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The story is behind a paywall at Newsmax. Vatican source tells Newsmax John Gizzi that ‘Pope Francis is dying,’ with insiders saying they believe the Pontiff will not survive past 2022.

No link, because it's in a book, not on a web-site somewhere. That's why I put it in general chat. One can however always check the book (and one hopes reads the whole thing). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In 1975, President Ford was left to manage the difficult ending of the Vietnam War. President Ford went to Congress for a relief package to allow American personnel and our allies to evacuate. However, there was ONE USSENATOR- who opposed any such support. The result was the...

While watching the various choirs celebrating Christmas, I noticed that many of them seemed to be using a rather, uh, odd, application of "social distancing."Take this example (there's lots of examples, though) from youtube, a performance on November 22 by the choir of Westminster Cathedral (the Catholic cathedral in London, not the more-famous Westminster Abbey)The cathedral was empty of any general public, only the choir and its conductor inside; the presentation was via television and live-streaming.About half the choir appears to be absent, the older adolescent males and some of the old guys.What is odd is how the choirboys are...

Given the submissive role women are expected to have in Islamacist society and culture, is it possible the two burked congresswomen are actually only marionettes manipulated behind the scenes by unaccountable men?Has anyone ever speculated upon this before, that their words, although probably honestly-held sentiments by the two, are not their own?

As one can see from many of the overnight posts on the internet, our fifth column was busy, trying to remind us that "everybody does it," "both sides do it," in reference to the murders in New Zealand. And I have no doubt that during the day, here and elsewhere, the Demos, primitives, and other appeasers and virtue signallers are going to continually refrain this, "everybody does it," "both sides do it." Which of course is nonsense. The murder of forty people from the other side is not the same as the all those whose lives have been taken from...

Stanford Fellow Hints At Possible Justin Fairfax Sex Assault A woman named Vanessa Tyson, who is a fellow at Stanford University, says that a man who allegedly sexually assaulted her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention is now an office-holder about to get a “very big promotion,” according to a screenshot provided by a tipster. A friend of Tyson’s named Adria Scharf, based in Richmond, Virginia, shared the “heartbreaking” message, which Tyson wrote as a private post. Tyson is a fellow at California-based Stanford University and professor at California-based Scripps College, which means the alleged sexual assaulter must hold office...

The story begins with a singular event that launched a young man on a quest........a quest to be a part of one of mankind's greatest endeavors. The event occurred in the late 50's when this young man was in high school. The event was the launch by the Soviet Union of the first artificial satellite. When Sputnik was first announced around the world, the race for space exploration was on, and this young man from a tiny midwest town was inspired by both the idea, and his teachers to become a part of this brave new frontier that was unfolding........

When I got to the neighbor's house for Christmas dinner today, the neighbor was out, looking after the cattle, but his wife was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, going through a large bag of transparent tan-colored pharmaceutical bottles, taking out their contents and carefully putting a pill each into different compartments of two plastic boxes (which looked as if fishing-tackle boxes). Auntie had arrived under the cover of darkness the previous night, but was still sleeping. I looked at a couple of bottles, paid for by the hard-pressed taxpayers of Missouri, but being unfamiliar with pharmaceutical drugs, saw...

I quit drinking in 1987, and since then alcohol has never crossed these lips.....in between these shores. Exactly why I quit drinking remains cloudy, ambiguous, to this day. While I had been a heavy drinker from the time I was about 17 years old, I had never gotten into any legal, financial, or academic trouble because of it. My drink of choice was usually St. Louis-Beajolais, that bitter red wine that tastes like the blood of one's enemies, and for about 15 years, I drank a vineyard of the stuff. There was a vague notion that being deaf, drinking was...

It was in late November 1994 that I knocked on the door in one of the ubiquitous Khrushchev-era four-story "workers' flats" in a remote neighborhood of Kiev. It was late afternoon and dark as midnight, both outdoors and in the hallway. Such flats consisted of one large room for a single family, and a communal kitchen and bathroom used by four or five families. At times, there was more than one family in a room, however, and some sort of portable folding screen used to separate the real-estate. Such flats were inevitably filthy, the notion of "sharing" being that one...

It was in March of 1995 that I found myself in Kiev; I disremember why I had gone there, but it must have been important, as when wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants with free medical care for all, I generally avoided the big cities, preferring instead to amble around the backwoods, the boondocks, the rural areas. It was the beginning of spring, but still cold from winter. I had contacted a family, saying I would show up at their home on such-and-such a date, to which they responded, "sure, fine, okay; we'll be here." The...

It was a quiet, snowy night out in the Sandhills of Nebraska last night, out here where there's more square miles per capita, than capita per square mile; more miles of road per vehicle, than vehicles per mile. Someone requested identification of the rank of a Canadian army officer during the second world war, after which franksolich, twiddling his thumbs in solitude, ran amok with the scanner. The discussion took all sorts of twists-and-turns, and the end was nothing as the beginning had been. This is, uh, rather heavy with photographs.

When I was ten years old, our teacher assigned us to research our individual family histories, as best as fifth-graders could do. I swiped one of my father's lined green ledger books, and meticulously recorded my ancestors, and their vital statistics, as I collected them from the parents, aunts and uncles, and great-aunts and great-uncles who were still living at the time. I was a late child, three of my four grandparents being dead before I had even known of them. I had many older brothers and sisters, after which there had been a substantial gap. My parents were grey...

I got twitted last night, about the length of my hair. It's long, but it's not quite yet to the neck, which is when I usually get it cut. I told neighbor that, well, most males my age have either thinning hair or no hair at all, whereas I have this lush luxuriant foliage. Most males my age have things I don't have, and so this is my particular vanity, something to show off. God gave me at least one thing about which to flaunt. I've always worn my hair long, but the reason I gave him is only the...

When I was wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants with free medical care for all during the 1990s, of course I made a great many acquaintances. What follows was one of them, a guy I met on a train. He had recently been fishing, and insisted I join him in his meal. Normally, I am a laid-back, mellow, easy-going sort of person, and I had no problems accepting the hospitality of Russians, Ukrainians, White Russians, and Moldavians, but this was, uh, dead fish. I however got the impression I had better eat, and so for the...

I am doing some family research, undertaken with some urgency, and am trying to find the church in which my parents were married. According to the certificate of marriage issued by the church itself, it is "Church of Our Lady of the Scapular of Mt. Carmel, New York City." I used google, and came up with a lot of information about scapulars and Mt. Carmel and religious orders, but haven't found specifically this church. The "yellow pages" don't show anything, or if they do, I'm missing it. Does anyone know if this particular church still exists?

I have no idea the standing of the late Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983, if memory serves me correctly) in the world of music, other than that he was a famous symphony conductor, quite possibly one of the best of the past century. But by the time I met him, in February 1978 in London, he was nearing 90 years old, and had long ago passed the baton on to others. His appearance was a shock to me, because I had not realized how ancient he was at the time; I was seeing a white-haired crooked little man who in no...

A very Merry Christmas to decent and civilized people all over the world, but stockings full of coal and sticks to the primitives who almost, but didn't quite, cut it in 2009. The voting for TOP PRIMITIVE OF 2009 didn't seem to go hardly the way I had predicted, but then and again, I've never had much success as a predictor, especially in elections. When looking at the list of the nearly-wons among the primitives, one is reminded that in the 1700s in England (or perhaps it was during the 1800s in France), that an admiral (in England; or perhaps...

It was the late afternoon of December 16, the year I was nineteen, and a junior at the University of Nebraska; the week of final examinations for the semester, and I had just one remaining, in Spanish, for 10:00 a.m. the following day. It was snowing greatly that day, in Lincoln, and in the rest of Nebraska, silver-dollar sized flakes drifting down, covering the ground to several inches, and causing the trees to sag from the weight. I had just gotten done eating supper with classmates, who were all agog and excited about going home for Christmas. I had my...

I've been working on the top stories about Skins's island for 2009, with that scheduled for release some time the week of December 20-26, when it's a slow day here because of the Christmas holiday. However, there's something else that's needed, for the following week, the week of December 27-January 2, when it's a slow day here because of the New Year's holiday. Nominations now being solicited for the TOP PRIMITIVES OF 2009 nominations close at midnight (central time; 11:00 p.m. mountain time) December 11, 2009 The number of top primitives will be limited only by the number of nominations...