Portrait of Isabel de Borbon

She was Queen consort of Spain and is also known as Elisabeth of France, eldest daughter of Henri IV and Marie de' Medici. Her daughter Maria Teresa married Louis XIV. From Artnet:

A recent conservation undertaken by the Prado Museum, which holds the work, has restored the painting’s original depth and colors, with the lateral additions newly blended into the main canvas. This effort is part of a project to restore Velázquez’s equestrian works.

“The queen has recovered the regal bearing and the serene and natural beauty with which she was portrayed,” María Álvarez Garcillán, of the Prado’s conservation department, said in a statement. “With unique mastery, the horse once again shows off its qualities in a display of naturalism that only a genius like Velázquez is capable of recreating.”

Velázquez’s Queen Elisabeth of France, on Horseback was created as one of a series of portraits meant to adorn the Salón de Reinos, a wing of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid. The great hall hosted soirees and spectacles, as well as paintings celebrating the monarchy. Isabel’s portrait was intended to hang with that of her husband Philip IV and their son Prince Balthasar Carlos—all of them depicted on horseback.

In ways, Isabel’s and Philip’s equestrian portraits both complement and contrast with each other. Velázquez’s opted to place the queen on a white horse, echoing the stripe on the king’s rearing stallion. Where Philip is portrayed with a forward gaze, Isabel directs her eyes to the viewer, appearing composed atop her horse’s blanket and lavish gown bearing her anagram, which was not painted by Velázquez himself. (Read more.)

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Musk's $1 Credit Card Clampdown: Restoring Accountability

 From Amuse on X:

Contrary to prevailing misconceptions, federal agencies are not strictly mandated to use the General Services Administration (GSA) for every procurement; yet, centralization through GSA offers undeniable advantages such as competitive pricing, rigorous oversight, and significant cost savings. Unfortunately, the widespread issuance of approximately 4.6 million federal credit cards and lax management have permitted agencies and their employees to circumvent GSA-negotiated agreements, leading to extensive unnecessary spending and inefficiency. In fiscal year 2024 alone, these cards facilitated around 90 million transactions, totaling nearly $40 billion in expenditures.

The historical proliferation of federal purchase cards, dramatically expanded during Clinton-era government streamlining efforts, was intended to enhance efficiency. However, this well-intentioned measure quickly evolved into an unchecked system rife with wasteful and fraudulent activities. Reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) vividly document abuses: a U.S. Forest Service employee charged over $31,000 in personal luxuries like jewelry and electronics; employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development amassed over $27,000 in taxpayer-funded shopping sprees at Macy’s and J.C. Penney; and perhaps most egregiously, a Federal Aviation Administration employee brazenly withdrew cash at casinos using a government card. These examples illuminate a persistent culture of entitlement and fiscal negligence within federal bureaucracies.

Yet, the misuse extends beyond isolated incidents of outright fraud. Systemic negligence results in substantial unaccountable losses, such as audits revealing the disappearance of hundreds of Department of Education computers collectively worth over $260,000. Multiply this by hundreds of thousands of federal employees with credit cards and the losses are monumental. Such reckless oversight starkly contrasts conservative ideals of responsible stewardship and fiscal restraint.

Further, agencies regularly bypass centrally negotiated GSA travel agreements, opting instead for convenient but costly individual bookings on government-issued credit cards. This practice nullifies carefully negotiated volume discounts, inflating costs and exemplifying the very inefficiency conservative principles abhor. (Read more.)

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Is Pro-War Pro-Life?

 From Christine Niles.

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Mercredi des Cendres

From author Catherine Delors:

Ash Wednesday follows Fat Tuesday, and the mood could not be more different. Today, a day of fast and prayer, marks the beginning of Lent. The day of ashes on foreheads, and the admonition Memento, homo, quod pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris (“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”)

No better illustration of the contrast between Carnival and Lent than this work by the 19th century Bavarian artist Carl Spitzweg. Spitzweg, though classified as a Romanticist, admired and emulated the genre paintings of the 17th century Flemish school. His style is often humorous and down-to-earth (two qualities I find somewhat lacking in Romantic art.) (Read more.)

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NGO Fraud Racket

 From Tierney's Real News:

Our elected officials have very little power relative to the bureaucracy. DOGE is a threat to the bureaucracy.

It’s shocking. One person was getting $1.9 billion sent to their NGO which basically got formed about a year ago and had no prior activity - so they just set up non-governmental organizations and fund them by the government. No real oversight.

These nonprofits become very wealthy - they pay themselves enormous sums through these nonprofits. That's been going on for so long it's a gigantic scam like one of the biggest maybe the biggest scam ever. There are probably millions of NGOs.

Soros was really good at this. He figured out how to hack the system. He’s a genius at arbitrage. [Arbitrage is the practice of buying and selling an asset at different prices in different markets to make a profit.] He figured out that you could leverage a small amount of money to create a nonprofit and then lobby [pay off] politicians to send a ton of taxpayer money to that nonprofit so that he can can take a $10 million donation to a non-profit (from the Government) and leverage that into a billion dollar non-profit NGO.

{Soros isn’t spending HIS money - he’s using taxpayer money for his schemes and most of it is funneled through USAID or the CIA.]

It'll have a nice sounding name like the “Institute for Peace” or something like that. They just get grants and I think a lot of people in the government know that they are not doing good work - it's a giant grift. (Read more.)

From The Vigilant Fox:

The data scientist revealed that “States United Democracy Center,” an NGO co-founded by Norm Eisen, received $17M—and “the only thing they did with $17M was make a terrible muppet show.”

“That’s (explicit word)!” she exclaimed.

“They got money, and they did something with that. It was just awful. Jim Henson would roll in his grave. And it was weird because all the videos have less than 200 views,” DataRepublican explained.

“They didn’t even try to promote them with ads or anything. So where did the $17 million go?” she asked.

Shortly after this interview aired, DataRepublican revealed she was doxxed in a viral post on X.

After being doxxed, DataRepublican shared more details about herself to take back control of the narrative. She revealed her real name as Jennica Pounds, a 100% Deaf and nonverbal database kernel engineer with expressive dysphasia related to autism. (Read more.)

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Why All Morality is Arbitrary Without God

 From Culturcidal:

Do you know what secular morality is? Ultimately, it’s the child’s game of telephone with a heavy dose of self-interest involved. What do I mean by that? Well, where do secular moral beliefs come from? They are beliefs that are fed to people through the culture. Kids hear things from their parents, at school, and from their friends. They watch TV shows. They read comic books and fairy tales. They see who’s punished and who’s rewarded for doing things in society. Then, they start to formulate their own beliefs – and this is where the self-interest part comes in. They may adopt a moral framework, but in places where it’s difficult, inconvenient, or disadvantageous, they usually bend the rules to make things easier for themselves.

Now, if a culture is healthy enough, unified enough, and has strongly enforced rules, it can still produce a moral people – for a while at least. Long term? That’s a much more doubtful proposition. Unfortunately, in America, we don’t have a healthy culture or a unified culture. There is also no longer strong cultural pressure to conform. What does this inevitably create? Widespread degeneracy. That’s because a large percentage of the culture does whatever they want to do and then just calls it moral. After all, who can contradict them? Sure, I can. You can. But what moral authority do we have over them in their mind? None whatsoever.

This is how you end up with people who consider themselves to be moral cheerleading for Luigi Mangione’s murder of a random stranger, spewing hate online all day and putting kids in front of drag queens. It’s how we had people who morally justified riots, looting, and shoplifting. Just about every degeneracy you can imagine is championed by godless people who will tell you what they’re doing is moral and in their minds, they decide what’s moral and what’s not, so no one can contradict them. (Read more.)

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"If Ever I Cease To Love"

It is Mardi Gras. "If Ever I Cease To Love" was once the theme song of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is a song which does not make sense, but then neither does love, most of the time. Tomorrow it will be Lent.

In a house, in a square in a quadrant
In a street, in a lane, in a road.

Turn to the left on the right hand
You see there my true love's abode

I go there a courting, And cooing to my love like a dove;
And swearing on my bended knee, if ever I cease to love,
May sheep-heads grow on apple trees, If ever I cease to love.

Chorus:
If ever I cease to love, if ever I cease to love,
May the moon be turn'd to green cream cheese,
If ever I cease to love

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Zelensky's Tragic Mistake

 From Amuse on X:

Zelensky’s administration, by imposing legal mandates forcing parishes to either renounce their spiritual lineage or face forced closure, has effectively dismantled thousands of religious communities across Ukraine. This relentless persecution has plunged millions of devout Ukrainians into a profound spiritual crisis, isolating them from the very essence of their faith. The government’s invasive measures have not only stripped away religious freedom but have also desecrated deeply held spiritual traditions, substituting a historically and spiritually authentic institution with a politically expedient counterfeit.

In practical terms, Zelensky has criminalized the traditional expression of Orthodox Christianity, labeling authentic believers as enemies of the state. Priests who dared resist this coercive assimilation into the OCU found their churches confiscated, their congregations dispersed, and their sacred rites disrupted. For the vast majority of Ukraine’s faithful, these brutal actions represent an undeniable assault on their religious identity and spiritual heritage. (Read more.)

 

From The Rand Paul Review:

She’s not a neocon, either. And neither is President Trump. That could be one of the reasons Trump chose Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence. The DNI position oversees all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the FBI.

That scares the hell out of the neo-con establishment that’s embedded itself in the federal government like the Viet Cong in the jungles of Vietnam.

Fear breeds anger, especially among the government elites on Capitol Hill. Anger causes people to lash out. Gabbard isn’t easily intimidated.

Most of the neocons on the Republican side–due to Trump’s reelection and popularity–are biting their tongues to hold their anger in check. Not the Democrats.

In her opening statement during her Senate confirmation hearings, Gabbard set the stage. She took a reasoned yet defiant tone to those who would sink her aspirations to become DNI, arguably one of the most powerful positions in a president’s cabinet.

Colin Rugg of Trending Politics posted on X, “Tulsi Gabbard unleashes on the deep state, the 51 intelligence officials, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party in her opening statement.”

“One of the best opening statements I’ve seen,” Rugg continued. (Read more.)

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Seville Cathedral

 Let's keep in mind that the mosque had been built over an older Christian Church from the days of the Visigoths. From SUR in English:

The construction of Seville Cathedral began in 1401, over the remains of the city's former aljama mosque - a reflection of Seville's Islamic past. The decision to build a Christian temple of colossal magnitude was intended to demonstrate the power and wealth of the city, which was an important commercial and political centre at the time.

Legend has it that the architects and builders set out to "make a church so big that those who see it finished will think we are mad". It is fair to say that they succeeded. Covering an area of 11,520 square metres, Seville Cathedral is the largest Gothic cathedral and the third-largest church in the world, after St Peter's in the Vatican and St Paul's in London.

 The exterior of the cathedral is impressive for its size and elaborate Gothic decorations. Its imposing façades are adorned with sculptures of saints, reliefs and decorative elements that show the mastery of the artists of the period. Among its numerous gates, the Puerta del Perdón, the Puerta de la Asunción and the Puerta de San Miguel stand out, each with unique architectural details. (Read more.)

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