Good newspaper columnists fix their mistakes.

Mistakes hurt vulnerable people, including children. When a newspaper columnist promises a reader to correct a mistake in the next day’s paper, the columnist corrects the mistake in the next day’s paper.

Scranton Times-Tribune columnist Chris Kelly made a mistake in his Feb. 2 column. Kelly’s words hurt people, including children. After I challenged his inaccuracy and provided him with detailed facts to the contrary Kelly promised to fix his error the next day.

Instead, Kelly broke his promise.

When I declined to help him clean up his mess the way any good journalist would want to do, Kelly made matters worse.

My communication with Kelly began when I read Kelly’s column and he wrote, “Undocumented immigrants are, by definition, illegal immigrants. Calling them ‘undocumented’ creates a distinction without a difference.”

Chris Kelly Opinion: Bully in chief backs down

Undocumented immigrants are not “illegal” immigrants. Even the Poynter Institute’s journalism fact-checker site agrees that “Living in the U.S. without documentation is a civil violation, not a crime.”

In an “issue brief” titled “Criminalizing Undocumented Immigrants,” the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project asks, “Is the fact of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws a crime?”

“No,” says the ACLU. “The act of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws is not, standing alone, a crime. While federal immigration law does criminalize some actions that may be related to undocumented presence in the United States, undocumented presence alone is not a violation of federal criminal law.”

A large number of undocumented people in the United States, including those who overstay their visa, actually enter the country with authorization and remain when their authorization expires. The ACLU brief goes on to explain legal rights all undocumented people possess in the United States.

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/FINAL_criminalizing_undocumented_immigrants_issue_brief_PUBLIC_VERSION.pdf

Kelly can call people anything he likes. As long as he abides by the law he is free to disparage and diminish the hopes of men, women and children who deserve better. Some conservative media commentators do just that. Fancying himself a liberal you would expect Kelly to carry himself above the right-wing crowd.

Most reliable journalists agree Kelly’s characterization is incorrect. Portraying decent people as illegal demonizes them. By spreading confusing information, Kelly slurred immigrants who pursue the American Dream by living and working in the shadows of official U.S. government approval. 

I sent Kelly a Facebook message letting him know why he needed to correct his mistake. I included the link to the ACLU brief. Kelly seemed to agree with me and said he would correct his statement.

“Tomorrow,” he wrote back.

The more I thought about Kelly’s words the more I saw the need for Scranton’s sole mainstream media commentator to offer a clearer explanation to his readers and to the community.

“You really need a whole new column,” I wrote Kelly. “You drew some terribly harmful conclusions.  With friends like you undocumented people don’t need enemies. A paragraph correction won’t cut it.”

I also sent Kelly a 2019 column I wrote about immigration and posted on one of my websites. Between 2002 and 2006 I lived and worked as a daily newspaper columnist in Central Coastal California agricultural country where many Mexican farmworkers are undocumented. I stood with documented and undocumented immigrants then and I stand with documented and undocumented immigrants now.

I’ll Always Stand With Them

 “Thanks again. Be well,” Kelly responded.

The next morning I sent Kelly another Facebook message: “Did you make the correction? What did you or your editor say?”

Kelly responded, “I think you’re right about needing a new column. Working on sourcing it now. Do you have any contacts I should reach out to? Again, thanks for the feedback.”

I ignored Kelly’s request for my assistance. Kelly has been working at the Times-Tribune for decades. If he doesn’t have multicultural contacts by now, I urge him to connect with people who shape the future of the city and nation he serves. Talk with a few of the young men from Mexico he can easily find working in all kinds of weather on house roofs throughout the city. Walk through South Side where it’s easy to find people who can introduce you to new immigrants. Persist until Latinos might consider trusting you. At the very least, call the ACLU.

No newspaper correction or new Kelly column appeared the following day. Instead Kelly wrote about cleaning up a local cemetery. I sent Kelly another message.

“When is your correction column running?” I wrote.

Kelly responded with raw defensiveness.

“So the ‘Great Champion of the Undocumented’ has no sources who could actually help me get it right?” Kelly wrote. “I tried to be cordial out of my genuine respect for your long and consequential career, but you won’t have that. Maybe you really do care about undocumented people, but it’s clear your goal here is to break my balls. Don’t bother. I learned a long time ago that ‘my ego is not my amigo.’ It’s clear you’re still ruled by yours. Unless you have something of value to pass along, stop wasting your time and my attention.

And be well. (I mean that.)”

Consider this column “something of value.”

Five generations on my father’s side of the family in Scranton started with an immigrant. James Patrick Corbett journeyed from his tiny Cornamona village on the Irish West Coast to work for 45 years as an underground coal miner in Scranton. He and my grandmother Mame raised 10 children in their tiny house on Cedar Avenue. Toxic coal dust-induced Black Lung disease killed Pa at 81. In 1966, when I was 15, I rode with him in the ambulance to Mercy Hospital in Scranton where he died just a few blocks from where I now live.

Immigration that helped build Scranton hard coal country and the nation still matters to the Irish. Undocumented Irish make up tens of thousands of hardworking people under attack by America’s cruel culture of ignorance. Undocumented Indians, too, and I’m not talking about Navajos or Apaches. Countless immigrants from countless foreign countries move to Scranton for countless reasons. Not all these men, women and children are documented. But they all deserve a chance. The U.S. Constitution supposedly protects them.

Kelly makes it easier for anti-immigration zealots to vilify defenseless people terrified by right-wing threats of mass deportation. It’s hard to trust a newspaper columnist who maligns the brave human quest for freedom. The public trust we serve as journalists depends on clarity for credibility.

After looking and failing to find a correction in the Times-Tribune or in Kelly’s Sunday Feb. 9 column, I gave the man described on his Facebook page as an “award-winning columnist, editor and writing coach” another chance to keep his word.

“Are you writing and publishing a correction?” I asked in yet another Facebook message.

Kelly again failed to respond.

No correction has yet to appear.

A few days later I spoke on the phone to a California friend of more than 20 years as he and his wife braved rush hour traffic, rain and mud slides on their drive home from Los Angeles. His English is about as good as my Spanish. We laughed and I sang him a piece of a song popular in his native Sinaloa, Mexico. I told him how proud I was of his passing his American citizenship test earlier that day.

The land of the free needs all the good citizens we can get.

Good journalists, too.

All those years ago

Bring us to this sacred space

Walking together

I did the Trump dance today.

No music.

Just me doing the Trump dance all by myself.

With my feet planted firmly on the tile, pumping my arms back and forth in that nonlinear, contorted, non-rhythmic manner Trump invented and exhibits to celebrate himself, I shimmied and I shook.

No, I was not celebrating Trump’s election and swearing in as president. I was rejoicing in my publishing team’s decision to re-issue my 2020 novel Paddy’s Day in Trump Town. Expect Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited around the Fourth of July, a truly fine date to blast off an updated version of my ticking car bomb of an Irish American novel.

COVID-19 robbed us of the 2020 book launch and tour we had planned for Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where the novel is set as well as a Republic of Ireland promotional barnstormer. Now, with Trump back in the Oval Office, we need to help make America great again.

Trump lovers and Trump haters need me. Unhinged, gonzo, delusional and deranged, my new release will be even better than the Trump dance. With a prologue and five new up-to-date chapters and what I’m calling an “Apocalogue,” Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited will offer something disturbing for everybody.

For better or worse, persistence is an Irish American trait. People like me believe in the unbelievable. And Donald Trump is truly unbelievable. The next four years, should democracy as we know it last that long, will prove to be even more unbelievable.

The Wilkes-Bare Irish Guys in the book are big-feeling boastful bigots and proud of it, not at all ashamed of hating the people they hate. Wilkes-Barre Mayor and Irish Guys President Spuds McAnus once jumped in the face of an LGBTQ community leader at a campaign rally protest and sneered, “What’s so gay about being a queer?”

Illegals, drag queens, Feminazis, woke libtards and any other enemies of the people outside the volatile Irish Guy tribe need not apply for membership in the private mostly men’s club freedom lovers like them call their own.

By the way, Mayor McAnus won re-election in a landslide and joined Trump’s admirers at today’s inauguration where Trump in his speech called today Liberation Day.

You know what that means, don’t you?

Everybody Trump dance!

While we’re at it, how about a nice Irish jig to get us in the mood for Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited?

With one sinister stroke of his expensive presidential pen, Joe Biden betrayed the decent people who live in his Scranton birthplace.

Biden recently commuted convicted child slave trader Michael J. Conahan’s 17 ½- year federal prison conviction for racketeering, freeing him from serving the rest of his prison sentence. The 72-year-old degenerate former Luzerne County judge made big money selling children into institutional slavery — ordering boys and girls as young as eight into for-profit juvenile prisons in exchange for more than $2 million in cash he shared with another depraved county judge.

With one demonic stroke of treachery, Biden destroyed his own legacy.

For this evil act America’s 46^th president must never be forgiven.

Nor should Conahan be absolved of his vicious crime. But there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about this shameless ex-convict living large in the Florida sun except forever shun him and anyone who has anything to do with him.

The doddering hustler who campaigned for president in 2020 as Scranton Joe is another story. We law-abiding coal crackers must make him pay. We owe swift retribution to ourselves and to the promise of a moral nation built upon the notion of liberty and justice for all.

No discussion about building Biden’s presidential library in Scranton should ever be considered. Instead, a hometown developer with a clear conscience should buy Biden’s former home on North Washington Avenue where he lived until he was 10, tear down the house and build a safe space playground for at-risk children, a memorial park that symbolizes our solemn vow to protect future generations.

America needs to forever remember the despicable hardship wrought by anile Scranton Joe Biden.

While we’re at it, Pope Francis should excommunicate Biden from the Roman Catholic Church where Biden hides in his faithlessness without begging forgiveness or confessing his most grievous mortal sins both public and private.

Most immediately, though, the downtown street and expressway fawning elected Democratic government officials named in Biden’s “honor” must be renamed Spruce Street and the Scranton Expressway respectively rather than the now shameful Biden Street and the President Biden Expressway.

Both roadways now reflect nothing but dark highways to Hell.

One child in the “Kids for Cash” horror story later shot himself though the heart and died. Another child died of a drug overdose. Countless youngsters among the thousands Conahan condemned to endless suffering live in life’s shadows fighting the demons trauma and hopelessness inflict on them. Yet Biden willingly wielded his presidential pen like a slave master’s bullwhip, gifting renewed power to Conahan and opening raw, fresh wounds that never heal on the psyches of countless damaged children and the people who love them.

Now linked forever these two reprehensible and always dangerous fools care nothing about improving the lives of others as long as they get what they want. If Biden possessed any honor whatsoever, he would admit he was wrong for releasing a public menace back into civilized society. If he were able, Biden would do something to remedy his own recklessness.

If Biden asks bootlicking Democratic state, Lackawanna County and city elected officials to remove and replace the road signs, these lackeys will no doubt quickly do whatever they can to comply with his wishes. Otherwise, Gov. Josh Shapiro, County Commissioner Bill Gaughan, Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti and other professional Biden flunkies will refuse to budge, continuing to defend Biden the way they have done from the start of Biden’s delusional tenure in the White House.

A recent wishy-washy editorial in the Scranton Times-Tribune waffled on whether to remove the road signs. As expected, the newspaper’s timid feature-writing columnist Chris Kelly has shied away from supporting the community he serves, people who deserve better than the double-dealing consequences of Biden’s sellout. More lap dog than watchdog, Kelly’s snark is always worse than his fight. So don’t expect homespun print and/or broadcast media to lead the charge to promote brave Scranton values rather than the phony scripted scruples Biden claims to uphold.

We the people must accomplish this mission by ourselves.

Until now only well-known regional Republicans, including bigots, reprobates and other clods, have led rallies to publicly support renaming the Biden roads. I grudgingly voted for Biden in 2020, yet now find common cause with even these vile dimwits who oppose Biden’s commutation for Conahan.

Getting even with Biden is not a partisan political fight. Our crusade requires Democrats, Republicans, independents and even nonvoters who crave moral strength. Decency makes trustworthy people who we are. I’ll stand with anyone willing to question authority and fight America’s corrupt system that sells out hard-working, vulnerable people who struggle yet help make this country work.

So should you.

Scranton is not and never will be Biden’s hometown no matter how many times he claims our proud city as his own. By disrespecting ethical people everywhere, Biden has smeared Scranton’s stellar place in history.

Scranton belongs to those of us who live here, who value our immigrant story and the role our tough town still plays in fulfilling the American Dream for people the Democratic Party long ago abandoned.

Biden owes us.

We owe him nothing.

1

one crinkled leaf fell

into infinity’s void

wintertime magic

2

enso holds ensnow

ice cold stillness enlightens

awareness feels crisp

3

white stormy platform

sits outside in zazen chill

warm ki nourishes

Raking leaves is cathartic.

Solitary.

Meditative.

Monk-like and focused I pulled crisp fallen leaves from the tree lawn into the gutter with all the energy of an aging samurai sweeping an empty dojo floor. Workers had already picked up most of our autumn leaves, but after the recent snowfall more dropped on East Gibson Street.

When I moved close to our baby tree that got slammed during last week’s snow storm I spoke softly, gently encouraging her to heal and return to us stronger than before the attack of wet, heavy snow that broke her limbs but not her spirit.

“You’re the most beautiful tree in Scranton,” I said, giving a spray of leaves a little peck.

I complimented her appearance without being “treeist,” a word I made up that defines the opposite of my increasing regard for nonhuman nature and the vulnerable fast-disappearing species that make up our planet. Earth exists as an endangered species all by herself. Without Mother Earth no human would remain or appear ever again.

If only for a few seconds, at least try to think about that somber fact.

Like human sexists who mostly harm women, human treeists disrespect the spirit of life that courses though the living, breathing veins of their victims. Like us, trees and leaves have veins. Leafy tubes carry water, nutrients, glucose and oxygen, transporting invisible building blocks of existence throughout the leaves and the rest of the tree. Like human veins that carry vital life energy into the hearts of our species, tree veins carry power and vitality throughout their trunks, branches and leaves that make up their bodies.

Standing back to inspect the natural beauty of our baby tree I noticed how since her accident she has expanded her reach into the sky, standing evermore firmly planted beside her big sister tree who reaches beyond the telephone wires as if she’s hugging the heavens, kissing the sky the way Jimi Hendrix smooched the azure outskirts of his mind. Our baby tree reflects the psychedelic, trippy and magical essence of the universe. Baby tree’s a hippie tree dancing amid societal breakdown, reflecting a wild natural rhythm of existence to which more people should pay attention.

Stephanie and I pay attention.

After I raked the leaves and piled them on the corner for city workers to collect, I entered our Zen garden through the high cedar gate at the back of the house. On my way in I reached down to greet two different kinds of bushes that line each side of the garden path. Weighty snow had pounded both plants and I spent time a few days ago carefully lifting and sweeping snow from their bowed branches. Now they responded like grateful pet dogs thankful for the attention.

A fat squirrel standing on the meditation platform where we sit zazen on warmer days watched my entrance. Resting both little paws on its belly the creature resembled an enlightened beastie Buddha, sitting back on its haunches, calmly observing life in all forms.

A week earlier I found a dead squirrel stretched out nearby beside the hard coal Buddha, three chunks of anthracite set one atop the other sculpted into what reminds me of a black dragon guarding the temple. I want to believe the squirrel died of natural causes but realize how predators prowl even peaceful land. Survival of the fittest dictates such stark reality.

Our primary failing as human predators lies in believing we have the right to conquer life. War, pollution and other toxic invasions might one day doom us all. Despite living atop the food chain, perhaps our species is a devolving freak of nature, mutant monsters too smart for our own good, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, yet quirks of nature after only about 200,000 years headed for future self-destruction. If so, the 4.5 billion-year-old planet will get along just fine without us.

Meanwhile I’ll do my best to live in peace among the intruders, practicing harmony as my main martial art of societal self-defense that requires helping to protect the environment. Peace of mind magnifies the will to persevere. Peace of mind unites the commitment to save a little piece of our world with the hopeful growth of our baby tree.

Stephanie and I look forward to watching our baby tree grow.

Together we’ll kiss the sky.

From our upstairs bedroom window she looks seriously injured. One branch covered in wet thick snow lies frozen on the ground. Other branches droop from watery weight, hanging low as if bowed in mourning.

We call her our baby tree.

She’s a survivor who stands where her predecessors failed to grow. Over the years we’ve planted three trees near the corner where our 100-year-old house has stood through the ages. Each tree died. For a long time our baby tree looked like she wouldn’t survive, either, but she persevered.

We trimmed the top at the center branch about two years ago, giving her one last chance to succeed like a crew-cut Marine recruit giving a boot camp obstacle course everything she has. But even Tony the wise city tree expert pronounced our baby tree dead.

Stephanie said we should wait. Patience can invigorate baby trees as well as seasoned humans like us. So we waited. And one day the living tip of a tiny green bud appeared on our baby tree. More buds appeared in the following weeks. The smallest green leaves opened and turned wide as a child’s palm when she reaches to shake hands.

That first year made history. When Tony drove by and saw her dancing in the breeze he stopped to marvel. In his many years as an arborist planting, pruning, fertilizing and nurturing trees, he had never seen such a comeback.

“She’s a miracle tree,” he said.

“That’s our baby tree,” I said.

Sometimes I gently caressed her leaves and said, “You’re the most beautiful tree in Scranton.”

Sensing shyness and strength I spoke respectfully, not wanting to embarrass her or exert any more pressure than she already endured through tumultuous seasons and whatever evil lurked underground near the sewer grate that poisoned her forebears.

Our baby tree stood her ground.

The next year, and the year after that, she displayed powerful determination. Whatever power she carried in her genes convinced me she would thrive. Like people, she only lived so long. Like all life she, too, would one day succumb to nature and return to the universal mysteries that control life and death in all forms.

This fall our baby tree shined. Warm bright weather generated vivid fresh color dancing in golden sunlight among a beautiful buff coat of greenish-yellow leaves.

“She looks like a lemon lime popsicle,” I said one day not long ago as Stephanie and I walked down the hill on North Irving Avenue toward our sturdy old house. Our baby tree’s big sister stood beside her. Towering over her sibling in her own matching flourish of radiance, she stood swaying in a gentle breeze as testament to time and wonder.

Big sister came to us years earlier when a violent storm sent a massive tree crashing into the middle of East Gibson Street that could have destroyed our house had it fallen through the ancient wood. We have no control over which way the wind blows.

Or how hard the snow falls.

Later today I’ll lace up my trusty steel-toed boots, zip my worn black fatigue jacket to the neck and pull my watch cap over my head to go outside. I’ll use both hands and the broom to gently brush heavy snow from her limbs. I’ll talk quietly and tenderly, reminding her we’re here to do whatever we can to help.

Then we’ll hope for the best. Most people hope for the best at times like these. But we need to prepare for the worst. Nothing lives forever. Nothing is permanent. Still, we’re all connected — you, me, Stephanie and our baby tree.

Our roots will always run deep.

Psst.

Wanna get high?

My new novel Weed Wine Magic will light your fire.

So will real weed wine.

I can’t wait to see the movie.

One night in late October my editor Stephanie to whom I am married and I settled into our cliffside room at the Inn at the Cove in Pismo Beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean, each holding half a glass of what California Central Coast winemaking guru Bob Lindquist calls his 2023 Grenache Rosé “Especial.” What makes Bob’s “Especial” wine particularly special is the hand-planted, hand-picked cannabis infused into the wine.

“We provide the juice and a friend provides the bud and makes the wine in his temperature controlled garage,” Bob said. “The 2023 weed wine is … from organic grapes and organic bud.”

“So clean and pure!” sayeth the weed wine guru.

“If the Feds legalize cannabis, then someday we might be able to make it legally and actually sell some,” Bob said with a glow in his voice as vivid as a black light “Keep on Trucking” poster.

Cannabis-infused wine is illegal to sell anywhere in the United States. Whenever you see weed wine for sale it’s not weed wine at all. The product is alcohol-free THC and CBD-infused grape juice. In California, though, state law permits people to make bona fide weed wine for their own personal use and to share with friends.

Since weed is still illegal where I live in Pennsylvania and I have abstained from all illegal drugs for more than 40 years, standing in the parking lot when Bob gifted me with two bottles of weed wine in a boutique brown paper bag I felt like singing back-up with the Eagles on “Desperado” or auditioning as Don Johnson’s co-star in a new “Miami Vice” movie. But Bob’s bounty registered on the Hoocha Weed Scale as 100-percent-high-CBD-low-THC-legal, the sacred consequence of organic farming philosophy that respects the planet, the cosmos and nature in general.

My high wasn’t so much a mental experience but a physically-centered and subtle liberation of spirit. Honed, not stoned, like a polished piece of green Big Sur jade that glistens in moonbeams. We finished the bottle the next night with similar peace of mind. Stephanie sensed lavender in a fresh bouquet of violets. Weird as it might sound, I caught a hint of crisp celery just cut from a Santa Maria field.

“Not real psychoactive,” said Bob.

“That’s OK,” I said, “I’m psychoactive enough as it is.”

Still, the weed wine offered a simple natural sacrament from which adherents can take an easy climb up the stairway to heaven. I imagine a greater THC concentration will take you higher, like Sly Stone sang at Woodstock, but Bob’s Buzzy Brand produced plant-based enlightenment that enraptured my endorphins and delighted my dopamine.

Before we flew home we took our second bottled pot potion to Mama Osa, our friend and inspiration for one of the Weed Wine Magic characters who lives in Halcyon, a cooperative Central Coast community based on theosophical philosophy and universal principles of goodness. Halcyon was hip long before the hippies. Mama Osa promised to keep our weed wine cool until we return next year.

We also expect to make the scene when Hollywood films the movie.

Weed Wine Magic is a unique story unlike any far-out flick moviemakers have produced in recent years. When I think about my book I think about writers Ken Kesey, Richard Brautigan and Hunter Thompson. When I think about a movie I think about easy-riding Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, director Quentin Tarantino and Mexican director/actor Diego Luna.

My 2024 West Coast launch and readings from Blood Red Syrah, A Gruesome California Wine Country Thriller and the sequel Weed Wine Magic, A Freaky California Cannabis Country Chiller at Bob’s Arroyo Grande tasting room could not have gone better. Some of my best friends on the Central Coast showed up to raise a glass and cheer. Wine club members laughed at all the right times, asked smart questions and enjoyed drinking Bob and Louisa Lindquist’s fine family wines that once motivated editors at a prestigious magazine to name Bob one of the 50 best winemakers in the world.

We all agree a movie based on my novels would blast off.

We open with a drone shot of the contemporary raw western edge of America, rocky cliffs hovering over a wide expanse of deep blue sea. I hear psychedelic music, bongos and surf guitar. I see bountiful Hoocha Weed growing tall in tan sand mountains, the most potent cannabis on the planet. Mexican mysticism fills our souls.

Cheech and Chong might even ask for walk-on roles.

Lights.

Camera.

Action.

My big screen psychedelic dream is why I’m sending queries to film industry executives. If Hollywood producers are willing to tune in and turn on to Weed Wine Magic we’ll get the green light, step on the gas and take the ride. American moviegoers are long overdue for better high times. Truly creative people can take only so many superheroes. The diverse characters in my books reflect deeply held power of the people, untapped consciousness and wisdom daring producers can bring to a boil like homemade weed wine aged in the ancient Oceano dunes.

A young, bold audience is ready to take our trip through the open doors of perception, a journey to the center of their minds as well as the minds of my protagonists and antagonists both human and otherwise. The Weed Wine Magic movie will energize us to escape our craven new world, exchanging chaos for peace and love.

Paz y amor will prevail in our new age of Aquarius. Like the song says, “peace will guide our planets” and “love will steer the stars.”

See you at the premier.

Pro-Palestinian protesters lined the Scranton General Dynamics ammunition plant driveway Sunday afternoon shouting “shame” as workers came and went during an employee shift change. Workers there make shell casings workers elsewhere in America fill with explosives to send to Israel to kill Palestinian men, women and children.

More than 35,000 civilians have died in the Israeli slaughter many respected international human rights experts publicly call genocide. Men, women and children continue to die in the American government financed and supported Israeli carnage.

The Gaza Health Ministry asserts Israeli attacks have killed at least 37,765 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Israeli military assaults have wounded more than 86,400 Gazans. Over 11,000 people are missing. Scholars and researchers in Gaza consider the estimates low.

Scranton ammo plant teams work around the clock.

A skinny white woman wearing a tank top and blue jeans stormed past me Sunday on her way into the bomb factory.

“I’m going to work to pay my fucking bills,” she said to no one in particular, fuming and giving the crowd of about 25 people the bony finger she waved high above her short blond hair all the way to the high metal gate a security guard had earlier opened.

Work.

That’s what people do at the ammunition plant.

That’s how people make a living to survive.

Although I share the ire of other protesters, I also understand the corner into which the mighty pro-Israel lobby and elite elected officials have pushed these factory workers.

U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey are two favorite darlings of Israeli fanaticism and predatory defense contractors. Cartwright and Casey stand with Israel right or wrong. Cartwright and Casey support bombing Palestinians with weapons made in Scranton where Casey lives and Cartwright maintains a financial connection to a law office where his high-powered lawyer wife works.  

These two American Zionist hawks are not nice people. These pampered rich men are dangerous accomplices to murder.

On Sunday, as workers drove and walked to and from their shift at the plant, protestors chanted, “Good jobs don’t kill people.”

Their mantra makes a salient point that exposes Cartwright and Casey for the frauds they are. How many good jobs can either man honestly take credit for bringing home to Pennsylvania? If, in fact, either man has successfully procured work for constituents, do quality benefits and wages exist as part of the employment package?

Where are the good Scranton jobs that don’t kill people?

Not all ammo plant workers are demons although some deserve the label. Cartwright, Casey and their moneyed masters are the true ghouls who lack honor, morals, integrity, decency and a simple sense of right and wrong.

The Pope should personally kick both sinners out of the Roman Catholic Church. At least deny these immoral trespassers the sacrament of Holy Communion if they ever make an appearance before the altar rail. Absolution must be more selective for devils on the hell bound train.

Don’t target workers for a ramped-up protest. Confront Cartwright more than ever at his offices, Moosic mansion and public events. Don’t scorn people who might prefer working in jobs that don’t help kill. Confront Casey no matter where he goes.

Recognize both men as true enemies of humankind.

Of course, neither of these timid public pimps will sit face-to-face with me and answer hard questions about any issue that opens them up to truthful scrutiny. When was the last time either of these insecure Washington aristocrats spoke in person with an ammo plant worker let alone with an aggressive journalist?

Standing near the General Dynamics gate Sunday my wife held a handwritten white poster board sign that said in black ink, “Bread Not Bombs.”

I spoke with two plant workers who walked by.

“How you doing?” I said.

Both men nodded in response.

As they kept walking one looked at my wife’s “Bread Not Bombs” sign and said, “I wish.”

Turning to his colleague he softly repeated the words for emphasis.

“Bread not bombs,” he said.

Truth supposedly comes out of the mouths of babes.

So does truth come from the mouth of a bomb maker.

Cannibals could have saved Joe Biden.

Gobbling up the President the way Biden hinted New Guinea cannibals ate his Uncle Ambrose Finnegan during World War II would have at least kept Biden from taking the CNN debate stage.

Democrats could have benefited from human meat-eaters, too. They wouldn’t have to worry about Biden’s name appearing on the ballot for re-election in November.

Now Democrats and Republican carnivores are circling the upcoming presidential election like vultures soaring over the White House.

My crude slob U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) even called out his colleagues as predators for turning on Biden after the octogenarian’s pathetic debate performance against former President Donald Trump.

“Chill the fuck out,” Fetterman wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Yet few people can honestly argue Biden’s appearance last week showed the world anything better than a cracked shell of a former slick world leader. Biden stood open-mouthed and wide-eyed like an anile nursing home patient caught in the TV room with his pajama bottoms down.

Pathetic Biden vs. Pathological Trump?

America’s in more trouble than Biden’s missing Uncle Ambrose.

We’re eating ourselves alive.

Don’t blame me, I’m pescatarian.

Blame Scranton values.

As a former longtime Democrat who voted for Biden in 2020, I’ve warned Democrats about Biden for years. Two years ago I wrote a column for the national online magazine Gonzo Today titled “Don’t Run Again, Joe” in which I hit the nail and Biden’s hair plugs on the head.

Don’t Run Again, Joe – Greetings from Scranton

But the public meltdown occurred long before Biden ambled onto the stage for the June 27 debate.

Biden mentioned his birthplace within seconds of his first response. The man Barack Obama called “the scrappy kid from Scranton” put his foot in his mouth within seconds of opening his yap (what many Scranton natives call a mouth).

“I come from Scranton, Pennsylvania,” Biden said. “I come from a household where the kitchen table – if things weren’t able to be met during the month was a problem. Price of eggs, the price of gas, the price of housing, the price of a whole range of things.

“That’s why I’m working so hard to make sure I deal with those problems. And we’re going to make sure that we reduce the price of housing. We’re going to make sure we build 2 million new units. We’re going to make sure we cap rents, so corporate greed can’t take over.”

Hip new loft apartments with granite countertops are all the rage in Scranton.

Yet even non-loft rent in Scranton is too high for the average Biden Street retail clerk or warehouse worker toiling in one of the dismal distribution centers greedy corporate millionaires erect throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. Young working-class Scrantonians need truly affordable housing more than a misfiring robotic president.

Nobody’s capping anything in Scranton including an increase in homicides, homelessness, drug addiction and alcoholism. Nobody’s capping deaths of despair.

By the way, as Biden likes to say, maybe the biggest warehouse and commercial real estate mogul in Northeastern Pennsylvania is a convicted felon who served time in a federal prison for paying off judges who locked up kids for cash in adjacent Luzerne County.

When Biden left town with his family at 10 years of age, rents were cheaper for working-class people. Keep in mind blue-blooded Biden never spent a second of his privileged life as a true blue-collar worker. Lace curtain Irish pretender Biden came from money and political power. His great-grandfather served as a Pennsylvania state senator, for Christ’s sake. Biden’s beloved old Scranton neighborhood remains loaded with prep school snobs.

By-the-boot-straps myth defines Biden. That’s a big part of his problem. Wanting to be something he isn’t and never was will help destroy his well-crafted legacy once and for all. Blind party loyalty harms Biden far more than it helps. Misplaced political priorities add to what Democrats claim is an already collapsing system.

Biden’s advisors see what I see. They just won’t admit it. Waving from a stormy lee shore as Biden sails the ship of state into the cliffs, they cheer until the very end. Then they blame the rocks.

Tribalism defines Scranton politics. What elite pundits call “circling the wagons” means refusing to accept reality even when truth can be beneficial. Tribal dysfunction equals societal destruction. Those sacred Scranton values Biden claims to hold dear will shipwreck him and the rest of us, condemning constitutional democracy to an early grave.

Biden’s got to go as soon as possible.

Even with the best new presidential nominee Democrats can find, Trump will be difficult to beat. That’s why I predict Trump as America’s next president even if he’s elected from his prison cell which federal law allows. Tens of millions of voters will rush to the polls to vote for Trump in November because they hate the same people, places and things they believe he hates.

Countless conservative, fascist and off-the-rails voters hate Blacks, Browns, queers, drag queens reading books to children, women and “illegal aliens” whether they be Mexican, “Mooslum” or from Mars. Countless Trump voters are convinced Trump also despises these same “enemies of the people.” Don’t forget Trump has mocked Jews in the past. Countless Trump supporters mock Jews, as well. Countless Trump voters believe Hitler had some good ideas, too.

If the election comes down to Trump vs. Biden, Trump wins. Democrats will no doubt blame people like me who refuse to vote for Biden or any Democrat who has shored up Biden’s complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Hey, hey, ho, ho, Scranton Joe has got to go. So do Fetterman, Zionist Biden apologist and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, Scranton Mayor Paige Gephardt Cognetti, state Sen. Marty Flynn and all the NEPA state reps.

Where are those cannibals when we need them?