1.  In your charity, if you could offer a prayer for the repose of the soul of an excellent gentleman whom I met last fall, who tragically drowned accidentally earlier this week, and also for his family, most especially his wife and two adult children.  A Requiem Mass will be said for him today (Wednesday) at 12:30pm EDT.  The consecration of the Host and Chalice will be at approximately 12:55pm EDT, if you would like to set an alarm.

2.  Regarding the cattleman in Nevada: I would strongly discourage you all from hitching your cart to this particular horse.  While I have all manner of criticisms of the BLM and certainly of thuggish FEDGOV tactics, it is essential that one pick one’s battles very carefully, and this is NOT a good battle to pick.  The guy in question has been grazing his cattle at essentially zero feed cost for upwards of twenty years (well, THAT makes the cattle business easier, doesn’t it!) because he stopped paying the BLM any lease charges.  Again, we can debate all manner of things including the ridiculous rules about closing land to grazing in order to “protect” lizards or prairie chickens or whatever the fake “endangered species” du jour is, and certainly we can debate the existence of the BLM itself, but there is no free lunch; everyone else pays to graze.  This guy is claiming, as I understand it, some grandfathered right to the land through the Mormon cult (again, BIG red flag), but I don’t buy it.  This situation stinks all around to my refined sniffer, and I would NOT die on this hill.  Since so many have asked, that is my read.  Just be careful with this one.

3.  I am going to post the “Psychopathy Checklist” that has been going around for the past week or so.  Read it and tell me that my characterization of politicians as psychopaths isn’t accurate.  I’m telling you, these people are all psychopaths and you simply CANNOT deal with psychopaths as if they are normal people.  They are playing a completely different game with a completely different rulebook, and unless you savvy to this and respond appropriately, they will lay waste to entire nations and civilizations without batting an eyelash.  I think that the most critical point may be point 12 below – psychopaths are devoid of any sense of shame.  They cannot be shamed, and thus things like “censures” or even public humiliation (think Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner) are useless against them because they genuinely do not care.  They have to be physically stopped and restrained, sometimes permanently.  This is why capital crimes must be punished as such.  I know it is unpleasant to face this fact, but there is no escaping it.

I can’t help but comment on the last sentence in point 14.  I look back at my life and recognize that one key indicator about people is how they treat waitstaff at restaurants.  I know that sounds rather trivial, but it is so true.  I remember meeting a couple when I first moved to Denver.  We went out to dinner, and it was wonderful.  HOWEVER, they were both extremely rude and dismissive to the waitstaff.  When a waiter or busboy would come to the table this couple would ignore them – literally not look at them or respond, and would not look the waiter in the eye when ordering (ALWAYS watch the eyes).  I alone spoke to the waitstaff, even though I was the “lowest ranking” person at the table by far.  I noted the behavior because it was so egregious, but blew it off, which was pure weakness on my part.  In retrospect, I could just kick myself a million times for that, and I have seen the same thing over and over again.  Watch how people treat those in weaker or service positions.  It is a highly reliable indicator.

I’ll link to Jesse’s Cafe Americain because his commentary at the end is spot on.

  This is from sources on the web, and is based on Robert Hare’s psychopathy checklist.

1. Look for glib and superficial charm. A psychopath will also put on what professionals refer to as a ‘mask of sanity’ that is likable and pleasant.   It is a thin veneer.

2. Look for a grandiose self perception. Psychopaths will often believe they are smarter or more powerful than they actually are.

3. Watch for a constant need for stimulation. Stillness, quiet and reflection are not things embraced by psychopaths. They need constant entertainment and activity.

4. Determine if there is pathological lying. A psychopath will tell all sorts of lies; little white lies as well as huge stories intended to mislead. Psychopaths are gifted or dull, high functioning or low performing like other people. An untalented psychopath may harm a few; a highly talented psychopath may lay waste to nations. The difference between the psychopath and others lies in their organic lack of conscience and empathy for others. The sociopath is trained to lack empathy and conscience. The psychopath is a natural.

5. Evaluate the level of manipulation. All psychopaths are identified as cunning and able to get people to do things they might not normally do. They can use guilt, force and other methods to manipulate.

6. Look for any feelings of guilt. An absence of any guilt or remorse is a sign of psychopathy.  They will often blame the victim.

7. Consider the level of emotional response a person has. Psychopaths demonstrate shallow emotional reactions to deaths, injuries, trauma or other events that would otherwise cause a deeper response. Other people are satisfaction suppliers, nothing more.

8. Look for a lack of empathy. Psychopaths are callous and have no way of relating to others in non-exploitative ways. They may find a temporary kinship with other psychopaths and sociopaths that is strictly utilitarian and goal-oriented.

9. Psychopaths are often parasitic. They live off other people, emotionally, physically, and financially. Their modus operandi is domination and control.  They will claim to be maligned or misunderstood to gain your sympathy.

10. Look for obsessive risk taking and lack of self-control. The Hare Checklist includes three behavior indicators; poor behavior control, sexual promiscuity, and behavioral problems.

11. Psychopaths have unrealistic goals or none at all for the long term. Either there are no goals at all, or they are unattainable and based on the exaggerated sense of one’s own accomplishments and abilities.

12. Psychopaths will often be shockingly impulsive or irresponsible. Their shamelessness knows no bounds. You will ask, what were they thinking? And the answer was, they weren’t because they did not care.

13. A psychopath will not genuinely accept personal responsibility. A psychopath will never admit to being wrong or owning up to mistakes and errors in judgment, except as part of a manipulative ploy.   They will despise and denigrate their victims once they are done with them.  If they have any regret it is that their source of satisfaction supply has ended and they must seek another.

14. Psychopaths lack long term personal relationships. If there have been many short term marriages, broken friendships, purely transactional relationships, the chances the person is a psychopath increase. Watch especially how they treat other people in weaker positions and even animals.

15. Psychopaths are often versatile in their criminality. Psychopaths are able to get away with a lot, and while they might sometimes get caught, the ability to be flexible and adaptable when committing crimes is indicative.

If you should find yourself in a business or personal relationship with a psychopath, the best advice is seek counseling if you need, obtain assistance if you must, and run if you can. You are a diffused and multi-faceted person with many interests. A psychopath is powerfully focused on obtaining what he wishes from others, without many prohibitions or distractions. Avoidance is the best policy. Long term confinement is their best treatment.

I do not think the repetitive sociopathic behaviours and psychopathic tendencies of the Roman imperial leadership to be accidental. The mad emperors kept recurring because they were the creatures of what that culture had become, and they stood as emblems at its apex.

Men are social animals, and can go mad in groups, as well as alone. Psychopathy can be the black hole at the center of a whole galaxy of madness and sociopathy under the right conditions, and the results can be flamboyantly destructive, as we most recently saw in several places during the 20th century.  The psychopaths can thrive anywhere that deception is an advantage, but their prime hunting ground is a system in crisis, a controllable chaos lacking a well defined rule of law.   

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord. –Psalm 26:14

The Introit from yesterday’s Mass (Tuesday in Passion Week) came from Psalm 26:  Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord…

Do manfully.
Do manfully.
Do manfully.

The whole of Psalm 26, which should probably be a daily prayer in these dark days:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? Whilst the wicked draw near against me, to eat my flesh. My enemies that trouble me, have themselves been weakened, and have fallen. If armies in camp should stand together against me, my heart shall not fear. If a battle should rise up against me, in this will I be confident. One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. That I may see the delight of the Lord, and may visit His temple. For He hath hidden me in his tabernacle; in the day of evils, He hath protected me in the secret place of His tabernacle.

He hath exalted me upon a rock: and now He hath lifted up my head above my enemies. I have gone round, and have offered up in His tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation: I will sing, and recite a psalm to the Lord. Hear, O Lord, my voice, with which I have cried to Thee: have mercy on me and hear me. My heart hath said to Thee: My face hath sought Thee: Thy face, O Lord, will I still seek. Turn not away Thy face from me; decline not in Thy wrath from Thy servant. Be Thou my helper, forsake me not; do not Thou despise me, O God my Saviour. For my father and my mother have left me: but the Lord hath taken me up.

Set me, O Lord, a law in Thy way, and guide me in the right path, because of my enemies. Deliver me not over to the will of them that trouble me; for unjust witnesses have risen up against me; and iniquity hath lied to itself. I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord.

Memories, like the corners of my mind.  Misty watercolored memories….

Yes, it was three years ago today that I forever made myself into the crazy-eyed chick who does unladylike things involving korans, cured pork products, and fire.  Oh, and I also handed Lindsey Graham his own ass, too.  “The only way it ends is with you sobbing in the men’s room.”  Heh.  Indeed.

There are a couple of words that I would change, just to tighten things up a bit, and I would correct the Mapplethorpe-Serrano misattribution, but this really is aging quite well – like a bold-yet-velvety Cru Beaujolais of righteous, two-fisted wrath.

Thanks to all of the good folks who sent this thing uber-viral.  Mr. BigFurHat at IOwnTheWorld.com, Andrea Shea King, Western Rifle Shooters Association, Moonbattery, WeaselZippers, Vanderleun, Roger Kimball, and Gates of Vienna, who did the 10-language translation project.  The Arabic subtitled version of the baco-licious koran burning, done by Egyptian Copts, some of whom may now be martyrs, now stands at over 707,000 views.  That video stood as proof that the Obama regime was lying about Benghazi from the very beginning.

In the first two weeks after I posted it, I was receiving upwards of 100 emails PER HOUR, twenty-four hours per day, and when I typed my own name into Google, the results pane literally scrolled in real time.

Lessons?

1.) Fear no man, do the right thing, and God will provide.

2.) One person can make a difference.

3.) You never know when your life is going to make a dramatic pivot.  It could be today.  Stay frosty.

4.) The world is absolutely desperate for manful, forthright truth-telling, even if it has to come from a chick.

5.) Put a tea candle in the bottom of your glass beaker and light up the bacon grease-soaked pages of the koran from below, rather than use a kitchen lighter from above.

This is just excellent. I’ll pick out just a few of the 24 reasons. Do read the whole thing.

“24 Reasons Why Not to Reject Limbo”

24 Reasons Why Not To Reject Limbo
John Vennari

Limbo is in the news. A new document from Rome’s International Theological Commission [ITC], released on April 20 (2012), states that Catholics may virtually ignore the teaching on limbo and may have “many reasons for hope” for the salvation of unbaptized infants.

Practically every major newspaper carried the story. Headlines such as “Vatican Abolishes Limbo;” “Vatican Report Rejects Limbo;” and “Concept of Limbo Now Assigned to Oblivion” appeared throughout the world.

Yet despite this latest study, many intend to hold to the conventional teaching that the souls of infants who die before Baptism do not attain Heaven, because they have not obtained the remission of Original Sin that only Baptism provides. They go to Limbo, a place of natural happiness wherein they suffer no pain of punishment since they are guilty of no personal sin.

Listed below are 24 of the chief reasons why I, and thousands of Catholics the world over, will not reject the Catholic doctrine of Limbo:

1. Because Pope Pius VI, in a formal magisterial decree, denounced the rejection of Limbo as “false, rash, slanderous to Catholic schools”;

2. Because the ITC’s study on Limbo is neither a papal document, nor a magisterial document, but a modern theological exercise that does not bind the conscience of Catholics in any way;

4. Because it is an unchangeable article of Faith, taught infallibly by the Second Council of Lyons and the Council of Florence that the souls of those who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision;

5. Because Pope Sixtus V taught in a 1588 Constitution that victims of abortion, being deprived of Baptism, are “excluded from Beatific Vision,” which is one of the reasons Sixtus V denounced abortion as a heinous crime;

7. Because to reject Limbo strengthens the implicit denial of Original Sin, a chief error of our age;

14. Because churchmen can not reform Catholic doctrine for the sake of alleged “new pastoral needs,” since human considerations and “signs of the times” have no bearing on whether or not a Catholic doctrine is true;

The following comes from Catholic Essentials:

I. The Limbo of the Fathers – A place and state of rest wherein the souls of the just who died before Christ’s ascension were detained until he opened Heaven to them; referred to as “Abraham’s Bosom” (Luke xvi,22) and “Paradise” (Luke xxiii, 43) and notably in Eph. IV, 9 and I Peter iii, 18-20.

II. The Limbo of Children – It is of faith that all, children and adults, who leave this world without the Baptism of water, blood or desire and therefore in original sin are excluded from the Vision of God in Heaven. The great majority of theologians teach that such children and unbaptized adults free from grievous actual sin, enjoy eternally a state of perfect natural happiness, knowing and loving God by use of their natural powers. This place and state is commonly called Limbo. (Definition from A Catholic Dictionary, 1951)

References in Scripture:

“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell” Luke 16:22

“Now that He ascended, what is it, but because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth” Ephesians 4:9

“Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that He might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison: Which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water.” 1 Peter 3:18-20

“And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise” Luke 23:42-43

Church Teaching:

“Moreover as Christ was true and perfect man, He of course was capable of dying. Now man dies when the soul is separated from the body. When, therefore, we say that Jesus died, we mean that His soul was disunited from His body. We do not admit, however, that the Divinity was separated from His body. On the contrary, we firmly believe and profess that when His soul was dissociated from His body, His Divinity continued always united both to His body in the sepulchre and to His soul in limbo. It became the Son of God to die, that, through death, He might destroy him who had the empire of death that is the devil, and might deliver them, who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude.” Catechism of Council of Trent, The Creed, Article IV

“Q: What are we taught in the Fifth Article: He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead? A: The Fifth Article of the Creed teaches us that the Soul of Jesus Christ, on being separated from His Body, descended to the Limbo of the holy Fathers, and that on the third day it became united once more to His Body, never to be parted from it again”. Catechism of St. Pope Pius X, The Fifth Article of the Creed

“The fourth and final reason is that Christ might free the just who were in hell [or Limbo]. For as Christ wished to suffer death to deliver the living from death, so also He would descend into hell to deliver those who were there”. Also, “The reason they were there in hell [i.e., Limbo] is original sin which they had contracted from Adam, and from which as members of the human race they could not be delivered except by Christ. Catechism of St. Thomas Aquinas, The Creed, The Fifth Article, Reasons for Christ’s Descent

“The limbo of the Fathers and the limbo of children, without any doubt, differ as to the quality of punishment or reward. For children have no hope of the blessed life, as the Fathers in limbo had, in whom, moreover, shone forth the light of faith and grace. But as regards their situation, there is reason to believe that the place of both is the same; except that the limbo of the Fathers is placed higher than the limbo of children, just as we have stated in reference to limbo and hell.” Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas, Whether the limbo of children is the same as the limbo of the Fathers?

“Suarez, for example, ignoring Bellarmine’s protest, continued to teach what Catharinus had taught — that unbaptized children will not only enjoy perfect natural happiness, but that they will rise with immortal bodies at the last day and have the renovated earth for their happy abode (De vit. et penat., ix, sect. vi, n. 4); and, without insisting on such details, the great majority of Catholic theologians have continued to maintain the general doctrine that the children’s limbo is a state of perfect natural happiness, just the same as it would have been if God had not established the present supernatural order” 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, Limbo Summary

Contrary to what some Catholics have come to believe today, the doctrine of Limbo is mentioned in Scripture (albeit by a different name) and as we can see above, has been taught century to century by the Catholic Church. To deny its existence is not Catholic.

Time for this again, spurred by this thoroughly horrific email, which is the ripened fruit of the post-conciliar “Church of Nice” and all of its attached heresies:

Ann:
Some time back I read that you understood that aborted children were in limbo.  I understood that these children were in what we would understand as heaven.  If that is true, I am glad that I have had an abortion and I am willing to pay the price of hell so another does not have to experience this hell on this earth.

L