Dazed and confused- JoMac forgets what century it is:

Meditating on the joy of liberation:

Chinese rulers lean toward ostentatious tribal displays….

….but The Emperor claims size is not important….

….though he does get tempted by medal envy:

Imagine that- A proponent of violence (the state sponsored kind) gets whacked. As you sow, so shall ye reap:

State gangs square off over turf and innocent individuals have to head for the hills….

….or risk being consumed by grief:

The standard continues to fall for what militarists deem legitimate authority:

To the state, everyone is a potential criminal:

The obligatory, restrained recognition of collateral damage:

There MUST be something wrong with this. Let’s pass a law!

Even if you buy into the fact that the police are just doing their job and accidents will happen, this incident should make it very clear about the cost of a “war” on drugs. Are you willing to sacrifice your life in the name of a slightly more drug-free society than there was yesterday? If we can take out a couple crackheads every day, are you ok with your wife, husband, or child being “accidentally” slaughtered by a scared, heavily armed officer?

Those in power continue to get stronger and continue to exert more violence with impunity. On a more cynical day, I would say that incidental casualties are welcomed by government as part of keeping the populace in a state of fear.

….his January, 2009 plans are all laid out:

Is JoMac cut out to be Emperor?

There’s still more liberatin’ to be done….

….and boxes to be filled:

Now this is the kind of “public service” the world can be thankful for:

CLEAR-ly, not a good idea:

So much for relaxing bus travel:

Hillary is still not quite recovered from her grueling primary campaign:

The lights go out in Georgia. State mobsters will always choose to kill rather than lose territory:

Torture is now a thrill ride:

Even the brave, battling soldier boys take the time to get their daily dose of The Root:

Pucker up and show some love….

….or the Emperor gets nasty:

But now that I’ve been reminded, I’ll be thinking about those hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered in cold blood. The mothers. The fathers. The children. All of them–total strangers though they were, who lived long before my time–are on my mind right now.

Nobody in this country should ever forget what this day means. Nobody. Ever.

Nobody.

Ever.

No value? No kidding:

The Emperor sets himself up for another fall:

Some encourage and/or enlist children to fight their battles:

Will Obama pray at this wall, as well?

Call in the Haz-mat team to clear away the toxic myths:

Superheroes as real as Batman:

Untimely death- the most convenient method of government cover-up…..

….when the media isn’t doing it for you:

Make your message clear, concise and easy to understand:

Only the state can get away with treating people like fenced cattle:

The O-bomb-anator looks for more targets:

Be a good slave and follow the leader- all the way to oblivion:

Who needs LSD to tune out and turn on?

Has the Prince of Darkness decided to make an appearance, or did Mc-Bama catch some bad lighting?

What goes better with peaceful sports competition that surface-to-air missiles?

If the slaves won’t accept your lies- gas the bastards:

A Roll Call of state slaughter….

….and the grisly, confirming evidence:

Is this what’s meant by “smaller government?”

Where would we be without the state on the lookout for terrorist jellyfish?

Not only do politi-gangsters see walls as solutions to numerous problems, they also seem to revere them:

What Neocon or state apologist could not be moved by this sight- the red, white, and blue; the stars, stripes, and barb wire?

Don’t say you weren’t warned. Asking honest, logical questions, directed at the state, can get you a kick in the teeth:

Taking the John-John bad boys behind the woodshed? We can only dream:

Big Brother’s snooping grows ever more obtrusive:

For arguing with a TSA agent, Robin Kassner wound up being slammed to the floor. She’s filed a lawsuit.

“I kept begging them over and over again get off of me…and they wouldn’t stop,” Kassner said.

And it wasn’t enough for another woman to show TSA agents nipple rings that set off a metal detector. The agents forced her to take them out.

Mandi Hamlin said, “I had to get pliers and pull it apart.”

In Chicago, people like Robert Perry are subjected to exhaustive security checks. He was patted down, his wheel chair was examined and his hands were swabbed, all in public view in a see-through room at the security checkpoint. Perry, 71, is not alone.

“It’s humiliation,” Perry said.

Perry was also taken to a see-through room by a TSA agent when his artificial knee set off the metal detector.

“He yelled at me to get the belt off. ‘I told you to get the belt off.’ So I took the belt off. He ran his hands down over and pulled the pants down, they went down around my ankle,” Perry said.

At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.

“She was yelling ‘I have power, I have power, I have power,” Perry said. The power to stop him from flying to Florida with his wife that day to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

“It makes you feel like you have no rights,” Perry said.

Yes, Mr. Perry, that’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel: like you have no rights. That’s the point of all such harassment by government bullies intoxicated with the elixir of Authority. The fact of the matter, however, is that you do have rights, by virtue of the fact that you are a human being. A TSA bullycrat violated those rights by stripping you in full view of other travelers, publicly humiliating you and making you feel like some sub-human freak, reveling in the glory of her power over you as she did it.

Carlos Villarreal, former director of security for the Sears Tower, said proper training is crucial. “When you’re wanding somebody and you can identify which part of the body set of the alarm, that should be sufficient to clear a person,” Villarreal said.

But all too often, it’s not enough for 16-year old Michael Angone. She frequently flies as a member of the Chicago Children’s Choir.

“I’ve had to completely take my pants off and show them like my entire leg,” Angone said.

As a baby, Angone was diagnosed with cancer. Her parents, both Chicago police officers, had to have her leg amputated. She said she always warns TSA security agents that her prosthetic leg will set off the metal detector, but many insist on doing an embarrassing full body pat-down.

“I feel like I’m being felt up in public,” Angone said.

Her father Bob Angone wanted to know, “What’s the reason for all the feeling up, you know the groping at the back of the neck, the chest, underneath the bra, all the groping on her body, her buttocks?”

CBS 2 News asked the TSA those questions, but got no answers.

Of course they got no answers, and most likely they won’t. If they get any response at all, it will most likely be some kind of non-sequiturish bullshit. You know, something like this:

A spokesman said that out of 2 billion passengers screened nationwide since 9-11, there have been only 110,000 abuse complaints.

That should certainly make Robert Perry, Michael Angone, Robin Kassner, Mandi Hamlin, and 109,996 other people feel a whole lot better for having been molested and/or assaulted by the petty tyrants of the TSA: Hey, there’s only been 110,000 of you who have complained. Come on, kwitcherbitchin’!

And it looks like the fun in only just beginning:

The TSA declined to comment on the Angone and Perry cases, but the agency has announced that soon, passengers who set off an alarm that cannot be resolved will have a choice: Agree to a physical pat-down or what some believe is an even worse invasion of privacy.

This fall, O’Hare International Airport will get its first advanced digital x-ray machine. It allows TSA agents to see through clothes and discover any hidden weapons. Critics have likened it to a virtual strip search.

Are you feeling safer yet? Well, I know I am. I’m going to be sleeping a whole lot easier knowing that many more 70-year-old men with artificial knees, teenaged girls with prosthetic legs, young women with nipple rings and anyone who dares question the holy, sanctified Authority of TSA agents will be scanned by an X-ray device. Whatever concerns there may be that this is simply a legalized means of physical molestation by which any of these public servants may be getting some kind of perverse jolly or the simple ego rush of a power trip must be swept aside for the sake of protecting this great land of liberty from the greater evil that seeks to vanquish us.

I mean, who knows what these people might be attempting to carry onto an airplane??? Besides nipple rings and prosthetic knees and legs, of course. Why, these people could even be Islamo-Fascist jihadists in disguise!!!

And you don’t want the Islamo-Fascists to win, do you?

(Cross-posted at The Postmodern Tribune.)

Roger asks some pretty difficult questions that may cause the heads of many in our statist culture to explode from the sheer internal pressure built up by cognitive dissonance.