There’s a woman who works up at the local Smoke Shop who just came in from Vegas. She likes to go shoot pool in tournaments there, and after buying a cheapy $150.00 roundtrip ticket ahead of time, and a cheap room, can usually clear $800.00 or so, and have some fun.
She looks like a middle aged cue ball herself, shiny, happy, roundish, totally nonthreatening. In fact, flying out of Detroit Metro, she had no problems whatsoever. Flying back from Las Vegas, she was detained, grilled, bullied and almost missed her flight. Her crime? She had a still factory sealed bottle of nail polish she had purchased at Krogers before leaving in her luggage. Not even in carry-on! It still had the Kroger price tag on it. They have no “Krogers” in Vegas. They have “Safeway.” Seriously, “We have never heard of Krogers ma’am, why were you trying to bring liquids onto the plane. Who are you, where do you live, who do you work for? Who do you REALLY work for?”
“Krogers is our grocery store, and I thought I might paint my nails on vacation. They didn’t care about this in Detroit!” “We have never heard of Krogers. Whats in the bottle, lady, really?”
We really accept as a society being brow beaten over Nail Polish?
It gets better. When she finally boarded the plane in Vegas, there were two, count them two, women on the plane knitting. With huge needles. Personally, I’d rather face down some “Candy Apple Red” nail polish than a 14 inch pointy steel thing. But liquids are taboo, baby, and knitting needles not. Which is more akin to the box cutters, anyway?
Then there is Van Jones. Ughhhhhhh
The society of Free Speech and intellectual debate is dead.
His job was to work towards green jobs.
You fuck with people like Glenn Beck, who can say anything, and the neo-con mouth pieces will take you down.
Is it not our patriotic duty to question everything, including 9/11. No, no, no, 9/11 is the 2nd krucifux-ation of the krispy kreme krist. It started the whole new testament of the Wingers, a new book with only one line:
“Thou shalt be afraid, very afraid.”
You see, before it became impolite to discuss politics, it was almost mandatory in an intellectual quarter.
But now it has become verbotin.
We fear for our jobs, we bite our tongues, we hide our identities no matter how paltry our pay, or unimportant our position. For a man like Van Jones to lose his position for speaking his opinion, daring to ask the question is just another shot fired at us all.
Be afraid. Toe the line. Keep your mouth shut. Support your local SS!
In an area near Ann Arbor, Camp Take Notice was forcibly removed by Police. This was a group of recently made homeless people camping on public lands. It was clean, well maintained and drug-free. There are over 900 homeless in and around Ann Arbor, and only 60 beds. And its getting worse. They actually clear-cut this whole field of trees to ensure they could see and run out any squatters.
So, being poor is illegal now too. Even if you have nice tents, clean coolers and pick up your garbage.
The message is daily.
Be afraid.
Seig Heil!
Amazing how these random tales all wrap together nicely in my morning musings. After all, the stories these days are all the same.
Happy Forced Labor Day!
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Work doubly, stay quiet and obedient, question nothing, never fuck with the PTB, be invisible if your poor….
or die.
Fuck what this country has become.
/ early morning mini-rant.
I was so naive when I came to the US of A in 1998. I thought Americans were into free speech. Imagine my shock when people asked my opinion of things and got pissed when I did not not agree with them.
I quickly learned that America has become a land in which dissent is only tolerated on the right. I admit I am careful especially at work where I am a supervisor and could easily be accused of being “political” if I am the least bit leftist. I still sneak it in or answer honestly when asked. I openly call bullshit on things like racism or anti-semitism or other rants against “foreign” religions and what generally happens is that when people are having those conversations and I show up they clam up and admit to me they were having a conversation that I would have called them on.
I think consumerism has made us (myself included) passive and play dohish. I feel like I have a front row seat at the fall of Rome many days.
Author
we are all ants, and the right is a huge anteater that must not be wakened to our very presence, UCC.
America is nothing like the Myth of us, its all illusion.
amazing to me that when all the fears all the cooked up crisis’s are unleashed and were all walking around with the results in plain view, if not wrecking your life, how fear can work anymore. Regardless of political ideology or even cultural/regional differences it’s pretty hard to understand why people still FEAR the very antidote that lays at the heart of our system. They accept and embrace their misplaced fears, making them reality. Even the left embraces the I’m grateful stance, like saving us from the evil right and the falling too bigs, and unleashing the necessary killing and torture to protect us. Guess it’s easier to believe in the boogieman created then face the fact that the homelessness the poverty, the ignorance, are a result of our acceptance that this is how things are and it’s better then ????
Hard to face reality when you can still believe in the twisted American Dream, the one that tells you to get to work, when there is no work and to fear everything that might put a crack in your dream, or that you’ll end up homeless on the streets or in Gitmo as your a threat to carefully constructed fiction they have woven that is indeed a dream a nightmare dream.
Author
re: Van Jones calling Republicans assholes, didn’t Dick Cheney tell Leahy to FUCK OFF on the Senate floor?
Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. For anyone who is one of the three people left of political center who doesn’t know of this, she details the 10 steps by which a country loses its freedoms and becomes fascist.
When it first came out, I couldn’t read it because of BushCo. I’d just scream and holler in rage. Now that they’re supposedly gone, guess what? They aren’t. All their policies and tactics are still in place and still being used by the right, most recently in the flap about the school speech and in the Van Jones debacle.
As you say, toe the line.
And be very afraid.
Author
My experiences at the tea bag party In Brighton MI today.
Have to go thru a lot of footage to transcribe it.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW