Kristen Chat

Proud childless cat lady 😘 Old soul w/progressive views. Vintage & baseball junkie. Former (forever in my 💜) ATLien. FEMINIST AF ally 💜

[Kristen Chat @kchatcats]

@NWSNashville Stood in line to early vote!

[The Space Coast Rocket @CoastRocket]

WE COUNT THE ENEMIES WE KILL. WE RARELY COUNT THE ONES WE CREATE.

Nidal Hasan was a patient on my floor in the surgical trauma ICU at Brooke Army Medical Center.

I wasn't there when he arrived. I had just left for my deployment to Mosul, Iraq. But the nurses and doctors who cared for him were my peers and my friends, and I know exactly what that required of them, because every one of us had done some version of it before. Before anyone tells me what strength looks like, understand what that work demands.

I have cared for a drunk driver who wiped out an entire family and landed in our ICU himself. I have cared for gang members who shot up a block while children were stepping off a school bus, then ended up on our unit with bullets of their own. I have kept alive people who murdered their own families and failed at taking their own lives. And in Iraq, I saved the lives of the very enemy fighters who had just tried to kill us and miraculously survived our response.

Every one of those patients got our best. Not because we felt anything for them, but because of who we were. You set aside anger, grief, prejudice and every personal feeling you have, because a life in front of you is a life in front of you. That's the oath. That's the duty.

So when Hasan came through those doors, my colleagues did what we had always done. They preserved the life of a man who murdered thirteen people and would have killed them too, given the chance. He killed those men and women in one of the very same buildings many Soldier's like myself have been in when I was stationed at Fort Hood.
He is alive today because they did their jobs. That was not sentiment. It was a hard, tangible expression of the values this country claims to stand for. Our principles had to mean something even when the person benefiting from them had violated everything we believed in.

Now the Pentagon plans to livestream his execution by firing squad on Dec. 3, and our leaders apparently believe turning his death into a public spectacle will demonstrate American strength. I think it demonstrates how little they understand the enemy they claim to be fighting. We kept Nidal Hasan alive, now our leaders want to make him a martyr.

Hasan walked into Fort Hood expecting to die. He believed his death would be rewarded. At his trial, he called no witnesses and offered no defense, and his own court-appointed lawyers worried he was seeking execution. He failed at martyrdom once. Now we're about to hand it to him, in high definition, for every extremist with an internet connection to replay, manipulate and celebrate.
We supply the footage. They supply the meaning.
Long after the politicians finish congratulating themselves, that video will still exist. Their moment of bravado becomes somebody else's recruiting material for decades. And this failure to think past the immediate display of power reaches far beyond one execution. We count the enemies we kill. We rarely count the enemies we create.

Look at the school in Minab, Iran, where multiple investigations attributed the strike that killed more than 100 children and their teachers to us. You cannot bury people's children beneath the rubble of their classrooms and expect a speech about American intentions to decide how they remember you. No denial brings those children home. No claim of good intentions makes their parents forget whose weapons killed them.
If those were our children, we would remember for the rest of our lives. We would demand accountability. Many of us would want vengeance. We would tell their stories to the next generation. We know this because we did exactly that after September 11.

Why do we imagine other people love their children less, grieve less deeply, or remember less clearly?

We have developed a horrifying talent for creating more terrorists than we will ever stop. We inflict suffering, evade responsibility, and then act as though the anger that follows came out of nowhere.

Think back to the first time you saw one of those al Qaeda videos of an American being beheaded. Remember the sickness in your stomach. Remember the rage. Remember thinking that only savages would film a killing and send it out for the world to watch. Now ask yourself what the rest of the world will see when the camera is ours.
Terrorist organizations stage executions for the cameras. Authoritarian regimes make death a public spectacle to feed fear and rage. Watching our own leaders reach for those same tools should force us to confront how much of ourselves we are surrendering in the name of defeating them.

The line separating us from the people we condemn has to live in our conduct. A flag cannot hold it for us. Neither can a uniform, a title, or a declaration that we are the good guys.
On that ICU floor, on a bloody street in Mosul, and in trauma bays across this country, people like my colleagues hold that line every day under circumstances most will never face. They keep monsters alive because their duty and their humanity are bigger than their hatred of what those monsters have done.

Execute him if that's the sentence. But do it the way a confident nation does; quietly, lawfully, and without giving him the stage he always wanted. Let him be forgotten.

I expect our leaders to show at least as much discipline as the nurses who had to care for him.
They keep telling us they are defending what makes America different. Every day, they make that difference harder to see.

Robert W. Burns III is the editor and publisher of The Space Coast Rocket, an Army veteran and a retired trauma nurse. The views expressed in this column are his own.

[Chad Withrow @TheChadWithrow]

I will repeat. They play 162 games to decide Division CHAMPS. MLB cannot have a system in place where a Division CHAMPION’s season is decided in a 3-game series. MLB Postseason format is broken.

[𝓔𝓶 ♡ @emkenobi]

They raped her for hours and not a single one of them was expelled from @Cornell despite the school fully being aware of what took place. Their only punishment was to write an essay. That girl had her life destroyed by these men and this was the “justice” she received. None of them were charged or convicted.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

Another horrific category Tennessee is *leading* in under this GOP supermajority: YOUTH PRISONS

“In contrast, Tennessee’s Dept of Children’s Services budgeted $360 MILLION to build 2 new facilities”

(We can’t afford school lunches for all tho😕)

https://t.co/A0mZpeWwR1

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

THE “WORST OF THE WORST”: A NUN WITH A WORK PERMIT.

Sleep peacefully, America. ICE caught Sister Leticia Ugboaja walking to Sunday Mass.

She had a valid work permit, attended EVERY required immigration appointment and complied with EVERY condition of her court-ordered protection.

A nun. A nurse. Following the rules. Walking to church.

Thank God they got to her before she could receive Communion.

It took intervention from members of Congress to help secure her release. Apparently, a work permit and doing everything immigration officials require aren’t quite as effective as knowing someone in Congress.

So much for “do it the right way" hey MAGA????

ICE: protecting America from the terrifying threat of a nurse with a rosary.

Know your rights. Demand accountability: [https://t.co/du9bv2TwAq](https://t.co/1jbDdp5uRP)
Help keep PAXIS free: [https://t.co/Hi5Yo2MuXu](https://t.co/PR7n7ez2En)

[jezz @JezziiB]

The last 24 hours of news as a woman:

- A man jacks off to the woman next to him on a plane. United makes her return to her seat.
- 7 frat boys drug and gang rape a student for hours, and advertise “free p*ssy” to their frat. Cornell makes them write essays.
- A football player rapes a student. LSU reduces his suspension.
- A teen boy stalks and stabs a girl 10 times. Courts grant only a restraining order.
- Brendan Carr spent 9 years in a cult raping teen girls. Trump made him FCC Chair.

[Kristen Chat @kchatcats]

@TheTNHoller Jerri Green has been getting threats for over a year now. Just because there’s no news story doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them.
This is unfortunate. But he isn’t the only candidate to be threatened.

[Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton]

Our national symbols matter, and they belong to all of us—not just one man.

A big thank you to everyone who turned out to protect the Kennedy Center this weekend. Keep going.

[Sels @suh_less]

Shut him tf up 🫪

[LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 @LongTimeHistory]

UPDATE—Mother of 17 year old boy who was beaten by ICE on way to enlist in Marines—has been deported.

Son says agents warned her to "be quiet" and "even offered us money" to not talk.

His mother bravely spoke out anyway.

She was then targeted for arrest—deported the same day.

[Morgan J. Freeman @mjfree]

Luis Ochoa is 17.
He is a U.S. citizen.

He was driving with another U.S. citizen to enlist in the Marines when he was pulled over and ripped from his car by ICE.

Someone started recording.

This is the horrific video.

While the boys were being beaten, they repeatedly tell the agents they are CITIZENS — and are ignored.

One agent told said, "I don't give a damn. Your parents can't help you now."

Both teenagers were detained for hours before being released.

They were preparing to serve this country - yet their citizenship did not protect them from being beaten, pepper-sprayed, and detained by their own government.

This is what the Nazis did then, and ICE does now.

[Democrats @TheDemocrats]

Reminder: Free speech includes a free press.

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

Imagine being dumb enough to be like, ‘well, I can’t afford gas, I lost my cattle ranch, my wife’s OB closed up shop, my kids got measles, my blueberries might kill me, my lettuce gave me the shits and there’s a data center in my backyard, but at least it’s Lake America now!’ 🇺🇸

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

macabre = “muh-KAHB”

Worcestershire = “WOOSS-ter-sheer”

omnipotent = “ahm-NI-puh-tunt”

reticent = “RET-uh-sunt”

epitome = “ih-PIT-uh-mee”

myriad = "MEER-ee-ud"

Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word.

It means they learned it by reading.

[Kristen Chat @kchatcats]

@GBC_Press

[Tea Pain @TeaPainUSA]

Food so good you grow an extra finger!

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

It’s hard to imagine many people having a bigger impact than Dolly Parton. Born in a one-room cabin, she earned 11 Grammys and an Emmy, built a business empire, helped millions of kids learn to read, and — as if that wasn’t enough — helped accelerate the research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine. What a life. Michelle and I are thinking of Dolly’s family and her many, many fans.

[lacey ᥫ᭡ @stateoflace13]

in honor of Dolly Parton, for the love of god please read a book

[Kristen Chat @kchatcats]

@SumnerSevereWx It is hecking NOISY in Portland