Miniature of the Duc de Normandie (Louis XVII)

Marie-Antoinette's younger son, her chou d'amour. The prince is probably three or four in this picture.

Dauphin Louis-Charles a couple of years later, at six or seven. Small boys wore pink in those days. Share

The Largest Wave Of Sex And Human Trafficking In History

 From The Easton Gazette:

Trump is stating that Kamala Harris as Vice President has facilitated the largest wave of sex and human trafficking in history.

He went on to detail that 325,000 migrant children are missing.

Trump further explained that now many of the children are likely dead while others may be slaves for sex or other purposes. (Read more.)

 

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania....From The National Pulse:

A Pennsylvania community is expressing significant concern over reports that up to 1,000 migrants may move into a former Civil War-era orphanage. Located in the town of Scotland, near the historic Gettysburg battlefield, an Indiana-based disaster response organization is eyeing the building, recently used as a summer camp, to “provide shelter for refugee families.”

In an August letter responding to the proposal, Greene Township zoning officer Daniel Bachman noted that the building’s most recent use falls within the R-1 or low-density residential code, which would not accommodate a higher-density shelter. The zoning denial, however, can be appealed. (Read more.)

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Meanwhile, in Ohio....

 I heard from a reliable source in Ohio about the activities of the migrants. The reality is even worse than the reports. To quote my friend:

The Springfield stuff is true. The police have been told not to take reports. Our RINO Governor has ties to Haiti including a school they started in their dead daughter’s name. I don’t believe for one second he is not involved. There are 3 other towns involved as well. There are many people profiting off this. Americans are being kicked out of rentals in favor of Haitians. Haitians are getting jobs that were never posted. They are going to the top of lists for housing,food , etc....I also heard through the grapevine that the citizens have started a petition to recall the town council. I have heard people say the government there is corrupt. Honestly don't know if they are Democrats or Republicans not really much difference here.

 

Reel of the Springfield Town Council, here.

 

 

Read about the National Youth Advocate Program, HERE. Coming to Maryland.

From Revolver:

What’s happening in Ohio is growing bigger and scarier by the day. As most of you know, Ohio residents are now claiming that Haitian “migrants” are eating their pets, along with the geese and ducks at local parks. Naturally, the media—who haven’t lifted a finger to investigate—rushed to dismiss these claims as ‘lies.’ Of course they did, because this story, like everything else unfolding in Ohio, doesn’t fit the left-wing agenda.

As we’ve noted, the situation in Ohio is fluid and constantly changing. We’ve gone from shocking tales of pet-eating savages to an onslaught of horrific car accidents caused by unlicensed, reckless Haitian migrants, creating chaos, death, injuries, and skyrocketing insurance rates. Now, we’re hearing that someone has put together a video showing alleged Haitian “migrants” wreaking dangerous havoc on the roads, and it looks horrifying. (Read more.)

 

There is a report that some migrants are being registered to vote. From GP:

Ohio’s election integrity unit announced on Thursday that it had uncovered a voter fraud scheme that involved Haitians living in the state.

In a press release on Thursday, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose outlined details of the scheme and said he would “aggressively pursue” those involved, including third-party groups and paid canvassers.

The release stated:

Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced today that his Election Integrity Unit has issued a warning to Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections after an investigation uncovered the use of illegal voter registration forms by a government agency.

“This is a reminder to all of our elections officials to be vigilant as we enter the final weeks of voter registration eligibility for the 2024 general election,” said Secretary LaRose. “We’re continuing to aggressively pursue third-party groups and paid canvassers who’ve been submitting fraudulent registration forms, and we’re cracking down on the use of illegal forms that aren’t authorized by my office as the law requires. These investigations are happening even as we continue to broaden the enforcement of Ohio’s constitutional citizenship voting requirement.” (Read more.)

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Ladies at Needlework

From Anna Gibson:

Needlework of all kinds was a common pastime for aristocratic and wealthy women in the 18th century; needle-crafts such as hand-embroidery, sewing, couching and even lacework were ways for upper-class women to occupy their hours of leisure time and create elaborate embellished gifts for close friends and family, or even embellished decor for their own personal use.

Needlework was ever-present in the lives of lower class women as well, although spending hours honing skills in elaborate decorative needlework was usually reserved for women who used that skill to bring in money instead as a leisure activity enjoyed by wealthy women. Needle skills were necessary for the everyday tasks of running a household, such as sewing, mending, and marking linens; as with upper class women, embroidery could be used to embellish gifts or personal items. (Read more.)

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Kamala Harris’ Top 7 Lies During The Debate

 From The Daily Wire:

Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris made a series of false statements during their first debate against each other this week.

It is difficult to put an exact number on all of the false claims made by each candidate since some of the statements are made more as an opinion versus a statement of fact and some false claims are more egregious — outright lies — versus being slightly misleading, like mixing up a location.

The difference between their false claims was that Trump was repeatedly fact-checked and hit with followup questions by ABC News debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis while Harris was never fact-checked once and the moderators never asked her any followup questions after she finished talking.

CNN’s Daniel Dale laughably claimed that Trump made more than 33 false statements during the debate, while Harris made only one — a claim that is blatantly false. A rough estimate from a Daily Wire analysis of the debate found both candidates made a comparable number of false statements at more than a dozen false claims each. (Read more.)

 

From The Georgia Record:

During this weeks Presidential debate, Kamala Harris went to great lengths to appear confounded by Trumps statements about a number of areas. We decided to check his statements to see what evidence exists: Trump said the Virginia Governor made statements in support for abortion, including allowing babies to expire after live birth.

CNN published a story in 2019 about Virginia Governor facing backlash for his statements after saying  "I can tell you exactly what would happen,” Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon, told Washington radio station WTOP. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” (Read more.)

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Florida: Updated Guidance for COVID-19 Boosters

 From Florida Health:

The most recent booster approval was granted in the absence of booster-specific clinical trial data performed in humans. Furthermore, this booster does not protect against the currently dominant strain, accounting for approximately 37% of infections in the United States. There are currently limited data to inform whether these boosters offer any substantial protection against the virus and subsequent circulating variants. Although randomized clinical trials are normally used to approve therapeutics, the federal government has not required COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to demonstrate their boosters prevent hospitalizations or death from COVID-19 illness. 

Additionally, the federal government has failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 boosters, or acknowledge previously demonstrated safety concerns associated with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, including: 

• prolonged circulation of mRNA and spike protein in some vaccine recipients,  

• increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections, and  

• increased risk of autoimmune disease after vaccination. 

Health care providers are encouraged to share information in this guidance in discussions with patients regarding the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and boosters. 

Based on the high rate of global immunity and currently available data, the State Surgeon General advises against the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Any provider concerned about the health risks associated with COVID-19 for patients over the age of 65 or with underlying health conditions should prioritize patient access to non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and treatment. (Read more.)

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Impression, Sunrise (1872)

 From ArtNet:

On a November morning in 1872, Claude Monet set up his easel and began furiously painting the foggy scene beyond his hotel balcony. As a Normandy native, Monet knew Le Havre’s habor well, but he captured it like never before.

Freshly returned from London, where he’d admired the watery, smog-drenched atmospherics of J.M.W. Turner, the 32-year-old went further than his British predecessor, drowning the industrial seascape in a green-gray haze. Figures were bold outlines and the sun a tight ball of orange ricocheting across the water. Monet completed the work in a single sitting, and the offhanded name he lent it ahead of a revolutionary 1874 exhibition would come to connote an entire movement.

Impression, Sunrise has crossed the Atlantic for the first time as the centerpiece of “Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment,” at Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery of Art. After debuting at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay in spring, it’s the second port of call for the show, which commemorates the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition.

Through period photographs and 130 works, many of which were featured in the Paris exhibition, “The Impressionist Moment” seeks to add context and clarity to the 1874 show whose moment in the sun was fleeting, even if it now claims a long shadow. (Read more.)

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Of Cats, Ohio and the Haitian Invasion

A horrific situation. From Mark Steyn:

Re that last one, J D Vance and others are getting some pushback for claiming that, in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian "refugees" are eating their neighbours' domestic pets. Naysayers insist that no cats were harmed in the making of this "far right" "fake news" story. On the other hand, from Springfield's Channel 6 News:

Woman arrested for allegedly killing cat, eating it in front of neighbors

That would be Allexis Telia Ferrell. On the other other hand, The Daily Dot responds, ah, yes, cat-eating may be happening in Ohio, but relax, it's not by "recent" immigrants:

Prominent conservatives are blaming recent immigration from Haiti after a woman in Ohio was arrested for allegedly eating a cat.

The only problem? The woman has lived in America for the past six years.

So her preferred dinner order is as American as apple pie with a side-order of Maine Coon. Got it. Very helpful.

Doubtless, even in America, the truth will eventually emerge. But, as the many fine judges I have been up before in US courtrooms like to say, we don't need to reach that particular question. The essentials of the situation are enough:

Per the last census (2020), Springfield has a population of 58,000.

The nutters in charge of this great republic then decided that a (Republican-voting) city of 58,000 would benefit from the addition of 20,000 Haitian "refugees". They have TPS, which means "Temporary Protected Status" - like the Somalis, whose "temporary" protection began in 1991 and is scheduled to end a week today. Well, we'll see.

But, at a stroke, Springfield has been turned twenty-five per cent Haitian, and, given the sex and age distribution of the "refugee" cohort, rather younger and more male than it previously was. On that scale of importation, there is no possibility of assimilation with the mores of Springfield. Someone has taken the decision to kill the existing Springfield, and in its place will rise something other.

Such as what? Well, Haiti has the fourth highest murder rate in the world, so an increased Clark County corpse count would seem the way to bet, and not just in cats.

As elsewhere in the western world, the traffic is all one-way. Nobody in, say, Port-au-Prince needs to worry about the town suddenly becoming twenty-five per cent Ohioan. (Read more.)

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If You Want Your Child to Respect You

I think they mean "authoritarian" rather than "authoritative." From GEediting:

Maintaining discipline is crucial when raising children, but there’s a thin line between discipline and dictatorship. Often, parents fall into the trap of establishing an overly authoritative environment. We might think it’s the best way to maintain order, but in the long run, it can lead to a lack of respect. When children feel like their voices are not heard, they start seeing their parents as oppressors rather than mentors.Don’t  get me wrong, setting boundaries is important. But it’s equally key to allow your child some autonomy. Let them make decisions and learn from their mistakes. This way, your child will not only respect you more as they grow older, but they’ll also develop valuable life skills. (Read more.)

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Tennyson's 'Guinevere'

 

Ah my God,
What might I not have made of thy fair world,
Had I but loved thy highest creature here? ~ Tennyson's "Guinevere" in Idylls of the King

From Dr. Esolen at Word and Song:

The Queen has betrayed her husband King Arthur, and in the worst way — in her adulterous love for his closest friend and bravest knight, Sir Lancelot. Arthur’s treacherous nephew, or supposed nephew, Modred, has played the betrayal for all it is worth, and now the whole kingdom is in civil war, and it appears that everything Arthur fought for will fall. Arthur, you may know, is a legendary Christian king, a Welshman, for the Christians in Britain had been driven into the mountains of Wales by Hengest and his hordes, when the Saxons swept into the land. Why, the very word for “English” in Welsh is “Saesneg,” and if you ever sing “Men of Harlech” in Welsh, you’re quite aware that the enemies are those same Saxons. And now all seems to be slouching backward into the beast.

So Guenevere flees to a convent, incognito, and is admitted, which certainly is a case of bending the rule, because, after all, nuns do abide by a written rule of life. Yet Guenevere asks only that she be left incognito and that she be permitted to join the nuns in their penances, though not in their joyful feasts, and to do the same work they do. We see then that she might be on the verge of vision, because she does know she has done wrong. What she does not know is how very wrong she has been, both in her sin’s effect on other people, and in her mistaking the king her husband. Her main companion at the convent is an innocent little novice whose chatter, quite free of all malice, makes her feel guilty, especially when the girl praises the king and criticizes the queen, who she does not know is sitting right beside her. And then Arthur himself shows up, to take his leave from his wife forever. He tells her what he had hoped from her, and how she has dashed his hopes; but he also tells her that he loves her still. His and not Lancelot’s is the most human heart. (Read more.)

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The Questions They Didn't Ask

 From The Transom:

This debate was devastating for the broadcast industry. It will likely be the last debate of any kind to be hosted by the old guard networks. Why subject yourself as a Republican to a situation that amounts to Candy Crowley times ten? And on top of that, avoids any of the obvious questions that should be top of mind? Questions like:

• Can Joe Biden still function as president?

• An American just got killed by Hamas — what should we do?

• Iran-backed forces are targeting Americans — what should we do?

• China, as an existential challenge — how will you push back?

• What will you do to stop inflation?

(Read more.)

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Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma

 From Reid's Reader:

Sometimes one has to bow down to a whim. A couple of years ago I just happened to see in a bookshop a new book about Tutankhamun, titled Tutankhamun – Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma written by the formidable English Egyptologist Professor Joyce Tyldesley. She has so far written 17 books about ancient Egypt and she is regarded as an expert in her field. I am no Egyptologist, but I knew at once that this book would not be one of those pot-boiler books that give readers a sensationalist version of an ancient civilisation. So I bought the book… and then I left it on my shelf for two years without reading it. I had so many other books to read and review. Finally, this month, I got around to reading Tutankhamun – Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma. And how enlightening and informative it was! After all the fantasies we’ve been given about ancient Egypt; after all the nonsense about deadly curses for those who disturb ancient tombs; after Hollywood movies where mummies come back to life and cause havoc [entertaining though they may be] – I found a courteous, matter-of-fact book about Tutankhamun and his times, as best as we can uncover those times. Joyce Tyldesley is a scholar, but she does not condescend to her readership, explaining things when needed, but keeping a clear narrative.

Tyldesley divides her book into two halves. The first deals with Tutankhamun and the world in which he lived. The second deals with how archaeologists found and dealt with Tutankhamun’s tomb and how it was treated 3,000 years later. Her preface and prologue tell us that Tutankhamun reigned from 1336 BC to 1327 BC – that is, he reigned for just under nine years. He died when he was about twenty. But she does not accept the idea that Tutankhamun was a “boy king”. Though his reign might have been short, and though his rule began when he was only about eleven, he grew to maturity and acted as a ruler should. It was quite common then for people to die in their twenties and it was very rare indeed for people to reach the age of fifty or older. In the era when Tutankhamun lived, the 18th. Dynasty, pyramids were no longer raised to honour pharaohs. Instead, pharaohs were buried in the remote Valley of Kings on the west bank of the Nile, their tombs cut out of hard rock.

So to Tyldesley’s account of Tutankhamun’s life and time.

The pharaoh Akhetaten was a sort of heretic. He moved his capital from the traditional court in Thebes / Luxor to the smaller city Amarna and he set about abolishing many of the gods. Some historians have mistaken him for a monotheist – a believer in one god – but this was not true. Akhetaten was a henotheist – one who believed that there were many lesser gods, but only one really important god. Akhetaten shut down many temples and built his worship around the sun god alone. His consort was Nefertiti. Among Egyptologists there is still much speculation about who were Tutankhamun’s parents. Was his mother Nefertiti? Or [a possibility] one of his older sisters? Or what some Egyptologists call “harem queens”? We do not know because a pharaoh would keep his sons very much in the background and not publicise the birth of a son. (Read more.)

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Young Louis XIV Meets His Aunt, Queen Henrietta Maria

A painting by the Belgian artist Henri Decaisne (1799–1852) depicting the meeting of the exiled  Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, with her nephews Louis XIV and Philippe in 1644. From Wikipedia:

Gaston de France, Duke of Orléans presents his sister...Queen Henrietta Maria of England to Anne of Austria, regent of France for Louis XIV. The infant Louis XIV in peach stands in front of his mother and next to his brother Philippe de France, Duke of Anjou. Queen Henrietta Maria stands between Gaston and his daughter la Grand Mademoiselle. Cardinal Mazarin is behind Queen Anne.

Henrietta Maria had to seek exile in France since Parliament impeached her and was trying to take her prisoner. Plus she was pregnant and, after giving birth in Exeter in June 1644, she had to escape to France, leaving her husband and five children behind. She planned to raise more money and arms but was never able to return. Her husband Charles I and her daughter the Princess Elizabeth she never saw again.

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DEBATE ANALYSIS

 From The National Pulse:

In tonight’s ABC Presidential debate, one candidate – Donald Trump – displayed vivid, righteous indignation, channeling frustrated Americans on the critical topics of the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and especially trade. The other, Kamala Harris, came off as scripted, platitudinous, and hollow on major policy points.

Thanks to the listlessness of Congressional Republicans over the past decade, Harris had an easier time with one topic: Obamacare. But across the board, Trump was far more in touch with the day-to-day American experience, rightly quizzing at the end of the night – if she has all these plans, why hasn’t she done it? She is, after all, in office right now, without much of a “boss” to answer to nowadays.

But with inflation still squeezing the average American, economic stagnation, trade imbalances, and real-world illegal migration horrors manifesting across the country, Trump seized the mantle of ‘MAGA’ – Making America Great Again. Regular readers will be acutely aware that if I really didn’t believe so, I wouldn’t write it.

Trump’s consistency across the 90 minutes was key to this.

While Harris attempted to needle him on crowd sizes and financial inheritance, Trump always brought the issue back to the policy debate at hand. Kamala, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get away from the subjects. This was interesting, particularly because Trump is often accused of being the “personal” debater, whereas tonight, it was Harris who attempted to play the man rather than the ball.

On the issue of war, the distinction was especially clear: Trump spoke of limiting the cost of human life, and Harris spoke of limiting the damage to the failed policy of neoconservatism, interventionism, and globalism.

Particularly on Israel, she will likely regret her comments, especially in places like Michigan where the Arab-American population will be angered by her declared allegiance. Trump, again, has been consistent on the topic for well over a decade now. (Read more.)

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Babylonian Map of the World

 From LiveScience:

This tablet, which depicts how Babylonians perceived the world thousands of years ago, is peppered with details that offer insight into an earlier time. For example, the ancient world is shown as a singular disc, which is encircled by a ring of water called the Bitter River. At the world's center sits the Euphrates River and the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon. Labels written in cuneiform, an ancient text, note each location on the map, according to The British Museum. Interestingly, cartographers may have used some creative license. For instance, "Babylon" is marked on only one end of the Euphrates, even though it occupied both banks for most of its history. (Read more.)

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The Queen's Jewel Cabinet

From Geri Walton:

Marie Antoinette had several jewel receptacles she used for her trinkets. The ones that were modest in form and size were “covered in leather and lined with satin.” Others that were “monumental [in] proportions,” such as the armoire à bijoux (jewel cabinet)...were opulent and extraordinary in appearance.

The monumental armoire à bijoux was 8 feet 9 inches high by 6 feet 9 inches wide and 2 feet 2 inches deep. Yet, for its overall size it was probably too small to hold all the Queen’s jewels. The armoire was created in 1787, after the city of Paris commissioned a German cabinetmaker named Jean-Ferdinand-Joseph Schwerdfeger to create it at Marie Antoinette’s request. (Read more.)

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Introducing Dr. Frank

 I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Douglas Frank speak in Easton, MD about election integrity on September 8, 2024. We are 80% through the Communist Revolution. The Solution is LOCAL ACTION  See www.FrankSpeech.com.

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Ancient Egyptian Head Cones

 From Live Science:

Until recently, archaeologists had only seen the hats depicted in paintings and never found physical evidence of them in burials. But in 2019, the Antiquity study described two burials at cemeteries in Amarna, an archaeological site in Egypt that was once its capital. The burials contained skeletons with head cones, proving that the accessories were more than simply stylistic motifs created by painters. An analysis of the remains revealed that the cones were made of beeswax and that neither individual appeared to have been wealthy. Rather, their skeletons indicated that they had been laborers and had experienced food shortages.

Archaeologists remain uncertain about the hats' purpose. One previously proposed idea was that these caps were crafted from a type of perfumed unguent, or balm, that released a pleasant scent as it melted. Another possibility is that the cones were thought to help with fertility, as they are featured in paintings with Hathor, the fertility goddess.

"Scholars often link the cones specifically with sensuality, sexuality and related notions, as they are frequently associated in imagery with women, sometimes unclothed," the authors wrote in the Antiquity study. (Read more.)

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The Harp Lesson

Young Marie-Antoinette, in her state bedchamber at Versailles, is instructed in music while being painted by D'Agoty. The Queen is in déshabillée, as was her custom in the mornings, even while receiving merchants, artists, tutors and petitioners. Share

Politics and Religion

 From According to Hoyt:

There is nothing — NOTHING — that pisses me off more than being accused of being in a “cult of Trump”. Not because it hits “too close to the truth, uh?” as idiots will claim, but because it’s like being accused of being secretly a unicorn. It’s both terrifying in revealing how out of touch my opponents are, and insane to a level that makes me sure our polity is headed to hell.

I’ve recently been accused of this by both pro-lifers — will you people PLEASE stop letting yourselves be spun by the left? Please? Half of the things you’re reacting to are the usual truncated statements. The others are just your wanting stuff that can’t happen, not yet, and for which the remedy is to continue fighting — and by the intellectual right who is very afraid any sign of supporting Trump will get the left to call them stupid. Apparently this is different from supporting W or Romney of McCain because reasons. Also Trump is so uncouth and speaks so loud, and has orange hair, donchaknow? And he didn’t even graduate from the ivy leagues, the dunce.

And yes, I’m quite sure of how I’m classifying these people, because these are people I KNOW and have known online for years. My sympathy in this case is with the pro-lifers, partly because they’re sick and tired of fighting. But I’ll remind them Trump allows them to continue fighting. The other side means millions of term-babies killed (Partly also because the economy will encourage more abortions) and also a lot more pro-life activists in jail. Neither of the sides is what you’d want. I GET THAT. But unless you have a raging Jones for martyrdom, vote for the guy that allows you to continue fighting for what’s right. (Read more.)

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The Devil’s Renaissance

 From Armas:

The nature and persistence of antisemitism on its own terms, its intellectual and theological content (such as it is), is properly a topic for others, who have engaged it in ways I never have. I have been satisfied merely to know the history in outline, and that has been sufficient to warn against it and its advocates. What I can offer is an interpretive framework or two for understanding its abrupt resurgence now, rooted not in the thing itself, but in the nature of history — and of man. 

The first is fairly simple: the generation that experienced antisemitism’s most-horrific episode in the Holocaust is now mostly gone, and so the social prohibitions upon its expression are concurrently lessened. This is also partially explanatory as to why Western societies are increasingly tolerant of migrant cohorts that never had any such prohibition, most notably those from the Muslim world, who will now express openly their loathing of the hated Jew. In a single lifetime we have gone from a society in which this was unthinkable — because nearly every parent or grandparent had played some part in a great World War against the operators of the hideous camps — to one in which very few feel a direct and living connection to what they see as yesterday’s fight. When my grandmother was a child she knew veterans of the American Civil War, and it shaped her society and personal perceptions powerfully — especially in east Texas, where the defeated and their descendants gathered. A similar role is played by the Second World War in the civic memory and values of every generation born clear through the close of the last century: the major difference being that, as Americans, we were all heirs to the victors. 

That time is over. The last veterans approach centenarian status, and the last time Americans elected a Second World War-veteran President was thirty-six years ago. The proportion of the American population that has no meaningful experience of that generation in public life approaches sixty percent of the whole. The proportion of the American population that is actually in that generation is under one percent of the whole. (Read more.)

 

Andrew Klavan shreds the faux history of Daryll Cooper.

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Fairytales of Blenheim Palace

 From Tatler:

The poster girl of America’s Gilded Age, heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt married the 9th Duke of Marlborough in the ultimate cash for class transaction in 1895, orchestrated by her ferocious social climber mother, Alva Vanderbilt. She met the Duke at 17 years old at a dinner party given by Lady Paget. 'My hostess had placed the Duke on her right and had put me next to him - a rather unnecessary public avowal of her intentions,' she wrote in her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold.

The story goes that she was all but forced down the aisle, but once the deal was sealed, it secured financing for an increasingly dilapidated Blenheim. The heiress arrived in England and the fortunes of the palace began to change. The 9th Duke was given $2,500,000 of capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company in trust, and an annual income of four per cent guaranteed to him by the New York Central Railroad Company, which continued until his death — about £66 million in today's money.

Now chatelaine of England’s most lavish estate, the Duchess set about integrating into the English social set. Winston Churchill was a regular guest, as was Nancy Astor - but ideally never at the same time. ‘She and Winston Churchill were actuated by a strong antipathy one for the other, so much so that one never invited them together, dreading the inevitable explosion,' wrote Vanderbilt. ‘It was therefore unfortunate that on one of Lady Astor’s visits to Blenheim, when my son was host, Winston should have chosen to appear. Nancy, with a fervour whose sincerity could not be doubted, shouted, "If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee!" Whereupon Winston with equal heat and sincerity answered, ‘And if I were your husband I would drink it.’ (Read more.)

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Nashville School Shooter Motive Revealed

 From Right Flank:

Trans people weren’t a part of the national dialogue until the 2020s.  Rewind to the 80s and earlier decades and such individuals were either ignored or institutionalized.  The mainstream media has since veered to the left of the political spectrum, essentially endorsing the trans movement without sufficient reason. Hale and others frustrated with their gender perceive themselves as victims.  Such victimhood leads to violence against the surrounding society. 

At this point, it should be perfectly clear to rational and logical people that the internet has warped the minds of our kids, tweens, teens and even some twentysomethings.  Developing minds in the late 90s, aughts and years after were allowed to access the internet during their formative years without sufficient supervision. (Read more.)

 

From Megyn Kelly:

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Ancient Bridge in Spanish Cave

 From Ancient Origins:

A new study led by the University of South Florida has shed light on the human colonization of the western Mediterranean, revealing that humans settled there much earlier than previously believed. This research, detailed in a recent issue of the journal, Communications Earth & Environment, challenges long-held assumptions and narrows the gap between the settlement timelines of islands throughout the Mediterranean region. Reconstructing early human colonization on Mediterranean islands is challenging due to limited archaeological evidence. By studying a 25-foot (7.6 meter) submerged bridge, an interdisciplinary research team – led by USF geology Professor Bogdan Onac – was able to provide compelling evidence of earlier human activity inside Genovesa Cave, located in the Spanish island of Mallorca. (Read more.)

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The Gothic Style – An Introduction

 From The Victoria and Albert Museum:

The Gothic style first appeared in the early 12th century in northern France and rapidly spread beyond its origins in architecture to sculpture, textiles and painting, including frescoes, stained glass and illuminated manuscripts. This sophisticated new design style combined a detailed observation of nature with an expressive elegance. Gothic was quickly adopted throughout Europe, with versions of the style still visible in the 16th century.

The term Gothic was first coined by Italian writers in the later Renaissance period (late 15th to early 17th century). The word was used in a derogatory way as a synonym of 'barbaric'. They denounced this type of art as unrefined and ugly and attributed it to the Gothic tribes which had destroyed the Roman Empire and its classical culture in the 5th century AD. (Read more.)

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Trump Warns U.S. Economy Will Face ‘1929 Depression’ If Kamala Wins

 From The Daily Wire:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump warned on Wednesday that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidential election this fall the U.S. will face the worst economic crisis in nearly a hundred years. Trump made the remarks during a town hall event with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in Pennsylvania.

“I gave you the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country,” Trump said. “If you let the Trump tax cuts expire, which she wants to do, she wants to terminate them. If you do that, you will suffer the biggest tax increase in history. There’s never been a tax increase like it, on top of which she wants to add a lot of tax.” Trump highlighted Harris’ plans to implement price control policies to stop inflation, which critics say she helped spark by casting the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate to pass the American Rescue Plan. (Read more.)

"What is to be done when tens of millions of Americans believe that 600,000 abortions a year are not enough and that a man can be a woman?" From Dr. Gorka:

The great Rush Limbaugh used to call them “low-information voters,” the tens of millions of Americans who believe the mainstream media and who aren’t engaged politically. For them, if they do think about politics, it’s at the level of a meme, the conventional wisdom that “Republicans are greedy and Democrats care.” On Election Day, their decision is based not on the Truth but on how much they drank in the disinformation of the Establishment. Today, matters are much worse. 

Today, we are not politically divided based on our attitude to simple concepts, such as whether or not government should “do more,” or whether the liberties of the individual should come first. Today, one of the nation’s parties has utter disdain for the Constitution and is supported by voters who act more like cultists than autonomous adults. The Democrat Convention in Chicago is Exhibit A. 

From the Planned Parenthood Taco-truck providing free abortions to the 20-foot high inflatable IUD and the platforming of those suffering from transgender body dysphoria, this perverse circus would be unrecognizable to any Democrat of JFK, or even Bill Clinton’s era.  (Read more.)

 

 Meanwhile, does the Secret Service have no shame? From Right Flank:

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley recently broke the news that President Trump’s Secret Service detail assigned to protect him in Butler, Pennsylvania was woefully undertrained.  The agents tasked with protecting the former president were given a mere two hours of training.  The worst part is the training occurred online. If Trump’s security detail were provided with comprehensive training, he probably wouldn’t have been shot during his speech in Butler.  It appears agents were intentionally undertrained to put Trump in danger. (Read more.)

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A Fireball Meteor

 From Live Science:

A newly discovered asteroid has met a colorful and spectacular end above the Philippines, exploding in a bright green fireball that was visible for hundreds of miles. The space rock was only discovered earlier the same day, earning it a spot in an extremely exclusive club.

Astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey discovered the roughly 3-foot-wide (1 meter) space rock, named 2024 RW1 in the early hours of Wednesday (Sept. 4), the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a post on the social platform X . The Catalina Sky Survey is a NASA-funded project at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory near Tucson, which scans the skies for potentially hazardous near-Earth objects. ESA representatives predicted that the "harmless" asteroid would break apart in the atmosphere and that "people in the area may see a spectacular fireball [meteor]." And that is exactly what happened. (Read more.)

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V&A Exhibition About Marie-Antoinette

They interviewed my friend Gareth. From British Vogue:

The drivers of the French Revolution, in particular, used Marie Antoinette as a pawn, caricaturing her as a figure of dubious morals. “Critics of the monarchy accused her of multiple affairs, paedophilia, espionage, even bestiality,” explains royal historian Gareth Russell, who is working on a book about the fall of the French monarchy. “They attempted to attack and undermine the monarchy by presenting the queen as a figure of pornographic excess,” a depiction proliferated via pamphlets shared on the streets of Paris.

 In the years following the French Revolution, there was a collective need to defend its principles (and the violence they precipitated), particularly among left-wing thinkers and writers, meaning that the conception of Marie Antoinette as an out-of-touch monarch was only burnished after her beheading. “Those who wanted to justify the revolution in later decades needed to render understandable the execution of a widowed mother, which is what Marie Antoinette was,” explains Russell. “When you depict Marie Antoinette as saying ‘let them eat cake’, you render her completely unsympathetic.” In the 20th century, meanwhile, she’s become an emblem of the dangers of abject consumerism. “As you enter the 1900s, Marie Antoinette as an icon of materialism starts to serve another purpose, almost in the same way as the sinking of The Titanic did,” explains Russell. (Read more.)

From Tatler:

The exhibition will also explore Marie Antoinette's influence on popular culture and style. Her clothes have had a lasting impact on design and fashion and, in 2006, Sofia Coppola's famous homage starring Kirsten Dunst won an Oscar for costume design. To this day, more than 230 years after her execution, Marie Antoinette remains a regular figure on designers' mood boards for her love of pastels, ribbons and flowers. Past collections by Jean Paul Gaultier, Dior and Vivienne Westwood all owe more than a hint of their inspiration to the French fashion plate. (Read more.)

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When American Generals Lie

 From Dr. Sebastian Gorka:

The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece by my former White House colleague, H.R. McMaster, under the title “I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump.” I am not surprised by the self-obsessed and plaintive tone of the article, given my experiences with the former three-star general and National Security Adviser. On his first week in office, as Strategist to the President, I was tasked with briefing the general on the President’s Congressional address that very evening. My job was to inform Gen. McMaster that the Commander-in-Chief would be speaking bluntly about the threat of radical Islam. 

When he heard this, the serving General strangely erupted over the use of that term, using a string of expletives as if he were an Obama appointee who deemed “radical Islam” a politically incorrect phrase. It was our very first ever meeting and within minutes this uniformed Army officer was screaming at me using phrases I will never forget, including: “Do you think I just fell off the f—ing applecart yesterday??!” At that point, I had spent 12 years working with the military and never been sworn at. Especially not in the West Wing.  

Even more peculiarly, later the same day, after having exploded at me over the phrase “radical Islam,” McMaster urgently requested to see me and begged I help him manage the DC rumor that he was leaking to the Daily Beast from within the White House. This general was hardly an emotionally steady hand at the tiller. 

Nor was the three-star a courageous leader of men, given that fact that later in his tenure, McMaster would repeatedly tell the President not to move our embassy or recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish state, fearing the eruption of a regional war. Not only did that not happen then, we had no new wars anywhere for the full 4 years we were in the White House. (Read more.)

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Oldest Dinosaur Yet

 From Popular Mechanics:

When it comes to dinosaurs, the most famous of these gargantuan reptiles roamed the Earth during the Jurassic or the Cretaceous—your stegosauruses, your T. Rexes, and your velociraptors (thanks, Spielberg). But the story of the dinosaur dates back before these two geologic periods, and well into the Triassic, a 50.5-million-year stretch that picked up the pieces following the Permian extinction (a.k.a. The Great Dying) and saw the beginnings of the dinosaur age—only to be cut down to size by another extinction event, known as the end-Triassic.

The Triassic is also the era of Pangea, when all continents formed one, big supercontinent, and living on a particular stretch of Pangea some 233 million years ago was a member of the Herrerasauridae family of carnivorous dinosaurs. This bi-pedal, eight-foot-long Herrerasaurid (though other members of this group could be upwards of 20 feet long) at some point perished in what is now a state in southern Brazil that its present-day human occupants call “Rio Grande do Sul.” (Read more.)

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Death of Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont

On May 22, 1807, Abbé Henry Edgeworth, the last confessor of Louis XVI, died in what is now Latvia with the exiled Bourbon court. The daughter of Louis XVI, Marie Thérèse Charlotte of France, was at his side as he drew his last breath. The scene is described in the novel Trianon.

The town of Mitau was bright with snow in the sunshine of a May morning, and cold winds whipped around the little palace which His Imperial Majesty the Tsar of All the Russias had generously loaned to the impoverished, exiled Bourbons. In a small, sparsely furnished room of the palace, an aged priest lay dying. In a chair beside his bed sat a young woman, not quite thirty, in a maroon, high-waisted wool dress, with a white linen apron. Under a close fitting white cap, her amber-colored hair, in a grecian knot, framed a strong, solemn face with piercing blue-gray eyes. Dipping a cloth into a basin of water, she sponged the forehead of the sick man, whose chest shuddered and heaved. At first glance, no one would guess that she was Madame Royale, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, their Mousseline la sérieuse, now the Duchesse d’Angoulême. With closer examination, no one with her dignified, albeit rather stiff bearing could be anything but a princess. She radiated a cold majesty to those who did not know her, but in her eyes burned the fires of deep emotions; her frigid manner was from sadness, not apathy or scorn. ~from Trianon: A Novel of Royal France by Elena Maria Vidal

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