"The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, the SA (Sturmabteilung; commonly known as the Storm Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons—the elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents of Nazi policy."TRAITOR Trump's first concentation camp, known as "Alligator Alcatraz" was opened in South Florida on July 1, 2025, in South Florida with TRAITOR Trump and Rod DeSantis present and happily touting its existence as if they had just funded an actual day care center, community college, or hospital. The only term I find adequate to describe TRAITOR Trump's emotional response to this concentration camp is "masturbatory glee". This isa term I have used once or twice before in reference to some of his most egregious and criminal acts. When TRAITOR Trump is able to do anything which creates havoc,makes the world a more dangerous place, or worsening the living conditions for a major segment of America's population, his responses are always a public exhibition of strutting like a rooster in a chicken lot in which he is the only male of the species. His face becomes exactly like of the high school bully who has just slapped a non-consenting freshman girl on the hindquartes and gotten away with it. When he stood in front of the press at the opening of this hell hole,his experssion was exactly like that of an insecure 13 year old boy who has suddenly discovered that he has one black hair on his chest or crotch. TRAITOR Trump delights in the suffering of others, especially if he is the perpetrator of that suffering. There is no word or expression in the English language that better describes his reactions in these instances than masturbatory glee. We are teetering on the edge of the greatest disaster any civilized country can perpetrate or ignore as it is being perpetrated. We are facing the onset of what will become an American Holocaust if TRAITOR Trump is not stopped by the US House, Senate, and Supreme Court. It is unlikelyh at this time that any of the three are willing or morally able to do that. The razor slim margins which votes on his "Big Vicious, Ugly Bill" is being defeated by are not based on strength or moral courage. They are based on the dissent of a small handful of the worst elected officials in America whose oppostion is due to their desire to make that "Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill" even bigger, more visious, and uglier. The United States is sitting at the cusp of being host to a Second Holocaust. More concentration camps are going to be built. More people will be incarcerated unjustly, denied due process, deported, suffer from inhumane treatment, and many of them will die in the process or because of hte long term effects of that process. The question has now become "what will you as an idividual citizen do in response to this sought after Second Holocaust? Will you sit silent or even assist as thousands of German citizens did in World War II? Will you simply stick your head deep within your shell of compliance while blaming other under your breath as many other German citizens did in World War II? Will you ignore this Second Holocaust as much of the so-called civilized world did in World War II? Or will you be a real participant in the resistance to this Tyrann, this Racism, this Second Holocaust? Will you even join TRAITOR Trump in his masturbatory glee?
My Appalachian Life
An ever growing site of non-fiction,flotsam, fiction,memoir,autobiography,literature,history, ethnography, and book reviews about Appalachia, Appalachian Culture, and how to keep it alive!!! Also,how to pronounce the word: Ap-uh-latch-uh. Billy Ed Wheeler said that his mother always said,"Billy, if you don't quit, I'm going to throw this APPLE AT CHA" Those two ways are correct. All The Others Are Wrong.
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Thursday, July 3, 2025
"Alligator Acatraz" Is TRAITOR Trump's First Concentration Camp!
The Holocaust Encyclopedia tells us that:
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
July 4, 2025, Stand Up With Ned Pillersdorf And Kentucky's 5th House District
On July 4th 2025, at 5pm, in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, Attorney Ned Pillersdorf will hold his formal announcement of his candidacy in the Kentucky 5th US House District in the upcoming 2026 election. He is opposing long term Right Wing Radical Repugnican Hal Rogers who has just voted to support TRAITOR Trump's Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill which will be highly likely to force the closure of 23 hospitals in the district due to the vicious, widespread cuts to Medicaid. The Announcement will be held at Rosenburg Squre in Prestonsburg about one block from the Floyd County Judicial Center. I am asking all my readers of this blog to make an honest effort to attend the announcement. Ned Pillersdorf is the most legitimate opposition to Rogers to arise in the district in twenty years or more. He is a nationally known and respected attorney who won more than 1,000 appeals of the cuts of Social Security benefits which werel levied against a vast pool of the former clients of attorney Eric C. Conn. Ned is also the attorney who represented the former employees of Blackjewel Mining when their jobs were cut and they were not paid for their last weeks of work. For forty years, Ned has represented the poor, needy, disabled, infirm, and elderly of the 5th district when they were engaged in tough fights against a plethora of agencies, prosecutors, and corporations who were determined to make the lives of those people even worse by their actions. Ned is also the spouse of former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Janet Stumbo who has also devoted her career to the improvement of the human condition in the 5th district. Please attend the announcement and join in the huge show of support for Ned and his candidacy. Bring your family! Bring your friends! Join all of us who will be attending in a show of support for change in the US House, protection of constitutional rights in America, and common human decency around the world.
Monday, June 30, 2025
Kentucky Hospitals Likely To Close And Counties Without A Hospital In That Event!
Over the last few weeks, we have all heard a lot in the news media about how TRAITOR Trump's "Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill" will do myriad kinds of harm to America, especially to rural America, the lower and middle classes, hospitals, education, health care in general, vaccines and vaccine production, Medicaid, Medicare, WIC, SNAP or Food Stamps, agriculture, food safety, airline safety, the arts and sciences, and several other critical aspects of life in America. It will also add about 4 TRILLION DOLLARS to the budget deficit, and all of this damage is being done to provide vast unnecessary tax cuts to the rich, super rich, and corporations. Every word you have heard about the upcoming damage is true! The damage is intentional, purposeful, and will cost thousands of lives across this country in addition to the vast economic damage it will do. But in this blog post, I just want to address one aspect of that damage, the damage to hospitals and health care in Kentucky. Every legitimate news agency and policy analysis corporation is telling us the same thing. If the proposed cuts to Medicaid are approved (and it appears they almost certainly will be approved) thousands of hospitals, especially rural hospitals will be forced to close due to lack of income. Hundreds of thousands of the poorest, and often sickest Americans will lose their access to health care, and thousands of those people will die along with the hospitals which have been serving them. According to the Kentucky Center For Economic Policy, there are 35 hospitals in Kentucky which are likely to close on that list of hospitals. Since I first heard that dire forecast, I have been studying the issue both on my own and in consulations with others who understand the issues and politics involved. Two of the people I have discussed this with in depth are a retired attorney who spent her career in Eastern Kentucky and comes from a very politically centered family, and a retired nurse who spent her career working in one of the poorest counties in the state which does not have a hospital at this time to lose. We all agree that there are a vast number of issues that would arise for Kentucky and the nation if this Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill" becomes law. My reading of the article which I supplied the link to above shows me that the majority of the 35 hospitals in Kentucky which can be expected to be starved out if Medicaid is cut are in Eastern Kentucky. Although I generally think of I-65 as being the border line between Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky, that is not absolutely accurate. We can also take the position that I-75 is the border between the two. But for the sake of somewhat original thinking on that issue, let's say that the border is an extension of the line created by the border between Ohio and Indiana. If we go to that point on the Kentucky border with Indiana and Ohio and draw a straight line from there due south to the Tennessee border, it is as good a candidate for the border between Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky as any other. The image below is of that map showing the locations of the endangered hospitals in Kentucky from the linked story by the Kentucky Center For Economic Policy. If you use that imaginary line from the KY/IN/OH intersection, you will find that only 12 of the endangered hospitals are west of that line. East of the line are the 23 remaining hospitals which are most likely to close due to the loss of Medicaid funding created by the "Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill". God Help Us In Eastern Kentucky If That Happens!
The counties in this list will all be without a hospital in the event Medicaid funding is cut as designed in the "Big Ugly, Vicious Bill" They are Letcher, Knott, Floyd, Martin, Lawrence, Elliott, Carter, Rowan, Greenup, Lewis, Breathitt, Jackson, Lee, Owsley, Rowan, Rockcastle, Montgomery, Powell, Clark, Clay Fleming, These counties are contiguous and constitute a vast block of real estate in Eastern Kentucky which would have no local hospital. Patients in these counties would have no readily available emergency rooms, ICU's, maternity wards, or other services which require a hospital setting. To illustrate just how bizarre this possibility is let's look at some geographic possibilities which would be created. It would be possible to travel by car from Jenkins on the Virginia border to Vanceburg on the Ohio border without ever driving through a county with a hospital. It would also be possible to drive by car from Mount Vernon in Rockcastle County to Greenup in Greenup County without passing through a county with a local hospital. In addition to the loss of these hospitals, the job losses would be catastrophic in a region which is already economically distressed. Nearly all the prescribing professionals (M.D.'s, APRN's, PA's) would be highly likely to leave the region, perhaps even the state. Additionally, thousands of licensed providers such as imaging professionals, Registered Nurses, Licensed Practical Nurses, Certified Nursing Assistants, and a few other professions would be forced to leave the region in order to find work. There would also be hundreds to several thousand unemployed food service workers, housekeeping workers, maintenance workers, clerks, bookkeepers, and security professionals. Yes, there are a couple of hospitals which might survive such as those in Pike and Perry Counties but those two counties are on the Virginia and West Virginia borders and the drive for many patients would be just too far, too expensive, too time consuming, and thousands of low income patients would be likely to not receive regular ongoing health care. One hospital not on the list in Johnson County would suddenly be the primary source of care for Lawrence, Martin, Floyd, Magoffin, and Elliott counties due to the closure of the one hospital in Lawrence County and all three in Floyd County. In legitimate emergencies and accidents, the concept of The Golden Hour for transport to an emergency room would no longer exist. Distances would be too great in many cases for an ambulance crew to assess, transport, and facilitate admission to a hospital for many critical patients in a timely, life saving manner. EMT's and other emergency responders would suddenly be traveling far from their primary service area and their numbers would, at present levels, be too small to provide both the added transport and provide the current level of services in their primary area of responsibility.
The Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill is a disaster in the making for Kentucky and many other states where multiple hospitals will be lost. The damage of this bill is deliberately designed to minimize the poor of this region and several others, to deny them medical services as are customary in a real Democracy. It is intentional! It is criminal! It must not be allowed to take place. This bill must not be approved.
Sunday, June 29, 2025
On Friday, June 27, 2025, I Spent Some Time With Some Of My Favorite Immigrants
On Friday, June 27, 2025, we traveled to Lexington to finally get new batteries in my wife's power wheelchair. They had been dead for about two weeks and it was a bad time. We needed a break and, for a while we got one. After spending time with the technician and his wife at the wheelchair company, getting the batteries installed, and then moving on to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant where despite living about two hour away we are regulars. We love the food, we really like the manager and his entire staff. We got done eating and then traveled to a little Asian food store for one item of a chile paste which we cook with sometimes. I will no longer name any immigrant, immigrant owned business, or other identifying characteristics of a business due to the danger which is being presented on a daily basis to ALL IMMIGRANTS by TRAITOR Trump and the Criminal Syndicate which poses as a "cabinet". We spent little time in the business and, it is my impression, that the family which owns it are American citizens. I chose the one item I was searching for, looked around the store and figured I didn't need anything else. When I walked to the counter to pay, the wife of the family was working in the store area away from the counter. Immediately, her young son who is about 7 or 8, in my estimation, moved from another spot behind the counter to the register and rang up my purchase, took my debit card and, with some help from his mother, completed the transaction, thanked me in perfect English. I was instantly taken back to my own childhood growing up in a country store in first Floyd County Kentucky and then another in Knott County Kentucky. I had also been trained to work in the store from a young age as soon as I could count change. I was flooded with memories and instantly told the little boy that I had also grown up in a store with my parents, how much I had enjoyed working in the store, and I tried to let him know, in no uncertain terms, that it is a good thing to be a young boy working with your parents in a family owned store. Yes, it is summer and school is out of session. I have no knowledge that the boy is ever in that store on a school day, or that he is ever working in any dangerous capacity, or that he is ever doing anything that makes his providing help to his parents is illegal. It is a parental choice they have and should always have to bring their children to the store with them, teach those children to work as young as they are capable of doing whatever job the parents choose to have them do. It is valuable training to help a child become a contributing citizen in the world and a worker who is committed to being a part of the working class. It is a damn fine thing to be a young boy working in a family store and I am an expert on that subject. When I was three days old, my parents carried me home from the Lackey, Kentucky, hospital and placed me on the counter in our store and, as I lie about sometimes, told me to "greet customers until you are big enough to do something else. I am proud of that boy and I am proud of his parents.
The photograph above is of my father Ballard Hicks sitting in our family owned country store at Dema, Kentucky.
Amazing Press Conference From The White House!
Just a few hours ago in the White House briefing room, the most amazing press conference in the history of the world took place. The White House press secretary released a surprising and exhilirating list of new developments from the ever expanding and limitless brain of "the stable genius" Donald Trump. After a discussion of how the American bombing of three Iranian nuclear development sites had made more progress toward lasting peace for the entire foreseeable history of the world than any other leader ever made, the press secretary stated that this action is guaranteed to be the final action necessary to guarantee that Donald Trump will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She added that this "peaceful bombing" will be followed by the agreement from Ukrainian President Zelensky that he has realized he "should not continue his war of aggression against Russia and will reccomend that the Ukrainian parlaiment offer a peaceful solution to the crisis which he caused and will also reccomend that Ukraine do as it should have long ago and rejoin the Russian nation". All of this action in the interest of world peace was created by our Supreme Leader Donald Trump. She also discussed other developments which have been made in recent weeks by Donald Trump which will reveal totally that most of the rest of the world "don't know what the fuck they are doing". Those developments included in her discussion listed Donald Trump's highly effective and inspiring attendance at the meeting in Canada of the G7 in which in her words, "He was lauded, praised, congratulated, and cheered by those lesser members of the G7 for his incredible work to advance the world into the full enjoyment of the 21st Century." Then she went on to say that since Donald Trump has secured peace in the Middle East, increased the likelihood that Ukraine will agree with Russia and Putin to end their war of aggression against Russia and they will be simultaneusly readmitted into the Russian nation on the same day that Canada becomes the 51st state of the United States. Her press conference went on to disclose that Donald Trump has "a lot more free time on his hands now since the world is at peace and he is working on other things of great interest to the world." She added that "a lot of the lying media claim that all Mr. Trump does is play golf but what they don't realize is that being on the golf course gives him a lot of time to use his awe inspiring intellect to work on other issues." Shestated that just in the last few days he had been eating a piece of cherry pie just as George Washington, our tenth or twelfth worst president, had eaten cheerry pie so does Donald Trump. "But while Mr. Trump was eating his pie, he found a perfectly round seed in it. And, after firing the White House Chef and sou chef, he thought further on the subject and was reminded of how so many second class math professors at places like Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Notre Dame mistakenly believe that the thing they call Pi doesn't have an end to and think it could have a million digits. What a waste of numbers is what he said. Then he thought some more and figured out that the kind of Pi you can't eat only has four digits after the three. Those four digits, and we don't mean fingers here,are 4547 and that's the end of that." She went on to say that it is a cinch that Donald Trump will become the only person in the world to receive both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. When one of the left wing sissy reporters from CBS reminded the press secretary that there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics, she said "There will be one now because Donald Trump has straightened out this mess about the kind of Pi you can't eat which has been going on unstopped for 1400 years ever since some of those fools like Archimedes and Fig Newton started spreading that lie so they could make money from it."
Yes, this is Satire!
Monday, June 23, 2025
An Aphorism For Today's Times!
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A USELESS PIECE OF INFORMATION! THERE IS ONLY INFORMATION FOR WHICH YOU DO NOT CURRENTLY HAVE A USE!
So far as I know, I actually invented that two sentence aphorism. At least, I am the first person I ever heard use it in public. I have always loved information and I actually grew up reading nearly all of a set of World Book Encyclopedias which my parents bought for me. Before they bought that particular set, I read an earlier, less complex set of encyclopedias which they had bought for my sister who was eight years older. I have no idea when the first occurence was in which that phrase popped into my head. It must have been some situation in which a previously obscure bit of trivia had been floating in my brain without a purpose and suddenly a situation arose when I could drag it out of the dark and dusty synapses and foist it upon someone else. But the situation in which I was reminded just last night of that wonderful aphorism occurred during a conversation by phone with a relative in which we were discussing the terrible political disaster in which the United States now finds itself with TRAITOR Trump and his Criminal Syndicate which poses as a "cabinet". The person with whom I was talking brought up the name of the Right Wing Radical Repugnican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky. I brought up the fact that Congressman Massie, one of the most extreme Right Wing Radical Repugnicans in congress in a time when the Repugnican delegation is the most extreme in the history of the nation, is currently in agreement with Congresswoman Axexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most liberal members of congress, that the attack which TRAITOR Trump ordered against nuclear sites in Iran is unconstitutional. My relative then stated that they think Massie has ulterior motives to which I agreed but stated that in my opinion he is seeking an opportunity to try to get himself into the White House and is actually intelligent enough to pull off that crime. I then asked my relative if they knew where Congressman Massie's college degree was achieved. My relative, who had no idea where Massie got his degree, stated that they just want to "ignore Massie" which I consider one of the most asinine statements I ever heard. I made an honest attempt to make the point that Massie and his wife both hold degrees from MIT, which proves they are both smart enough to pull off a robbery of an American election, especially if we consider that TRAITOR Trump, one of the stupidest people alive, can pull it off. My relative still insisted that they just want to "ignore Massie" and that it doesn't matter where he got his degree. At this point, I insist that the aphorism above is definitely applicable in such a situation especially when we combine it with another from Sun-Tzu whcih states that If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Both I and my relative consider Congressman Massie to be an enemy of both Democracy and the United States. Yet my relative is willing to state that they are willing to ignore that enemy and to disregard a very pertinent piece of information about him, the fact that he holds a degree from one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. That degree, that piece of information, makes Congressman Massie more dangerous than if he had just barely skated through a university studies degree at Podunk Community College. I am perpetually baffled in today's world to see fairly well educated people such as my relative who are willing to attempt to disregard any piece of information about the key people who pose the greatest danger to our country since World War II. GOD HELP US ALL!
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Thoughts On Reading (Fully) Books I Don't Like
Many times on this blog, I have written about books, buying books--especially used books, reading books, reviewing books, and sometimes about books which I have not liked at all. But I'm a bit funny about how I deal with beginning a book I turn out to not like compared to how many other readers deal with such books. I almost never throw a book out without finishing it even when I have decided that I don't like it, that it is garbage, never should have been printed, and is almost totally a waste of time for everyone who has ever been involved with it including both myself and the author, the publisher, the printer, the printer's devil to use an old typesetting term, the mail man or woman who dropped it off in my mail box, the low paid and under respected worker at the Goodwill Store where I might have bought it, right down to the eventual garbage man who will dump it along with the other contents of a can into the yawning and cavernous jaws of a garbage truck. Yet, I like to acknowledge the fact that the author who spent the time to write it, get it accepted for publication, and sold made a commitment to do the necessary work to produce whatever 100, 200, or 2,000 pages of drivel I have attached to myself and my psyche much like the man or woman working on a county road gang has been a participant in the process of attaching a ball and chain to their leg and placing a Pulaski or weed blade in their hands. I have also made a commitment to the author, publisher, editor--if there was one half asleep at a desk the day they approved that particular epistle for publication, and that same belittled and beleagured Goodwill employee who rang it up, added the tax, and then had the gall to ask me if I wanted to round up so the same corporation who is robbing that person of their services and scrape extra money from me so they can move on to the next belittled and beleagured employee who has no other employment options at the time. If the author took themselves seriously enough to do the work to produce the book, put in on the market, and hope for its success much like a poor mother wishing her very ordinary child can become president some day, I owe that author the common decency to shut my mouth, put my negative opinions in my pocket, grit my teeth, and ride this flea bitten nag of a book to the end of the line where it may or may not be noted with the words, "The End", "Fini", or simply "Sucker, You Had It Coming". Authors are a weird lot say I who have also launched a couple dozen short stories into the world without ever herding them and a few others into the covers of book much like poor, bedraggled cattle into a muddy, dung spattered holding pen until the truck arrives to take them to the stockyard. Why on God's green earth, you are probably asking yourself, did I feel the need to take the time to give this nod to all the poorly educated and trained scribblers who have created so many overpriced wastes of paper and printer's ink? The answer is that I am currently involved in reading two books simultaneously which I would not have been willing to pay fifty cents for the pair if I had known in advance what they contained...or failed to contain. I am always reading at least one book, generally two or three at a time, because my wife and I are engaged in a long term habit of reading a novel together which I usually read aloud day after day as she washes the dishes. Then I rinse those dishes. We have also for a year or two been reading one short story from some collection or other in the evenings after supper. Thank God, as I have been involved in reading two bad books at the same time, we have also been reading a collection of short stories which is composed of 28 fine stories by 20 or so authors of some repute. Without that short story of quality each day, I would be pulling my hair out. Thank God for Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry, Richard Connell, Frank R. Stockton, and Jack London.
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