We sit around and bitch about the corporations caving to the alt-Reich, about Congress people just giving in to Trump, about ICE not having a conscience to do the things they do.
Yet as long as we only sit and bitch, as long as we're not fighting back in some way, we are also complicit in what our country's government does.
If you honk your horn to warn people ICE is around, you are protecting them. If you protest the regime, others will see that there's are others standing up and this is not inevitable. If you call your Congress people, you are telling them what the will of the people is, and that people are watching their actions. You don't have to do everything, but you should be doing something.
How can you expect corporations to care or Congress people to have a spine, if you won't even pick up a phone? Courage, and consciences, are contagious.
No he didn't. He didn't give it a moment's thought, and he didn't care. He still doesn't. If sucking up to Trump next week gets him ratings, he'll suck up to Trump again.
I remember during the later part of the Troubles, one group set up an exchange student program, where junior- and senior-year Catholic and Protestant kids were sent to spend the year in the US, like regular exchange students. Except every host family took in two kids, matched in sex and roughly matched in age, one Catholic and one Protestant. Living together for a year in an alien country, they came to see each other as human, and friends.
Not really. The NYT ran an interesting article a couple years ago on generational support for Israel. [This is from memory, so don't get down on me for history or generation errors.] The people who reached adulthood in the 1940s and early 50s supported Israel wholeheartedly; they saw Israel as the underdog. The people who reached adulthood in the 60s and 70s saw the 1967 war and saw a militarized grown-up state holding it's own. The 80's and 90's adults saw them as over-weaponized and aggressive. And people reaching adulthood after 2000 saw them as overly aggressive, oppressive and approaching genocide (that opinion forming before the current genocide, obs).
The Israeli government knows the US opinion had been generationally changing as well. It's why they've invested so much money in AIPAC, news organizations and US politicians, and why they're constantly supporting older-generation politicians.
My guess is that he's saying this to suck up to Trump, even though he knows he can't do it. And that Trump Inc will make "commemorative" coins and sell them at inflated prices to MAGA idiots who will believe they're real coins and try to spend them sometime in the future.
The thing that pisses me off is that, back in the late 1970's / early 1980's, the Church became aware they had a sex abuse problem and could be held liable. And instead of mocking the priests to places where they couldn't commit harm, they:
Increased their movement of assets away from individual churches and dioceses info separate ownership, so those assets wouldn't be forfeit in case of lawsuits;
Purged a bunch of documentation about abusive priests, shredding, burning, or throwing it away;
Moved the documentation that remained to secret local archives supposedly sealed by the confessional and clerical privilege, and then away from local churches and dioceses to the Papal Nunciature (Embassy) in DC where they're covered by diplomatic immunity;
Went out and bought a massive amount of specific insurance to cover any sex abuse claims that might arise - and got a very cheap price for it, too.
Continued their practice of moving abusive priests between dioceses and parishes, denying there was a problem to anyone who might ask and giving those priests the opportunity to give other victims.
Probably other shitty stuff, but those are the points I remember offhand (and it's more than enough). They never cared about their victims, only preserving their money and power.
The amount set a new record for abuse cases against school districts in Oklahoma, topping a $5-million settlement reached by Kingfisher Public Schools in 2023. [...] the district paid $500,000 from the school’s general fund toward the settlement, while their liability insurance paid $1 million.
Sounds like they were under-insured. The Catholic Church got away with it by having their insurance pay everything, and then declaring bankruptcy whenever someone went against the Church's actual assets.
Which is exactly what they said last spring, and then crickets. Fool me once ...