View From The Left Coast

Not long ago columnist Molly Ivins wrote an article criticizing the “D.C. Democrats� for providing poor examples of leaders for Democrats nationally. “I’ve had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting SOB up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton,� she says.

Molly is critical of Clinton and others over their repeated support of Cheney administration moves, from the invasion and occupation of Iraq to the fiasco of Congress keeping Terry Schiavo’s body “alive� to banning flag burning. “Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal,� she continues. “They’re talking about a ‘lobby reform package’. We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it.� She doesn’t linger on Hillary’s hubby selling an indulgence to the mafioso who donated $300,000 to her campaign, and her refusal to give back money donated by Abramoff.

Molly goes on to say that the PEOPLE of the Democratic Party, not its leaders, are the only ones challenging the inherently corrupt system. We’re seeing that over and over with town after town going on record as opposing a war that was begun with lies and now, as even William Buckley has admitted, has failed. And yet people like Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton and virtually all congressional Democrats supported it at the beginning, and support it now.

What is happening here is that these “DINO’s� are feeding at the Trough of Abramoff, and assuming that we will follow them, as we followed Al Gore and John Kerry into defeat. When they approve the illegal actions of the Cheney administration, and national treasures like John Bolton and Alberto Gonzales to represent our interests on the world stage, how are WE being represented?

Molly suggests we select our OWN candidates “who take clear stands and kick ass.� “If there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic Governor,� says Molly, “let’s run Bill Moyers or Oprah or some university president with ethics and charisma.�
She goes on to say that Howard Dean raised $42 million, with a late start, so we should be able to do the same.

Right on, Molly! Bill or Oprah are OK with me, or Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer. Maybe even Michael Moore! Let’s start by throwing out the usual gang of idiots, and then start to work on something REALLY different. We should insist that REAL Democrats favor ending the war NOW. Any that favor continued genocide of Iraqis and Americans. . .throw 'em out.

As Buckley says, “…different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.�

Posted by Walt Frazer at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The amazing lack of support by Democrats of Senator Russ Feingold’s bill to censure George Bush for his administration’s lawlessness is even harder to understand than their support of “Patriot� Act, the illegal occupation of Iraq, the continued operation of torture camps, or even (in the case of Hillary Clinton) Jack Abramoff. What are they thinking of?

Starting with the use of an act of terrorism by a group of Saudi Arabians to excuse the invasion of a totally innocent sovereign country (however mismanaged) to take their oil, killing tens of thousands of its citizens, killing or maiming thousands of Americans (Cheney’s score of murdered Americans is rapidly approaching Bin Laden’s), abrogation of international treaties, moving on to the illegal assaults on whistle-blowers acting on their consciences, the wholesale attacks on the rights of Americans protected from wiretaps and other illegal searches and seizures. . .all this has happened with the collusion of many Democrats from backing the invasion of Iraq to the signing away of Americans’ rights over and over again in the “Patriot� Act.

Somebody recently coined the acronym “DINO� for “Democrats In Name Only�, and I’m afraid it applies to many of those in elected office, including our own Dianne Feinstein. After this many years of incredible criminality, I find it hard to understand why any elected person, especially Democrats, can deal with them and pretend everything is business as usual. They treat the NSA wiretaps as something to negotiate, but then really put their foot down when one country sells its interests in America’s ports to another country. After what the Cheney gang has done for five years, the Dubai ports deal is where you draw the line?

In my struggle to understand Democratic complicity in all this, I can only assume that our elected officials are convinced their constituents are stuck in reaction mode to 9/11. That after a few guys crashed planes into buildings, all the laws on the books can be suspended. . .forever. That we are stuck in support of an illegal war that we obviously are losing, pumping unbelievable amounts of money and American blood into an ill-conceived, ill-managed attempt to make a few rich people richer. And that, after the loathing and monkey-wrenching the Republicans imposed on the last Democratic president (we’re not the only ones to “hate� and “bash� a president), the Democrats owe civility (remember Cheney’s “Go f--- yourself� remark on the floor of the Senate?) to Republicans?

I think it’s high time we had a series of litmus tests for Democrats before nominating or re-nominating them: demand they stop giving aid and comfort to the un-American Cheney-Bush Administration, end the illegal and futile war NOW, close all the torture camps NOW, stop spying on Americans NOW, return ALL the money they get from creatures like Jack Abramoff, and start representing the people who elected them rather than large corporations.

Maybe the first step in taking back the government should be taking back the Democratic Party.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Among the many stains America has acquired since the ‘election� of 2000, the torture camp of Guantanamo is among the worst. The camp has been decried by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations, called by Amnesty International “the Gulag of our times�, denounced as a place of “cruel and inhuman treatment illegal under the U.S. Constitution." Nothing since the forced internment of whole families of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II has earned this country such fear and loathing in the eyes of the world.

Now, months after being ordered to do so by American courts, the Cheney administration has released some of the names of those being held and tortured. The proofs of torture and violations of international treaties are myriad. People from many different countries, including children, have been imprisoned here, charged with no specific crime, and with no prospect of release, ever. This is not America, this is Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. And it’s taking place on various ships at sea, in European prison camps and at Abu Ghraib: we’ve seen movies of it on TV! And America couldn’t care less: the press doesn’t run the stories, our elected representatives approve more money and lend legitimacy to the Cheney Administration as though it’s simply business as usual.

Aside from the shame it has caused this country, Guantanamo has shown, as did Manzanar, that our Constitution, that thin line between us and tyranny, is far more flimsy than we’d like to believe. When the president declares war, legally or illegally, it’s as though the Constitution, international treaties, and even common morality no longer exist. Clearly we need to strengthen it to make examples of those who ignore it, to ensure this kind of barbarism doesn’t occur again. Roosevelt should have been held criminally AND civilly liable for the losses of the inmates of Manzanar, and Cheney should be criminally AND civilly liable for the torture and suffering caused by his orders for running Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Those of us who find torture and mass murder unpatriotic and un-American, we too could end up in Guantanamo.

Moreover this past four years of national shame has also shown the weaknesses of our Congress and the mainstream media in protecting our country from INTERNAL tyrants every bit as awful as Hitler and Stalin. They’ve obviously trampled the law of the land, again and again, and yet no one has the courage to demand impeachment proceedings begin.

Without a free press, without a representative government, without the protection of an enforceable Constitution, how are we any better than the “rogue� or “terrorist� states we presume to invade and depopulate? We have become monsters in the eyes of the world: how is it that our elected officials and the fourth estate can’t see that?

We must close Guantanamo, and all the torture camps now!

Posted by Walt Frazer at 05:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Having just returned from a trip to the Red state in the lower right hand corner, just 90 miles from Gitmo, my main piece of advice is: avoid Miami. We won’t go into how I ended up at the Miami airport. . .we’ll just say it was a lapse in judgment. . .but I can say that I learned it’s a place to be avoided. The hard way.

My first mistake was trying to rent a car there. As often happens nowadays, you end up with a heap of luggage, sooner or later (or sometimes not), then you face the task of finding the shuttle that takes you to where the cars are. Sometimes it’s far, far away, and often, as in the case of Miami’s airport, its location is a secret. This is your first lesson: there are MANY secrets in Miami.

Eventually, you will find them (just as all bleeding stops. . .eventually). Then some serious fun begins.

It is often the case with airports that, in an effort to alleviate traffic problems, the folks who run the place have torn up all the roads and forgot to put up signs. The lady in the booth at the rental car hangar, who seemed a little put out that I had bothered her, said “Just turn left.� What she didn’t say was “Too bad you didn’t rent a Hummer, fool.� I didn’t high center the little two-wheel drive car we did rent, and the muffler wasn’t seriously damaged, but we were sorry the shocks weren’t heavy duty, and next time I’ll remember to see if some cars come with GPS.

Like ants checking every inch of the kitchen before finding the cookie jar, by going to all the places where we didn’t want to go, we eventually found the road we did want. The problem was that our vacation was now ruined: we spent the next week worrying about how were going to deal with our return trip.

When the time came, however, we returned sadder but wiser. We knew that, if we refilled the rental car gas tank at the station across of the return point, we would pay 70 cents more per gallon than at the one two miles distant. We also spent some hours poring over maps of how to approach the airport and consulting local experts, and left an extra hour to get there. This meant our cross-country trip would take a little over 16 hours door to door. . .if everything went right.

We did find the traffic exhilarating, and were able to avoid the kamikaze drivers (many of whom were disturbingly young and female, and presumably had more to live for than beating their personal best driving record by ten seconds). Loading the luggage on the shuttle, when it did show up, was good exercise, but being dropped off at the wrong end of the terminal was more conditioning than we planned on. Having walked to the other end of the terminal, we were told the flight was operated by another airline, so we walked back to where we were originally dropped. By the time we got to the right line, and were told that we could use the machine to check in (the machine decided we should leave one suitcase in Miami, so we had to reason with the counter agent).

Then it was time to stand in line for the TSAs.

Back in 2002, when they started security screening, no-fly lists, removing shoes, belts, and nail clippers from customers and hiring the n-thousand people who assure you are who you are, it occurred to me to ask “Is this really necessary?� When you think about it, no sentient being in the western world missed what happened on September 11, 2001, and how. Given that knowledge, if some Saudi Arabian young men pull out box cutters or nail files on an airplane, every person on the airplane between the ages of 6 months and 102, male AND female, will tear the Saudi gentlemen limb from limb. Think about it: would YOU let somebody hijack the airplane you are on, knowing these guys plan to crash the airplane into a building? You would not.

So we all know security screening can be challenging and time consuming, and can make you miss your flight. What we didn’t know (and a fellow in line was kind enough to show us) was that if you are in danger of missing your plane, you can go to the shorter line reserved for the first class passengers.

Eventually (there’s that word again) we did get to the airplane, which turned out to be leaving twenty minutes late. Our return trip was 25 hours long, but therefrom hangs another tail.

However, next time I fly to that lower right Red state, I’ll make sure I visit another airport.

And I’m so glad the folks from Dubai don’t run the airports. Yet.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)