C Halling

A mother of four who feels that we need to be better neighbors. Don't judge and don't push your beliefs onto others. Respect, People, Its about Respect.

[C Halling @c_halling]

@meg_lynn_g Ya but, everything is already in stores and super inexpensive right now

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨 This video is deeply disturbing… especially if you are a woman.🚨

In Rochester, Minnesota, masked ICE agents ran a U.S. citizen’s plates, pulled her personal information, and then drove to her parents’ house to intimidate her.

A legal observer was in her car, in a Walmart parking lot, observing ICE agents.

As they left, she then drove behind them, and instead of continuing on their way, they deliberately drove 4 towns over, to the address tied to her registration… her parents’ house.

They stop in front of the house, got out, and walked up to her window…

“We just wanted to make sure you got home safe, Olivia.”

She tells them, “This is my parents’ house. This isn’t where I live.”

The agent responds, “If this is not where your vehicle is, you might want to go look that up with the state.”

Translation: we pulled your data, and we’re comfortable using it, and showing up at a residence connected to you.

Then they try to justify this intimidation…

“You know we were trying to get a child molester, right? His plate came back as murder.”

She immediately pushes back and says she knows they’re lying, because they stopped a woman in the parking lot.

They respond, “His wife then?”

So, now the story shifts… First it’s a male child molester, whose plate “came back as murder.” Then it’s his wife.

If their alleged target was a man… stopping and questioning a random woman, without individualized probable cause, is a constitutional problem.

Law enforcement cannot just detain or interrogate someone because they might be related to someone they claim to be investigating. You need specific, articulable suspicion tied to that individual. You don’t get to broaden the stop to whoever happens to be nearby.

And if someone is actually convicted of murder, they are in prison. They are not casually driving around a Walmart parking lot.

This is a perfect example of why DHS’s stories never add up, because they are always lying about going after “violent criminals.” They only say that to justify violating the constitution.

As the exchange continues, they warn her to “stop following us,” and illegally threaten to arrest for “impeding”… which she points out she has not done.

And if one video should set off every alarm bell in this country, about how ICE agents are weaponizing their authority against U.S. citizens who dare to observe them… it’s this one.

When federal agents decide that filming them is grounds to run your plates, pull your personal information, and physically show up at a residence tied to you, that’s a serious shift in how power is being used.

Access to government databases comes with strict limits for a reason. Those systems exist for legitimate investigations, not to send U.S. citizens a message.

When that access is used in a way that feels retaliatory, it raises real constitutional concerns, especially around protected speech and privacy.

And add that to the recent reports of ICE agents forcing entry into homes, without presenting judicial warrants, you start to see a broader pattern:

Agents are pushing the boundaries of authority in ways that directly impact ordinary people.

That combination… database access, residential intimidation, and aggressive tactics at people’s homes… should concern anyone who believes government power is supposed to have limits, and citizens are supposed to have protections.

[P a u l ◉ @SkylineReport]

Fun fact:

If you’re standing on a public sidewalk filming ICE operations, you’re usually more legally protected than the agents yelling at you. Every federal appeals court that’s ruled on it says Americans have a First Amendment right to record government officials in public. Meanwhile, ICE has no authority to order bystanders to disperse, create exclusion zones, or boss citizens around unless you’re committing an actual federal crime.

In plain terms: an ICE agent telling you to “move along” has about as much legal force as a random stranger doing the same thing. Physics, statutes, and the Constitution all agree.

The Receipts

[1] U.S. Courts of Appeals (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th Cir.) — All recognize a First Amendment right to record police and government officials in public spaces
Fields v. City of Philadelphia, 862 F.3d 353 (3d Cir. 2017)
https://t.co/JioUZDbcrz

[2] ACLU — “Taking photographs and video of things plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right”
https://t.co/ueDCqPO65p

[3] 8 U.S.C. § 1357 — ICE statutory authority (limited to immigration enforcement and specific federal crimes; no general police powers)
https://t.co/G7XUikz2ZG)

[4] Code of Federal Regulations, 8 C.F.R. § 287.8(b)(1) — ICE officers may not restrain individuals not under arrest from walking away
https://t.co/BvXCCJC3CO

[5] U.S. Marshals vs. ICE authority comparison — ICE lacks authority to issue dispersal orders or establish exclusion zones
https://t.co/TI8qyCuUrl

[C Halling @c_halling]

@CheyCab Kinda random?

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

The silence of the generals, by Robert B. Hubbell

The most remarkable aspect of Trump’s speech to the assembled generals and admirals of the US military was the silence.

The generals sat in silence.

They sat in silence as Trump slurred and rambled through a “speech” that insulted the intelligence, professionalism, and loyalty of the generals.

They sat in silence as Trump attacked their former commander-in-chief, Joe Biden.

They sat in silence as Trump claimed that the military would use U.S. cities as “training grounds” for waging war against American civilians.

They sat in silence as Trump said he would ask the military to fight “the enemy from within.”

They sat in silence as Hegseth said the generals were free to ignore the law of war and international treaties that separate the US military from barbarians and war criminals.

They sat in silence as Trump said that the Navy should “consider the concept of battleship.”

They sat in silence as Trump wondered aloud why the generals sat in silence.

They sat in silence even after Trump pandered for their applause.

Their silence spoke volumes.

In their silence, the generals affirmed their oaths to defend the Constitution.

In their silence, the generals demonstrated their professionalism, discipline, and judgment.

It could have been otherwise. Trump and Hegseth expected it to be so. In their adolescent fantasies, Trump and Hegseth believed the generals would fête them with standing ovations, chanting, “USA! USA! USA!”

Instead, Trump and Hegseth were humiliated as their unhinged, delusional words slapped sharply against the bare walls and fell to the ground, their lunacy heightened by the silence of the generals.

Without the crutch and cover of cheering crowds, Trump’s mental deterioration was laid bare for all to see. Trump told the generals that the city of Portland “looks like a war zone. . . . unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II.”

Every general who heard Trump say that Portland “looks like a war zone” knew it was a lie and understood that their Commander-in-Chief is so feeble that he is unable to distinguish between reality and “false tapes” replayed on Fox News.

Every general who watched Pete Hegseth’s peurile speech immediately recognized him as one of the posers and video-game warriors that the generals identify as misfits to be counseled out of the military at the first opportunity.

The generals were not impressed by Trump or Hegseth. The generals are sophisticated, successful professionals who have risen to the top (in part) because of their ability to judge people—the good, the bad, and the flakes. They left the meeting understanding exactly who Trump and Hegseth are.

All Americans should take confidence and comfort from the silence of the generals. Their silence was an act of protest—because their silence exhibited loyalty to the Constitution and respect for the Office of the President, rather than for Donald Trump.

Prior to Trump’s meeting with the generals, dozens of readers forwarded Substack and social media posts claiming that Trump would use the occasion to declare martial law. Other readers sent posts claiming that Trump would administer a loyalty oath requiring fealty to Trump. Still others predicted on-the-spot mass firings and public humiliation of generals perceived to be disloyal.

In his final insult, Trump told the generals they looked like they came out of “central casting.” In doing so, he trivialized and demeaned their accomplishments and professionalism, telling them they were nothing more than props for infantile speeches by men who hold the military in contempt.

And so, the generals sat in silence, depriving Trump of the thing he values most--obsequious adulation.

The silence of the generals spoke volumes.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

About eleven years ago, I was closing in on my undergraduate degree at Georgetown University using my G.I. Bill benefits (thank you, American taxpayers), and I got into an argument with a fellow veteran during an evening class discussion over women in combat roles.

I forget how the subject initially came up, but someone else had offered that women should be permitted to attend Ranger School, the U.S. Army’s premier combat leadership course.

This observation pissed off my fellow veteran, and before I knew it, we got into a heated argument right there in the middle of class.

When I pointed out that although most women (and most men) couldn’t hack Ranger School, there were surely some women who could pass the grueling standards of the course, he responded with exasperation: “Oh, c’mon!”

This was otherwise a calm and collected man. We had thoughtful conversations all throughout the semester, but it was this topic—and this topic alone—that infuriated him to the point of shouting.

At the time, I naïvely thought that he genuinely didn’t think women could compete with men in combat courses. In the years since, I can’t help but think it was less about standards and more about the voluntarily emasculated feelings of some men when confronted with the reality that some women have the capacity and skill to do what most men cannot.

He never attended Ranger School, and had he done so, statistics were not on his side regarding the prospect of success. So, if a woman graduated from Ranger School and earned her coveted Ranger Tab, what would that say about him?

Less than a year after that argument, Captain Kristen Griest and 1st Lieutenant Shaye Haver became the first women to earn their Tabs. They did so while meeting the same exact standards as their male peers. They did so under a grading system that relied, in part, on peer evaluations, meaning that the approval of their male classmates was essential to graduating.

Two months later, they were joined by Major Lisa Jaster—a 37-year-old Army Reserve engineer officer and mother of two—the first woman in the Army Reserve to accomplish the feat (an uncommon feat for any Army Reserve soldier).

In the ten years since these three women earned their Tabs, more than 150 women have joined this exclusive club, all meeting the same high standards as the men alongside them, all doing so not out of personal glory but fidelity to their oath as soldiers.

Many other changes have taken place in that time.

In January of 2016, the repeal of the combat exclusion ban for women was fully implemented, opening all military occupational specialties to women for the first time.

Six months later, the ban on transgender service members was first lifted; by this time, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—the policy effectively banning lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members—had been in effect for more than four years.

By 2018, all service branches had implemented new policies permitting Black women to wear certain natural hairstyles, which had been previously and ludicrously banned under the bizarre grooming regulations up to that point.

By 2023, all service branches had implemented some degree of new policies permitting shaving waivers for service members with pseudofolliculitis barbae (PFB), a medical condition causing severe razor bumps that disproportionately affects Black men.

That same year, all branches had come into compliance permitting the wearing of turbans, hijabs, and beards for religious reasons, allowing Sikh and Muslim service members to serve honorably in uniform within strict grooming standards.

In the history of our Armed Forces, only ten women have officially risen to the rank of four-star general or admiral, most of them in the past decade — and half of them in the past four years, including Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who became the first woman to serve as Chief of Naval Operations (the top U.S. Navy officer) in 2023, making her also the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The long overdue changes being made to our military were still too fast and too frightening and too insulting for some straight white men in our country, most of whom haven’t served in uniform a day in their lives but had always taken a very curious pride in our military being (in their minds) the last bastion of white male excellence.

These mediocre men could stomach seeing other white men accomplish what they could not. That somehow felt fair. But they could not bear seeing women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and some religious minorities not just be accepted in the ranks but excel while being held to the same high standards.

Trump’s reelection brought the promise of salving their insecurities. They had no evidence to support the ludicrous assertion that our military has somehow been made weaker by all these changes, nor was that ever the point.

What they wanted was a military that didn’t remind them that people who don’t look like them were serving with honor and excellence in ways they could not — or declined to.

Something had to be done. Their feelings needed to be salvaged. Merit and standards needed to be replaced by comforting images of only straight white men in power.

The past nine months have been a whirlwind of rollbacks in service to their hurt feelings. On the same day, a month after he took office, Trump removed Air Force General C. Q. Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — and Admiral Franchetti from her role as Chief of Naval Operations.

No reason was given for their removal. Both were only 16 months into their posts, which typically last four years. Both were replaced by white male officers. Both were basically forced into early retirement.

Admiral Linda Fagan, Commandant of the Coast Guard, had been removed by Trump the day after his inauguration. Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, U.S. Military Representative to NATO, was removed in April. Vice Admiral Yvette Davids, the first woman and Hispanic service member to serve as Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, was removed from that position only 18 months into an expected three-year tenure.

In all cases, either no real explanations were given for their removal or the explanations offered were murky and dubious at best.

The trans ban was, of course, reinstated by Trump a week after he took office. With zero credible evidence to support his executive order claiming they failed to meet high standards, five thousand honorably serving trans service members were given a deadline to accept early discharge from the ranks or risk their benefits while waiting for the Supreme Court to decide their fate in the near future.

Earlier this month, Trump, who campaigned on keeping the United States out of wars, renamed the Department of Defense to the “Department of War” — although not really because that would technically take an Act of Congress, so his executive order refers to the name as a “secondary designation” (I’m not kidding).

Then came today’s latest clown move in Dollar Store Fascism. Pete Hegseth, television personality and Trump’s Defense Secretary, ordered most of the upper half of all available generals and admirals in the Armed Forces to report to a “closed-door gathering” on Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia with no advance information on the reason.

It’s unconfirmed how many generals and admirals (along with their senior enlisted advisors) were in attendance, but some reports have said as many as 400, many of them traveling quite some distance from their official command and staff duties. There are close to a thousand generals and admirals in the U.S. military from one-star and up. Those in attendance were primarily the more senior officers.

It was an unprecedented order because it would typically be seen by top government officials as unnecessary and deeply reckless. A great way to put our national security at risk is announcing to the world—and all hostile nations—that you’re gathering the bulk of our senior military leadership in the same space at the same time on a specific date.

It was an attempt at a pure mafia move. An insecure show of power by an insecure administration that is privately loathed by many of the generals and admirals who were in attendance. It was a cheap imitation of Tony Soprano if the fictional New Jersey mob boss had been a complete idiot.

Hegseth, who unintentionally gave the appearance of someone who had just taken a bump of cocaine backstage (I’m sure he did no such thing), told the assembled generals and admirals that big changes were coming.

He leaned into the typical “war-fighting” and “warrior ethos” themes that sound like corporate pablum coming out of his mouth. He referenced the Roman Empire within the first minute of his remarks, which was more than likely a red meat bit for Trump’s white nationalist supporters, who revere Rome as the foundation of western values and steadfastly ignore that it was the Romans who executed Christ for treason.

He literally fat-shamed the generals and admirals in attendance, announced there would be imminent, new grooming standards regarding beards (an implicit reference to Black men and some religious minorities in the ranks), and talked of new physical fitness standards that would remove gender from the equation, which any adult with common sense could read as an effort to cull women from the ranks.

I have long believed that women and men in uniform should, in fact, be held to the same physical fitness standards but with a reasonable framework that takes into account the whole of physical fitness excellence, including flexibility, dexterity, and benchmarks that align to the greater whole.

A military IT specialist or military lawyer or whomever should be physically fit, but I care less about their ability to break records on an obstacle course than I do their effectiveness in cyber security and international law.

That’s not what Hegseth wants. He desires to see women barred from combat and ultimately kicked out of the ranks entirely. I know this because he has literally expressed this view in the past. His framework for universal physical standards isn’t about lethality; it’s about creating a vehicle for flushing women out of the military.

In probably the most cringey portion of his remarks, Hegseth opined:

"And since waging war is so costly in blood and treasure, we owe our republic a military that will win any war we choose or any war that is thrust upon us. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, FAFO.

"If necessary, our troops can translate that for you."

FAFO means “fuck around, find out,” which is what you might expect from an angry teenager imagining what they would say while addressing top military brass, not the reasonable, adult leader of the Defense Department.

That last bit—“our troops can translate that for you”—was a spot of embarrassing pandering to Trump’s base about elitism because Hegseth is just one of the boys, you know? Just a good ole boy from the working class ranks. Not a Princeton-educated ROTC grad from a middle class family.

For their part, the generals and admirals sat stoney-faced and silent. Hegseth had clearly been hoping for applause with the cringey “FAFO” line but was greeted with perplexed silence by the gathered brass. In fact, the reaction of the military’s top leadership was closer to that of a morgue after business hours.

While some of that can explained by the discipline and conditioning of military officers who have long understood to keep still during political speeches, it was still far too quiet and staid given the surroundings. These generals and admirals understood they could have applauded his remarks without fear of retribution, and they clearly chose, en masse, not to do so.

They knew it was not really a briefing. It was an attempt at a political rally. They knew the intended audience were not them, the generals and admirals who had served with honor for decades sitting before Hegseth.

The intended audience were Trump’s mediocre supporters who are furious at the elites and blame everyone who doesn’t look like them for their own mediocrity.

Trump’s approval numbers are way down. The economy is anemic. Epstein hangs like a dark cloud over the administration. Hegseth has been consistently criticized for his irresponsible actions all year and privately bashed for his incompetence by top officials and aides at the Pentagon in leaks to reporters.

This performance was done in the hopes of reminding most of Trump’s supporters why they voted for him in the first place: to remove everything and anything that makes them uncomfortable and reminds them of their personal failures. It was done to rekindle and enable their resentment at a system that has always catered to them but somehow still couldn’t adequately compensate for their shortcomings and magically wand them into success.

It was an intended realization of the wet dream of a particular kind of middle-aged straight, white guy in our country who has read way too much Tom Clancy but never actually served and has always wanted a Daddy to come along and tell them their lack of success is not their fault and the success of women and people of color and queer folks in the military is unearned.

That was the whole point of the event. It had nothing to do with improving our national security and military readiness. It was a role-play session for undeserving straight, white guys who could never hack it and resent those who could.

It was a celebration of the smallest men in the world, and by that measure, it was wildly successful.

And the rest of us will be picking up the pieces for a long time to come.
----
Full essay available here for easier sharing: https://t.co/YnTYGSwhnA

[C Halling @c_halling]

@rodgers_isaiah This so very kind.

[Dr. MemeNstein 🇺🇸🦅 @Coste1Costello]

Liars fear facts.

[C Halling @c_halling]

@NortonMpls Love that place

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

I told you that the SCOTUS's ban on national injunctions would supersize Trump's lawlessness.

Well, it's starting.

1/ Let me break some news for you: Trump is stealing money to build facilities like Alligator Alcatraz - from an account earmarked for the OPPOSITE of detention.

[Brooklyn Flowers @BrooklynFlowe15]

Interesting read because first President Obama and then President Biden tried to give Kerr County funds to update their Flood Warning Systems, but they REJECTED it from Obama but then Senator John Cornyn told them to KEEP the cash from Biden and still not update the system -

[Stephanie Boyle @snboyle]

There is an hour + of meetings in Kerr County from November 2021, where the broken brains are saying they don't want the american rescue plan money https://t.co/obw5CxtGV9

[Stephanie Boyle @snboyle]

@BrooklynFlowe15 I found some of the original on TikTok

[scha·den·freu·de  @BlisterPearl]

it's absolutely perfect

[C Halling @c_halling]

Tell me you know nothing about class load without telling me you have no clue about college class load.

[Libertarian LaXer 🗽🥍 @mdrn_cnservativ]

@GinnyMcDonald8 Full time students averaging 12 hours a week??

Had no idea it was so low

2.5 hours a weekday?

People spend More time on their iPhone

[C Halling @c_halling]

@dieworkwear Anyone who has followed you for any length of time knows the answer is the four in hand. I like the Windsor because that’s what my dad wore.

[C Halling @c_halling]

@CheyCab Common sense is lost on some tho.

[C Halling @c_halling]

@CheyCab Of course you did! I don’t check this garbage pail often.

[Victor Shi @Victorshi2020]

@SRuhle Do yourself a favor and watch this entire video. “And what I feel most tonight is scared — scared that what we are facing is a crisis of confidence…What I have not heard from any of the people I speak to is exactly what might restore that confidence.”