| 12 August 2006 The Last Best Freedom I am in Michigan, the flat part of it, on personal business. I left Washington in a bit of a rush, since I did not have the time to go stand at the airport and wait for my bottled water, jug of Popov vodka and tube of lipstick to be confiscated by the dedicated entry-level employees of the Transportation Security Agency. I don't blame them, not personally, and I wished I had a little better sense of what was coming when I saw the Secretary the other day. My Boss snorted when he heard the news about the big plot. He said he had been interviewed about how to smuggle a bomb on airplanes years ago, right after the pivotal attack, and he suggested concealing the explosive as a sports drink or Starbucks double-decaf latte, since the airlines weren't serving anything worth swilling in-flight anymore. I don't know what they are doing about smokes these days. I won't dispute that they are deadly weapons, though legal, but probably too slow-acting to be placed on the list of banned items. Particularly since the rules have lent an entirely new meaning to the term “disposable lighter.” But I digress. I did not stop to get more cigarettes in Virginia, since I figured that the Hezballah distribution system would take care of me when I got there, and you only need so much vodka and lipstick for a pleasure trip. The cigarettes get to Michigan from North Carolina through a ring of Lebanese-Americans who purchase cases of smokes down in North Carolina, where the taxes are the lowest in the nation, and then truck them up here for re-sale at a profit of more than $10 a carton. Michigan is a progressive state for taxing vices, which is why the good citizens pay a dime deposit on containers that contain liquids. Think about it. The hidden tax is so lavish that there was a two-part episode on Seinfeld about smuggling cans and bottles to Detroit from New York to collect a refund of money that was never paid in the first place. That scheme did not work out, for a variety of comical reasons, but the Lebanese plot worked out quite nicely. The profits, at least some of them, were wired back to the Levant to purchase weapons for the armed wing of Hezballah to purchase rockets to lob into Israel. The irritated Irish sued to do the same thing here, collecting money for weapons to fight the British and kill other Irish, so this is neither a new thing nor associated with any particular faith or ethnic group. I know enough to insert this painfully correct disclaimer, since our unfortunate treatment of the Japanese-Americans in the Global War on Fascism, which has resulted in a manifestation of massive social guilt that has aged Lutherans in wheelchairs being subjected to intrusive screening at the airport. The whole thing is ridiculous, on its face. The only real answer is to have us all travel nude, though prisoners have managed to circumvent even that precaution through means I will not address on the family Internet. Suffice it to say that even nude travel would simply give rise to a whole new set of issues. Was it only two years ago that the underwire construction of brassieres was a security issue? Could physical augmentation through cosmetic surgery be the next frontier? So that is why I chose to drive to Michigan, smoking when I felt the need, with the backseat filled with sports drinks, Vodka and lipstick. I mostly obeyed the speed limit, and under the sunny skies, thanked whatever God prevails here for the last best freedom of the Inter-State highway system. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |