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).