Pope Benedict will grant Nancy Pelosi an audience tomorrow. The notoriously conservative Pope is apparently granting legitimacy to Nancy Pelosi's fraudulent misrepresentation of church father's views on abortion--Thomas Aquinas and Augustine were pro-choice.

I've long been interested in the dynamics of religious movements, which nowadays is also the dynamics of political movements.

Churches, like any large voluntary organization, have at their core a contradiction. In order to attract newcomers, they must have low barriers to entry. They must be unintimidating, friendly, and compatible with the culture they are a part of. In order to retain their membership, however, they need to have an identity distinct from that culture. They need to give their followers a sense of community—and community, exclusivity, a distinct identity are all, inevitably, casualties of growth. As an economist would say, the bigger an organization becomes, the greater a free-rider problem it has. If I go to a church with five hundred members, in a magnificent cathedral, with spectacular services and music, why should I volunteer or donate any substantial share of my money? What kind of peer pressure is there in a congregation that large? If the barriers to entry become too low—and the ties among members become increasingly tenuous—then a church as it grows bigger becomes weaker.

Well you can't get lower than zero, so I guess that Roman Catholic church is near death.

Robert Wagner, now 80 and schlepping reverse mortgage scams for a living, is having his memoirs serialized by the Daily Mail. Is there anything more pathetic than an eighty year old man talking about his sexual conquests?

The real affairs, however, had considerably more charm. One night, I met the great actress Joan Crawford at a cocktail party and was surprised when she suggested I follow her back to her house. When we got there, she invited me for a swim, telling me there were some trunks down by the pool and I could help myself. I did so and got in the pool.

After a few minutes, Joan, who was 25 years older than me, came out of the house with nothing on, dived gracefully off the board, swam the length of the pool underwater and came up right between my legs.

'Hi there!' she said in her most vivacious voice. It was a lovely, creative invitation and I responded accordingly.

Reminds me of Geraldo's boast of having slept with Bette Midler--distinctly creepy.

I don't know why his publisher thought this would be a good idea, because its doubtful his peer group is much interested and pretty much anybody under the age of sixty-five has lived through the sexual revolution and won't be terribly impressed. How much more interesting his memoir would be if he could tell us something more about these remarkable women than the quality of their sexual appetites.

And there's the rub.

Wagner apparently never evolved past the archaic view of women as sexual objects and not much else. He's a sad reminder that the greatest generation weren't great at everything.

I do like the photo of Liz Taylor though. A much better memory than the risible image she's portrayed for the last twenty years or so.

The New York Times interviews Ann Coulter:

Do you consider yourself as speaking for the conservative movement, or just someone who has attracted many conservative fans? Something else?

I THINK I SPEAK FOR ALL AMERICANS WHO THINK NEWSPAPER EDITORS WHO PRINT THE DETAILS OF TOP-SECRET ANTI-TERRORIST INTELLIGENCE GATHERING PROGRAMS ON PAGE ONE IN WARTIME SHOULD BE EXECUTED FOR TREASON.

This is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vp of AIG’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of AIG. While quitting AIG Mr DeSantis delineates the disgrace of Liddy, who wants to perform a civic duty in winding down AIG, but simply lacks courage to stand against the political storm from Congress and the Attorney Generals of New York and Connecticut. Congress passed an unconstitutional, confiscatory, retrospective law against the AIG employees, convenient scapegoats lest popular rage turn against the criminals in Congress. The Attorney Generals threatened to publish the home details of AIG employees who kept what they had earned - which everyone understands is blackmail.

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

Colin Powell expressed "concern" over Obama's ambitious political agenda to create a permanent entitlement class that would be forced to vote Democrat for the rest of their lives. By now its pretty clear that Powell's only loyalty is to himself--a point made clear by this excerpt.

Mr. Powell was considered a possible Republican presidential candidate as early as 1996, and in 2007 he donated the maximum amount allowed to Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who won the GOP primary. But less than a month before last fall's general election, Mr. Powell endorsed Mr. Obama over Mr. McCain.

After the Fort Hood massacre, one of my friends was surprised to learn our military bases are actually gun free zones. Another irony of military life. Chances are, if Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire off post, there might have been a concealed weapon available. In 1991, a gunman did open fire in a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen - the town outside Fort Hood - and killled 23 people. Suzzanna Hupp, a patron who lost both her parents in that massacre, had left her gun in her car because she did not have a concealed carry permit. As a result of the Luby massacre, Texas reduced the restrictions for concealed carry permits.

Another thing that non-military experienced folks might not be aware of is that as a medical officer, Major Hasan is considered a non-combatant. Despite the image of Frank Burns brandishing a firearm, medical personnel may not use arms against enemy forces acting in conformity with the law of armed conflict. Of course there is that caveat "acting in conformity with the law of armed conflict" - since when has America had an enemy oblige? Nonetheless, the U.S. conforms to the law. Speculation that Major Hasan was conflicted about fighing Muslims is baseless. He wouldn't have been permitted to even if he desired.

Tiger Wood's recent woes illustrate how silly its become to distinguish between NBC and the National Enquirer. Both are covering the story in exactly the same way and with the same ferocity. Meanwhile evil, conspiring men seek to hijack the world economy for their personal benefit, riding the fiction of global warming--move on, no story here.

Nevertheless, its hard to feel sorry for a guy who essentially makes his living off of the nation's collective obsession with the lives of people who display superlative skill at children's games. His 100 million a year income from sponsors like Nike is based solely on this strange hero worship.

Understanding that the public image is the cash cow, why would Woods jeopardize everything he has to have sex with women not as attractive as his own wife? Self-esteem problems?

Well, I doubt we'll ever get an answer to that eternal question, but more interesting is the news that Wood's lawyers are negotiating with Elin, or more likely with her legal representation, to renegotiate the prenuptial agreement as an inducement for her to stay in the marriage.

“The links legend's spouse is reportedly being paid a hefty seven-figure amount — immediately transferred into an account she alone controls — to stick with her husband,” Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker reported. He goes on to write that Elin demanded and is getting a total rewrite of the couple’s prenuptial agreement. The couple wed in 2004 and have two children.

Reportedly, the couple had an agreement that stipulated they must remain married for 10 years in order for Elin to collect a settlement of $20 million, and that is the part of the settlement being negotiated.

If she stays two years, she doubles the payout of the original prenup. If she stays seven, she quintuples it.

This is what I call a rock and a hard place for Elin. If she takes the money, she's effectively saying the marriage is ended and she'll whore-it-out for two or seven years. Tiger is going to know it as well, and thus feel free to resume his extra-marital life-style. Now she's the wronged wife, but after this deal, she becomes a very unsympathetic character who might well have a difficult time living with herself in spite of her tainted gains.

From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense--from a personal point-of-view, Elin would probably be better of taking the 20 million (which is a LOT of money) and keep her dignity.

Tiger has screwed up his life beyond repair no matter what happens. It. wouldn't be far from the truth to say that Tiger has lost his soul. He should ask himself if all these women he's been sleeping with would be sleeping with him if he wasn't one of the highest paid athletes in the world. With the dissolution of his marriage, perhaps only his mother will still love him for himself. Tiger will be a sort of Gollum--a vessel for the commercially viable image with no independent identity.

Sounds like a horror story. A modern American life.

You probably didn't hear much about this.

the trip epitomized a national story with anguished, almost operatic dimensions: a young leader forced to shake hands with the man who he believes killed his father. And it served as a reminder of this region’s deep attachment to political symbolism.

For many Lebanese, the visit was a measure of Syria’s renewed influence over Lebanon after years of bitterness and struggle since the Syrian military’s withdrawal in 2005. That withdrawal came after Mr. Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was killed in a car bombing that many here believe to have been ordered by Syria.

The withdrawal was a blow to Syrian prestige, and afterward Saad Hariri seemed to have the entire Western world at his back as he built a movement for greater Lebanese independence and pushed for an international tribunal to try his father’s killers.

But since then, the United States and the West have chosen to engage with Syria, not isolate it. And Saudi Arabia, which has long backed Mr. Hariri and competed with Syria for influence here, reconciled with the Syrians earlier this year, leaving them a freer hand to guide politics in Lebanon as they once did.

Maybe you heard more about this.

DAMASCUS, Syria (April 4, 2007) "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Pelosi told reporters after her talks with Assad.

Pelosi said she and her delegation "expressed our concern about Syria's connections to Hezbollah and Hamas" and discussed the issue of militant fights slipping across the Syrian border into Iraq. "These are important issues not only in the fight against terrorism but important priorities for us for peace in the Middle East," she said.

Take Nancy at her word. She and the rest of the elite Democrat establishment truly do believe they are acting in the best interests of the country. The problem lies in how you and I and elite Democrats define 'best interests'.

We catch occasional glimpses into a foreign policy that Democrats dare not articulate clearly and publicly because it represents such a drastic about-face for a 50 year foreign policy doctrine and the moral basis used to sell it.

We are kicking the Jews to the curb.

They've clearly got to take care here, because there are millenialist religious elements combined with decades of Holocaust sympathy woven into the very fabric of American life. Support for Israel is seen by many Americans as divinely approved and an extension of the American role during the second world war, as the defender of freedom and democracy. The political risks are enormous. Yet many in the Democrat political establishment have concluded that Israel is an albatross around our necks for both practical reasons, as well as an affront to the Leftist moral principles of racial diversity and social justice. Put in another way, the Left would have cheered the Visigoth sack of Rome as a simple matter of justice, and accepting a millenium of 'dark age' as an acceptable price to pay.

One must remember of course that Democrats are a coalition, and that just because it has a contingent of Visigoth cheerleaders, doesn't mean the entire party is in lock-step with that thinking. Some think chaos in the middle east is good for the western world because it will force us to adopt green technologies and abandon our dependence on oil--you know, mandate technological progress.

Therein lies the paradox of the Left--naivete and political sophistication all rolled up in the same package.

Don't forget arrogance though. Lots of arrogance in that mix.

You have to admire the subtlety in the entire matter. Pelosi didn't have to say anything substantive, she just had be photographed with Assad. That told the Lebanese, the Iranians and the Israelis everything they needed to know. Subsequent foreign policy impotence by Barack Obama confirmed the message.

Unfortunately, at least a couple of millenia of statecraft experience strongly suggests that they are making a huge mistake. Machiavelli would have been aghast.

This has been a low, dishonest year in American politics. To Nile Gardiner's neat ranking of Obama's 10 worst foreign policy blunders, I'd add this shining turd of appeasement - cancelling his meeting with the Dalai Lama 'to keep China happy'.

Why? 10 reasons:

1. Appeasement doesn't work.
2. Weakness is provocative.
3. DL has the Congressional Gold Medal, America's highest civilian award.
4. In 2008 candidate Obama told President Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony to protest China's repression in Tibet.
5. So did Hillary Clinton, the current SecState.
6. Nine other Presidents met the DL.
7. Tibetan patriots in Chinese jails are betrayed.
8. Iran's tyrants are emboldened and Iran's dissidents weakened.
9. It's a disgrace to America.
10 The DL has the Nobel Peace Prize.

When I was researching for a little talk about Sherpas which I gave this afternoon to my daughter's 3rd grade class in NJ, I came across this 1950's shot of the DL (on the right) with Mao before the 1959 clamp down and the DL's flight from Tibet.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

So, once again, the Obama administration has sold Great Britain, formerly our #1 ally, down the river, along with the inhabitants of the Falklands, whose opinions would seem to count for something. We are past the point where anyone could doubt that the Obama administration's hostility toward the U.K. is intentional. Obama seems to have substituted personal pathology for national policy.

Investors Business Daily here:

The U.S., which backed Britain to the hilt when Argentina invaded its Falklands in 1982, has suddenly gone neutral on who has sovereignty over the islands. This is much more than a bad slap to our best ally.

Remember April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq who infamously told Saddam Hussein in 1990: "But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." To Saddam, that was a green light from the U.S. to invade his tiny neighbor.

Today, we hear similar language from the U.S. on another territorial dispute that may take us down the same road.

My gut reaction is to re-deploy the Royal Navy from Afghanistan to the Falklands and then annexe the US Virgin Islands (I've long coveted St John's, USVI, where they already drive on the left) and then burn down Washington, tho I expect you'd cheer us on this time. I'm telling you, Yanks, you're pissing off Americaphiles like me, not because your scummiest President and dopey Hillary are doing doo-doo on our alliance, but because your decent leaders are silent. Palin and Romney should be screaming blue murder. Don't take Gordon Brown's quietism as a guide. He's more supine than Obama.

Meanwhile I suggest Hillary asks Argentina for some troops for Afghanistan while she's so popular in B.A. They make good sandbags.

Exit question: What was the best thing that ever happened to Argentina?

Answer: Getting whacked by Britain in 1982 which led directly to the fall of the murderous military junta and then democracy. There should be statues of Thatcher on every street corner. She liberated Argentina.

There's a General Election here tomorrow. For me the best outcome would be for UKIP, the UK Independence Party, to do well enough to get the faux-conservative, Cameron, sacked from the Conservative Party leadership. In fact Cameron will likely be Prime Minister 2 days from now, a true triumph of Cultural Marxism, when supposed conservatives take liberal ideology as a given. But I still voted Conservative, dammit:

Most times I'm amused at how some of the stupidest arguments I've heard are prefaced by some self-righteous lefty telling me how much he or she values 'critical thinking'. Invariably what follows is a series of rather obvious non-sequiturs and other logical fallacies.

Sometimes it just makes me sad. Where are the all the smart people?

Rich Lowry doesn't break a sweat destroying the Democrat's rhetorical underpinnings of support for the lamentable START treaty.

Wright goes as far as to say New START makes it less likely “that North Korea, desperate for cash, would sell nukes to terrorists who could sneak them into the United States and detonate them.” This might be plausible—if New START were a treaty with North Korea. When it comes to the states we worry about, such as North Korea, Iran, and Syria, they have never made decisions about their nuclear-weapons programs on the basis of U.S.-Russian strategic arms-control agreements; it is hard to imagine anything less relevant to their decision making. (Our non-nuclear friends, on the other hand, worry that the administration’s arms-control agenda, with New START as the first step, could reduce the credibility of our nuclear umbrella and force them to begin to re-think their own nuclear options.)

Robert Wright is so stupid he should be institutionalized.

Egyptian regime:

• American ally


• Allied with America's allies


• Doesn't kill American military


• Secular government


• No nukes


• Not threatening to blow up the region


• Doesn't stone people to death


• Doesn't hang homosexuals

• American enemy


• A threat to America's allies


• Purveyor of IED's to kill many Americans


• Islamofascist government


• Nuking up as fast as it can


• Threatens to nuke Israel


• Stones women, hangs homosexuals

This is the best account I've seen. It differs completely from the "standard model" purveyed by Al-Jazeera, the BBC, Obama, Cameron and the EU:

The rioting taking place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square has much to teach about politics in the Arab order. The crowds are not there by accident. For some past days the protesters appeared to have everything their own way. Actually President Mubarak was biding his time and weighing the balance of forces. He wins who mobilizes superior force. Opposition leaders including Mohamed El Baradei and the Muslim Brothers appeared to have mobilized that superior force. Capable operators, they also appeal unanimously to the Western media. Western reporters one and all interpret what they see in terms with which they are familiar at home. So anti-Mubarak good — pro-Mubarak bad, and besides, hasn’t a chance.

How taken aback the media are that Mubarak is mobilizing his defenders, and timing it to maximum effect. Thousands turn up to counter-balance the protesters. The consequent rioting looks frightening, but the arrival yesterday of the tourist camel from the pyramids and some tourist ponies gave away the element of theater. Nobody resorts to firearms that would clear the area immediately. The fact that dozens of tanks all around could have stopped the rioting, but do nothing, means that what is going on is the equivalent of a poll to determine who has the numbers. Somewhere in the background are the generals who can swing it, as they have been doing since the days of Gamal Abdul Nasser and the Free Officers in the 1950s. And the force is going to rise until it becomes clear who really does have the numbers. It looks a fair bet right now that Mubarak will stay in office until the September election, which gives him time to organize the succession for his new vice president and companion in arms Omar Suleiman and assure continuity.

When President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron and their spokesmen come out with denunciations of Mubarak, threaten to cut off aid, and speechify about “orderly transition” as though it were some Holy Grail, they are taking the events unfolding before them at face value. Their haste to jump to conclusions that don’t correspond to the situation is partly the fault of the Euro-centric perspectives that the media pump up, and partly stems from ignorance about the invisible springs of action in the authoritarian Arab state. These Western leaders look like earning the contempt of those in power and those seeking to wrest power. A remarkable achievement.

By chance I recently order David Pryce-Jones book, The Closed Circle, An Interpretation of the Arabs.

I've gotten a wry satisfaction out of reading the accounts of AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post; incidentally for much too high a price by the estimations of most analysts.

The Huffington Post may have been founded as the liberal answer to the conservative Drudge Report, a place for progressive wound-licking in the wake of George W. Bush’s re-election.

But on Monday, Arianna Huffington was distancing herself from the lefty label as she announced the sale of HuffPost to AOL for $315 million.

“We don’t see ourselves as left,” she told POLITICO. “And I think it’s one area where news consumers are ahead of the media, because they know that continuing to see everything that’s happening as a right-left issue is missing what’s happening, and is also making it much harder for us to be properly informed.”

Some on the left worry that the sale to AOL could mean an end to HuffPost in its current incarnation — away from its roots in the progressive community, which were its first bloggers, commenters and readers, and toward a more middle-of-the-road posture, to make it more broadly appealing.

When I first heard about it, I immediately wondered how all the early staffers and bloggers would feel about this, especially in light of the fact THAT THEY DIDN'T GET PAID. It was too perfect, a complete validation of what I've been saying about the left for years. To reiterate: the left is constituted of dysfunctional, angry people and those that know how to exploit dysfunctional, angry people.

In the online world, few media entrepreneurs have been as savvy as Arianna Huffington. And while it may take a while, the HuffPo deal will serve as a powerful consolidation of progressive media operations in the increasingly digital news industry. What's especially interesting about this is Arianna's the ultimate personification of the left's hypocritical socialist elite. Not only do progressives like Arianna love money --- lots of it --- they love telling other people what they should do with theirs. When the Mayhill Fowler story broke in 2008 --- Fowler first reported Barack Obama's "clinging to their guns and religion" comments at a ritzy San Francisco fundraiser --- Huffington was vacationing on a yacht in Tahiti. Progressive eviscerated Mayhill Fowler for her reporting, especially since the media's establishment Obama-enablers would have bottled up that juicy "clinging" tidbit.

In spite of Arianna's windfall (turning a million dollar investment into 100+ million in just five years), much of the professional left, all of them wannabe Ariannas, are making cooing noises about the move, no doubt hoping there's a possible journalistic sinecure in it for them, or choosing to believe that left-wing ideas 'sell'. which of course explains why the Huffpo has chosen to follow the Sun's business model, including the famous page 3 girls--because the left's ideas don't sell, but sex does.

If you're in a poker game and you don't know who the patsy is; you're the patsy.