Men in Dresses

I've been reading the book Hitler's Pope by John Cornwell. It's a fine book, though it really can be boiled down to: Pope Pius XII could have done something other than collude with the Nazis, but he didn't, and here are 100 examples. It does not make me regret leaving the Catholic Church.

I haven't been to a Catholic church since 1997 or so. At some point I realized: 1) A lot of unmarried and (officially) childless men, wearing dresses, were talking very earnestly about the importance of traditional gender roles and the nuclear family. This just seemed somehow a bit off. 2) More importantly: a lot of these preachy moralizing men were actually abusing children, lots of children, over many years, and the church hierarchy was often complicit in these abuses. The church actively sought to protect abusive priests (though much of the attention has been focused on pedophile priests who abused boys, I think it's vital to remember that many girls and women were also harassed, raped, abused, and exploited by priests). Around the time that this scandal leaked out, the pope-before-this-pope got all shirty about the possibility of women becoming priests, like it was just totally unthinkable and wrong and wasn't going to happen on his watch, etc. Aha, I thought, this is it: pedophile priests, okay, women priests, totally not okay. Now we're all clear, and I can do something else with my Sunday mornings.

A recent and lengthy report in Ireland details sadly familiar abuses and cover-ups. Meanwhile, the current pope, Pope Very Scary German Man IX, goes about the place acting as if the last 1500 years of history (and in particular, the last 100 years or so) have never happened at all and we should all just forget about trifling things like birth control and women's rights and the HIV epidemic in Africa, but make sure to send money to those nice men in fabulous hats and red leather shoes, c/o The Vatican, Rome, Italy. It's as if he has seen Somewhere in Time, and he hopes that if he and the cardinals just dress up in period clothes and concentrate really really hard, we'll all wake up in a previous century.

And now, for something completely different.

I have made the heroic decision: I will avoid writing about Sarah Palin in today's blog post. I will instead write about how the world is ending. You're welcome.

As all of the leaders of the developed world have decided to treat the Copenhagen Climate meeting as a nice junket amongst the beautiful Danes, rather than a chance to press forward with meaningful coordinated action, this seems like a good time to find out that climate change is quickening. Scientists have been concerned about a feedback loop for some time, realizing that as the ice at the Poles and elsewhere melted, more dark surface area of the Earth would be exposed, absorbing rather than reflecting heat. This would in turn mean more of the sun's heat was retained, melting more of the ice, which would again decrease reflective surfaces, which would make the Earth warmer, and so on, and so on. As this happened, the time in between each of these things would get shorter, causing everything to cycle more rapidly, increasing the pace of climate change. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a series of wrist-slitting articles about this in New Yorker a while back, in case you're interested, but your time might be better spent building a boat/moving to high ground/deciding to believe in Jesus, just in case.

So anyway, yeah, that worst case scenario is now the actual scenario. But what's cool about this is it's not like voters in 2100, as they paddle to the polls, can rectroactively punish politicians from 2009 who failed to act by unelecting them...unless that large hadron collider in Bern has some more interesting applications than we currently know.

Update 11/25: Obama will, after all, be traveling to Copenhagen and will be offering a specific commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

Doing the Right Thing: The Democratic Edition

So it's no secret that I hold the Republicans in the House and Senate in near-universal contempt. At best, they are pork-rolling blowhards; at worst, they are misogynistic racist hypocritical blowhards. There are several who seem to me to be actually, perhaps certifiably, crazy, and then there's the orange one. Finally, all of them commit the unforgivable sin of being boring (a sin for which their Democratic counterparts must also confess, and do penance, hopefully involving watching their own speeches on the House or Senate floor on a repeating loop for all eternity).

But the Democrats, the fucking Democrats. I loathe the Republicans, but I don't have to vote for them. Great! But I also loathe the Democrats, and I do have to vote for them. Fuck! Democracy in this country seems to have come down to a choice between batshit insanity (seriously, "Creationism"? "Death panels?" "Glenn Beck?") and corporate sellouts. Now that they might start debating the Health Care Reform bill (seriously? again. Didn't everybody already have a chance to get up with some pretty charts and pictures their interns made for them and say crazy shit, like our friend Virginia Foxx from right he-yah in Nor' Carolinah) suddenly there are a bunch of Democrats who see this as a chance to hold the bill hostage in order to loot the treasury for their own state. Mary Landrieu, for instance, has inserted into this monstrosity of a bill language that gives a bunch of money to her state, Louisiana, without actually calling it "Louisiana." Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas has courageously come out against the public option, American Hero that she is.

And Joe Lieberman, I can't even TALK about Joe Lieberman, because there aren't enough drugs in the house to sedate me afterwards. All of these politicians are using a bill which should help tens of millions of their fellow citizens (who are, in fact, human beings who deserve health care as much (or more!) than these assholes in Congress) to do the kind of thing Americans already hate them for--porkbarelling, power-hungry, lobbyist-driven politics. Rather than actually considering what might be for the good of the nation, they are using this for their own personal and political gains.

A plague on both their houses.

All Palin, All the Time...

Is not what I'm intending this blog to be. Nonetheless, between Palin lashing out at the Newsweek cover as "sexist" and The Guardian writing an article about Michelle Bachman ("The new wave of female firebrands striking fear into the heart of liberal America") I just couldn't resist. It's like a mild ongoing irritation, somewhat similar to eczema--an itch that begs to be scratched.

Anyway. It makes my little women's head spin when I consider these two radical Christians (let's not call them conservatives, because they do not want to conserve anything, they want to make things other than what they are, to make reality conform to some fantastic fiction in their mind of What Should Be and How People Should Act) get to have it both ways. Not in a fun, sexy way, although since they are Christian Republicans, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out they were having things many, many ways, but the whole "Women's libbers have ruined Merka and motherhood and killed babies" sacred-unchanging-gender-roles thing, coexisting with getting to scream sexism about any criticism leveled at them. Nonononononono, you don't get to do that! You think people should be sexist! You think people should be defined by their gender and sexual orientation! You can't (Sarah Palin) take advantage of your femininity (you think Bill Kristol liked you for your appreciation of French film and your subtle critique of Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht? Think again, sister) and then be all offended when people comment on your looks and femininity. If you weren't all about having it both ways, you wouldn't have dragged your kids, Basket, Hamper, and Window, hither and yon to prove that you were a nice, soft, vagina-endowed American and not a scaaaaary, mean, castrating and possibly secret-penis-having lady like Hillary.

In short, as I may have mentioned in this blog one or a hundred times before, it is just so irritating (scratch scratch scratch) that these women who are themselves power hungry harpies walk through the doors that the women's movement and women themselves have pried open and then just shit on everything the women's movement has stood for and done. Like they would have gotten where they are without the women's movement. Like Sarah Palin would have been anything but a question in Alaskan Trivial Pursuit if it wasn't for Hilary Rodham Clinton and her hard work and accomplishments. It was Hillary who scared the Republicans enough to even think about nominating a woman, and Hilary has paid the price for being who she is--a tough, highly educated, highly achieving, non-cookie baking woman--over and over again. The scrutiny and insults that Hillary has endured are a price that Palin is unwilling to pay. She wants her medals of honor without having ever seen battle. I call bullshit.

Update: Here's a quote from Going Rogue that I would have added to my "Actual Student Quotes" list, had it been turned in to me: "In national politics, some feel that Big Business is always opposed to the Little Guy. Some people seem to think a profit motive is inherently greedy and evil, and that what's good for business is bad for people. (That's what Karl Marx thought too.)" And everyone knows that Karl Marx was wrong about everything!

And, yes, I fixed the spelling of Hillary's name.

Rogueish

So Sarah Palin "wrote" a book. Her continued relevance astonishes me, but then, so do the Birther/Teabagger people (recently seen on a bumper sticker: TEABAGGING IS FOR NUTS). For example, this whole thing in the NY-23 race, where the Republican candidate--who was leading in the polls--was pushed out by her own party in favor of a "real conservative" who promptly lost the race, giving the Democrats a seat they had not won in 100 years. (Thanks!) Amazingly, this loss was then claimed as a "victory" by the grassroots crazy movement.

Perhaps if mental health care was better funded in this country, some of these people could get the help they so evidently need.

Media Matters is having a good time documenting the inaccuracies in the book and in Palin's public appearances. One thing that continues to bother me is Palin's valorization--both by herself and by Christian conservatives such as James Dobson--for choosing to have her baby even after learning that he had Down Syndrome. The key point here is choice, and from Palin's perspective there should have been no choice other than to have the child. So she should not be lauded for that decision which was no decision. Without choice there is no virtue.

So, Funny!

For the laffs, I tried to find out how much it would cost certain people (that is, Senators, who currently have just fantastic awesome healthcare: John McCain, Joe Lieberman, various idiots from Alabama/Arkansas/Alaska) how much it would cost for them to buy health insurance on the "open" market. Hahahah, though, the first three Senators I tried all qualify for Medicare. So even if their lush, single payer, publicly provided, taxpayer supported health care were to suddenly be taken away because the American people suddenly became rational and voted them out of office (note to self--do Senators/Congresspeople get health insurance even after leaving office? If so, consider running for Congress--2 years of work for a lifetime of free health insurance? Deal.) they would still get single payer, publicly provided, taxpayer supported health care.

Oh. The hilarious. It burns.