad storm when in reality the weather was pretty benign. I think it borders on the criminal the way weathermen scream disaster any time there is the potential for a little of the white stuff, but yesterday the masses collective ignorance worked to my advantage. I was in and out of the mall in an hour, fists full of gift cards and tinsel.

I must confess, getting into the holiday spirit is difficult for me even in a normal year, and this year has been anything but normal. Becky was typically a whirlwind of activity around Christmas and while I have tried to recreate the frenetic holiday atmosphere, my heart just ain’t in it. Her absence is keenly felt. But, as they say, the show must go on. Jack is certainly aware that there is something different about this time of year, if only because he has had the opportunity to enjoy spending several hours of quality time yanking strings of lights off the Christmas tree, opening presents and wearing funny hats. He seems to understand that this season is about taking the time to relax and celebrate the things we have, remember the things we’ve lost, and not take ourselves too seriously. I know exactly how he feels.

Technology, Etc.

When I arrived at work this morning there was a sign on the door informing the employees that the computer network was down for the indefinite future due to a malfunctioning air conditioning system in the server room. Without access to the various insurance related programs and, of course, the internet, some 200 people sitting in an office park in the middle of the Meadowlands have nothing to do. I work in a paperless office, so there aren’t even any files to review. The only thing that does work is Microsoft Word which is how I am able to type up this blog entry. I will have to wait until the computers are back up to post it.

I got my first office job in 1984, filing medical reports into claim files in a dank basement office in Long Island. There were no computers, and the hottest technology at the time was an early prototype fax machine that used the shiny rolls of ultra thin paper. The copier jammed every third use (well some things never change) and the phone system was state of the art with two lines and a hold button. It’s a wonder anything ever got done.

The most interesting thing to me about the ascension of the PC as the indispensable tool of the office is that there was very little associated rise in productivity. In 1987, Nobel laureate Robert Solow famously observed: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Despite massive investment in IT infrastructure, productivity growth was nonexistent. At the time, this was known as the “Productivity Paradox.” Economists have also made a more controversial charge against the utility of computers: that they pale as a source of productivity advantage when compared to the true industrial revolution, or the invention of the automobile.

While the slow growth in productivity accelerated somewhat at the dawn of the 21st century, it hasn’t reached levels one would expect. Some experts partly attribute this to the integration of the internet into work desktops; thereby giving employees easy access to entertainment they wouldn’t have had a few years ago.

My interest in workplace productivity issues is now completely spent. Look for further entries on such exciting topics as the living organic qualities of the NewJersey Turnpike.

The Telephone Keeps Ringing So I Ripped It Off The Wall

I hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving. Florida was nice, although my dives got cancelled by an overly cautious boat captain. Jack is 10 months old today. Man, this year has flown by. Today is also the Patriot’s last day at his current job. Monday finds me cruising up and down the New Jersey Turnpike commuting to my new gig. This will be a big adjustment since I have worked in and around NYC for my entire adult life. I’ll miss the ferry in the morning but not the chaos of downtown. I suppose the next step is to buy a mini-van and move to North Jersey.

So when I switched to Verizon last month because T-Mobile SUCKS, I purchased a smart new phone manufactured by the Korean company LG. I have been enjoying the QUERTY keyboard and built in GPS navigation system and up to this point the only thing that scared me about the phone was the prospect of receiving an enormous bill. Then I read this (from CNN):

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- An exploding mobile phone battery apparently killed a South Korean man in the first such known case in this gadget-obsessed country, police say.
The man, identified only by his family name Suh, was found dead at his workplace in a quarry Wednesday morning and his mobile phone battery was melted in his shirt pocket, a police official in Cheongwon, 135 kilometers (85 miles) south of Seoul, told The Associated Press.

"We presume that the cell phone battery exploded," the police official said on condition of anonymity.

The official said the phone was made by South Korea's LG Electronics, the world's fifth-biggest handset maker.

LG Electronics confirmed its product was involved in the accident but said such a battery explosion and death was virtually impossible. E-mail to a friend

Virtually impossible doesn’t sound like completely impossible. The doctor who examined Suh said the death was probably caused by an explosion of the battery.

"He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken," Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying.

His freaking spine was broken? What kind of insane technology is involved here? An exploding cell phone battery has the force potential to actually break your back? Imagine if he was holding the damn thing up to his head at the time it exploded. Ewww.

A little internet research reveals that similar explosions have taken place in New Zealand. The phone that exploded there was made by Nokia who issued a warning about bl-5c batteries made between December 2005 and last November. That story also proffered the statistic that around 100 out of 46 million cell phones worldwide have overheated or exploded “so far”. This begs the question as to whether we are all carrying around little potential hand grenades which could rip off the side of our faces at any time without any warning. Wonder if the TSA will ban them on commercial flights. Seems to me the risk is at least equal to the shoe bombs.

Giving Thanks

The Patriot is taking Jack and heading for Florida to celebrate the Thanksgiving holidays with the parents. It will feel strange to be wearing a golf shirt and shorts on what is usually a blustery day here in the northeast, but I suppose we should all get accustomed to the effects of global warming and this will be a good start. Plus I can go to the beach and even fit in a couple of dives assuming my nagging head cold clears up by Saturday. I’m flying out of Newark tomorrow morning, Thanksgiving Day. I learned last year after a 27 hour nightmare trip to Oklahoma City that flying the day before the holiday is a recipe for total disaster. Hopefully the airlines will have worked out any massive delay issues by tomorrow morning.

To get into the spirit of Thanksgiving on my morning commute I was ruminating on American gluttony and consumer culture. Despite the fact that a barrel of oil is approaching the $100 level, sales of trucks and SUV’s were actually up last quarter. Americans are so addicted to their lifestyles that a few more dollars at the pump certainly isn’t going to interfere with their favorite sport-spending money they don’t have. These are the same overextended Americans who are losing their homes at a record rate because they took out $500,000 mortgages while bringing in an average yearly income somewhere in the $36,000 range. Who on earth actually needs a 3500 square foot house besides a family with eleven children? Well, we’re told that WE do. We’re entitled to one. We’re Americans and therefore deserving of a larger share of the world’s resources, even if we can’t afford it. I am the biggest anarchist around, but even I have a hard time blaming the banks for this real estate mess. Greed drove the market to unsustainable heights and hubris brought it crashing back to earth. PT Barnum had it right a hundred years ago, there really is a sucker born every minute. These suckers who think that there should be “less government” are now running to the feds begging for a bail-out. As a wise friend noted in a text this morning, “self-reflection and sustainability are not embedded in the archetypical American identity.” Indeed. It’s bad enough that we are self-destructing economically here at home-the weak dollar, the mortgage mess, the spasms in the markets, etc., but we are exporting our American Exceptionalism to the rest of the world, often at the point of a gun. And we’re not even running out of oil yet. Imagine how many countries we’ll have to invade when things get really tight?

Of course it may not come to that. Thomas Friedman (the NY Times Op-Ed contributor) in his recent book, The World Is Flat recounts a journey to Bangalore, India, when he realized globalization has changed core economic concepts. Due to this discovery, he suggests the world is "flat" in the sense that globalization has leveled the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries. Americans now compete for jobs not only with other Americans, but with the most brilliant minds around the globe. This does not bode well for future generations of Americans when one considers the pathetic state of our educational system and general lazyness. The number of American college students now studying math, science, and engineering is at a dramatic low yet students in China and India are now graduating their own cadres of mathematicians, scientists and engineers that outnumber America's by prodigious margins. And these people are hungry. They look at the American shining City on the Hill and want it for themselves. And who are we to tell them they can’t have it? The rest of the world doesn’t believe in American Exceptionalism. They believe in Indian and Chinese Exceptionalism. The problem is that there are nowhere near enough resources on planet earth to allow a billion Chinese people to live the American lifestyle. So what do you think is going to happen? My guess is that we will eventually rip each other apart with nasty wars over dwindling resources unless the idea of diminished consumption and the virtue of conservation are sewn into the fabric of our domestic and foreign policy. How likely is that to happen in a capitalist system?

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving y’all. Remember the needy, since the government can't be bothered. Also, heritage turkeys aren't just for yuppies anymore. They're tasty and good for the environment; a win win.

One Pill Makes You Larger...

I ran across an interesting site today in my wanderings through the back alleys of the internet. The "The Erowid Experience Vaults” are “an attempt to catalog the wide variety of experiences people have with psychoactive plants and chemicals as well as experiences with endogenous (non-drug) mystical experiences, drug testing, police interactions, deep experiences of connection to music, etc.” http://www.erowid.org/experiences/.

Most of you know that the Patriot hung up his crack pipe years ago once things started to get ugly back in the boogie down Bronx. Nevertheless, being an unrepentant Deadhead, I still find stories of people doing weird and illegal things while under the influence of psychedelics to be vastly entertaining. I don’t know if this is because I can personally relate to some of the stranger aspects of the psychedelic experience, or if getting away with stuff while tripping my brains off has left some kind of indelible mark on my psyche. Either way, the following excerpt is representative of the type of tale categorized at erowid. The title of the entire piece is called “It's Fake....Let's Eat It All' (WRONG!)” Been there, done that.

“At one point, probably six hours into the trip, I decided that I just needed to leave for a while. Just go away, into the woods, AWAY from this seething mass of lunacy swirling around me. I walked into the edge of the forest, into a little sunlit glade filled with white flowers here and there. Ohh the relief I felt! here was a perfect spot to lie down and grab ahold of the fraying edges of my sanity and...wait...that's not a flower!! I had stumbled into a shithole. The white flowers were wads of toilet paper that had recently wiped some dirty hippie's ass. THERE WAS NO ESCAPE. The crushing blow struck me between the lobes and i was paralyzed, stark still for several minutes. Then I pulled myself together and plunged back into the howling, gibbering carnival of humanoid creatures which now spread out for miles and miles. I knew I had no choice but to surrender myself to it.”

There’s a lot like of stories like this one. Have fun, my freaky friends.

$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?