DL Open Thread: Saturday, March 21, 2026

“Ladies And Gentlemen, Please Remove Your Tin Foil Hats And Stand For  Pete Hegseth’s National Anthem”:

BTW, I was quite surprised when I saw who wrote the music for this. (No, it’s not Andrew Lloyd Webber.) Although–since I only to go to church for funerals, I forgive myself.  Do you know?  I mean, without cheating?

Why, you may ask, am I leading with this? Here’s why:

He spoke of “overwhelming force” and the U.S. military’s unmatched ability to rain “death and destruction from above” on its “apocalyptic” Iranian foes.

Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing in the Pentagon, issued a call to the American people for a specific kind of wartime prayer. He asked them to pray for victory in battle and the safety of their troops.

“Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches,” he said, “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

At a time when the U.S. and Israeli militaries are dropping thousands of bombs on a majority-Shiite Muslim nation, the explicitly Christian nature of Mr. Hegseth’s call stood out.

“Our capabilities are better. Our will is better. Our troops are better,” he said in a recent interview with CBS News’s “60 Minutes.” “The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops, and we’re committed to this mission.”

Tattooed on Mr. Hegseth’s right biceps is the Latin phrase “Deus vult,” or “God wills it,” which he has described as a “battle cry” of the Crusades, the ruthless medieval wars where Christian warriors fought to take over Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Mr. Hegseth sees those battles as perhaps the most formative moment in the history of the free world.

In his book “American Crusade,” published in 2020, he describes the Crusades as “bloody” and “full of unspeakable tragedy,” but argues that they were justified because they saved a Christian Europe from the onslaught of Islam.

“Do you enjoy Western civilization? Freedom? Equal justice? Thank a crusader,” he writes in the book. “If not for the Crusades, there would have been no Protestant Reformation or Renaissance. There would be no Europe and no America.”

Our ‘Secretary Of War’.

Islamic Oil To Rescue Our Christian Gas Pumps?  Yep, Trump’s obsessed by those high oil prices:

The United States temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil currently at sea in an effort to bring down surging oil prices, reversing earlier efforts to impose “maximum pressure” on the country, as the war with Iran entered its fourth week on Saturday.

The move underscored how little success the Trump administration has achieved in calming global markets rattled by the American-Israeli military campaign against Iran, forcing it to turn to a measure that could benefit its adversary. Brent crude, the international benchmark, settled at $112 a barrel on Friday, a roughly 54 percent increase since the conflict began.

Are ICE Prisons The New Data Centers?  The town of Social Circle, Georgia thinks so:

City officials in Social Circle, a town outside Atlanta with about 5,000 residents, are speaking out against a new detention center that could hold up to 8,500 people at one time, almost twice the population of the entire town itself.

Their case seems practical: The city’s water supply simply can’t handle that many people. The town’s city manager, Eric Taylor, said there is a lock on the water meter at the facility, which will remain in place until ICE can demonstrate that it can run the detention center without overwhelming the town’s water and sewer services, per the Georgia Sun. If the city’s water supply is depleted, that could spell disaster for its residents.

“The lock is there until ICE indicates how water and sewer will be served without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity. The City of Social Circle is not satisfied that an adequate engineering analysis has been conducted,” a representative from Taylor’s office said in a statement to HuffPost. “Our permit to draw water out of the river is 1 million gallons a day. Our sewer plant can process 660,000 gallons per day and is at capacity. Their BLUF analysis indicates a daily water and sewer need that exceeds these amounts, including a sewer demand of 1,001,683 gallons per day.”

Hmmm, water rights.  Might be a good movie in there somewhere.

Boycott Beef?  Yes, at least until there is some justice for these workers:

On Monday at 5:30 a.m., more than three thousand employees at the JBS beef packing plant in Greeley, Colorado, officially walked off the line. Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, the union that represents the plant, had begun the first major meatpacking strike in more than four decades, effectively shutting down one of the largest meat processing sites in the country. About 7 percent of America’s beef comes out of this single plant on a normal day. But now, thousands of workers—mostly foreign-born laborers from Haiti, Somalia, Burma, and Mexico—formed a picket line across the street, singing in Haitian Creole, chanting through a megaphone in Spanish, and wearing placards that read PLEASE DO NOT PATRONIZE JBS.

They were walking out to protest stalled wage negotiations and poor working conditions. A recent class action lawsuit brought by Haitian workers at the plant claims that they have been segregated onto a night shift and forced to work at “dangerously fast speeds.” Last month’s strike vote was nearly unanimous—evidence, the union says, of worker frustration.

By mid-morning outside the plant, just three semis carrying cattle for slaughter sat idling on the side of the highway—a far cry from the usual long line of trucks, known among workers as “Death Row.” The cattle pens north of the plant were virtually empty. Production was at a standstill. But the company seemed to want to downplay the significance of the stoppage. “This morning,” a JBS spokeswoman told me via email, “many JBS Greeley team members chose to report to work rather than participate in the strike called by UFCW Local 7, and we expect that number to continue increasing in the days ahead.”

Perhaps this quote will help you (and yes, even me) consider your dietary choices:

If the strike continues, it stands to become a national issue, one that might force a reckoning over how our meat is made. “I don’t think the American public has a sense that the food on our table is being produced by immigrant workers under conditions that would make Upton Sinclair turn over in his grave,” said Peter Rachleff, a professor emeritus of history at Macalester College and author of Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement. “I don’t think the public has a clue that that’s what’s going on.”

Please read the entire article.  Not sure the strike can succeed, but I’m hoping that it will.

‘Teleporting’ The Key To Faster Disaster Relief?  Just one more story I couldn’t make up:

A far-right conspiracy theorist turned high-ranking official at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) claims to have once teleported to a Waffle House.

Gregg Phillips, who in December was appointed to lead Fema’s office of response and recovery, has spoken on “multiple podcasts” about being teleported against his will, CNN reported on Friday.

On a January 2025 podcast appearance, Phillips claimed that his car was “lifted up” while he was driving and transported 40 miles (65km) away into a ditch near a church. And in another instance on the same episode, Phillips said he was teleported 50 miles away to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, CNN detailed in a deep dive into Phillips’ past public statements.

“I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House – this was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said on the podcast Onward, co-hosted by rightwing activist Catherine Engelbrecht.

The irony?  He was wearing no shirt or shoes, meaning ‘No Service’.

Carney Gives Renters Short Shrift.  I know, ‘dog bites man’.  It’s who he is:

Wilmington Mayor John Carney delivered his budget address Thursday evening at the Old Town Hall as protesters outside chanted and banged pots and pans, demanding more housing support.

Housing investments were a big focus of Carney’s speech, but advocates and some City Council members say they want to ensure the money goes toward helping unhoused people and rent-burdened residents.

More than half of the city’s residents are renters. Local activist Shyanne Miller, progressive governance director for advocacy group Working Families Power, said the goal was to make city leaders listen to their concerns.

“Hopefully, they heard everything we said,” Miller said. “We are asking for some relief for a lot of people in the city, and renters are not getting relief. There are people living in the park. Ideally, he heard that we’re not accepting that.”

Carney’s response:

Carney said it was a close decision to reject raising property taxes because, while some residents saw massive spikes after the recent property reassessments, the city ended up with no new net revenue. He said last year’s plan to fund interior reassessments of the hardest-hit residential properties has hit a snag because of struggles to secure a vendor.

He also said he wants to purchase vacant properties and convert them for low- to moderate-income residents.

“It’s more than just increasing the availability of affordable units, which is important for the folks that are screaming out front, but it also lifts up the neighborhoods, because you don’t have that nuisance property anymore,” Carney said.

“The folks that are screaming out front.”  That, right there, is who John Carney is.  Condescending, dismissive.  He views these advocates as nuisances to be marginalized while he and Buccini/Pollin craft the city’s future, which doesn’t include the folks screaming out front.  He is, and will always be, Carper’s Mini-Me.

What do you want to talk about?