St. Paul’s Body Found?

Independent carbon dating of bone fragments extracted from traditional tomb consistent with traditional martyrdom.

There is a reasonable probability that the remains are those of the Apostle Paul.

In the time of Pius XII the possible remains of the Apostle Peter were found where they were supposed to be, beneath the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica on Vatican hill in Rome. And then lost in a Vatican storeroom. And then rediscovered in the time of Paul VI. Interesting book about it: "The Bones of Saint Peter".

There is an interesting biblical parallel between the lives of Daniel and his three friends in Babylon near the time of the destruction of the first Jerusalem temple. And the traditional martyrdom of leading Apostles in Rome near the time of the destruction of the second Jerusalem temple.

From my comment on a Daily Mail .co .uk article, Have we found the body of St Paul?, article excerpts below:

I report and link. You decide. - J:)

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. - 2nd Corinthians 2:14

Excerpts from a Daily Mail .co .uk article, Have we found the body of St Paul?
:

Have we found the body of St Paul? [/] By A N Wilson Last updated at 2:43 AM on 30th June 2009 [/] Ruthless, half mad, he stoned Christians to death. He also founded modern civilisation. And until yesterday, his fate was one of history's great mysteries...

Deeply moved, the Pope delivered the news on Sunday that fragments of bones found in the tomb traditionally considered to be that of Saint Paul did indeed date from the first or second century. [/] Which means that, in all likelihood, they are the bones of the Apostle Paul - bones that have lain there for 1,950 years yet, astonishingly, have only been discovered in our time.

You might say, so what? Aren't Roman Catholics always making claims about bones and relics? Was it not said that if you measured all the bits of the True Cross venerated throughout the world you could build a bridge to the moon? Yes, yes. [/] But this is slightly different, and it is very exciting. The Pope was not saying that he revered some relics as a matter of faith. He was saying that scientists, by carbon dating, have come as close as possible to identifying the very bones of St Paul himself.

Why is he so convinced? Though the carbon-dating experts knew nothing of their origins, the bone fragments were recovered after a tiny probe was inserted into the tomb which lies in a crypt beneath the Basilica of St Paul outside the Walls in Rome - a church long held to have been built on the site where Paul was buried.

It was only three years ago that the tomb itself was discovered by Vatican archaeologists. [/] The fact that it was positioned exactly underneath the epigraph Paulo Apostolo Mart (Paul the Apostle and Martyr) at the base of the altar convinced them it was Paul's tomb. [/] Now backed by the evidence of his carbon-dated bone fragments, the Pope has announced: 'This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that the bone fragments are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul.'

What makes the discovery all the more exciting is that the last days of Saint Paul have always been a bit of an historical puzzle. [/] To understand why this news is being treated as such a sensation, we have to examine his life - an extraordinary and dramatic life which, it is no exaggeration to say, changed the course of the world.

[…] You can tell from his letters that he is a driven, hyperactive genius of a man - more like a half-mad poet, I have often thought, than a clergyman. [/] His great flights of beautiful prose-poetry about the nature of love, or about the consolations of faith, echo down the ages to inspire new generations of readers afresh. [/] 'Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword?'

Paul was the first great theologian, insisting that we are forgiven not because of our good deeds, but solely because of God's love for us. He was the prime influence on all the great Christian philosophers and thinkers from Augustine to Luther.

But what happened to him in the end? We never knew. We know from the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible that he was arrested for causing an affray in Jerusalem, when Jews set upon him for preaching Christianity. [/] We're told that, as a Roman citizen, he made an appeal to Caesar's supreme court in Rome, living for two years under house arrest. But then his story fizzles out. [/] Now, it appears that the aural tradition, passed on by word of mouth since the second century, that he had suffered martyrdom and was beheaded for his faith, is true.

[...] Historical research alone will never produce faith. But it has always been part of the Christian claim that it was historically rooted. The ministry of the Church - its bishops and priests - goes back, as far as the West is concerned, in an unbroken line to the martyrs of Rome in the early days of Christianity. [/] These were men and women who were alive during the lifetime of Jesus, and their lives had been turned around by their beliefs concerning his life, death and resurrection. To all the apostles, therefore, the Church owes an historic debt.

But to none more so than Paul, who opened up to the Gentile world the inexhaustible riches of the Jewish spiritual tradition which culminated in Jesus Christ. [/] A.N. WILSON is author of Paul: The Mind Of The Apostle. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Nine Supremes Dis Wise Latina!?!

(Sorry, the muse of sock-it-to-‘em headlines could not be denied.)

It is not encouraging that Judge Sotomayor showed less concern than the four liberal Justices for protecting white employees from being treated differently from other employees based on their race, and for avoiding a de facto quota system. Nor is it encouraging that Judge Sotomayor reached this result without appearing to engage the issue, through a summary order that may well have been intended to bury the claims of the white firefighters. But such is the jurisprudence of the "wise Latina" jurist President Obama has nominated for the Supreme Court.

From a Power Line Blog .com post, RICCI: THE MAJORITY'S WAY, THE DISSENTERS' WAY, AND SOTOMAYOR'S WAY, more below.

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

More from a Power Line Blog .com post, RICCI: [...] SOTOMAYOR'S WAY:

RICCI: THE MAJORITY'S WAY, THE DISSENTERS' WAY, AND SOTOMAYOR'S WAY [/] Power Line Blog: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul Mirengoff [/] June 29, 2009 Posted by Paul at 1:39 PM

[…] In Ricci, the Supreme Court was called upon to decide whether, or under what circumstances, an employer can discard the results of a facially neutral selection device in order to favor members of a particular racial group, where the purpose of doing so is to avoid a potential claim of disparate impact discriminaton. The City argued that employers should be able to do so where they have a "good faith belief" that this step is necessary to avoid liability for disparate impact discrimination.

The Ricci majority rejected this view. Justice Kennedy explained that the "minimal standard" advocated by the City

could cause employers to discard the results of lawful and beneficial promotional examinations even where there is little if any evidence of disparate-impact discrimination. That would amount to a de facto quota system in which a focus on statistics could put undue pressure on employers to adopt inappropriate prophylactic measures.

This is the heart of the matter. For more than 30 years, since my days as a government civil rights lawyer, important elements of the civil rights community and the civil rights bureaucracy have wanted employers to relax their standards to the extent necessary to guarantee that minorities enjoy proportional representation in the workplace. This urge has increased over the years, as it has often seemed that no matter how hard employers try to create tests and other selection devices that will not adversely affect minorities, they continue to come up short (or, stated differently, minorities continue to come up short on the tests).

For example, in the New Haven case, the city took testimony from a professor at Boston College whose area of "expertise" was "race and culture as they influence performance on tests and other assessment procedures." Declining even to look at the City's exam, she testified that no matter what test the City had administered it would have revealed a disparity between blacks and whites, as well as Hispanics and whites, particularly on a written test. In the 1960s, liberals would considered such a claim to "racist." These days, some liberals liberal rely on it.

Today's decision represents a setback to those who would impose a de facto quota regime. Employers will not be allowed to throw up their hands and abandon selection criteria merely because the criteria have an adverse impact on minorities and they don't feel like being sued (or in the case of political entitiies, because they want to favor, or curry favor with, minority groups and cite the risk of litigation as an excuse for doing so).

Under the standard articulated for the majority by Justice Kennedy, an employer may discard the results of a selection device that would have an adverse impact on minorities only if the employer has a "strong basis in the evidence" to believe that using the selection device would cause it to violate Title VII by engaging in disparate impact discrimination. Thus, the employer must have a strong basis in the evidence to believe that (1) using the device will result in disparate impact and (2) the test cannot be justified under the job relatedness/business necessiity standard or (3) there exists an equally valid, less-discriminatory alternative selection device that it refused to adopt.

Justice Ginsburg, in dissent, argued for a more lenient standard than the majority's "strong basis in the evidence" test. The dissenters would uphold the discarding of results from a test with a disparate impact where "the employer has good cause to believe the device would not withstand examination for business necessity." Depending on how this standard were applied, it could perhaps be sufficient to avoid a de facto quota system, and Justice Ginsburg made a point of claiming (albeit not very persuasively) that her standard would, in fact, avoid that result.

In any event, even the dissent's more lenient standard is a departure from that endorsed by Judge Sotomayor. As Justice Ginsburg wrote in footnote 10, "the lower courts focused on respondents' 'intent' rather than on whether respondents in fact had good cause to act." In other words, Judge Sotomayor refused to demand even that New Haven have "good cause" (never mind a strong basis in the evidence) to believe that it was vulnerable to a meritorious suit for disparate impact discrimination, before depriving the white firefighers of promotions they would have received had they been black.

It is not encouraging that Judge Sotomayor showed less concern than the four liberal Justices for protecting white employees from being treated differently from other employees based on their race, and for avoiding a de facto quota system. Nor is it encouraging that Judge Sotomayor reached this result without appearing to engage the issue, through a summary order that may well have been intended to bury the claims of the white firefighters. But such is the jurisprudence of the "wise Latina" jurist President Obama has nominated for the Supreme Court. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Radical Christianity? Good or Bad?

”Radical” has the basic meaning of “uproot”. – “Mark 4:16-17 KJV […] when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; 17 And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, […]”

I realized that during that time of my life my obsession was in obliterating myself in subjugation to the idea of salvation. My mantras of the time were to "lose my life for Christ" and to "pick up my cross and follow Him." And this tendency to destroy the self in this manner can be found amongst radicals of almost all political and religious ideologies -- you certainly show how leftist and Islamist radicals do it. [/] Radicalism is a universal phenomenon that can be fueled by almost any ideology. And sometimes these radicalisms stumble upon common objectives. [My emphasis]

From a Front Page Mag .com article, FrontPage Interview, more below:

Taking up your cross and following Jesus is, in the context of the gospels, a call to the “so great salvation” later made available through the blood sacrifice of the Son of God. Interpreting these passages as a mere call to self sacrifice has led many astray.

I report and link. You decide. - J:)

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. - 2nd Corinthians 2:14

From a Front Page Mag .com article, FrontPage Interview
(David Swindle interviewed by Jamie Glazov):

FP: What books have influenced you and made you reconsider your radical past?

Swindle: The first book which showed me how I might take conservatism seriously and eventually begin to develop my own variation of the philosophy was Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul. I read it while I was still a leftist but Sullivan's description of "a conservatism of doubt" really struck a chord with the passionate agnostic in me. (Even if movement conservatives are still pissed at Sullivan for x, y, and z they simply must read his book. It's wonderful.)

This understanding of conservatism set me up for David[ Horowitz]'s work. Having read almost all of them now my favorite is still The Politics of Bad Faith. David articulates a compelling case for understanding the Left as a religious movement. It's an idea that just rings so true. Uncivil Wars, with its exciting, unifying vision of the American Idea is also one of his books whose praises I can't sing loud enough.

On the subject of the intersection of religious and political faiths, though, your recent book, United In Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror really sent my mind exploring over the ideological terrain I'd explored -- but surely not in the way you would have guessed. Because the radicalism it forced me to reflect on was not the leftist radicalism of my college years but the Christian radicalism of my junior high and high school years. My deep agnosticism didn't emerge from nowhere. From 1995 up through about 2000 the driving pursuit in my life wasn't political but religious. I was a zealous Evangelical Christian on an intense mission to try and convert as many people as possible so they could escape the fires of hell. Your book made me reflect on this time of my life primarily because of what you wrote about in your chapter "Cravings for Death," what I reflected on in my FrontPage essay.

I realized that during that time of my life my obsession was in obliterating myself in subjugation to the idea of salvation. My mantras of the time were to "lose my life for Christ" and to "pick up my cross and follow Him." And this tendency to destroy the self in this manner can be found amongst radicals of almost all political and religious ideologies -- you certainly show how leftist and Islamist radicals do it.

Radicalism is a universal phenomenon that can be fueled by almost any ideology. And sometimes these radicalisms stumble upon common objectives. That's why you find the "Unholy Alliance" which David first wrote about and which you elaborated on in your own book. Having made these connections I've become intensely interested in what I refer to as "the radical spirit" and the attempt to figure out how those of us possessed of it can channel it into more productive directions than the radicals you and David have been so good at critiquing.

FP: Are you still a Christian? Tell us how your spiritual journey has evolved during your political transition.

Swindle: It depends on who we let define what it means to be a Christian. If one must believe in things like the Virgin Birth, the talking snake, and the inerrancy of the Bible then I'm not a Christian. But if we define "Christian" more broadly as I do, and we understand Christianity as a love for the ideas and example of Christ, then I'm very much still a Christian. I still read the Bible, consider its teaching, and seek to emulate Christ's call to live a life of absolute love for humanity. I want to internalize the spirit and metaphors of Christianity while discarding its archaic, and often downright destructive dogmas. (I hold this exact same attitude about the Left by the way. "Progressive dreams pursued through conservative means" remains one of my mantras.)

During my leftist college days I often drifted into exploring mystical and occult ideas. I explored the writings of Aleister Crowley and the variant of chaos magic advocated by comics author Grant Morrison. And I still find the magical metaphor to be a useful, intriguing way of looking at the world.

More recently, though, I've been strongly influenced by George[ Wolfe]'s Inter-Faith spirituality. […] This spiritual approach has seemed to fit so well that my wife April and I chose to have George marry us in an Inter-Faith wedding ceremony which was held on May 16. I find this spiritual outlook fits with my agnostic tendency and lines up pretty well with M. Scott Peck's fourth stage of spiritual growth -- a model for understanding spirituality that I find accurate and useful. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Iran's Axis of Nuclear Evil

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

From a Wall Street Journal article, Iran's Axis of Nuclear Evil:

Iran's Axis of Nuclear Evil [/] By JOHN BOLTON [/] Saturday, March 21, 2009

While President Obama's unanticipated Nowruz holiday greeting to Iran generated considerable press attention, his video wasn't really this week's big news related to the Islamic Republic.

Far more important was that a senior defector -- Iran's former Deputy Minister of Defense Ali Reza Asghari – disclosed Tehran's financing of Syria's nuclear weapons program. That program's centerpiece was a North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel destroyed it in September 2007.

At this point, it is impossible to ignore Iran's active efforts to expand, improve and conceal its nuclear weapons program in Syria while it pretends to "negotiate" with Britain, France and Germany (the "EU-3"). No amount of video messages will change this reality. The question is whether this new information about Iran will sink in, or if Washington will continue to turn a blind eye toward Iran's nuclear deceptions.

That the Pyongyang-Damascus-Tehran nuclear axis went undetected and unacknowledged for so long is an intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. It represents a plain unwillingness to allow hard truths to overcome well-entrenched policy views disguised as intelligence findings.

Key elements of our intelligence community (IC) fought against the idea of a Syrian nuclear program for years. In mid-2003, I had a bitter struggle with several IC agencies -- news of which was leaked to the press -- concerning my testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the Syrian program. Then Sen. Joe Biden made the Syria testimony an issue in my 2005 confirmation battle to become ambassador to the United Nations, alleging that I had tried to hype concern about Syria's nuclear intentions. (In fact, my testimony, in both its classified and unclassified versions, was far more anodyne than the facts warranted.)

Key IC agencies made two arguments in 2003 against the possibility of a clandestine Syrian nuclear weapons program. First, they argued that Syria lacked the scientific and technological capabilities to sustain such a program. Second, they said that Syria did not have the necessary economic resources to fund a program. [/] These assertions were not based on highly classified intelligence. Instead, they were personal views that some IC members developed based on public information. The intelligence that did exist -- which I thought warranted close observation of Syria, at a minimum -- the IC discounted as inconsistent with its fixed opinions. In short, theirs was not an intelligence conclusion, but a policy view presented under the guise of intelligence.

How wrong they were.

As for Syria's technical expertise, North Korea obviously had the scientific and technological ability to construct the reactor, which was essentially a clone of the North's own at Yongbyon. Moreover, it is entirely possible that Syria's nuclear program -- undertaken with Pyongyang's assistance -- is even more extensive. We will certainly never know from Syria directly, since Damascus continues to deny it has any nuclear program whatever. It's also stonewalling investigation efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency. [/] As for Syria's ability to finance a nuclear program, Iran could easily supply whatever Syria might need -- even in a time of fluctuating oil prices. Moreover, given Iran's hegemony over Syria, it is impossible to believe Syria would ever undertake extensive nuclear cooperation with North Korea without Iran's acquiescence. Iran was likely an active partner in a three-way joint venture on the reactor, supplying key financial support and its own share of scientific knowledge. Cooperation on ballistic missile programs between Pyongyang and Tehran is longstanding and well-advanced, and thereby forms a basis of trust for nuclear cooperation. Moreover, both Iran and North Korea share a common incentive: to conceal illicit nuclear weapons programs from international scrutiny. What better way to hide such programs than to conduct them in a third country where no one is looking?

Uncovering the North Korean reactor in Syria was a grave inconvenience for the Bush administration. It enormously complicated both the failing six-party talks on North Korea and the EU-3's diplomatic efforts with Iran, which Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice so actively supported.

Mr. Asghari's revelations about Iranian financing of Syria's nuclear program -- if borne out – will have precisely the same negative impact on Obama administration policies, since they track Mr. Bush's so closely. In fact, the two administrations' approaches differ only to the extent that Mr. Obama is poised to pursue policies, like face-to-face negotiations with Iran, that the second term Bush State Department wanted to do, but faced too much internal dissonance to implement.

The Nowruz video reflects the dominant view within the Obama administration that its "open hand" will be reciprocated. It's likely Iran will respond affirmatively to the near-plaintive administration request to "engage." [/] And why not? Such dialogue allows Iran to conceal its true intentions and activities under the camouflage of negotiations, just as it has done for the past six years with the EU-3. What's more, Iran will see it as confirmation of U.S. weakness and evidence that its policies are succeeding.

There is very little time for Mr. Obama to change course before he is committed to negotiations. He could start by following Iran's money trail.

Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations" (Simon & Schuster, 2007). [My ellipses and emphasis]

Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

From an American Thinker .com article, Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths:

Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths [/] By James Lewis [/] September 25, 2008

"... the community organizer ... must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.' [/] -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

"THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT --- An analysis of the Alinsky Model." [/] -- Hillary Clinton, BA Honors Thesis, Wellesley College, 1969.

"(Barack) Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing...." [/] -- The Nation

A psychopath is a person without conscience; someone who constantly breaks the moral rules of the community. Saul Alinsky was a "community organizer" who found a career that fit that personality disorder. In the Orwellian upside-down world of the Left, community organizers disorganize communities. That is the meaning of revolution, to overturn whatever exists today in the raw pursuit of one's own power.

Alinsky boasted about his close alliance with Frank Nitti, Al Capone's second in command in the Chicago Mob during the 1930s. Al Capone's Mob were domestic terrorists, and not for any noble cause either. They poisoned the Chicago politics of their era. Alinsky's close alliance with Frank Nitti tells us something crucially important today. Alinsky was also a lifelong ally of the Stalin-controlled Communist Party, at a time when Stalin was known to have murdered tens of millions of people. He was proud of building a bridge between organized crime and the power hungry Left. That tacit alliance may continue today.

Alinsky's personality fits the definition of a psychopath -- someone who has no guilt or shame toward others. But Alinsky also discovered how to teach psychopathic behavior to college students. That is the key to his success: To persuade hundreds of thousands of ignorant young people that it is much more moral to be immoral. Or, as Bill Ayers famously said, "Bring the Revolution home; kill your parents."

Bill Ayers is now a highly influential professor of education. That is not an accident; it reflects a deliberate program of radical agitation and propaganda through the school systems. If you want to know who brought down American education, Bill Ayers is part of the answer.

A lot of the Boomer Left is marked by psychopathic behavior, in politics and in the rest of life. That is why the actions of the Left are so shocking to many of us.

Alinsky's disciples -- including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- have a warlike political style. They learned politics as war from the Master. Obama is so well-trained in Alinsky tactics that he used to teach workshops on it. That is why Obama can knowingly violate Federal law against usurping the presidential power to negotiate with Iraq before ever getting elected. Actual election to head of state by the voters means nothing, just as it means nothing to Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, who have negotiated with Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood in clear violation of law while serving in Congress.

Teaching hatred for the normal majority is the key to power for radicals. But Alinsky taught that you can't easily hate millions of people. To do that effectively you need a one-person scapegoat to focus all your hatred on. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." That is the politics of personal destruction, and it doesn't matter if the target is black like Clarence Thomas, or a woman like Sarah Palin, or a severely wounded war veteran like John McCain.

That is why Obama is now instructing his followers to "get in their faces" of those Americans who are not down for his cause. Obama acts like a nice guy, but he is a political warmonger. He's been very clear about that: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." That's the language of gang war.

Today we can see the Left's rage reaction to John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin. The New York Sun quoted one feminist saying "All of my women friends, a week ago Monday, were on the verge of throwing themselves out windows ...People were flipping out. ... Every woman I know was in high hysteria over this. Everyone was just beside themselves with terror that this woman could be our president -- our potential next president." [/] The "comedienne" Sandra Bernhard suggested that Sarah Palin would be "gang-raped by blacks in Manhattan" if she dared to go there.

A British Leftist writing for Pravda (!) called "Sarah Palin - The Devil in disguise... [/]

Sarah Palin, Mrs. Nobody know-it-all shreiking cow from Alaska, the joke of American politics, plied with a couple of vodkas ... cheap little guttersnipe ... suppose you shut up ... you pith-headed little bimbo from the back of beyond ... So next time suppose you keep your mouth shut and while you're at it, make sure the members of your family keep their legs shut too. ... "

That warlike rage has been systematically whipped up over decades by the Left. That's what college "Women's Studies" does, just as "Black Studies" is deliberately designed to whip up black rage and victimhood. Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis is a case in point.

Alinsky called ordinary Americans "the enemy." Normal people don't declare war on all of society. But Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals that radicals

"...have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt ... They are right ... "

Normal, decent America is the enemy for these people. Obama and Hillary are lifelong followers of Alinsky. They use his tactics and ideology. That is why American politics became the politics of personal destruction when the Boomer Left came to power.

These claims require proof; but we have been looking straight at the evidence since the first Clinton term. Bill Clinton fits the diagnostic description of psychopathic personality, now relabeled "antisocial personality' in the DSM IV, the official diagnostic manual for psychiatry. Three out of the following seven criteria nails the diagnosis:

1. Failure to conform to social norms ... [/] 2. Deceitfulness ... or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; [/] 3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead; [/] 4. Irritability and aggressiveness ... ; [/] 5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others; [/] 6. Consistent irresponsibility ... ; [/] 7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

I would give Mr. Clinton credit for Numbers 1, 2, 6, and 7, and possibly 3 (impulsivity) and 4 (irritability and aggressiveness). Dick Morris, who advised the Clintons for 20 years, describes dramatic scenes that certainly fit the description. Or Bill's inability to stick with a meeting agenda, impulsively running endless bull sessions at the White House. As for 5, his picking up women opportunistically and in a way that put his career, not to mention his family life and American security, at risk. The Monica affair showed an impulsive, reckless president who got into power by endless lying and conning.

Liberal Democrats used to be normal Americans before the Boomer Left rose to power. Hubert Humphrey and Harry Truman had a strong sense of American morality. They despised the Stalinist Left and fought to keep them out of the Democrat Party. They were sensitive to ordinary shame and guilt, the emotions that make us civilized. When Bob Dole asked "Where is the shame?" in the 1996 presidential election, the answer came out: Not in the modern Democrat Party. People without guilt or shame make merciless power mongers.

Normal people slow down in School Zones where kids might run across the street -- not because they're afraid of getting a speeding ticket but because they can't stand the thought of hurting kids. They don't need to cheat compulsively on wives and husbands to prove how irresistible they are. Normal people have internalized some modesty and humility, and are capable of respect and love for others. A common feature of psychopaths is the inability to feel authentic love and respect for others.

True psychopaths are often charming, seductive, and treacherous. They make natural con artists. Many psychopaths are extremely manipulative -- and what is more manipulative than stirring up hatred among victim groups to empower oneself? That is Jeremiah Wright, the diabolical Father Pfleger, James Meeks, and by his own definition of radicals, Saul Alinsky.

The worst are "malevolent psychopaths" -- people who sadistically hurt others. Hitler and Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, and probably many famous Western intellectuals fit the description of malevolent psychopaths. That is tragic and shocking. Historian Paul Johnson presents compelling evidence for malevolent psychopathy in the life of Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, and many others in his important book Intellectuals. Western intellectuals have been the home team of Leftist radicalism for a century now.

But the single most important point about Alinsky's "community organizing" strategy is that normal people can be trained to act like psychopaths: To become convinced that a "higher morality" allows them to act without conscience. As Alinsky wrote admiringly about V.I. Lenin, well known as a large-scale murder leader:

"Lenin was a pragmatist; ... he said that the Bolsheviks stood for getting power through the ballot box but would reconsider after they got the guns!" [/] That is a laugh line, believe it or not.

Alinsky called this "pragmatic radicalism." He differed from his Communist friends only in being more practical and less ideological. Alinsky was a radical because it suited his personality, because it was fun, brought him power and influence, and made him feel good. He was very clear in saying that, and he inspired the Boomer Left to follow his lead.

Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals: [/] "... to the very first radical . . . who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer."

If that doesn't send a shiver down your back, you haven't been paying attention. [/] James Lewis occasionally blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com [My ellipses and emphasis]

Thank God America Isn't Like Europe -- Yet

Wisdom in the Washington Post?!? Will wonders ever cease?!?

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

From a Washington Post article, Thank God America Isn't Like Europe -- Yet:

Thank God America Isn't Like Europe – Yet [/] By Charles Murray [/] Sunday, March 22, 2009; [Page] B02

Do we want the United States to be like Europe? [/] The European model has worked in many ways. I am delighted whenever I get a chance to go to Stockholm or Amsterdam, not to mention Rome or Paris. There's a lot to like -- a lot to love -- about day-to-day life in Europe. But I argue that the answer to this question is "no." Not for economic reasons. I want to focus on another problem with the European model: namely, that it drains too much of the life from life.

The stuff of life -- the elemental events surrounding birth, death, raising children, fulfilling one's personal potential, dealing with adversity, intimate relationships – occurs within just four institutions: family, community, vocation and faith. Seen in this light, the goal of social policy is to ensure that those institutions are robust and vital. The European model doesn't do that. It enfeebles every single one of them.

Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. The nations of Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their "child-friendly" policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. They are countries where jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And with only a few exceptions, they are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.

Call it the Europe Syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. Afterward, a few of the 20-something members of the audience came up and said plainly that the phrase "a life well-lived" did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and they saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality that goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.

If that's the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that's the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble? If that's the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that's the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?

I stand in awe of Europe's past. Which makes Europe's present all the more dispiriting. And should make it something that concentrates our minds wonderfully, for every element of the Europe Syndrome is infiltrating American life as well. The European model provides the intellectual framework for the social policies of the Democratic Party, and it faces no credible opposition from Republican politicians.

Yet not only is the European model inimical to human flourishing, I predict that 21st-century science is going to explain why. A tidal change in our scientific understanding of what makes humans tick is coming, and it will spill over into every crevice of political and cultural life. As Harvard's Edward O. Wilson argues in his book "Consilience," the social sciences are increasingly going to be shaped by the findings of science. It's already happening. Whether it's psychologists discovering how fetal testosterone affects sex differences in children's behavior or geneticists using haplotypes to differentiate the Dutch from the Italians, the hard sciences are encroaching on questions of race, class and gender that have been at the center of modern social science. And the tendency of the findings lets us predict with some confidence the broad outlines of what the future will bring.

Two premises about human beings are at the heart of the social democratic agenda: what I label "the equality premise" and "the New Man premise." The equality premise says that, in a fair society, different groups of people -- men and women, blacks and whites, straights and gays – will naturally have the same distributions of outcomes in life -- the same mean income, the same mean educational attainment, the same proportions who become janitors and who become CEOs. When that doesn't happen, it is because of bad human behavior and an unfair society. Much of the Democratic Party's proposed domestic legislation assumes that this is true.

I'm confident that within a decade, the weight of the new scientific findings will force the left to abandon the equality premise. But if social policy cannot be built on the premise that group differences must be eliminated, what can it be built upon? It can be built upon the premise that used to be part of the warp and woof of American idealism: People must be treated as individuals. The success of social policy is to be measured not by equality of outcomes for groups, but by the freedom of individuals, acting upon their personal abilities, aspirations and values, to seek the kind of life that best suits them.

The second tendency of the new findings of biology will be to show that the New Man premise -- which says that human beings are malleable through the right government interventions -- is nonsense. Human nature tightly constrains what is politically or culturally possible. More than that, the new findings will confirm that human beings are pretty much the way that wise observers have thought for thousands of years.

The effects on the policy debate will be sweeping. Let me give you a specific example. For many years, I have been among those who argue that the growth in births to unmarried women has been a social catastrophe -- the single most important force behind the growth of the underclass. But while other scholars and I have been able to prove that other family structures have not worked as well as the traditional family, I cannot prove that alternatives could not work as well, and so the social democrats keep coming up with the next new program that will compensate for the absence of fathers.

Over the next few decades, advances in evolutionary psychology are going to be conjoined with advances in genetic understanding, and I predict that they will lead to a scientific consensus that goes something like this: There are genetic reasons why boys who grow up in neighborhoods without married fathers tend to reach adolescence unsocialized to norms of behavior that they will need to stay out of prison and hold jobs. We will still be able to acknowledge that many single women do a wonderful job of raising their children. But social democrats will have to acknowledge that the traditional family plays a special, indispensable role in human flourishing and that social policy must be based on that truth.

For some years a metaphor has been stuck in my mind: The 20th century was the adolescence of Homo sapiens. Nineteenth-century science, from Darwin to Freud, offered a series of body blows to ways of thinking about human life that had prevailed since the dawn of civilization. Humans, just like adolescents, were deprived of some of the comforting simplicities of childhood and exposed to more complex knowledge about the world. And 20th-century intellectuals reacted precisely the way adolescents react when they think they have discovered that Mom and Dad are hopelessly out of date. It was as if they thought that if Darwin was right about evolution, then Aquinas was no longer worth reading; that if Freud was right about the unconscious mind, then the Nicomachean Ethics had nothing to teach us.

The nice thing about adolescence is that it is temporary, and when it passes, people discover that their parents were smarter than they thought. I think that may be happening with the advent of the new century. All of us who deal in social policy will be thinking less like adolescents, entranced with the most titillating new idea, and more like grown-ups. But that will not stop America's slide toward the European model. For that, there must be a kind of political Great Awakening among America's elites. They will have to ask themselves how much they value what has made America exceptional, and what they are willing to do to preserve it.

The trouble is that American elites of all political stripes have increasingly withdrawn to gated communities -- literally or figuratively -- where they never interact at an intimate level with people not of their own socioeconomic class. Over the last half-century, the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, and never having had a close friend who hadn't gotten at least 600 on her verbal SAT.

America's elites must once again fall in love with what makes America different. The drift toward the European model can be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious. [/] Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from his 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture. [My ellipses and emphasis]

POLL BJon Blame Fritzl’s Mother For His Horrendous Abuse Of His Daughter?

(Josef Fritzl was recently sentenced to life in a psychiatric facility for imprisoning and massively abusing his children and grandchildren for twenty-four years.)

See article below, and: Vote! Make your opinion (or lack thereof) count!! Vote at Adult Christian Forum Thread 139419!!!. (Choices and link also given after article below.)

Why did Fritzl feel the need to dominate someone to such a degree? [/] Time and again, in his jail cell and in court this week, he has cited the influence of his mother, a woman of stern principles and iron discipline, whom he claims forbade him to have friends and sought to 'protect' him from the wild, wicked world outside. [/] 'My mother used to stop me having friends,' he told the court. 'I was not allowed to have any until I was 12. [/] 'I did manage to have one secret friend, but the friend bitterly let me down. I decided not to have any friends after that.'

Thinking, as he must have, that his mother loved him, he submitted himself completely to her will. Ever afterwards his notion of love was perverted. [/] For him, it meant an expression of absolute power - and recipients of this love would be expected to demonstrate unquestioning acquiescence. [/] Normal human relationships are utterly impossible for a man with such convictions. [/] People are not robotic and predictable, as he would like them to be; they are messy and surprising. They do not respond according to the rules. They do not fit with our preconceived ideas of what they should say or do.

[...] A control sadist like Fritzl, who is inherently terrified of this unpredictability, will create a different universe in which nobody says no, and nobody upsets the order which he imposes by his own will. [/] Fritzl did so in a literal sense, by building an airless and lightless dungeon beneath his house, and leading his second, secret fantasy-life inside it - a life he also shared with other living souls whom he reduced to objects he could manipulate.

That is the reason why he did not speak to Elisabeth for years and years, but always copulated in silence. [/] If he spoke, then she might reply, and that was dangerous, for it would remind him - and declare to herself too - that she was human and not an object or a thing required for his pleasure. It was essential for Fritzl that she should be deprived of vitality and reduced to an object, and for this to happen she had to be voiceless. [/] Literally, she was the living dead - which explains my nauseous sense that there are worse things than murder, and why we all shudder with contempt for this man and what he has done with his own offspring.

From a Daily Mail [U.K.] article, What kind of human being can this be?, more follows:

What kind of human being can this be? [/] By Brian Masters [/] Last updated at 1:27 PM on 18th March 2009

For more than 25 years now, I have pondered, examined and attempted to comprehend some of the most baffling and sordid cases of serial murder. [/] I wrote a biography of serial killer Denis Nilsen, and covered the trial of Rosemary West. [/] But the Josef Fritzl case makes me wonder if there are not degradations of the soul more deeply squalid even than murder.

This man did not kill his daughter; but he did take her life while she remained living, thus condemning her to be witness to her own obliteration. [/] He is said to have raped her up to 3,000 times over 24 years - mechanically, indifferently, and in front of other members of his incestuous family in the cellar. He is said not to have addressed a word to her for the first nine years of her ordeal. [/] All this is unimaginably cruel, and yet we must consider what makes a man descend to such wickedness?

It is no good merely to weep and wail: for the sake of our own humanity, we are obliged to work out what manner of a man this is. [/] […] [/] But it is not the sadism which looks for gratification simply in the infliction of pain and contemplation of suffering; it is the sadism of blind selfishness.

Fritzl was determined to have his way at all costs. He was determined not to be thwarted; nor to be challenged or resisted. He even used the word 'kingdom' to describe his ghastly dungeon. Only he could enter his domain, and those inside were subjected to his terrifying rule. [/] Grotesque though it is to contemplate, we can hardly be surprised that his obsessive urge to exert control without any fear of reprisal led to incest. [/] For what weaker victim is there than your own child, who not only would be too frightened to argue, but would also be inclined to assume that all was as it should be, since it is the child's wish to trust?

As Elisabeth Fritzl emerged from childhood into puberty and adolescence, she would have realised the desperate trap into which she had been enticed by a father who so appallingly abused her innocence and trust. [/] But by then she would also have come to accept that it was too late to do anything but subject herself to his relentless abuse. Her thoughts must truly have been of blackest despair, that her tormentor was the one man on Earth she had once believed was inherently responsible for her happiness. […] [My ellipses and emphasis]

Poll Question: Blame Fritzl’s Mother For His Horrendous Abuse Of His Daughter? | Poll choices:

1. Yes. Visiting iniquity upon descendents. / 2. Yes. Freud was right. / 3. Yes. Fritzl permanently crippled emotionally. / 4. Yes. Extremely evil woman. / 5. Yes. Extremely misguided woman. / 6. Yes. Mother’s parents also to blame. / 7. Yes. All or most of 1-6 above. / 8. Yes. / 9. Possibly. Fritzl may be lying. / 10. Possibly. Not much known about her. / 11. Possibly. Father, others may be more to blame. / 12. Possibly. / 13. No. / 14. No. The wickedness of the wicked is upon him. / 15. No. She did what she could. / 16. No. Freud was wrong. / 17. No. Law of mother not to be kept. / 18. No. His insanity of unknown origin. / 19. No opinion. Important issues deserve much study. / 20. No comment. / 21. No opinion. / 22. This poll is worthless. / 23. This poll is of negative value. / 24. Other.

Vote at Adult Christian Forum Thread 139419! Vote!! Make your opinion (or lack thereof) count!!!

Disown, Ask, and Receive

From a forum post

{{___ Good question. }}

Not sure what question you are referring to.

{{___ Because we are not perfect we fall.}}

Adam did not fall from imperfection but from a deliberate disobedience of an explicit command or law that God had placed him under.

Christians today are not under law as was Adam in Eden and Israel under the law of Moses.

The born again are completely forgiven of all imperfections, past, present, and future.

Although the heart may say that one has failed, God is greater than our hearts. His Word and His Spirit testify that foregiveness is complete.

{{___ This is why I believe Jesus says to deny ourself daily.}}

I have always taken the daily to apply only to taking up one's cross. Leedy's diagram of the verse agrees. And this instruction took place before the crucifixion. It does not have precise application today.

In the process of conversion, we deny or disown ourselves. Jesus is accepted as Lord. He now "owns" us, particularly as to all we are and have in this world. Our new possessions are spiritual and eternal and are not to be disowned or denied.

{{___ From this I think Jesus means for us to stay in denial of ourself all the time.}}

The memories of the old man and his ways must be pushed aside explicitly at times and the focus placed once again on Jesus and the putting on of the new man, the putting on of the armor of light, the putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ.

{{___ Then we keep open the door for the Holy Spirit to indewll us.}}

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit does not cease. The door only has to be opened at conversion. The internal witness of the new personal spirit of the born again supported by the witness of the indwelling Holy Spirit that one is a child of God is always there when it is sought.

{{___ It may be Jesus knew we may rely on when we were born again for denial but Jesus wants us to stay in denial of ourself all the time.}}

There is no sense in repeating the denial of self when the Word and the inner spiritual witness tell us that denial followed by the gift of saving faith is evelastingly sufficient. A better way of stating what I think you are getting at is that we should always remember that we belong to Jesus now, as members of His Body in fact, and that we no longer belong to ourselves. Our commitment at conversion is accepted and superceded by God's eternal and irrevocable commitment to us as His sons.

Joe the Plumber Reports from Terrorist Missle Target, Sderot in Israel

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

From a Power Line Blog .com article, Joe the Plumber, live from Sderot:

Joe the Plumber, live from Sderot [/] Power Line Blog: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul Mirengoff [/] http://www.powerlineblog.com [/] January 11, 2009 Posted by Scott at 8:44 PM
The Jerusalem Post reports that Joe the Plumber has arrived in Israel. By noon today he had made it to Sderot. By my estimation, he has gotten a better handle on the situation than his supposed betters in the media:

"You should be ashamed of yourself," he told foreign reporters [[foreign from Jerusalem Post perspective]].

"You should be patriotic, protect your family and children, not report like you have been doing for the past two weeks since this war has started," he said.

Wurzelbacher, the man who stole the limelight from Republican presidential candidate John McCain during the American election campaign, has found a new job - as a correspondent for the Internet Web sites PJTV and Pajamas Media.

Armed with a camera and a temporary Government Press Office card, he got a taste of reality in Sderot, visiting a house hit by a Kassam rocket two weeks ago and experiencing a "Code Red" alert first-hand. He also observed and reported from the house where a Kassam landed on Sunday afternoon.

The people of Sderot "can't do normal things day to day," like get soap in their eyes in the shower, for fear a rocket might come in, Wurzelbacher said. "I'm sure they're taking quick showers. I know I would."

He also wondered why Israel waited so long to act. "I know if I were a citizen here, I'd be d%%%%d upset." He described himself as a "peaceloving man," but added, "when someone hits me, I'm going to unload on the boy. And if the rest of the world doesn't understand that, then I'm sorry."

Is there any chance Pajamas can send Joe on to Beirut, Damascus and Tehran after he completes his assignment in Israel? I think he could teach the media reporting from those locales how to do it right as well. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Obama‘s D. C.: Already “Clown-Car Fast Lane“?

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

From a National Review .com article, Life in the Clown-Car Fast Lane:

Life in the Clown-Car Fast Lane [/] And the party has not even started yet! [/] January 05, 2009, 4:00 a.m. [/] By David Kahane

Can you believe it? Barack Hussein Obama II hasn’t even been inaugurated yet and he’s already been interviewed by federal prosecutors in the ongoing Blago mess; he’s seen Bill Richardson immolate himself rather than stand the federal grand-jury scrutiny that would have come with his appointment as Commerce Secretary; his boy Rahm Emanuel is both en pointe, having resigned the House seat that was previously warmed by Hot Rod [[Blago]] and Dan Rostenkowski [[ In 1994, Rostenkowski was indicted on corruption charges and stepped down as Ways and Means chairman; he lost his House seat in the Congressional elections later that year. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1996, and was fined and served (1996–97) a 17-month sentence. … Rostenkowski was pardoned by President Clinton in 2000.]], and, apparently, on Patrick Fitzgerald’s tapes too; and he’s facing the prospect of the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, standing like a homunculus George Wallace in the schoolhouse door, ready to deny entrance to a black man when Roland “We Are the Senator” Burris tries to take Bambi’s [[Obama’s]] hardly-even-used seat tomorrow.

And here we Democrats thought the Clinton administration could never be topped!

You people had better get used to it, though, because hijinks and shenanigans like these are going to be the order of the day for at least the next four years. After all, we are the Tammany Party — the party of Slavery, Segregation, Sedition, and Surrender — so this sort of thing is not exactly new for us. Just look at our track record: We rightfully opposed the tyrant Lincoln with a loser general running on an antiwar platform, we perfected defensive election theft with Boss Tweed to save us from the plutocrats and goo-goos, [[The goo-goos, or good government guys, were political groups founded in an era when urban municipal governments in the United States were dominated by machine politics. … In New York, the exclusive City Club was the domain of "goo-goos," who sponsored "Good Government Clubs" in every assembly district. Their efforts led to the election of a reform mayor in 1894, a setback for the political machine known as Tammany Hall. - Wikipedia]] and we formed an unholy alliance with gangland to get Franklin D. Roosevelt the Democratic nod over Al Smith at our convention in (where else?) Chicago in 1932.

We are the party of Barack Obama and the Daley Machine; the party of the Clintons and their amazing alchemistic Library, which turns Saudi dross into altruistic gold; the party of Tony Rezko and Norman Hsu; the party of vaporizing fundraisers, absconding bagmen and sitting New Mexico governors (and a recent presidential “candidate”) currently under federal investigation for allegedly steering a state contract in the direction of one of his big backers, David Rubin of CDR Financial Products in Beverly Hills. Now comes word that Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state-designate, Congress and the Emoluments Clause willing, got millions of dollars for a mall in Syracuse shortly after the developer coughed up a hundred grand for the Bill Clinton “Foundation.” That’s what I call commerce!

We are also the party of Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who’s currently under “investigation” by the House “Ethics” Committee for a myriad of dubious practices, including using campaign contributions to pay his parking tickets.

Best of all, we are the party of the ineffable Christopher Dodd (D., Countrywide), another recent “presidential candidate” who in appearance and demeanor is a throwback to the great days of Tammany mugs. It was Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who got a sweetheart mortgage deal as a “Friend of Angelo” Mozilo, the disgraced former head of Countrywide Financial; Dodd who steadfastly denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in trouble — perhaps his status as the No. 1 recipient of their campaign largesse had something to do with his unshakeable faith in them; and Dodd who has promised to release the paperwork concerning his hinky mortgages but, of course, hasn’t.

The War Hero [[John Kerry, 2004 Democratic presidential nomineee]] will release his Navy service records, which show him racking up medals faster than Audie Murphy in his 16 weeks of “combat,” before the son of disgraced Connecticut senator Thomas J. Dodd releases his paperwork. Yes, that’s right — Chris’s old man was censured by the Senate in 1967 for behavior “contrary to good morals, [that] derogates from the public trust expected of a senator, and tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.” And now Chris seems headed down the path to the same fate, although how it’s possible to bring a Senate that includes such stalwart Democrats as John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, Jay Rockefeller, Carl Levin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, and Hillary Clinton into disrepute seems hard to fathom.

Still, as the Connecticut Post recently editorialized: “[Dodd] says there was nothing untoward about the mortgage rate he received from Countrywide Financial, a company that was heavily involved in the nationwide mortgage collapse. He feigns indignance each time the issue is raised. But he can make the questions stop easily. All he has to do is release documents on two mortgages from Countrywide, each of which seemingly came in with interest figures below the going rate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he should have long ago put this issue to rest.”

But what’s the rush? Like one of the patron saints of Tammany Hall, Richard “Boss” Croker, Dodd’s little tin box has bought him a fine getaway estate in the Ould Sod. Dodd’s little manse in County Galway ought to come in handy when the Senate “Ethics” Committee starts closing in.

All of which, believe it or not, makes me proud to be a Democrat. The fact that we can get away with antics like these — the fact that our clown car is being driven at breakneck speed by real clowns under more or less permanent investigation — makes me laugh. Because you dopes never catch on and, like ^%$&BUSH&^%!, insist on treating us as a legitimate political party of high-minded statesmen instead of the lovable scamps and rapscallions we really are.

It doesn’t matter that Tammany and its mini-Tammanys across the country perfected a system of graft and corruption under the guise of helping the “little guy.” It doesn’t matter that, at various times, a coalition of gangsters, criminals, and Democratic politicians has seized, held, and operated whole states as criminal enterprises:

* Louisiana, where from Jean Lafitte to Huey Long to Edwin Edwards, crime has paid handsomely in this formerly one-party state. Laissez les bon temps rouler! [[Let the good times roll!]]

* New Jersey, where the cozy relationship between the Mob and Trenton is well documented, and where former senator Bob Torricelli — the Torch — loudly proclaimed his innocence in a fundraising scandal right up to the moment he flamed out and quit his reelection race.

* Arkansas, whose governors and U.S. senators were for many years on the gangland payroll run out of Hot Springs by transplanted Tammany gangster Owney Madden, acting in concert with Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky.

* Illinois, where, in a fit of affirmative action, we’ve brought both Republicans and the Jake Lingle Memorial Media into the fold, so that they can go to jail just like Democrats on the rare occasions they’re caught and convicted.

None of it matters. We keep on peddling the same shtick and the suckers keep on buying, and the bigger Big Government gets, the more adherents we garner. Pretty soon, if it hasn’t happened already, the Party of Take will be bigger than the Party of Give and then the Party really will be over. I just hope I’m long retired to my Countrywide-financed estate in Bayonne before it happens.

Which is why this Fitzgerald character has me a little worried. We loved him when we thought he was going to take down Darth Cheney, and even though all he threw us was the scalp of Marc Rich’s lawyer, Scooter Libby, we took our Fitzmas where we could find it. But now that he’s knee-deep in Blagojevich, we’re beginning to change our tune, and the deeper he digs, the more he’s starting to resemble Thomas Dewey. [[Governor of New York (1943-1955) and the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency in 1944 and 1948. … Dewey helped indict and convict Richard Whitney, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, on charges of embezzlement. … Dewey also led law-enforcement efforts to protect dockworkers and poultry farmers and workers from racketeering in New York. … In 1939 Dewey prosecuted American Nazi leader Fritz Kuhn for embezzlement, crippling Kuhn's organization and limiting its ability to support Nazi Germany in the Second World War. … By the late 1930s Dewey's successful efforts against organized crime – and especially his conviction of Lucky Luciano – had turned him into a national celebrity. His nickname, the "Gangbuster", became the name of a popular radio serial based on his fight against the mob. Hollywood film studios even made several movies based on his exploits; one starred Humphrey Bogart as Dewey - Wikipedia]] There are even rumblings that, having requested a three-month extension to bring an indictment against Hot Rod, Paddy Fitz might be looking at a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) beef against the whole darn Combine. [[Chicago Democratic machine]] Mother of Mercy!

But not to worry: BO Jr., can always do what his Democrat predecessor, Bill Clinton, did and fire every single one of the federal prosecutors, P. J. Fitzgerald, Esq., most certainly included. Luckily, folks will still be too busy sleeping off their hangovers and beginning the gestation period of their new babies to notice.

— Although he is a completely fictional character and does not, in fact, exist, David Kahane was born a Democrat, raised a Democrat and will die a Democrat. You can tell him how right he is to be a Democrat at kahanenro@gmail.com. [/] — David Kahane is a nom de cyber for a writer in Hollywood. “David Kahane” is borrowed from a screenwriter character in The Player. [My ellipses and emphasis]

U. S. Assaulted and Battered by Guilty Liberals on Behalf of “Victims“!!!

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

[…] Her thesis this time is that liberals always act like they are being victimized, primarily by the Republican Attack Machine. While in fact, they, with the help of a very biased media, tend to victimize all who disagree with them. […] She also tells the little-reported tale of how Obama won his Illinois Senate seat. During the presidential campaign, Obama was full of sanctimony about keeping candidates’ families off-limits. But, Coulter writes, "The only reason he was in position to run for president in the first place was that the Media Attack Machine ripped open the sealed divorce records of his two principal opponents … Why did no one know that during the 2008 campaign? The fact that Obama won his Senate seat by rifling through the divorce records of his opponents is surely at least as important as the fact that Palin’s teenage daughter got pregnant out of wedlock," she contends.

From The Women on the Web [wowOwow] .com article, Coulter on Caroline Kennedy:, more follows:

Coulter on Caroline Kennedy: 'Every Time She Opens Her Mouth It Gets Worse' [/] (and other gentle musings from the irritatingly leggy author of Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America) [/] By Myrna Blyth [/] [Jan. 5, 2009] 9:00 am

Ann Coulter is at it again. Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America (Crown Forum), the newest book from the leggy, blonde, irritatingly slender liberal-basher hits bookstores this week and is already climbing Amazon’s bestseller list. And so the usual media Ann-a-rama has begun with Coulter launching the book on her pal Sean Hannity’s radio and TV shows. She’ll be on “Today” on Tuesday and will follow that with countless interviews.

Coulter’s publicist says she never turns down an interview, even on radio talk shows that sound as if they emanate from someone’s garage. She knows her people are listening and buying thousands of copies of her books. She has already had six New York Times mega-bestsellers. Yes, there is a vast right-wing book-buying public who loves a girl who can call JFK “a venereal-disease-ridden sexual profligate and drug addict”; who never forget that “Sen. Ted Kennedy drove Mary Jo Kopechne off the Chappaquiddick Bridge”; who can recall that “President Clinton walked to and from church every Sunday carrying a ten-pound bible for the cameras – and then returned from church on Palm Sunday, 1996, to use a cigar as a sexual aid on Monica Lewinsky”; who can document, in footnote after footnote, that the Swift Boat Veterans were correct in their condemnation of the war record of “the mountebank Kerry.”

I talked to Coulter about Guilty as she was about to embark on her media tour. The book is (no surprise) another in her attacks against liberals. Her thesis this time is that liberals always act like they are being victimized, primarily by the Republican Attack Machine. While in fact, they, with the help of a very biased media, tend to victimize all who disagree with them. She has written about media bias before. “I really didn’t intend to make the book so much about the media,” she told me, "but I just couldn’t help it because the media has so much power. They like to act as if they are powerless, but everything today is about the media. I just had to point out all their dirty little tricks. If you are Paul Revere you have to sound the alarm.”

Now, let’s get one thing straight. I’m a member of the media who is about as unbiased in my political leanings as, say, The New York Times. In general, I think Ann is often more right than wrong, no pun intended. Oh, sure, she goes over the top once in a while, but when she does she is no more unfair or unbalanced then, say, Frank Rich or Keith Olbermann [[most of the time - BJon]]. And she is a lot funnier. In fact, she is often laugh-out-loud funny. And as for being a judge of the true character of some of our political leaders, do remember it was Ann who appraised John Edwards correctly long before his supporters and, unfortunately, Elizabeth Edwards ever did.

Guilty is full of interesting set-pieces such as her report on how the Media Attack Machine turned, during primary season, on their longtime dearly beloved Bill Clinton. She writes, “Obama emerged from the clouds, and at long last, liberals were finished with the Clintons … It took a decade but journalists finally noticed that Clinton getting serviced by a White House intern whose name he couldn’t recall may not have been the equivalent of the Gettysburg Address.” She points out that journalists acted as if Clinton had changed, rather than as if they were no longer covering up for him. Todd Purdum in Vanity Fair said Clinton’s “cavernous narcissism” was related to his triple-bypass surgery. Coulter writes, “Yes, who doesn’t know someone who, after open-heart surgery, becomes an egomaniacal, pathologically lying horndog?”

She also tells the little-reported tale of how Obama won his Illinois Senate seat. During the presidential campaign, Obama was full of sanctimony about keeping candidates’ families off-limits. But, Coulter writes, “The only reason he was in position to run for president in the first place was that the Media Attack Machine ripped open the sealed divorce records of his two principal opponents … Why did no one know that during the 2008 campaign? The fact that Obama won his Senate seat by rifling through the divorce records of his opponents is surely at least as important as the fact that Palin’s teenage daughter got pregnant out of wedlock,” she contends.

What does Coulter think of Sarah Palin? “I loved Sarah Palin. The media went after her so viciously and it was all about class,” she says. “She is a real middle-class woman, just the sort of woman that Democrats are always pretending they represent, and they attacked her relentlessly. I am not saying she was ready to be president this year, but with McCain running, she wasn’t going to get anywhere near being president. If she goes back to Alaska and is a good governor and studies and learns, she may be a presidential candidate a couple elections from now. Maybe she could be another Reagan. Remember, Reagan didn’t run for president at forty-four. She has things she needs to learn. But she has heart and soul and you can’t learn that from a book.”

As for Caroline Kennedy’s bid to be named senator, Coulter snorted, “I am indignant! In New York and Massachusetts people act as if the rest of the country is primitive, but they are the ones who are so primitive and nepotistic to even consider her. Fortunately, I think that may be headed for a crash landing. Every time she opens her mouth it gets worse.”

Although Coulter has had her great success preaching to the converted, I wondered if she also hoped her books might be read, as well, by independents or even liberals who might be swayed by her arguments. "But liberals don’t read," she replied. “If they read anything they wouldn’t be liberals. Whenever I go to dinner parties it is always conservatives who know things, who have the facts. I want my readers to read the book and be able to shoot down the myth of the Republican Attack Machine. I want them to argue with liberals on the street.”

Still, as the Inauguration approaches, Coulter is feeling just a bit more positive about the Obama presidency. “Judging by his Cabinet choices, he may not be as crazy as I thought he was," she said. “That may be worse for my career but better for the country. And that’s all right with me.”

Editor’s Note: Anyone who has read a women’s magazine in the last 25 years has most likely read the work of Myrna Blyth, who weighs in at wowOwow with this provocative piece. Myrna is the founding editor of More magazine, was the longtime editor-in-chief of Ladies’ Home Journal, and was senior editor for Family Circle magazine. She is the chairman of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. She has received many awards including the Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications, Inc., the Woman of Achievement Award from the New York City Commission on the Status of Women, and was named Publishing Executive of the Year by Advertising Age. Currently she writes for The National Review Online and is the editor-in-chief of Betty Confidential. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Hidden Toxic Debt Prevents Recovery!?!

But what are the world’s government financial moguls doing about it?!? The recent experiences of Japan and Sweden point to the one step, full disclosure of toxic debt, that is essential to any effective recovery!!!

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

From a Telegraph [UK] article, Only full disclosure of toxic debts will get the West moving again:

Only full disclosure of toxic debts will get the West moving again It has been a year of financial explosions. [/] By Liam Halligan [/] Last Updated: 5:44AM GMT 29 Dec 2008

The commercial pillars holding up the Western world - banking prudence and sound credit - have been smashed to smithereens [/] The "advanced" nations are now flirting with economic collapse. The emerging economies have also suffered "collateral damage" – the West's "sub-prime" debt bombs now threatening the stability of global commerce. [/] The developed world is on course to contract by 1.1pc during 2009. That will hurt. The emerging markets are also set to slow – their growth falling to 3.1pc – as China and India feel the impact of lower Western demand. [/] But 2010 could be even worse – unless policymakers can piece the global economy back together. And the prevailing policy response –soft bail-outs, ultra-low interest rates and unfettered government spending – not only won't work, but will compound this crisis.

So how should Western governments respond? How can we escape this credit crunch, and prevent it being repeated? [/] As the Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said last month, "getting the banks lending normally again . . . is more important than anything else". After piling into risky assets for years, the Western banks now refuse to lend to millions of credit-worthy firms and households. That's jammed the wheels of finance, making fears of recession self-fulfilling. [/] The money markets are locked because the banks don't trust each other. Even they don't know how much toxic debt is out there – and which bank could be the next to fall. That's why the spread between the London Inter-bank Offered Rate and overnight interest rate swaps of the same maturity remains so wide – and wider in the UK, now, than either the States or the eurozone.

The crucial inter-bank market will remain frozen until the banks are forced, under threat of prosecution, to reveal the true extent of their sub-prime liabilities. Such "full disclosure" won't be easy – involving the exploration of millions of complex derivative contracts, often across borders – but it simply must be done. [/] America's first serious reaction to "sub-prime" was the Troubled Assets Relief Programme – buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of dodgy loans the banks didn't want any more. When that didn't work, the US asked banks to forfeit some share capital in return for government cash, as in the UK.

But that's failing too – as shown by sky-high Libor rates. So, as a matter of urgency, the West must copy the hard-headed Swedes – who, in the early 1990s, insisted nationalised banks write down the full extent of their non-performing loans before more public money is spent on recapitalisation. Only then – once the sub-prime losses are fully-exposed – can securities markets clear and the inter-bank market reboot.

The UK/US approach of piling public sector debts on top of private sector debts prevents this vital purging process. Until it happens the global economy will continue to slide. But the big Western economies remain in self-denial, repeating the mistakes made by the Japanese. We're creating our very own "zombie banks" – technically alive, but commercially dead due to the weight of their toxic debts. A Western "lost decade" now looms.

So we need Swedish-style full disclosure. Nothing else will break the deadlock and get us out of this fix. Western politicians – and commentators – need to stand up to the powerful money men and administer the necessary medicine. [/] Instead, all our leaders do is slash interest rates, print money and rack up public debt. History will judge them harshly.

After full disclosure, how do we prevent such a crisis happening again? Firstly, the "white collar" crimes which drove this sub-prime debacle – at mortgage lenders, investment banks and ratings agencies – need to be severely punished. People who did bad things must go to jail. I'm against regulatory overkill, but recognise a strong framework of rules is needed. We need to acknowledge that too much leverage is even more dangerous than too little. Western central banks need to regain powers, weakened in the 1980s and 1990s, to impose "reserve asset requirements", so reining in bank lending.

Above all, we need to re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. This legislation – the centre-piece of America's response to the 1929 Wall Street crash – was copied across the Western world. [/] Glass-Steagall prevented commercial banks – which take in deposits and service ordinary firms and households – from engaging in the high-risk speculative activities undertaken by investment banks. \In the early 1990s – after huge lobbying by Wall Street, and lots of ridiculous talk about "freedom" – the legislation was repealed. No other single action has done more to cause this crisis. [/] The money men have, so far, managed to close down any talk about restoring Glass-Steagall. But that debate must now take place. That's why Glass-Steagall will be the subject of my first column of 2009. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Is Religion Necessary for Constitutional Government?

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." [- John Adams]

From an American Thinker .com article, Is Religion Necessary?, more follows:

Is Religion Necessary? [/] January 03, 2009 [/] By Joseph Ashby

The least understood idea presented in Mitt Romney's 2007 speech on religion was his statement, "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." From Left to Right this comment was savaged and belittled. [/] Neither Romney's speech nor his answers to questions on the topic indicated exactly why he thought religion was so important to freedom. He did assert that many of the Founding Fathers shared his view. Those familiar with the Founders know there is always a ‘why' in what they believed. [/] Romney's couplet was based on a statement John Adams made to the US Military where he said: [/] "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

To understand this statement we must remember that the Founders based their philosophies on human nature. So what Adams was saying was not theological or religious but pragmatic. George Washington's words clarify Adams' belief: [/] "Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." [/] The debate over whether this concept is anti-atheist ignores Washington's point. Which is that "reason" (the atheist's guiding light) and "experience" tell us that religion is necessary to maintain national morality; not that it's some mystic force that favors believers over non-believers.

There are so many who take personally any mention of religion in a public context, perceiving it as an attack on non-religious, moral individuals. But such statements should be taken in the broadest of all contexts, speaking generally to the entire society and espousing the most basic of all moral principles (such as honesty, fidelity and love for fellow man). [/] Returning to Adams' point, America's Constitutional system specifically requires a high level of morality (and by extension religion). This is because of the broad freedoms the Constitution affords. At the time Adams was president there were no drug laws, gun control laws, disaster relief or welfare programs. In essence, the Founding was built on the principle that Americans not only could but must govern themselves.

Self governance cannot function without morality. As morals decline, laws expand and freedoms necessarily contract. This is because no law is perfect. The perfect application of law is only possible if the lawmaker and judge are omniscient, knowing every reason a law exists and every detail, even the thoughts, of the alleged law-breaker.

Since this is impossible, the best situation is to have the fewest laws possible, to avoid illegalizing proper behavior under legislation's inevitably wide swath. The more self-regulating (or moral) a nation is collectively, the fewer laws needed to maintain order. [/] As national morality declines, inducing governments and citizens to favor more laws, the less plausible our Constitutional system becomes.

Recent tactics of the pro-gay marriage camp are a perfect illustration of this principle. As reports mount of out of hand protests and intimidation, it's obvious that what they are doing is wrong. The Stalinist tactics used to target private citizens, business and churches are clearly a perversion of First Amendment rights. [/] Unfortunately, this problem has no solution that can be both legislative and Constitutional. Passing a law restricting this behavior destroys the rights of responsible citizens whose actions are too similar to be legally distinguishable.

This dilemma is systemic. Misuse of guns induces public fervor to violate the Second Amendment. Neglectful parents lead to laws that destroy the right to parental prerogatives in raising and educating children. Corrupt politicians provoke expression demolishing restrictions on speech and campaign donations. The immoral use of rights is a precursor to laws that infringe upon those rights. [/] {The only Constitutional solution to these problems is to depend on citizens' sense of morality. In the absence of a "moral and religious people," the rights enumerated in the Constitution are "wholly inadequate" in creating a well-ordered society*. This is the meaning of Adams' words. [/] The irony should not be lost that the Anti-Prop 8 groups, who call for "the exclusion of religious principle" from constitutions, are the very people demonstrating why it is necessary.

* It should be noted here that in many respects, because government has overstepped its bounds, we are not governed by the Constitution. As our religiosity and morals have declined (and I count socialism's legalized plunder immoral), we have distanced ourselves from the America of John Adams' day. This is yet more empirical evidence supporting his conclusion about morality and religion.

Joseph Ashby is an aeronautical engineer specializing in lightweight carbon composite aircraft design. [/] [My ellipses and emphasis]

Gert Wilders: Man of the Year?

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. - Psalms 20:7

I report and link. You decide. - BJon

Geert Wilders has made all the right enemies. At a time when many counsel accommodation of Islamist demands, Wilders remains defiant. In an era of civilizational self-loathing, he defends the West without apology. Despite the threats to his life, he refuses to be silenced. For all this, Wilders deserves the praise of many – including the many in the West who scorn his name.

From a Front Page Mag .com article, Man of the Year: Geert Wilders more follows:

Man of the Year: Geert Wilders [/] By FrontPage Magazine [/] FrontPageMagazine.com | 1/2/2009

It’s a safe bet that Geert Wilders won’t be Time magazine’s Man of the Year any time soon. If anything, the unusually coiffed Dutch MP is a favorite hate figure of the Western media, which has spent years vilifying him as a “reactionary,” a “particularly dangerous type of demagogue,” a “racist” and an “Islamophobe.” Wilders would almost certainly plead guilty to the last charge, and with ample reason. His tireless campaign to sound the alarm about the growing threat of Islamic radicalism in the West has turned him into a target of Islamic jihadists and the object of untold assassination plots. A 2006 death threat, one of hundreds he’s received, declared that his “infidel blood will flow freely on cursed Dutch streets.” Al-Qaeda has specifically singled him out for slaughter.

Against this menacing background, it would have been no failing in his character if Wilders had decided that the price of speaking out about Islamic fundamentalism was too high; others in his prominent position would have reached just that conclusion. Instead, Wilders has persevered. Braving daily death threats and sacrificing the security that his critics take for granted, he has opted for the often-thankless task of saving Western civilization from its Islamist discontents – beginning with the valuable reminder that the demands of Islamic zealots are not only not congruent with Western values but are, in fact, in direct conflict with them. For his impressive personal courage, his steadfast political commitment, and his refreshing disdain for the suffocating pieties of political correctness, Geert Wilders is Front Page Magazine’s Man of the Year in 2008.

The steep risks involved in Wilders’s anti-Islamist campaign are tragically illustrated by the fates of two of his countrymen. Pim Fortuyn, the popular Dutch politician who warned against the Islamisation of Dutch society and railed against the “backwardness” of certain Islamic traditions, was gunned down by a crazed animal-rights activist in 2002. His killer later claimed that he had shot Fortuyn in order to defend Dutch Muslims from persecution.

Next on the hit list was Dutch provocateur and documentarian Theo Van Gogh. In 2004, Van Gogh was gruesomely murdered in Amsterdam by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-born Islamist who judged Van Gogh’s film on the mistreatment of women in Islam, Submission, to be a crime deserving of death. To Van Gogh’s butchered body, Bouyeri pinned a list of “infidels” who “deserved to be slaughtered.” Among the names singled out for execution was Geert Wilders.

The threats were all too real. Shortly after Van Gogh’s murder, Dutch authorities discovered an Islamist network with advanced plans to kill Wilders, and an internet video surfaced promising 72 virgins to anyone who carried out the deed. As police investigated, Wilders was forced into 24-hour protection, traveling from safe house to safe house to avoid his pursuers. Even today he is never without dark-suited bodyguards by his side. “There’s no freedom, no privacy,” Wilders says. “If I said I was not afraid, I would be lying.”

Yet, Wilders remains undaunted. This March, he again incensed Islamists when he released a short but explosive film called Fitna, which seeks to show that Islamic terrorism is directly inspired by the Koran. Artistically rough, the film is nevertheless effective, juxtaposing graphic footage of Islamic terrorism – including the 9/11 attacks, the Madrid train bombings, and the beheading of American contractor Nicholas Berg – with Koranic verses and clips of Islamic clerics preaching the murder of non-Muslims. If nothing else, the film makes it impossible to argue that Islamic texts have nothing at all to with the terrorist violence committed in their name.

[…] Less bloodthirsty – but more spineless – was the response in the West. Dutch television stations flinched from airing the film, forcing Wilders to release it on the video hosting site LiveLeak.com, which soon pulled it due to “threats to our staff of a very serious nature.” (LiveLeak later restored the film.) Political leaders meanwhile went out of their way to denounce Wilders. Thus Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende insisted that Fitna “serves no other purpose than to cause offense,” […] [/] But just as the tide of elite Western opinion was turning against him, Wilders was vindicated by an unlikely observer: Libyan-based jihadist cleric Omar Bakri. Not only were Fitna’s attempts to link terrorist violence with Islamic teachings not offensive, Bakri explained, but they were entirely accurate. Indeed, Bakri said, Fitna “could be a film made by the mujahedeen.” In other words, Wilders was exactly right.

[…] Given the great personal costs he has suffered, it must be asked: Has it all been worth it? It is a measure of Wilders the man that he never struggles with the question. “Speaking out boldly cost me my personal liberty, with 24-hour security and police protection for more than four years now,” Wilders told Front Page Magazine last week. “But if I and others don’t at least try, and if I would not do my modest bit, millions of westerners will lose their liberty. You see, there is so much at stake. Our liberty and freedom are being bargained away and only so few speak out against it. I am no hero but I would rather be killed for what I say and believe than submit in silence to Islamic totalitarianism. If I regret anything at all, it’s is not being too bold but not being bold enough.” […] [My ellipses and emphasis]