Bruja

The one who wandered in and called China “East Taiwan” was one of the funniest.

The presence of a Dickcissel implies the existence of a Clittranssel.

This is going to be more security theatre if it is anything.

Exactly. There’s a lot of opportunities for private profits from security theatre.

A more likely option could be implementing those plate scanners for toll roads. Scan people going through pre-check lane, follow up on unauthorised vehicles. Everyone else queues up to answer questions, be pulled aside for further inspection such as at a border gate.

Unlikely for it to go this far, not yet, but due to needing something huge for cover. Not due to impact on rich people. The TSA got implemented despite resistance and rich people get the fast lane or fly private. Could easily get an exemption for this barrier and also fly private over. Do rich people really drive across state borders all that often anyways? TSA was under cover of a culturally impactful terrorist attack. Now begrudgingly accepted. There is likely a missing ingredient before putting something like this in action in Texas. Abortion and trans fearmongering aren’t enough.

Open to hearing reasons why rich people would be severely impacted. They get away with most everything unless getting in the way of other rich people’s money. And something like this would put a lot of money into private hands.

My 'safe for eyes' orb has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my orb.

“Home of Overused Tagline Gags”

They’re going to build a physical border around Texas with checkpoints at interstate highways. Razor wire and saw blades in between to catch people, as tested across the Rio Grande. A private company either directly owned by a state politician or relation of once will be contracted to test the urine of everyone passing through for hormones that indicate pregnancy or out of bounds for cis people. Booths will be set up in the style of TSA full-body naked radar cylinders with semi-privacy to piss in public while bodies are scanned for abnormalities such as unexpected secondary sex characteristics and piss bags taped to the inner thigh. New detention centers will be built to temporarily imprison those who fail this first screening while further invasions of privacy are conducted. A fast-lane option where blood screenings are conducted every 6 weeks at diagnostic laboratories (paid for out of pocket) will be available. A black market industry of false certification cards will thrive. Other states with gqp leverage will attempt to follow suit.

That’s the price of Freedom©™ under the lone star. Enriching ghouls and expanding the fascist police state to catch poor undesirables.

Since I was eighteen, I have voted for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voted for the lesser of two evils.

I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce.

I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.

This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing. We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is “legal” we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is “illegal” the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers.

Gambling on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do.

I have no advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask is why? Are you voting for Biden and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again, why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?

Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged hope. It is hope that if millions of voters refrain from voting in 2024 because of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Putin, this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest. Yet if we protest, off the nation goes to Russia and China.

Fifty-five American philanthropists are asking China “to face manfully the doubts and promptings of their conscience.” Can not these do-gooders face their own consciences? Can they not see that American culture is rotting away: our honesty, our human sympathy; our literature, save what we import from abroad? Our manners are gone and the one thing we want is to be rich–to show off. Success is measured by income.

University education is for income, not culture, and is partially supported by private industry. We are not training poets or musicians, but engineers. Business is built on successful lying called advertising. We want money in vast amount, no matter how we get it. So we have it, and what then?

Is the answer the election of 2024? We can make a sick man President and set him to a job which would strain a man in robust health. So he dies, and what do we get to lead us? We remain in the same mess. I will be no party to it and that will make little difference. You will take large part and bravely march to the polls, and that also will make no difference.

Stop running Russia and giving Chinese advice when we cannot rule ourselves decently. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln, and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let’s vote, and not till then. Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.

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He left a funny custom blown glass pipe at my place in the early aughts and I've been trying to get it back to him. But also been using it in the meantime so not in any rush. Who are we talking about again?

Wow, looks like something bad happened in 1991 that caused inequality to get even worse than under Tsarist Russia.

Yes, that also, was limiting response to D61 mentioning Biden and Roe.
Thank you for the addition. Joe being a segregationist and voting to overturn body autonomy are things that still surprise the majority of USians who are eligible to vote and the facts cannot be overstated.