Don't You Just Positively HATE Having To Take Your Shoes Off At Airports?

Did the Feds seize the fancy hookers too?

It's so demeaning-- and the belts and all the other little indignities that have been flying such a drag. Glenn Greenwald doesn't paint an optimistic picture that Obama has any intention of fixing some of the Bush human right violations against the really big personal freedoms, so I have a feeling air travel will still be horrible for people like me and "Sir" Stanford. You remember him, right? Back in February Neither Ken nor I could stop writing about him. Well, yesterday "Sir" went crying to ABC News-- literally crying-- about how horrible his life has become since he was exposed as another Bernie Madoff Ponzi-operator.

The government seized his money and he now barely has a change of clothes and "was forced to fly on a commercial plane for the first time in almost two decades after the government seized his fleet of sic private jets. 'They make you take your shoes off and everything, it's terrible.'"

Poor thing! But he hasn't lost his spunk. He threatened to punch the ABC interviewer in the mouth when he asked him about charges that he had been laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel, although he did admit that the pesky government did find $3 million in drug money in his bank a few years ago. He doesn't deny it at all but bitches that it only gets in the news because he's flamboyant. His spirits are buoyed by the support he's getting from golfer V.J. Singh-- although Singh, who is sponsored by "Sir" says the support is just "at the moment."

As long as we're talking about the Feds seizing "Sir's" fleet of planes, I thought your own spirits might be buoyed, even for just a moment, to know they are also seizing the Madoff's West Palm Beach estate. Yesterday's Daily Beast had a soap-opera's worth of the tribulations of Ruth Madoff-- tribulations now; trial will come later. But picture this on afternoon cable:

As Ruth Madoff swept into Palm Beach last month with a quintet of girlfriends, her $7,500 Birkin bag dangling, her husband’s 74-year-old sister, who was ruined by Bernie’s scam, was watering plants and driving people to the airport just to make ends meet.

Sondra Wiener, forced to make pocket money like an out-of-work laborer, endures the pity of her neighbors. After her brother's scheme collapsed, she also put her home in a gated community outside Palm Beach up for sale. Her brother mailed her and other family members Cartier, Tiffany, and other expensive jewelry in December (which violated a court order and were repossessed), but sources say they do not think her sister-in-law Ruth has given her money. And Ruth is believed to have plenty, even now. Although authorities have seized her property and bank accounts—most recently the Palm Beach home and the antique yacht restored by Bernie—investigators describe caches of laundered funds hidden around the world in Ruth’s name.

...The name Madoff inspires an eerie silence. In particular, the very mention of Ruth seems to arouse fear. Those few who knew her well won't talk about her, those who knew her less well will only talk anonymously.

“Everyone down here thinks she was involved in the Ponzi scheme," said a leading socialite in Palm Beach. "She and Bernie were always collaborators. Look, let me tell you what happened to my friend. Her husband wouldn’t let her invest with the Madoffs. Then after her husband died, Bernie wasn’t taking any new investors. She talked to Ruth who said give Bernie a call and she told him 'Ruth knows what this is all about' and Bernie simply said 'OK, I'll take your investment.' And this woman gave him the store and rued the day she had met Ruth Madoff."