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"It needs to be said clearly: There are those who systematically work by all means to drive away migrants, and this, when done knowingly and deliberately, is a grave sin." - Pope Francis

As many have noted, the Acton ad was a massive political own-goal from which even many Republicans recoiled in disgust. You can’t really explain Trump & Vance doubling down as any kind of rational electoral strategy.

But culturally, they need a world in which sexual assault claims are presumptively false. Because if you acknowledge that the great majority are true, it becomes pretty much impossible to maintain that the dozens of accusations against Trump are all fabrications.

The stench of the Oval Office from the Trump regime will rest on these bishops for the rest of their days. Men of this caliber know exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it. Jesus has given use free will and these bishops have exercised theirs.

That it'll fail because they lack sufficient consolidation and centralized control does not make it trivial that the president of the United States is trying to steal elections and produce an illegitimate sham Congress. It is open rebellion against the Constitution and morally tantamount to treason.

We'll see how far the attempt goes, even if it will clearly fail. But a constitutional system that sees such an attempt by its chief executive and then leaves him in office has already been shattered. Merely trying is betrayal enough and places him outside of constitutional or democratic legitimacy.

I think serious disciplinary action against these bishops by the pope is entirely in order. Whether this was intentionally partisan or unintentionally idiotic, this represents a monumental failure of episcopal judgment. www.ncronline.org/news/ahead-e...

🗳️🙏 Pax Christi USA invites you to join a 24 hour prayer vigil, starting 12 PM PT/3 PM ET Mon, Nov 2, until 12 PM PT/3 PM ET Tues, Nov 3. We will pray together to show solidarity with each other and to share our belief in a democratic system based on the common good. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

... no labor standards so they can cheat & exploit us & pay poverty wages & use child labor & implement untested automation, etc, etc. America is the world's poster child for what capitalism & capitalists will do to your democracy if you let them: they will eat them them, & they will eat you.

The Trump regime’s window to get Russia a victory in Ukraine without Congress exposing the corrupt personal payments Trump and Co. will get from Russia if they pull it off is down to three months. Hence the big push now.

Until we understand that immigration enforcement is little more than trying to limit the practical and foreseeable consequences of our own foreign and economic policy, nothing will change. Borders are there to externalize cost and internalize benefit. Pure nationalist capitalist violence.

Catholic theologians and educators are invited to add their names to an open letter to the USCCB, urging the bishops to take a stronger, clearer public witness against military operations against Iran and to continue to promote teachings on peace and nonviolence.

The people who don’t want you to watch miss rachel want you to watch a public execution

They’re live-streaming the execution of the person they think they can get away with doing that to first. It’s a test. If they can do that, they’ll expand the margins of permission.

“Advocacy for immigrants belongs to every single disciple of Jesus, and it is, in its truest sense, an act of divine worship.” - Cardinal Cupich

The US Democrats need to look at their next Presidency as an endless sprint to obliterate MAGA, every day for years. Until the cancer is gone then there should be no time wasted on MAGA tears or conciliation. Only endless justice and rebuilding the democracy. Govern like every day is the last day.

But over the years, the French riot police have made tear gas, rubber bullets and baton charges their first response rather than one used in situations of extreme urgency. And whether you're a 60-y.o. protesting pension cuts or a 15-y.o. protesting educational cuts, that can radicalize you.

5/ If you take one thing away from this, know that now is the time to get your flu vaccine. Usually, advice is in October (the common saying is “flu before boo”), but for maximum protection, I think that advice will be late this year. Schedule your flu vaccine appointment this week. I am.

Hailed by lawyers and activists as the “Brown v. Board of Education of the disability rights movement,” the 1999 Olmstead ruling said that disabled people had a right to be integrated into their communities — not forced apart from society in institutions marred by a history of abuse and neglect.

The 39-page DOJ opinion took a sledgehammer to that ruling. The June memo declared that states had no federal civil rights obligation to help disabled people stay in their homes through programs that millions of Americans rely on to live independently or to care for their loved ones.

I didn't connect Trump's obsession with remodeling DC to the administration's assault on the rights of the disabled. But it makes sense in a morally grotesque way.

Artists are never poor, even when they are short on cash. AI ideologues are never poor, but in another sense, because their technology makes money cannibalizing the work of others.

Those arguing for mass-adoption of AI art always seem intent on proving the wrong thing; that AI tech will change beyond all recognition. They seem less inclined to prove their argument's much wilder claim; that human nature, and all previous modes of taste, emotion and investment, will change too.

The SCOTUS ruling in favor of resuming deportations of migrants to unknown countries is an abomination. As Pope Francis often said: “Migrants are not pawns of the chessboard of humanity; they are people with stories who deserve our love and care.”

The Trump era has really fucked everyone up in profound ways. Turns out electing the physical embodiment of the most demonic things about American society to the Presidency was a mistake

The Pope in Metz: “Today, relations between individuals and States are becoming increasingly uncivilized. The value of keeping one’s word is dismissed; instead, people boast of lies and deceit. “

Amen

Spine-chilling and horrifying 👇

Peter Thiel is simply the most self-regarding twit in your Ayn Rand reading circle. And if you've ever been in an Ayn Rand reading circle, you know all of what that entails

I really like Pope Leo's vestments, especially the blue he is fond of. They stand out without being ostentatious.

Pax Christi USA has joined dozens of other faith and human rights groups in supporting a new resolution offered by Sen. Chris Van Hollen. This resolution would require the State Department to address the deaths of US Americans on the West Bank and assess the human rights situation there, including…

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If Meta made a laptop I don’t think anyone would buy it, like you’d just sort of assume it was mining your data constantly, and I think every basic problem of theirs can be extrapolated from that.

Conservatives desperately want cultural supremacy and yet they are incapable of producing art. I don't even mean great or good art, I mean "works that are arguably artistic." Every cultural artifact they produce in any medium is instantly recognizable as vapid, disposable, and unworthy of attention.

and so white nationalism must be a response to something, it can't be it is own ideological formation with its own history driven by people with their own agency

i've been thinking a bit about killer robots in literature and how it's kind of ambiguous whether skynet is sentient. art knows that the machines don't need to think to have blood on the gears

“AI will kill us all” is how the tech industry, especially rich people in it, avoid talking about real world problems—ones they’re causing, exacerbating, or neglecting—while still thinking themselves good. “I’m better than all that,” they say. “I got high with my friends and BSed about the future.”

St. Dorothy Day refused to pay federal taxes because of crap like this.

Every person bears God’s image. No faith, tradition or appeal to morality can justify persecution. When people suffer, silencing those who speak for their dignity deepens the harm. Our Christian calling is to stand with the most vulnerable, defend human dignity and refuse to look away. #HumanDignity

the sum total of Sam Alito’s jurisprudence on voting adds up to “You have the right to vote for a Republican and if you aren’t likely to vote for a Republican, then Republicans are allowed to disenfranchise you.”

yeah, even accounting for historical revision by later scribes, the history of the Dumbass Kings is just super resonant right now. Like, instead of sci-fi authors and the torment configuration, we’re workshopping all kinds of a King Ahab from Ye Olde Days

Cancel culture is out of control.

I understand that humans thinking about math is Luddite behavior and humans making art is Luddite behavior and so on. But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing instead. What's the non-Luddite behavior for those of us who aren't wealthy investors?

like literally, and i say this as someone who thinks he was right, but he was a religious zealot who believed not just that he should wage a war to free the slaves but that killing slavers was correct and justified by the actual literal real christian god who had given him, john brown, a mission

one of the contradictions that i try to regularly sit with as both a spiritual practice (sorry) and a moral/ethical consideration is that some people will be completely right about the evils of their time and also really genuinely cracked in the head in a way most people aren't & never will be