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Month: December 2025

Did No One Hear This?

Published by digby on December 1, 2025

Hegseth said that he didn’t give the order to slaughter helpless victims struggling in the water but, come on. Media Matters has the receipts:

Such weak denials are not terribly credible given Hegseth’s infamous support for U.S. service members accused of war crimes in his previous job as co-host of Fox’s weekend editions of its Fox & Friends morning show.

Hegseth, in one particularly striking example, vigorously defended Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn during a February 2019 Fox & Friends appearance. 

Golsteyn, who had been charged with murdering a captured Afghan man who was allegedly a Taliban bombmaker during a 2010 deployment, had “allegedly told CIA interviewers that he and another soldier took the alleged bomb-maker off base, shot him and buried his remains,” and replied “yes” during a 2016 Fox interview when asked if he had killed the man.

Referring to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a fellow veteran who supported Golsteyn, Hegseth said: “If he committed premeditated murder, then Duncan did as well, then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?” He added: “Put us all in jail.”

He clearly doesn’t understand the laws of war and believes that the Geneva Conventions are to be thrown in the garbage. It’s just “me kill, all kill good” and that’s it. He’s a primitive man with a primitive mind and I don’t understand how in the hell he got into Yale.

Anyway, he has made this crystal clear since he became Defense Secretary and no one should be confused about what he’s doing:

“We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement,” he said in his September 30 speech to the country’s assembled military leaders. “We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

“Today is another liberation day, the liberation of America’s warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities,” he added. “You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.” 

The address came just four weeks after Hegseth reportedly committed “at best” a war crime.

We’re not at war. The whole thing is another Big Lie. He and Trump just believe they have the right to kill anyone they want anytime anywhere and are swinging their big … egos around trying to prove their manhood.

He’s a murderer, plain and simple and he’s never tried to hide his homicidal philosophy. As I wrote earlier, the U.S. Senate certainly knew this and either didn’t take it seriously or they agree with him. The blood is on their hands too.

Seriously, there is no greater evidence that we have become a rogue superpower.

Check this out. Hegseth believes it’s 1939, apparently because Americans are using cocaine?

If it’s 1939, I think we know who we are in that scenario.

Sweethearts Of MAGAland

Published by digby on December 1, 2025

Mark Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Old State Saloon, poses in front of the bar area at his establishment. He describes himself as 'a Christian, conservative, Constitution supporter, retired police officer, and family man'

Mark Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Old State Saloon, poses in front of the bar area at his establishment. He describes himself as ‘a Christian, conservative, Constitution supporter, retired police officer, and family man. 

He especially loves the parts in the Bible about the Good Samaritan,welcoming strangers and loving your neighbor:

A country-themed bar in the deep red state of Idaho delighted the Trump administration and some conservatives with its latest social media stunt on Saturday evening.

Old State Saloon, a watering hole in Eagle, pledged free beer for one month to anyone who ‘helps ICE identify and ultimately deport an illegal from Idaho,’ in an X post that went viral, garnering over 3.6 million views in under 24 hours.

The bar shared some of the messages they had received with alleged tips, encouraging law enforcement to target a hotel and an apartment complex in the vicinity of Boise, Idaho.

The post even drew the attention of President Donald Trump‘s Department of Homeland Security, which shared it with a GIF of Earl Sinclair, the main character from the family sitcom Dinosaurs that aired from 1991 to 1994, dropping his drink and jaw in a clip, seemingly approving of the offer. 

The bar replied to the DHS post: ‘Let’s go! Deport them all!’ At least one person has qualified for the offer already, according to reports.

It would be one thing if they sold themselves as the hateful, Satan acolytes they are. But the Christian stuff is galling not so much because they are hypocrites and liars but because so many of their church leaders and fellow Christians either agree or stay silent in the face of this cruel, crude behavior.

I don’t ever want to hear moralizing from these people again. Ever. Not one word.

Update — Dear leader speaking of a Democratic candidate at a “virtual rally” earlier today

"She hates Christianity" — Trump rants on Mike Johnson's phone at a Van Epps rally

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-12-01T16:54:12.468Z

Tear It Down At The First Opportunity

Published by digby on December 1, 2025

Good God:

Obviously, Trump really is embarrassed about his “shortcomings.”

Courage Is Contagious

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 1, 2025

Seventy years ago today

Rosa Parks sparked a movement 70 years ago today by refusing to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white passenger. She was arrested. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted over a year and ended when a U.S. Supreme Court very different from ours ruled segregation on public buses unconstitutional.

Parks said of her role, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

But it took courage. The year-long boycott shows that such courage is contagious. Oppressors fear it.

Jim Crow segregation and Klan lynchings had terrorized the Black community across the South for one nearly hundred years. A decade earlier, a murderous Nazi regime ruling Germany through fear had executed millions it deemed undesirable.

German novelist Hans Fallada, the pen name of Rudolf Ditzen, wrote Every Man Dies Alone in the fall of 1946. He based his novel on a Berlin couple that resisted the Nazis with a two-year postcard-writing campaign. Hillary Kelly discusses the work, its background, and Fallada’s plot in The Atlantic. Fallada examines how ordinary Germans dealt with the Nazi culture of fear. Many submitted, but not all.

Kelly writes:

The German authorities relied on terror, even toward party members, to keep their citizenry in line. But where they erred, as Fallada writes, was in “the assumption that all Germans were cowards.” No German freedom fighters brought down the government, no anti-propaganda mission persuaded the people to rise up en masse against their tyrants; it took a world war to knock Hitler from his perch. Yet some Germans, Fallada shows, found ways to surmount their fear and assert their moral integrity in acts of dissidence, even if they could not topple the regime.

Nazis assumed all Germans were cowards. White Democrats in the Jim Crow South assumed Blacks would never tire of remaining “in their place.”

And so it begins again. New Orleans expects a visit from Greg Bovino’s immigrant-snatchers this morning. Axios reports:

Border Patrol agents are expected to start immigration enforcement efforts Monday in New Orleans, with the goal of arresting 5,000 people in south Louisiana and Mississippi, according to reports.

Why it matters: Communities are rushing to prepare amid uncertainty and mounting fear.

The big picture: Greg Bovino, the commander of Customs and Border Protection, is reportedly leading the mission after wrapping up enforcement in Charlotte and Chicago.

The DHS claim that it is targeting violent ciminals for deportation is transparent pretext:

Two months ago, DHS sent immigration officers to Chicago to detain and deport “violent offenders” that the agency said were released from state and local jails because of “sanctuary” policies. So far, the agency says it has arrested more than 4,000 people. Officials have publicly identified only about 120 of those as having a criminal arrest or conviction, some for major crimes such as murder, and others for nonviolent offenses such as illegally crossing the border.

During arrests in Gretna, Louisiana on Wednesday, customs agents tried to enforce a 25-foot buffer zone for those filming their arrests. But a federal judge in January issued a temporary injunction on that Louisiana buffer zone law ICE appears to reference. Observers resisted.

Locals are preparing as if for a hurricane:

In and around New Orleans, some immigration lawyers say they have been inundated with calls from people trying to prepare for the upcoming operation. One immigration lawyer, Miguel Elias, says his firm is conducting many consultations virtually or by telephone because people are too afraid to come in person.

He likens the steps many in the immigrant community are taking to what people do to prepare for a hurricane — hunker down or evacuate. Families are stocking up on groceries and making arrangements for friends to take their children to school to limit how frequently they leave the house, he said.

In the days leading up to Border Patrol’s planned operations, businesses have posted signs barring federal agents from entry and grassroots advocacy groups have offered rights-related trainings and workshops on documenting the planned crackdown.

The Trump administration assumes it can terrorize immigrant communities without them and their neighbors resisting. They were wrong. Not all Americans are cowards.

Six Democratic officials, five of them military veterans, did not write post cards. The made a video cautioning service members not to obey criminal orders (as some may have already).

Donald Trump called for their arrest and execution.

Courage is contagious. That’s why Trump 2.0 fears it.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

It’s Who They Are

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 1, 2025

Hegseth “in hot water”

Has Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth started drinking again? With the pressure he’s under, it would surprise no one. The Hill reports that Hegseth faces “bipartisan scrutiny over his reported order to strike a boat in the Caribbean a second time, killing two survivors who were clinging to the ship’s wreckage on Sept. 2.”

BBC:

US lawmakers are pressing the Trump administration for answers about military strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats, after a report alleged that a follow-up strike was ordered to kill survivors of an initial attack.

Republican-led committees overseeing the Pentagon have vowed to conduct “vigorous oversight” into the US boat strikes in the Caribbean, following the report.

If reports are true, what gave him and Donald Trump the idea that blowing up small boats in international waters was a thing? Consider then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission: “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon … into the World Trade Center, using planes as missiles.”

Um, Tom Clancey?

It turns out that someone in the Trump administration did imagine using drones to blow up boatloads of civilians in international waters. Stephen Miller did. It’s who he is.

From Rolling Stone in 2023:

Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump’s top immigration advisers, advocated using U.S. predator drones in 2018 to blow up migrant boats full of unarmed civilians, according to an upcoming book by a former administration official.

In a passage reviewed by Rolling Stone, former Trump Department of Homeland Security appointee Miles Taylor writes about an April 2018 conversation in which Miller allegedly advocated an attack on a migrant ship headed for the United States. Miller, Taylor writes, argued for the potential mass killing of civilians by suggesting they were not protected under the U.S. Constitution because they were in international waters.

Miller contested Taylor’s account at the time.

“This is a complete fiction that exists only in the mind of Miles Taylor desperate to stay relevant by fabricating material for his new book,” says a spokesman for Miller.

What about now?

According to a converstion related in Taylor’s book Miller agued with Paul Zukunft, then an commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard:

[The] United States launched airstrikes on terrorists in disputed areas all the time, Miller said, or retaliated against pirates commandeering ships off the coast of Somalia. The Coast Guard chief calmly explained the difference. America attacked enemy forces when they were armed and posed an imminent threat. Seafaring migrants were generally unarmed civilians. They quarreled for a few minutes. Stephen wasn’t interested in the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants. He wanted to know whether anyone could stop America from doing it.

I’m thinking Hegseth did not come up with the idea of striking boats in the Caribbean (and leaving no survivors) alone.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense