… and here are a bunch of songs expressing similar sentiments.
Habemus Papam
It’s really too bad I didn’t put money on it, because I was right,: homophobic from the Global South, as predicted.
He sounds like poverty might actually rate, however, which would be a nice change of pace for the Church, to rediscover poor people again, and maybe focus on that instead of on so-called morality. (So called as morality only seems to matter if people are female or queer; sexual abuse & all that rot they never say a damn thing about.) He is flexible on condoms as contraception – if they’re being used to prevent infection, and hey, he’s a Jesuit, but on the conservative end of Jesuit, which means: expect anything once he’s learned more.
New Pope
So they’ve chosen a pope. We don’t know who he is yet, though, so in the meantime, let’s have a singalong, shall we?
Hitler Worse Than Hitler (Really)
As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler’s reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis’ needs, the researchers have found . . .
When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.
and this:
Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”
which doesn’t surprise me one bit. It’s still atrocious and terrifying, that so many people have either lied about them or somehow blocked them to such a degree they don’t even know they were lying. (I think it’s the former, for the record.)
Band Together: Trayvon Martin
It’s been a year since Trayvon Martin was shot and killed for wearing a hoodie and carrying an iced tea and a pack of Skittles. He would have turned 18 this month.
This artwork is by Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski. Go check out more of her stuff.
The Pope Can Quit?
A friend texted me that question this morning and all I could think was, “Does the Pope wear white?” Of course he can quit. He’s the Pope.
I’m pretty sure this is terrifying news, to be honest. This Pope Maledict wouldn’t leave unless he knew someone more conservative even than he will be the next to be elected. Of course that never, ever means it’s a done deal: the Cardinals are not unpowerful men themselves, and depending on how many enemies he’s made while Pope, there are all kinds of conversations going on about who might be next.
My guess? A homophobic cardinal from the Global South.
But it’s time for all of us recovered, recovering, and practicing Catholics who are on the side of the good to maybe say whatever kind of prayer you can muster for a Pope who will lead the real Catholic Church: the one that will start speaking truth to power about poverty and violence and discrimination. It’s what we do best. Let Vatican Council II’s dying embers spark.
Disability’s Top 10 of 2012
- Closed Captioning required on the Internet.
- Repeal of the CLASS Act.
- Senate FAIL
- Mainstream Media Representations
- Olympics!
- Violence Against Those with Disabilities
- Custodial Parents with Disabilities
- Cuts in Services Globally
- Passage of the Affordable Care Act
- Shootings in Aurora and Newtown
Some of these maybe obvious, but not all, so please go and read how all of these events effected those with disabilities and remember that the disability communities are as diverse as the LGBTQ communities.
No Liberty, Just Death
Not this year, but every year forever, these families’ holidays will be full of horrible memory. What a shitty, shitty thing. All that trauma, of the kids & the families & the teachers. Enough already.
I would like to see a month-long moratorium on gun sales every time a shooting like this occurs. Or maybe a month for every person killed.
Really I’d like to see us kick the NRA out of the goddamn country. I can’t imagine how all this death & trauma is worth anything to anyone. Even an idea. There is no liberty here. Just death.
If a civilized country can’t keep our school-aged children safe, we have no business being a country at all. Sorry, but we don’t.
Lawrence’s New President
Lawrence University just named Mark Burstein as the next President.
Way down at the bottom of the press release, this little detail: “Burstein will be joined in Appleton by his spouse David Calle, who is the Global Chief Financial Officer of Unilever’s Food Solutions business.”
I am so, so proud to work here, and pleased as punch, to boot.
Congratulations, Senator(-elect) Baldwin!
& Wow did we need to keep Glass-Steagall. & We need it back.
But it was also a striking affirmation of Ms. Baldwin, 50, a soft-spoken but unflinching seven-term congresswoman who won over voters in her native state without moderating the starkly progressive views — including lonely votes against the invasion of Iraq and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that curbed commercial banks — that routinely rank her among the most liberal lawmakers in the country.
She has played down the historic nature of her win, befitting a race where Ms. Baldwin’s sexual orientation played little role. At her victory speech here on Tuesday, Ms. Baldwin did not get around to talking about it until halfway through, saying she was “well aware” that her victory was a milestone for gay rights.
After the enormous applause — the loudest of the night — died down, she added: “But I didn’t run to make history. I ran to make a difference.”