From Border Patrol Overreach To A Bus Disguised As A Flight: What Went Wrong And How To Avoid It

A children’s Halloween parade turns chaotic, a 67-year-old citizen ends up with broken ribs, and we’re left asking hard questions about power, timing, and proportionality. We walk through what the video shows, what officials say, and the choices that escalated a neighborhood operation into a community flashpoint. Could this arrest have happened differently—earlier, elsewhere, with less risk to bystanders? We don’t settle for outrage or spin; we analyze trade-offs and how enforcement tactics shape public trust.

Then the stakes feel smaller but the lesson is the same: signals matter. A traveler arrives for an American Airlines “flight” and discovers the first leg is actually a bus. The boarding pass had a plane icon. The gate displayed a flight number. The fine print whispered the truth. We break down how metasearch tools compress complexity, why airlines blend bus legs into hub feeds, and how to avoid the trap with simple booking hygiene: read the entire itinerary, verify equipment type, and when in doubt, book direct. Clearer UX—distinct icons, color coding, and upfront mode labels—would save thousands from surprise ground legs.

Finally, we turn the mic on ourselves and tackle the rise of filler words—um, like, so—and the viral challenge to go 30 to 60 seconds without them. Fillers aren’t villains; they buy time, signal turns, and soften tone. But overuse muddies ideas and undermines authority when it matters most. We share practical tools: slow your pace, embrace clean pauses, chunk thoughts, and replace filler clusters with purposeful transitions. Keep the identity; trim the noise. If you try the no-filler challenge, tell us your time and the word that trips you up.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow, share with a friend who loves sharp takes on news, travel, and communication, and leave a quick rating to help others find the show. What filler word drives you most crazy?

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Liberty Line each week on Sunday, look for topics on my X file @americanistblog and submit your 1-3 audio opinions to anamericanistblog@gmail.com and you'll be featured on the podcast. 

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Chapters

• 0:29 Rainy Check-In And Headlines
• 0:56 Chicago Raid And Citizen Detainment
• 4:11 Tear Gas, Crowd Control, And Overreach
• 5:36 Could This Arrest Be Handled Better
• 5:36 Transition To Travel Story
• 5:37 The “Flight” That Was A Bus
• 8:00 Reading Fine Print And Booking Advice
• 9:08 Americans And The “Valley Girl” Voice
• 10:53 Why Fillers Spread And How To Pause
• 12:33 Fast Talking, Overapologizing, And Identity
• 14:14 Listener Challenge And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Hello, my dear love bunnies. How are you today? On a Wednesday, halfway through the week. All right, what do we have for you today from the X-Files, mainly the New York Post? Let's start with oh uh what it's raining here by the way. I don't know if you can hear my wind swipers there. I turned them off because I'm parked in the parking lot. Don't need the winch wipers on anymore. Okay, so I don't know how I feel about this. My gut reaction is this is wrong. Alright, U.S. citizen. Yes, U.S. citizen, 67 years old, suffered broken ribs after Border Patrol agents drag him out of his car in shocking video. Well, I think some of these people are getting a little too big for their britches. I appreciate the job they're doing, but let's back off a little bit, okay? With American citizens, you need to back off a lot. I don't know what has happened here. Let's read the article and see if we can figure it out. Shocking video captured Border Patrol agents dragging 67-year-old man from his car and pinning him to the ground in an immigration enforcement operation during a children's Halloween parade in Chicago. Well, well. The man was driving home after a long morning run when he turned a corner in the city's old Irving Park neighborhood and discovered border patrol agents had blocked off the road leading to his home. His running club DW Running Racing Team posted in a social media statement. The man who had, I'm sorry, the man who the club identified as a U.S. citizen was reportedly dragged out of the car and thrown to the ground shortly after agents threatened to break his window if he didn't move his car, the club said. Now, this is all being reported by third-party type situations. We don't know exactly what happened, if there was a confrontation, if the man was being belligerent. Who knows what is happening? But you better believe the left media, the left media will use this up. Video posted by the club captured the runner, who has not been identified by name on the ground, breathlessly saying, I'll move Mike, get off me. As agents kneeled on his back while cuffing him. So I just I just don't see these people dragging somebody out of the car if they were being compliant. If they're being compliant, why would they drag them out of the car? Do you see what I'm saying here? So onlookers scream, get off him. You're effing, suffocating him as the agents were filming while they were filming the incident. Um, let's see. The man suffered six broken ribs, my goodness. Which caused internal bleeding during the detainment in the the club claimed. The arrest came as Border Patrol agents converged in the neighborhood to conduct an immigration enforcement raid. Residents claimed the officers interrupted a children's Halloween parade and released tear gas without warning. Okay, this a little bit overreach here, guys. I think. I mean, maybe they had good reason to be there, but a children's parade? Could you not wait a little bit? The arrest came as the board Okay, good old, I got that. Footage obtained by the outlet showed agents deploying the tear gas and cuffing several people, including U.S. citizens, outside houses adorned with Halloween. This is this is too far. This is too much. The agents had to deploy crowd control measures to protect themselves from hostile crowd. Well, I guess so. Agents were conducting an operation to arrest an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was previously been arrested for assault. During the operation, Border Patrol agents were surrounded by a group of agitators. Federal law enforcement issued multiple lawful commands and verbal warnings, all of which were ignored. Two U.S. citizens were arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal office. Is there no other way they could have done this to arrest this guy? I guess they were just after one guy. This seems like a bit much for one illegal guy. Don't you think? I mean, I wasn't there. I'm just going by what this report is saying. Uh so this is crazy. You can go finish reading that if you like over there on the X-File because we need to move on to some other things. This confused traveler thought she booked an American Airlines flight, but was in for a shock at the airport. I totally missed something. Okay, so this is why I don't book, we don't book air flights from Google or any other weird, off-the-cuff, weird things that don't belong in airline bookings. This woman booked a flight through Google. Why? We go straight to Delta and book our things on Delta. Alright, so anyway, here we go. And a lot of she's getting a lot of flack too uh for their thing. She well, how stupid can you be when booking how do you not know a bus from an airplane? Well, let's go through it because I can see where she was confused. A New York woman who thought she booked an American Airlines flight was flabbergasted after she had bus rolled up instead. She detailed this mother of all transit mishaps in a TikTok video. Blah blah blah. Okay, so let's move on to the actual story. The mode of transport was especially confusing as there was a flight icon on her boarding pass, she noted in the caption. Oh my gosh, it is really pouring down rain. I hope this is not ruining the audio for you guys. Alex explained in a follow-up video that she lives in upper, I'm sorry, upstate New York and typically departs from Scranton, Pennsylvania. So, okay, we get all that. Uh the upstate native then navigated security and arrived at her gate. So she's at the airport, arriving at the gate, okay, noting that the flight board showed her American Airlines flight number and an airplane icon, and that travelers boarded according to their group numbers. It wasn't until it came time for Alex to board that she noticed something was seriously awry. She said, I look at a woman nearby and I say, Do you know how long the flight is? And the flabbergasted traveler said, Do you mean the bus? That's when it dawned on her that her plane trip was actually a two and a half hour bus ride from Scranton to Philly. Alex said she was especially confused while American Airlines makes it abundantly clear that the journey, its first leg involves a bus. Google Flights is a lot more cryptic about it. They simply write bus and the small text under the airline name sans any giant distinction between the modes of transport. Read the details, read the small print. I did go back through and see if I totally missed something, and I didn't, she says. It is not clear on there at all. Well, there you go. Hmm. Uh, I also just want to add to that when you are looking at a website called Google Flights, I think it's pretty reasonable to expect to be looking at flights, she declared. I agree. American Notes. That's why you don't go through Google though. You've got to go through the direct air flight, the airline. That's the way okay. You can go finish reading that. I'm sorry about all the rain. Nothing I can do about that. Alright, moving on to the last story, which I think is fascinating. And it is about uh, well, let me go over here and get it to it. Americans are getting self-conscious about their valley girl voice. So, like, here's why they can, here's what they can do about it. And as I say valley girl, it's not really the valley girl voice, it's all the filler words that we use now. Like, like, or look or wait, you know, that those kind of things. Americans are like so totally over how we speak, but I could actually stop using them. That's another one, actually. All right, filler, all right, that's another one. Filler words have become a so common in everyday conversation that most of us hardly notice them. I notice them. I notice some of them, not all the time, and I know I'm guilty of it too, until someone points them out. But according to a new study by Prepply, a global online language learning platform, Americans are getting increasingly self-conscious about their speech habits as Google searches for filler words have shot up 144% in the last month. I need to go look up filler words too to see if I use them a lot. I know that I do. This insecurity has even turned into a viral online trend. With the no filler words trend, Americans are challenging one another to record themselves speaking 30 seconds to a minute without using those dreaded words. But filler words aren't new. All right, let's go see. Linguists trace their popularity back to the mid-20th century when spontaneous conversation began to dominate public life. From radio broadcasts to casual office meetings. Over time, these verbal crutches spread into nearly every corner of communication, fueled by pop culture, social media, and regional slang. Yes, we get that. We know we figured that out. In the 1980s, California Valley Girl dialect cemented like as the go-to hesitation word for in for an entire generation. Then came so. Oh my gosh, yes. Oh my lord, yes. The word so S-O. Oh. Oh, that got on my nerves so much. All right. There's another one. All right. Oh gosh, stop it, Carol. Okay. That's another one. The tech era transition word that's now as common in boardrooms as in brunch conversations. By 2024, according to Pref Lease National Survey, 98% of Americans admit to using filler words regularly. Um, so and like were the top three offenders across the country. California led the nation in like usage, no surprise there, while 34 states paused with um most times. It's okay to pause rather than fill gaps in speech with words like um, like, or so. Pauses can be a powerful tool in communication, giving listeners time to absorb what you've just said. Language expert Sylvia Johnson told preptly. Beyond filler words, Americans reported other common quirks. Talking too fast, yes, I can't stand the people that talk too fast and especially too loud. I know Stephen Miller is guilty of this. Some other people are guilty of this. I like Stephen Miller, but sometimes it comes off I don't know how I don't know how to describe it. All right, moving on. Um, talking too fast, over apology, over apologizing, and yes, swearing too much. A quarter of respondents admitted to talking too much and mumbling ranked high among the most annoying habits to hear in others. And these habits can sometimes work together. When we speak too quickly, we tend to use more filler words. I think people like to talk quickly and loud because it makes them sound author authoritative or an expert. I think that's why people do that. By slowing down, we give ourselves more time to find the right words or phrase and reduce the need for fillers, Johnson said. Still, not all quirks are bad. More than 80% of people with accents or regional dialects said they're proud of them, preppy reported and reported, and half of those who've lived in a new region or country said they don't try to change the way they speak to fit in, embracing their linguistic identity. The study found that Americans feel their speech habits affect both their careers and okay, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do you think about that? What are some of the filler words? You can go finish reading that. Uh, what are you thinking some of the filler words that people use too much? Do you use any filler words? Uh do you are you uh are you aware of filler words that you might use? Um, let's see, I just did it. I know I do it a lot, and I apologize. Um, but I don't know what else to do except to practice, and maybe that's why I've started doing this podcast is to practice my speech, although I do read a lot as well on this podcast. Okay. So I don't even know how to start the next sentence without doing a filler word or an introductory word. Maybe that is the question of the day. Tell me the filler words that you do not like to hear people speak. And give me a culprit. Does um I know Glenn Beck. I don't know about his filler words, but he does use those long dramatic pauses. I hate them. It's okay. I understand a little bit of a pause like that, but sometimes he'll do a long, dramatic pause that is too long, and you think you've lost connection, and you start reaching for your phone thinking, oh gosh, I've lost my connection. I hate that. So that is the question of the day. I just said so. Uh I'm gonna start doing that viral trend. I'm gonna start recording myself and see if I can talk without using a filler word. That is my episode for the day. Thank you for listening. I did go over time a little bit, but that's alright. You guys have a great day. I'm trying to get off of my uh trying to get off of my screen lock here. Okay. Alright. Thanks for listening. Have a good day. Bye.