Category: Uncategorized

 

. . . and the MAGAts eat it up.

Over the Christmas holiday, the Trump administration threw its weight against the U.S. Constitution in favor of Christian nationalist authoritarianism.

The Framers of the Constitution established the United States of America on the rule of law, rejecting any religious qualifications for office or religious legal doctrine. They recognized that the establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.

In the First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791 as one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, the new Americans agreed that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

To that, sometimes under pressure, the nation has held. It is central to what it means to be an American.

And yet, on December 25, 2025, a religious holiday for many Christians, the Trump administration attacked that American principle to claim the U.S. is a Christian nation. As Ashley Ahn of the New York Times chronicled, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted: “The joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ.” The Labor Department posted: “Joy to the World. Let Earth Receive Her King.”

On December 24, over a video of officials wishing Americans Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays, the Department of Homeland Security posted: “Christ is Born!” Over another video featuring iconic Christmas movies and scenes made up almost exclusively of white Americans and including several images of President Donald J. Trump, DHS posted: “Merry Christmas, America. We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior.” On December 25, over a video of iconic American scenes with “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” playing, DHS posted: “Rejoice America, Christ is born!”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted: “Merry Christmas to all. Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May His light bring peace, hope, and joy to you and your families.”

At 6:46 on Christmas evening, Trump’s social media account posted: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries! I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing. Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”

As foreign policy journalist Anne Applebaum noted, rhetorically, “Not sure I understand why the Trump administration cares about Christians in Nigeria and not Christians in Ukraine.”

The Guardian explained yesterday that for years now, the U.S. right wing has insisted that Islamist terrorist groups are persecuting Christians in Nigeria. Those claims motivate Trump’s political base, the people he is depending on to stick with him as the rest of the country turns away.

Earlier this year, Trump designated the West African nation a “country of particular concern” under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act and warned he might go in “guns-a-blazing” if the Nigerian government didn’t stop what he claimed was the “killing of Christians.”

Nigerian officials have pushed back on the idea that Christians are suffering at the hands of extremist groups more than people of other faiths. Nigeria has no official religion: Muslims make up about 53% of the population and Christians 45%, with the rest of the country’s population tending to follow traditional African religions. Most analysts agree that the violence in Nigeria is complex, often rooted in competition for water or land but exacerbated by ethnic and religious differences. In the northwest, The Guardian explains, heavily armed criminal gangs kidnap both Muslims and Christians and raid both Christian and Muslim communities.

Nimi Princewill of CNN reported that Nigerian president Bola Tinubu had given Rubio the “go ahead” for the strikes, apparently to hit camps of militants, but Nigerian foreign minister Yusuf Tuggar said the operation was not about religion but about trying to ensure safety for Nigerian civilians.

Nonetheless, Trump supporters cheered the strikes. Far-right activist Laura Loomer posted: “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Christmas than by avenging the death of Christians through the justified mass killing of Islamic terrorists. You’ve got to love it! Death to all Islamic terrorists! Thank you.” “Amazing Christmas present by [Trump]!” Representative Randy Fine (R-FL) posted. “With Muslim terrorists attacking Christians in Nigeria, Syria, and even Europe—simply for refusing to submit to Islam—the President is showing that we will no longer tolerate these barbarians.”

Trump needs right-wing evangelical voters in order to stay in office, as protection from possible legal exposure but also to continue the pattern of “extortion, conquest, and theft” Will Saletan of The Bulwark identified yesterday. Saletan noted that “as president, [Trump] reduces every question to money.” What he can make from a deal determines both his domestic policy and foreign policy.

As Saletan puts it: “He arm-twists companies into giving the government a chunk of their stock. He withholds food stamps as a bargaining chip. He calls low-income housing an offense against rich people. He muses about awarding himself $1 billion from the Treasury.” His approach to foreign policy is to see what land or resources he and his cronies can grab by leveraging the economic or military power of the United States of America.

On December 23, Rebecca Ballhaus, Josh Dawsey, and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal examined Trump’s use of the president’s pardoning power to cash in, with “lobbyists close to Trump” saying that “their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million.” Some of those eager for a presidential pardon have offered lobbyists as much as $6 million if they succeed.

The Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, Liz Oyer, was fired in March. She told the Wall Street Journal reporters that Trump “appears to be considering political, personal and financial interests and not the interests of the American public,” subverting the pardon process.

If his presidency gives Trump legal protection and the ability to grift, what Trump’s right-wing supporters get from his presidency is the promise of overturning traditional American values in favor of imposing white Christian nationalism on the rest of the country.

In addition to its Christian messaging at Christmas, DHS posted, “This Christmas, our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks,” over a video of “Christmas after Mass Deportations.” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shared an AI video of Santa Claus putting on a bulletproof vest, then handcuffing an immigrant, processing the person, and then loading them onto an “ICE” plane for deportation.

On December 22, Brian Lyman of the Alabama Reflector noted that the determination to purge the country of “others” is not limited to those in the administration. Last week, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) escalated his attacks on Muslim Americans to demand their mass deportation. Tuberville has made it clear, Lyman wrote, “that he works for a very white, very Christian and very wealthy sliver of the population of Alabama.”

Tuberville “considers large numbers of people who live here aliens or threats to public safety” and is running for governor. He has tried to downplay his threats, saying his critics are overreacting or, as he calls it, “pearl-clutching.” But “no one should treat this as one of Tuberville’s many stupid, provocative statements with no follow-through” or pretend “it’s performative…[o]r even grimly funny.” If elected, Lyman notes, “he will have access to law enforcement resources and the ability to act on his paranoia.”

“Just the threat of that should give you pause.”

On Christmas Day, Republican Indiana state senator Chris Garten posted AI images of himself punching, kicking, and body-slamming Santa Claus in front of the state capitol. His explanation for the images was that he was reacting to the “fact” that “the North Pole is trying to bring more bureaucratic overreach & unfunded mandates down the chimney disguised as ‘Christmas cheer.’” “We The People run Indiana, not the bureaucrats,” he wrote. “Take it back to the North Pole big guy.”

Garten called outrage over the posts “fake” and “a stark reminder of how overly sensitive society has become.” He later blasted the “intolerance, swearing, and outrage” over the images and said: “Some of you clowns are just insufferable…. Merry Christmas, snowflakes!”

China is investing billions in Latin America, planning to sideline US farmers for decades to come.

Chinese state-backed money is remaking South American  ports — from Santos to Chancay — reshaping grain routes to Asia and squeezing U.S. farmers as tariffs deepen the split with Washington.

Chinese port upgrades in South America currently focus on ports in Brazil and Peru.  The upgrades to both ports’ infrastructure will facilitate making them a hub for the export of minerals like lithium, copper, and agricultural products such as SOYBEANS TO CHINA.  In other words, the Chinese plan on shifting their agricultural imports from the U.S. to South America.

Yes, that’s it – Trump – for whom about 99% of soybean farmers voted for — has screwed them over for the foreseeable future by driving the Chinese to other agricultural suppliers who don’t throw tariffs at China.

How are American farmers taking this grand news?  As always, the few who do comment for these types of articles try to put up a stoic face:

As China establishes new trade routes across Latin America, every new port or shipping lane makes a future recovery for U.S. farmers more challenging.

US soybean farmers are somewhat confused, don’t know what to expect.  Their opinions and outlook are all over the place.

“I don’t think our relationship with China has been damaged,” one Iowa soybean farmer said. “China is a low-cost buyer and will need soybeans from the U.S. for a long time. But we will never be their number one source.”

The quote is from April Hemmes, and Iowan farmer.  She does admit that the U.S. though is not a “reliable partner” because of politics.  Also, she doesn’t believe the Chinese will buy the 12 million metric tons of soybeans they promised by January of 2026.  She just doesn’t think it’s possible to do that now.  The number of metric tons ordered by China from the U.S.  has not yet been confirmed, but it’s definitely not 12 million metric tons as of yet.

Oh, and Trump loving soybean farmer Caleb Ragland says:

“U.S. soybean farmers are standing at a trade and financial precipice,” Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, wrote in a statement.

Ragland has been pounding that same damn dumb drumbeat this entire year.  He still believes in his heart that Trump is going to save the day.  Somehow.

But the “deal” that Trump made with the Chinese means that soybean farmers are going to be selling LESS over the length of Trump’s second term and likely well past then.

The facts are that the Chinese are going to expand those port facilities to exceed the capacity of current American ports.  It is not pretty.  Let’s t focus on secondary impacts to the economy:  Reduced soybean exports mean (1) dock workers are not going to have jobs; (2) the US will not need as many trucks and river barges to transport soybeans to ports; (3) the communities that depend on soybean exports to China will go into permanent recession.

Meanwhile, agriculture analysts admit these latest moves by the Chinese mean a PERMANENT SHIFT away from American farmers to South America instead.  Why:  BECAUSE OF TRUMP AND HIS TARIFFS –the Chinese want reliable partners who will treat them fairly and not pull political stunts.

Way to go Trump!

 

Kash Patel is leading the FBI with a focus on raising his star profile, according to his agents. The 45-year-old FBI director—who had no prior experience at the agency before bagging the top job—is said to demand a heads-up for any “noteworthy arrests” so he can be on the scene and get screen time.

A source told Axios that, alongside Patel focusing on making it on the news, agents are instructed that if the director does show up—which isn’t a given—they should avoid engaging with him. Patel is rarely spotted out of an FBI windbreaker while on the job, with a source telling Axios that the habit is rubbing staff the wrong way. “You’re the director of the FBI. Wear a f–king suit,” the recently-retired agent said.

The agent’s complaint mirrors a report leaked this month in a dossier compiled by former and current agents that addresses Patel’s leadership failures.

In one incident, the dossier claims that Patel threw a tantrum when he arrived in Provo, Utah, the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. While FBI agents were in the midst of a manhunt, Patel allegedly refused to leave his jet until he was provided with a size medium windbreaker. Patel then continued his fit, because the jacket did not have enough patches on the sleeve. He remained on the jet until members of the FBI SWAT team “took patches off their uniforms and ran those patches over to FBI Director Kash Patel at the airport.”

Navy confirms the obvious:

The U.S. Navy has confirmed to TWZ that construction of the first two Trump class “battleships” is not expected to start until the early 2030s. While cost estimates are still being firmed up, the service is moving now to award sole-source contracts to Bath Iron Works, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Gibbs & Cox for initial design and other work related to these large surface combatants. Readers can first get up to speed on what is already known about the plans for these ships and the glaring questions surrounding them in our initial reporting here.

President Donald Trump officially rolled out the Trump class warship plan at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, last night. With displacements of at least around 35,000 tons, the vessels are set to be armed with an array of nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as electromagnetic railguns, traditional 5-inch naval guns, laser directed energy weapons, and more. Production is supposed to start with two ships, the first of which will be named USS Defiant, out of a planned initial batch of 10 hulls. Trump has said that the total fleet size might eventually grow to 20 to 25 examples.

“Design efforts are underway with start of construction planned for the early 2030s,” a U.S. Navy official told TWZ. “Design studies are ongoing to refine Navy cost estimates. These details will be available in the PB FY27 [President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2027] budget request.”

Another individual familiar with the program also told TWZ that work to build the first Trump class ships is not expected to begin until the early 2030s. They also told us that the new “battleship” plan is supplanting the Navy’s DDG(X) next-generation destroyer effort, and will leverage work already done on that design concept.

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Trump’s “battleships” clearly are not the battleships of WW II.  These look more like the much smaller heavy cruiser, outfitted with several gun and missile systems.  Of course, because Trump has no understanding of anything having to do with the Navy, he thinks anything bigger than a canoe is a “battleship.”

I’d tag 2036 as “optimistic” for the first ship to enter service, assuming any ships ever enter service. If we say 2032 for laying the keel of the first ship, that’s a good six years and at least one additional Presidential administration for things to go wrong… and well before the program is capable of building a foundation of political support among labor and industry that might protect it from budget cutting down the line.

To put things in gambling terms… The chances of 2036 for the commissioning of USS Defiant (the first vessel) are slim — the ship may even be cancelled before “the 2030’s.”

The alleged presence of ISIS in Abuja is a mystery to local residents:

A day after part of a missile fired by the United States hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the people of Jabo in northwestern Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion.

Suleiman Kagara, a resident of this quiet and predominantly Muslim farming community in Tambuwal district of Sokoto state, told CNN he heard a loud blast and saw flames as a projectile flew overhead at around 10 p.m. on Thursday.

Soon after, it came crashing down, exploding on impact with the ground and sending the villagers fleeing in fear.

“We couldn’t sleep last night,” Kagara said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Kagara did not realize it at the time, but what he was witnessing was part of a US strike that President Donald Trump would later refer to as a “Christmas present” for terrorists.

Not long after the impact in Jabo, Trump declared on Thursday that the US had carried out a “powerful and deadly strike” against ISIS militants in the region, who he accused of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!”

According to US Africa Command, the operation neutralized multiple ISIS militants.

But Trump’s explanation has left Kagara and his fellow villagers scratching their heads.

Ozymandias, or, An Ode To Donald Trump

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Ozymandias, King of Kings

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”, 1819 edition

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The prominent theme of Shelley’s poem is the inevitable decline of rulers and their hubris. In the poem, despite Ozymandias’ grandiose ambitions, the power turns out to be ephemeral.

“. . . power turns out to be ephemeral.”  Which is exactly what will remain of Trump after we have had a chance to clean up the sewage, the rot, the trash that he has erected.

To remind Trump:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The papers the federal government holds relating to Jeffrey Epstein are trickling out, reluctantly and incompetently, as the Trump administration executes so many duties relating to justice and the Justice Department. They are a morass.

For one thing, there are simply so many of them, from so many legal actions, from (perhaps) intelligence surveillance, from his interactions with presidents and other governmental figures. Then there is the vetting process. They are coming out as individual documents, not at all as files of documents related by time or investigation. Not much can be gleaned from them until they are put into chronological and logical order.

We get a bit here and a piece there. The letter to gymnast pedophile Larry Nassar may or may not be genuine, nobody knows. Photos of smiling and happy Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in congenial surroundings. Legal documents and emails that, because of the too-generous redactions, are difficult to fit into any sort of order. Pages and pages blacked out, some of which may yield information after digital manipulation.

What do we hope to learn from these documents? The women who were abused and who have pressed for justice hope to learn who abused them and bring them to prosecution or at least societal disapproval, if prosecution fails. They would also like to understand why their reports to law enforcement went unacted upon. One of those claims has been found in the mountain of documents. It is a long way to justice.

A portion of Trump supporters and other Republicans seem to have particular expectations, that Trump will be shown to be innocent or even protective of the abused girls, or that some apocalyptic scheme will come together. The mass and incoherence of the material will allow them to construct narratives useful to their purposes.

What is in it for the rest of us? Standard reporting has shown a great deal, particularly recently. The New York Times has been doing a creditable job of exposing how Epstein made his fortune. We have long known of his industrial-scale pimping of children and courting of the wealthy and famous. We have long known that Trump was a good friend of Epstein’s and spent significant time with him. We have long known that Trump felt free to sexually assault women and that he has shown inappropriate affection for his daughter.

We know that institutions protect the wealthy and connected. We know that the wealthy and connected protect each other.

Will it matter if some of the released documents show Trump as a full patron of Epstein’s services? Will that compete with the narratives his followers will derive from their reading of the documents?

I’m not arguing against releasing the documents. We’ve followed that path, and their release can be helpful to the women who were abused, so let’s continue. It is likely to take a long time before anything definitive emerges.

 

Meanwhile, there’s this from Attorney General Pam Bondi:

When Trump is — finally — dead, I guess the MAGAts will remember Trump struggling against the Secret Service agents in Butler, PA, who raced to protect him from “whatever happened that day.”

And, of course, he monetized it immediately into “Fight Fight Fight” cologne for men and perfume for women, and a $150 “Fight Fight Fight” coffee table book that he sold for $150.

A short rewind to September 10, 2025.

Outside of the MAGAt cult…in terms of liberals and independents, not just “conservatives,” Charlie Kirk was a minor figure. And within moments of his death, conservatives were demanding Charlie Kirk shrines at universities, a “Charlie Kirk day of remembrance,” and we Democrats were wondering: “Say, what’s for lunch today?”

Because while we called out the act of murder and don’t condone it under ANY circumstances, Kirk’s death did not represent a “loss” for us. Every time someone is murdered, HUMANITY AT LARGE is diminished. But there hasn’t been a day since Sept 10 when I woke up and thought “I MISS CHARLIE” as I wiped a tear from my radical leftist cheek.

Trump seems to take GREAT DELIGHT in unleashing his bile, his seething hatred, his rage, on HOLIDAYS that average Americans are trying to enjoy, without an Adderall-addled old man calling them scum.

WHEN THE NEWS BREAKS THAT TRUMP IS DEAD, whatever reaction we…the people who are not red-hat wearing cult members…will have, will most likely NOT BE THE SAME as the reactions of the MAGAts. We won’t see the raised fist and the teensy weensy paper cut on his ear and “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.”

We’ll see a bitter old man at his country club, on Christmas Eve, wishing his Slovenian trophy wife would just come in his room and “touch it,” but she’s in her own room with the door locked or in New York with her son, telling him what a precious boo boo he is and how much mommy loves him, while sad old rapist felon Trump rage-tweets to the world that they are “scum.”

And when we don’t take a knee for DEAD Donnie, we’ll be labeled as creatures of hate, even though our REASON FOR NOT TAKING A KNEE is that we don’t tend to do that when it involves hate-filled vicious people.

Merry Christmas, folks.

He is a sick, tired, frustrated, lost old man who is in WAAAAY over his head.

A year into his second term, Donald Trump has undergone a major change in “tactics” as he deflects questions about his policies — and it’s an indication that he is now “just running on fumes,” an analyst wrote Monday.

Salon’s Amanda Marcotte pointed out that the president has developed an over-reliance on deflecting questions while claiming he is not up to speed on the topic or person he is being asked about, and that often begins with, “I don’t know…”

That is a change from his previous deflections, where he promised everything would sort itself out in “two weeks.”

According to the columnist, Trump’s ignorance act could be just that, but she wrote that it is surprising for a man who has always boasted that he is an expert on everything.

“The president’s willingness to play the stupidest man alive is telling, because he is also a narcissist who has spent his entire adult life demanding that people believe he is the smartest, most handsome, most perfect person who has ever walked the face of the planet,” she wrote. “He’s dubbed himself a ‘super genius’ who understands every topic under the sun — including money, trade, history, international relations, travel, the military, ISIS and spycraft — better than anyone else.”

Noting that now the president, “just says ‘I don’t know’ until people stop asking,” she suggested, “The purpose of this gambit is to deflect accountability for his growing pile of failures, corruption and scandals. But the cumulative effect is to paint a picture of a man who is profoundly, almost impossibly, dim-witted.”

While admitting his latest way of deflecting questions is frustrating, she added there is a “silver lining” attached to it.

“Even Trump himself seems to be getting tired of his own tactics. He can’t manage to work up the energy for a more convincing deflection. He’s bored and tired, his polls are falling and, with three years left, his second term already feels like it’s running on fumes,” she wrote before conceding, “It’s a small thing, but one of the many green shoots suggesting that, while this is not the end of MAGA, it may very well be the end’s beginning.”