As a child many decades ago, I was taken see a performance of the Gian Carlo Menotti opera, "The Consul," which involved someone running from the secret police in Eastern Europe. I remember one of the characters admonishing that "one must have one's papers, papers, papers" and being glad that we didn't live in such a society. Guess those days are over.
Several YouTube videos have had some notable people describing that they could not re-enter the country without letting the border agents look at their phones and computers. It is good to discuss this with family, friends, and coworkers. Decide wisely what to take with you when leaving for vacation or business.
I hope people will mention the First and Fourth Amendments when they make those calls to Congress.
Attend meetings or have one with your group(s) that present "Know Your Rights" while you still can. I have; they give you the proper language to use when stopped.
There are a lot of people about to find out that no one is free until we all are free. Thanks Thom. See you in the streets friends!
The so-called "Real ID Act" goes into effect next month. The idea of having to show any papers to travel within one's own country is an abomination, security theater whose only hidden value is to help airlines avoid a black market in ticket sales. Like the No Fly List which has something like a million names, is likely riddled with errors and almost impossible to challenge getting off of, travel on common carriers is becoming a bureaucratic nightmare that Kafka would have recognized. (Actually there are several lists, with the airlines at least having their own, and good luck getting off all of them.)
Drug testing, facial recognition technology, the routine recording of license plates on the road, body scanners, those damn metal detectors all over the place...Americans have been conditioned to accept all of them as "normal". Adding papers is an easy step, and citizens can sing about being in a land where the people are "brave" and 'free" all they want, while sleepwalking into a kinder, gentler version of North Korea.
With the Real ID act, the SAVE act, and Trumps, basically unchallenged executive orders, we are already living in a dictatorship, it is simply that the weight of the jackboot is not yet felt on our necks.
The central nervous system of the human body is almost simultaneous, the central nervous system of a society is slower to feel the pain and slower still to respond.
Haunting, beautiful, and heartbreaking, my German Jewish mother and Ukrainian father met in a refugee camp in Germany and immigrated to the USA in 1949. I heard so many stories of the truth of what happened and how. I will never forget, and I am working so hard to do my tiny part to wake people up. And I do that by spreading facts. Our tiny team of four volunteers has picked up the pace as Trump picks up the pace.
Our website is for anyone looking at what they can do in addition to your full plates.
This is an easy gig, yet it packs a punch. Everything on the website is free to use.
Don Bacon, R NE, is the first Republican member of Congress to ask for Hegseth's removal from office.Bacon is the chair of a House Armed Services subcommittee and one of just a handful of House Republicans in districts that Kamala Harris carried last year. He first made his comments to Politico. https://www.axios.com/2025/04/21/don-bacon-pete-hegseth-signal
We are in a minority -- it only takes a few Republicans. They are responsive to their donors. Complain to them.
Your mother (Michelle) survived the holocaust in Germany yet. Was she hidden by Germans, and escaped being rounded up and sent to a concentration camp? Must be a great story there.
Oh yes indeed. So many stories and yes, from time to time she was hidden with German citizens help. My Ukrainian father ended up in a labor camp where he spent two years escaping people. Oh the stories.
I just read a story on medium.com of a girl and her husband who jumped from a train on the way to Auschwitz, she jumped off in Germany, before it reached Poland and was his by friendly Germans until the end of the war.
As #45, Trump planned to "denaturalize" citizens. He could't get his ducks in line.
According to the USCIS Policy Manual:
A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if:
A) A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if he or she procured naturalization illegally. Procuring naturalization illegally simply means that the person was not eligible for naturalization in the first place. Accordingly, any eligibility requirement for naturalization that was not met can form the basis for an action to revoke the naturalization of a person. This includes the requirements of residence, physical presence, lawful admission for permanent residence, good moral character, and attachment to the U.S. Constitution.
B) A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if there is deliberate deceit on the part of the person in misrepresenting or failing to disclose a material fact or facts on his or her naturalization application and subsequent examination.
In general, a person is subject to revocation of naturalization on this basis if:
The naturalized U.S. citizen misrepresented or concealed some fact;
*The misrepresentation or concealment was willful;
*The misrepresented or concealed fact or facts were material; and
*The naturalized U.S. citizen procured citizenship as a result of the misrepresentation or concealment.
This ground of revocation includes omissions as well as affirmative misrepresentations. The misrepresentations can be oral testimony provided during the naturalization interview or can include information contained on the application submitted by the applicant. The courts determine whether the misrepresented or concealed fact or facts were material. The test for materiality is whether the misrepresentations or concealment had a tendency to affect the decision. It is not necessary that the information, if disclosed, would have precluded naturalization.
C) A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if the person becomes a member of, or affiliated with, the Communist party, other totalitarian party, or terrorist organization within five years of his or her naturalization. In general, a person who is involved with such organizations cannot establish the naturalization requirements of having an attachment to the Constitution and of being well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.
The fact that a person becomes involved with such an organization within five years after the date of naturalization is prima facie evidence
____
“The homegrowns are next,” Trump said during a meeting with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. “You’ve got to build about five more places.”
If I were king. Nazis, white supremacists, anyone who advocates to exterminate other human beings.
The legal issues involved in the 1919 Palmer Raids during the Woodrow Wilson administration have been resurrected during the retaliatory deportations during the second Trump administration.https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/palmer-raids
Palmer deported 556 citizens.
Current Trump administration policy has been compared to The Palmer Raids, and The "Repatriations" of the 1930s":
Trump's call for historic "mass deportations" of immigrants from the United States is forcing the nation to revisit past expulsions that left deep wounds still felt today. The big picture: From the Palmer Raids of Jewish and Italian immigrants of 1919 to the mass deportation of Mexican immigrants in the 1950s, previous deportation operations ignored civil liberties, heightened racial tensions and disrupted families of American citizens for generations.
It has also been compared to The Irish Expulsion, The Palmer Raids and the “Soviet Ark”, the “Mexican Repatriation” during The Great Depression, “Operation Wetback” during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, and The Deporter-in-Chief during the Barack Obama administration.
Louise’s song is hauntingly beautiful and frighteningly true to today. Your article is also frighteningly accurate and prescient. It feels to me like we are headed that way on a fast train. The guy is now talking about deporting American citizens who criticize his policies by calling them terrorists.
Are we "sliding into fascism" or sliding into something far older - reactionary life? A great many MAGAs are reactionaries - even if they have never even heard the word before. From my reading, reactionaries are people who want to return to some simple, stress-free era in the mythical past when you just got up in the morning and toiled in the fields, and life was relatively low-stress.
History shows that we have gone through numerous eras that were influenced by radical changes, often due to technological advances like firearms, cannons, tractors, the printing press, manufacturing machines, assembly lines, etc. Each of those changes raised the ambient stress level of society until humanity adapted.
Today, we are transitioning from an era of manufacturing to one of services. We have robots for labor. Nevertheless, our reactionary president is freaking out over a declining birthrate as labor-intensive jobs continue to evaporate. He wants America to return to the era in which people worked in factories, oil fields, farms, and coal mines. His MAGA cult members do too.
I was raised in a small German immigrant farming village west of Chicago. Our little town was thriving as postwar demand for starter homes made farmers wealthy, selling off their land for housing developments like the one I grew up in. Our town culture went from slow-easy to fast-busy. Small businesses were bought out by chain stores like A&P, Ben Franklin, and Walgreens.
Today, the entire village is in decay, downtown parking is easy as many stores are boarded up. The Boomers all got promoted and moved away to bigger and nicer homes. My Catholic grammar school and the adjacent convent that housed the nuns who taught us are empty. Those who still live where I grew up might very well feel left behind and embrace a political movement that offers a return to the good old days when life was not so confusing and they lived stress-free.
Nostalgia. The good ole days, where a man could walk off from his family,leaving a mother with children to feed and raise, and a woman couldn't even buy anything on credit. Our first TV was a Philco table model, with red Naughehyde, and Mom bought it on layaway, not credit. I got married in 1960 and my wife couldn't even get a credit card, though it was she who paid the bills (on time always).
"Them coloreds knew their place, didn't they, thanks to Jim Crow and red lining."
And them queers, well they were as invisible as a red car in the dark of a moonless night.
Mom got a job, a $1 and hour, at a bank, and watched men she trained get promoted and raises because they had families. Mom said: I have three kids, and the boss told her to find a husband.
On the other hand us kids had to learn to socialize face to face, and not just on school grounds, and there were no tiny screens with silly crap like ice bucket challenges and infuencers. We learned to read each other, pick up on what they now call vibes
The project I grew up in was slowly integrated around 1954/55, with hand selected families
It was clean and well kept, and per google street view it still is, a street view shows a woman in hijab, and the advertising of surrounding companies, is a real united nations.Every culture imaginable is represented.
The appeal to return to the past is magnetic, for white, males, but not so much for the victims.
And this has led to today's culture war..Unfortunately many,too many, of the would be victims imagine themselves part of the aggressor.
And the project is as manicured,neat and clean as it was in the 1940's and 1950's.
The project was built in 1934, to service Exide batteries. I use to mine their dump area for lead, and sell it to a junk yard for $.07 a pound. Exide is now a dilapidated mall. Across from my home was a YMCA where I set pins for $.10 a line, it became a Pizza Hut, and is now an Autozone. The battery casing dump area is now the sit of row homes. I doubt that the owners know their homes were built on top of a toxic waste dump.
There were some positives about the "good ole days" but the negatives outweigh the positives, however the reactionaries long to return us to the negatives, in which they believe they reigned supreme, keeping the negtives, like Tic Toc, social media and helicopter parent
Bemoaning the demise of Times Beach Missouri. My home town is bad enough, but all that's left of towns like Times Beach are memorial signs on the highway.
1982’s The Nylon Curtain included many allusions to the disillusionment of the “American Dream;” none so poignant as the frustration heard in “Allentown.” The song has emerged as an anthem of blue collar America, representing both the aspirations and frustrations of America’s working class in the late 20th century.
For non Pennsylvanians, Bethelem is Bethlehem Steel, a steel foundry town and Allentown,has its own burbs and is about an 18 minute drive from Bethlehem.
True, trading knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) for a paycheck is unlikely to change. However, keeping current with changes in work-related technology is essential, but that is stressful, so most people do not stay current. When technology changes finally do demand KSAs that workers do not have, people often wind up trading KSAs of lesser value for a paycheck, and that is even more stressful.
Red states experience the local factory shutting down far more often than Blue ones. Rather than relocate to places where their KSAs still have market value, they hunker down in place and experience small-town decay firsthand. Along comes some rich guy who promises them a miraculous increase in standard of living by building lots of new factories, oild fields, and coal mines, and they elect him president. They so desperately want to return to that happier era of their worklives. Of course, their president cannot make good on his promises and change the world, as the MAGAs are trying so hard to disbelieve.
And yet many latinos, men especially, voted for Krasnov. For the price of foods and drinking the Fool-aid of his fountain of lies. I hope that they are all sorry and will join the movement, fully documented of course.
His magats are cheering on his brutality even though they are also suffering under his regime. They must consider it a necessary evil that they must suffer in order to purge the country of the slime infiltrating white America. There is no doubt that they can be prodded to engage in extreme violence if encouraged to do so.
When it comes to the Venezuelans and Cubanos, all you have to do is say "commie Democrats" and it is like hitting a person on the knee with a rubber hammer.
I'm crying so hard from listening to the song I can't read. What is their reality, what have we become. A Venezuelan stumbled into Canada this morning and was grabbed by American officers - now disappeared.
This is indeed terrifying. Even more terrifying is the implementation of facial recognition in airport security. They're taking pictures and adding every traveler's image to a database along with all identifying information provided from passport or driver's license. Even more terrifying is the prospect of using AI to control and intimidate people into obedience. This prospect is far worse than George Orwell's vision in 1984. We're in big trouble and every day that Trump remains in office the prospect for the survival of our democracy dims.
I don't believe the 2024 election was above board. Too many MAGA loyalists accessed voting software after 2020 and had nearly 4 years to identify vulnerabilities. In addition, there is the "Dark Enlightenment" group of broligarchy who have unlimited cash to fund such endeavors. The prospects of what DOGE is doing with the sensitive data they've seized from government agencies, combined with social media footprints (social media controlled by those same broligarchs), and combined with AI "big data" analytics is also terrifying. This is the kind of democracy-damaging trouble that cannot be easily corrected. The Russians and RWNJ propagandists discovered that "free speech" is our Achilles heel and they've utilized it to full effect.
This and Pam Bondi’s order for government employees to report others who show “anti-Christian bias” are dictatorial measures that will soon overwhelm us. People are already being disappeared and they will soon include American citizens who have nothing illegal, but who simply express their First Amendment rights, including dissent.
By ICE's rationale: Donald, his mail-order [illegally imported,] 3rd baby-mama, and their too-tall son: Barron, as well as Donald's utterly oddball [coked out?] sons by his 1st baby mama, and the love of his life, his 1st daughter? Each has to GO to CECOT,
Or . . . at least, ALL need to be sent back to Scotland or Germany or Slovenia or wherever they came from.. . . Sh*thole countries that will take them. Just not here in the USA.
Also, dig up his golf-course-buried 1st wife and ship her coffin back to Zlín, Czech Republic.
As a child many decades ago, I was taken see a performance of the Gian Carlo Menotti opera, "The Consul," which involved someone running from the secret police in Eastern Europe. I remember one of the characters admonishing that "one must have one's papers, papers, papers" and being glad that we didn't live in such a society. Guess those days are over.
Several YouTube videos have had some notable people describing that they could not re-enter the country without letting the border agents look at their phones and computers. It is good to discuss this with family, friends, and coworkers. Decide wisely what to take with you when leaving for vacation or business.
I hope people will mention the First and Fourth Amendments when they make those calls to Congress.
Attend meetings or have one with your group(s) that present "Know Your Rights" while you still can. I have; they give you the proper language to use when stopped.
There are a lot of people about to find out that no one is free until we all are free. Thanks Thom. See you in the streets friends!
The so-called "Real ID Act" goes into effect next month. The idea of having to show any papers to travel within one's own country is an abomination, security theater whose only hidden value is to help airlines avoid a black market in ticket sales. Like the No Fly List which has something like a million names, is likely riddled with errors and almost impossible to challenge getting off of, travel on common carriers is becoming a bureaucratic nightmare that Kafka would have recognized. (Actually there are several lists, with the airlines at least having their own, and good luck getting off all of them.)
Drug testing, facial recognition technology, the routine recording of license plates on the road, body scanners, those damn metal detectors all over the place...Americans have been conditioned to accept all of them as "normal". Adding papers is an easy step, and citizens can sing about being in a land where the people are "brave" and 'free" all they want, while sleepwalking into a kinder, gentler version of North Korea.
With the Real ID act, the SAVE act, and Trumps, basically unchallenged executive orders, we are already living in a dictatorship, it is simply that the weight of the jackboot is not yet felt on our necks.
The central nervous system of the human body is almost simultaneous, the central nervous system of a society is slower to feel the pain and slower still to respond.
Haunting, beautiful, and heartbreaking, my German Jewish mother and Ukrainian father met in a refugee camp in Germany and immigrated to the USA in 1949. I heard so many stories of the truth of what happened and how. I will never forget, and I am working so hard to do my tiny part to wake people up. And I do that by spreading facts. Our tiny team of four volunteers has picked up the pace as Trump picks up the pace.
Our website is for anyone looking at what they can do in addition to your full plates.
This is an easy gig, yet it packs a punch. Everything on the website is free to use.
https://cc4democracy.com/
In terms of priority, national security, Ukraine treatment can end this BS. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
Don Bacon, R NE, is the first Republican member of Congress to ask for Hegseth's removal from office.Bacon is the chair of a House Armed Services subcommittee and one of just a handful of House Republicans in districts that Kamala Harris carried last year. He first made his comments to Politico. https://www.axios.com/2025/04/21/don-bacon-pete-hegseth-signal
We are in a minority -- it only takes a few Republicans. They are responsive to their donors. Complain to them.
How to find them. https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAB1mwfr-CV4mmQlAQKJIxuY0bB5yd&gclid=CjwKCAjwn6LABhBSEiwAsNJrjveE6gDXDQFbXEeIZeAVZMGQRf9-ijvEbmavHKbYS1wSlIAwyNukJhoChz0QAvD_BwE
Thank you for this. Lots of good information.
Your mother (Michelle) survived the holocaust in Germany yet. Was she hidden by Germans, and escaped being rounded up and sent to a concentration camp? Must be a great story there.
Oh yes indeed. So many stories and yes, from time to time she was hidden with German citizens help. My Ukrainian father ended up in a labor camp where he spent two years escaping people. Oh the stories.
I just read a story on medium.com of a girl and her husband who jumped from a train on the way to Auschwitz, she jumped off in Germany, before it reached Poland and was his by friendly Germans until the end of the war.
As #45, Trump planned to "denaturalize" citizens. He could't get his ducks in line.
According to the USCIS Policy Manual:
A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if:
A) A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if he or she procured naturalization illegally. Procuring naturalization illegally simply means that the person was not eligible for naturalization in the first place. Accordingly, any eligibility requirement for naturalization that was not met can form the basis for an action to revoke the naturalization of a person. This includes the requirements of residence, physical presence, lawful admission for permanent residence, good moral character, and attachment to the U.S. Constitution.
B) A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if there is deliberate deceit on the part of the person in misrepresenting or failing to disclose a material fact or facts on his or her naturalization application and subsequent examination.
In general, a person is subject to revocation of naturalization on this basis if:
The naturalized U.S. citizen misrepresented or concealed some fact;
*The misrepresentation or concealment was willful;
*The misrepresented or concealed fact or facts were material; and
*The naturalized U.S. citizen procured citizenship as a result of the misrepresentation or concealment.
This ground of revocation includes omissions as well as affirmative misrepresentations. The misrepresentations can be oral testimony provided during the naturalization interview or can include information contained on the application submitted by the applicant. The courts determine whether the misrepresented or concealed fact or facts were material. The test for materiality is whether the misrepresentations or concealment had a tendency to affect the decision. It is not necessary that the information, if disclosed, would have precluded naturalization.
C) A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if the person becomes a member of, or affiliated with, the Communist party, other totalitarian party, or terrorist organization within five years of his or her naturalization. In general, a person who is involved with such organizations cannot establish the naturalization requirements of having an attachment to the Constitution and of being well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.
The fact that a person becomes involved with such an organization within five years after the date of naturalization is prima facie evidence
____
“The homegrowns are next,” Trump said during a meeting with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. “You’ve got to build about five more places.”
In section C, it mentions "other totalitarian party." Does that mean that registered Republicans can now have their citizenship revoked? ;-)
If I were king. Nazis, white supremacists, anyone who advocates to exterminate other human beings.
The legal issues involved in the 1919 Palmer Raids during the Woodrow Wilson administration have been resurrected during the retaliatory deportations during the second Trump administration.https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/palmer-raids
Palmer deported 556 citizens.
Current Trump administration policy has been compared to The Palmer Raids, and The "Repatriations" of the 1930s":
Trump's call for historic "mass deportations" of immigrants from the United States is forcing the nation to revisit past expulsions that left deep wounds still felt today. The big picture: From the Palmer Raids of Jewish and Italian immigrants of 1919 to the mass deportation of Mexican immigrants in the 1950s, previous deportation operations ignored civil liberties, heightened racial tensions and disrupted families of American citizens for generations.
It has also been compared to The Irish Expulsion, The Palmer Raids and the “Soviet Ark”, the “Mexican Repatriation” during The Great Depression, “Operation Wetback” during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, and The Deporter-in-Chief during the Barack Obama administration.
Louise’s song is hauntingly beautiful and frighteningly true to today. Your article is also frighteningly accurate and prescient. It feels to me like we are headed that way on a fast train. The guy is now talking about deporting American citizens who criticize his policies by calling them terrorists.
Making American Freedom Impossible Always, from our mobster president.
Beautiful and poignant song, “PAPERS PLEASE”.
Hope it’s not a future anthem to remind the young of what they lost.
Are we "sliding into fascism" or sliding into something far older - reactionary life? A great many MAGAs are reactionaries - even if they have never even heard the word before. From my reading, reactionaries are people who want to return to some simple, stress-free era in the mythical past when you just got up in the morning and toiled in the fields, and life was relatively low-stress.
History shows that we have gone through numerous eras that were influenced by radical changes, often due to technological advances like firearms, cannons, tractors, the printing press, manufacturing machines, assembly lines, etc. Each of those changes raised the ambient stress level of society until humanity adapted.
Today, we are transitioning from an era of manufacturing to one of services. We have robots for labor. Nevertheless, our reactionary president is freaking out over a declining birthrate as labor-intensive jobs continue to evaporate. He wants America to return to the era in which people worked in factories, oil fields, farms, and coal mines. His MAGA cult members do too.
I was raised in a small German immigrant farming village west of Chicago. Our little town was thriving as postwar demand for starter homes made farmers wealthy, selling off their land for housing developments like the one I grew up in. Our town culture went from slow-easy to fast-busy. Small businesses were bought out by chain stores like A&P, Ben Franklin, and Walgreens.
Today, the entire village is in decay, downtown parking is easy as many stores are boarded up. The Boomers all got promoted and moved away to bigger and nicer homes. My Catholic grammar school and the adjacent convent that housed the nuns who taught us are empty. Those who still live where I grew up might very well feel left behind and embrace a political movement that offers a return to the good old days when life was not so confusing and they lived stress-free.
Nostalgia. The good ole days, where a man could walk off from his family,leaving a mother with children to feed and raise, and a woman couldn't even buy anything on credit. Our first TV was a Philco table model, with red Naughehyde, and Mom bought it on layaway, not credit. I got married in 1960 and my wife couldn't even get a credit card, though it was she who paid the bills (on time always).
"Them coloreds knew their place, didn't they, thanks to Jim Crow and red lining."
And them queers, well they were as invisible as a red car in the dark of a moonless night.
Mom got a job, a $1 and hour, at a bank, and watched men she trained get promoted and raises because they had families. Mom said: I have three kids, and the boss told her to find a husband.
On the other hand us kids had to learn to socialize face to face, and not just on school grounds, and there were no tiny screens with silly crap like ice bucket challenges and infuencers. We learned to read each other, pick up on what they now call vibes
The project I grew up in was slowly integrated around 1954/55, with hand selected families
It was clean and well kept, and per google street view it still is, a street view shows a woman in hijab, and the advertising of surrounding companies, is a real united nations.Every culture imaginable is represented.
The appeal to return to the past is magnetic, for white, males, but not so much for the victims.
And this has led to today's culture war..Unfortunately many,too many, of the would be victims imagine themselves part of the aggressor.
And the project is as manicured,neat and clean as it was in the 1940's and 1950's.
The project was built in 1934, to service Exide batteries. I use to mine their dump area for lead, and sell it to a junk yard for $.07 a pound. Exide is now a dilapidated mall. Across from my home was a YMCA where I set pins for $.10 a line, it became a Pizza Hut, and is now an Autozone. The battery casing dump area is now the sit of row homes. I doubt that the owners know their homes were built on top of a toxic waste dump.
There were some positives about the "good ole days" but the negatives outweigh the positives, however the reactionaries long to return us to the negatives, in which they believe they reigned supreme, keeping the negtives, like Tic Toc, social media and helicopter parent
Bemoaning the demise of Times Beach Missouri. My home town is bad enough, but all that's left of towns like Times Beach are memorial signs on the highway.
https://www.unionprogress.com/2025/04/21/one-womans-defiant-remembering-keeps-the-tragic-story-of-times-beach-alive/
Tom, as long as people have to work for wages to pay for the essentials to survive, they will want and need jobs.
1982’s The Nylon Curtain included many allusions to the disillusionment of the “American Dream;” none so poignant as the frustration heard in “Allentown.” The song has emerged as an anthem of blue collar America, representing both the aspirations and frustrations of America’s working class in the late 20th century.
Allentown
Billy Joel
[Verse 1]
Well, we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem, they're killing time
Filling out forms, standing in line
Well, our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers at the USO
Asked them to dance, danced with them slow
[Chorus]
And we're living here in Allentown
But the restlessness was handed down
And it's getting very hard to stay
[Verse 2]
Well, we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard, if we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke, chromium steel
[Chorus]
And we're waiting here in Allentown
But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away
See Billy Joel Live
Get tickets as low as $87
You might also like
THE HEART PART 6
Drake
Rah Tah Tah
Tyler, The Creator
Balloon
Tyler, The Creator
[Bridge]
Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face
[Chorus]
Well, I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down
But I won't be getting up today
[Instrumental Break]
[Outro]
And it's getting very hard to stay
And we're living here in Allentown
____
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs
For non Pennsylvanians, Bethelem is Bethlehem Steel, a steel foundry town and Allentown,has its own burbs and is about an 18 minute drive from Bethlehem.
True, trading knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) for a paycheck is unlikely to change. However, keeping current with changes in work-related technology is essential, but that is stressful, so most people do not stay current. When technology changes finally do demand KSAs that workers do not have, people often wind up trading KSAs of lesser value for a paycheck, and that is even more stressful.
Red states experience the local factory shutting down far more often than Blue ones. Rather than relocate to places where their KSAs still have market value, they hunker down in place and experience small-town decay firsthand. Along comes some rich guy who promises them a miraculous increase in standard of living by building lots of new factories, oild fields, and coal mines, and they elect him president. They so desperately want to return to that happier era of their worklives. Of course, their president cannot make good on his promises and change the world, as the MAGAs are trying so hard to disbelieve.
The Deserted Village (1770)
By Oliver Goldsmith
[Exported by the Brits}
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made!
How often have I blest the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree,
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
,
....
Farewell, and O where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,
Whether were equinoctial fervours glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigours of the inclement clime;
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain,
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him, that states of native strength possest,
Tho' very poor, may still be very blest;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.
The Fifth Amendment protects all persons in the U.S. The Administration does not. This Administration will have cost the U.S. Treasury $1.5 billion in damages awards, in my opinion, after these deportees bring suit. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/abuse-misuse-of-alien-enemies-act?r=3m1bs
And yet many latinos, men especially, voted for Krasnov. For the price of foods and drinking the Fool-aid of his fountain of lies. I hope that they are all sorry and will join the movement, fully documented of course.
His magats are cheering on his brutality even though they are also suffering under his regime. They must consider it a necessary evil that they must suffer in order to purge the country of the slime infiltrating white America. There is no doubt that they can be prodded to engage in extreme violence if encouraged to do so.
When it comes to the Venezuelans and Cubanos, all you have to do is say "commie Democrats" and it is like hitting a person on the knee with a rubber hammer.
I'm crying so hard from listening to the song I can't read. What is their reality, what have we become. A Venezuelan stumbled into Canada this morning and was grabbed by American officers - now disappeared.
What are American officers doing in Canada?
Dear Thom,
This is indeed terrifying. Even more terrifying is the implementation of facial recognition in airport security. They're taking pictures and adding every traveler's image to a database along with all identifying information provided from passport or driver's license. Even more terrifying is the prospect of using AI to control and intimidate people into obedience. This prospect is far worse than George Orwell's vision in 1984. We're in big trouble and every day that Trump remains in office the prospect for the survival of our democracy dims.
I don't believe the 2024 election was above board. Too many MAGA loyalists accessed voting software after 2020 and had nearly 4 years to identify vulnerabilities. In addition, there is the "Dark Enlightenment" group of broligarchy who have unlimited cash to fund such endeavors. The prospects of what DOGE is doing with the sensitive data they've seized from government agencies, combined with social media footprints (social media controlled by those same broligarchs), and combined with AI "big data" analytics is also terrifying. This is the kind of democracy-damaging trouble that cannot be easily corrected. The Russians and RWNJ propagandists discovered that "free speech" is our Achilles heel and they've utilized it to full effect.
Thom,
This and Pam Bondi’s order for government employees to report others who show “anti-Christian bias” are dictatorial measures that will soon overwhelm us. People are already being disappeared and they will soon include American citizens who have nothing illegal, but who simply express their First Amendment rights, including dissent.
The dictatorship is here.
All the best, watch your six,
Steve Dundas
By ICE's rationale: Donald, his mail-order [illegally imported,] 3rd baby-mama, and their too-tall son: Barron, as well as Donald's utterly oddball [coked out?] sons by his 1st baby mama, and the love of his life, his 1st daughter? Each has to GO to CECOT,
Or . . . at least, ALL need to be sent back to Scotland or Germany or Slovenia or wherever they came from.. . . Sh*thole countries that will take them. Just not here in the USA.
Also, dig up his golf-course-buried 1st wife and ship her coffin back to Zlín, Czech Republic.
Truer words were never spoke!