A. A. Milne's "King John"

I loved this poem as a child. It still brings tears to my eyes.

King John was not a good man –
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air –
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

King John was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon…
But no one came to tea.
And, round about December,
The cards upon his shelf
Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer,
And fortune in the coming year,
Were never from his near and dear,
But only from himself.

King John was not a good man,
Yet had his hopes and fears.
They’d given him no present now
For years and years and years.
But every year at Christmas,
While minstrels stood about,
Collecting tribute from the young
For all the songs they might have sung,
He stole away upstairs and hung
A hopeful stocking out.

King John was not a good man,
He lived his live aloof;
Alone he thought a message out
While climbing up the roof.
He wrote it down and propped it
Against the chimney stack:
“TO ALL AND SUNDRY - NEAR AND FAR -
F. Christmas in particular.”
And signed it not “Johannes R.”
But very humbly, “Jack.”

“I want some crackers,
And I want some candy;
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I don’t mind oranges,
I do like nuts!
And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife
That really cuts.
And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!”

King John was not a good man –
He wrote this message out,
And gat him to this room again,
Descending by the spout.
And all that night he lay there,
A prey to hopes and fears.
“I think that’s him a-coming now!”
(Anxiety bedewed his brow.)
“He’ll bring one present, anyhow –
The first I had for years.”

“Forget about the crackers,
And forget the candy;
I’m sure a box of chocolates
Would never come in handy;
I don’t like oranges,
I don’t want nuts,
And I HAVE got a pocket-knife
That almost cuts.
But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!”

King John was not a good man,
Next morning when the sun
Rose up to tell a waiting world
That Christmas had begun,
And people seized their stockings,
And opened them with glee,
And crackers, toys and games appeared,
And lips with sticky sweets were smeared,
King John said grimly: “As I feared,
Nothing again for me!”

“I did want crackers,
And I did want candy;
I know a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I do love oranges,
I did want nuts!
I haven’t got a pocket-knife —
Not one that cuts.
And, oh! if Father Christmas, had loved me at all,
He would have brought a big, red,
india-rubber ball!”

King John stood by the window,
And frowned to see below
The happy bands of boys and girls
All playing in the snow.
A while he stood there watching,
And envying them all …
When through the window big and red
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball!
And oh Father Christmas,
My blessings on you fall
For bringing him a big, red,
India-rubber ball!

(From Now We Are Six)

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A Strategic Assessment of the American Cultural Revolution and the National Security State

 From General Flynn:

The American people have just taken their first full breath after surviving an attempt to smother the Republic through a Marxist-inspired cultural campaign carried out largely through the administrative state, media, academia, and politicized elements of the national security bureaucracy. Most citizens did not fully perceive it while it was happening. Many in the intelligence community either passively accepted it or actively furthered it. The architects of this project are not finished, but their effort has been damaged and delayed. It is only by the grace of God that the country has endured to this point.

The American version of the cultural revolution is distinct from the Maoist model that ravaged China in the twentieth century. It did not coalesce around a single charismatic revolutionary figure. Instead, it spread along the arteries of bureaucracy, higher education, corporate structures, and activist networks. The long march through the institutions, as described by Antonio Gramsci, became the operational template. Rather than Red Guards filling the streets under the orders of an identifiable supreme leader, the United States experienced a coordinated convergence of agencies, NGOs, foundations, media outlets, and activist fronts, all advancing the same ideological project under different labels.

Because federal agencies differ widely in size, mission, culture, and internal resistance, this revolution unfolded unevenly. It never achieved total dominance in a single decisive stroke. Instead, it advanced by fragmentary gains and suffered fragmentary defeats. Wherever the ideological project captured an HR department, a training pipeline, a public school system, or a central media platform, it encountered resistance in state governments, independent media, individual courts, and networks of citizens who refused to comply. This piecemeal quality of implementation slowed the collapse and gave the American people time to see what was happening and respond. (Read more.)

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Advent: A Time of Asceticism

 From Ulrich L. Lehner at Church Life Journal:

Yes, Advent is a time of asceticism. The latter originally meant “training.” The liturgical color violet should remind us of that, but also the practice of our Orthodox brethren to fast during this time. When we practice asceticism we stop treating things as ends for us and begin to accept God’s order again. We retrain ourselves, so to say; fasting is just one aspect of that retraining. True asceticism is a tool to prepare ourselves, to be open to receive the Word Incarnate, and goes beyond a mere giving up of some objects (alcohol, chocolate, etc.) but aims to recalibrate our entire focus towards reality. It aims at changing our desire, to turn it away from selfishness and toward the attitude of acknowledging God’s order, receiving it in obedience.

Wisely, the mystics remind us that such phases of giving up things are to be interrupted by phases of fulfillment, of action, like our breathing is a harmony of inhaling and exhaling. When we inhale, we fill our lungs with the oxygen we need. For that purpose, however, we have to be open: If our airways are blocked, we cannot inhale. We cannot do so in a vacuum, either, and the world around us is just that: an empty place that cannot (ful)fill us. Inhaling, however, is rather passive; we are filled with something. Asceticism works a bit like this. It removes blockages and directs us to sources of fresh air. It prepares us to be (ful)filled. Only when we exhale do we become truly active. We use the air stored in us to speak, to sing, for bodily action—we express ourselves. We come to ourselves and to the mystery of our own being, God, and meet him in our soul. (Read more.)

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The Hidden History of Carols

It seems that in the Middle Ages caroling parties could be a bit wild. Most people do not realize that carols were not just for Christmas but every feast day had its carols, and some were more bawdy than religious. To quote:

 The story of Christmas caroling is full of unexpected surprises. The practice itself has gone through many changes over the centuries, and our perception of caroling today is based only on the very recent history. We think of Christmas caroling as a wholesome, and even religious, activity. Caroling seems to speak of the beauty, innocence, and magic of the Christmas season. However, in researching this practice, I have discovered that caroling was not as innocent as we might think. In fact, the act of caroling was actively combatted by the Church for hundreds of years.

Uncovering the origins of caroling has proven difficult. Some sources give the 14th or 15th centuries as the earliest date for caroling. I believe the reason for this is because this is the period when caroling began to be adopted by the church, and this is when carols first began to be written down. However, there is much evidence that caroling was around long before that. We don’t have written carols from the early periods, but what we do have are edicts from the Church and recorded sermons which make reference to caroling. (Read more.)

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The Invisible War Room Behind Every Democratic Talking Point

 From Amuse on X:

Begin with the phenomenon itself. A president warns of a border emergency, within hours Democrats declare it a “manufactured crisis.” A state tightens its voting rules, the same politicians and the same set of networks denounce “voter suppression” and “Jim Crow 2.0.” A Republican appointment or policy is announced, and suddenly everything is framed as a “threat to democracy”. These phrases are not inevitable descriptions of the facts. They are chosen, tested, and distributed. The oddity is not that parties use slogans, it is that the slogans appear everywhere at once, from Senate leadership to cable anchors to mid level influencers with uncanny speed and uniformity.

If we ask how this became possible, we are quickly led to the world of closed listservs that took shape in the mid 2000s. The basic technology was simple, a private email list, but the social innovation was new. A small group of progressive strategists and writers realized that they could turn what used to be informal chatter into a disciplined backroom. The early Townhouse list gathered liberal bloggers, activists, and media figures into a single confidential thread where stories could be pitched, spins tested, and responses coordinated before anything went public. That list set the pattern, a private room where partisans could plan the next day’s narrative while the public imagined they were watching independent minds at work.

The model reached its most famous, and infamous, form in JournoList, a private Google Group created by Ezra Klein in 2007 for roughly 400 left leaning journalists, academics, and policy professionals. Its stated purpose was to discuss politics and the media. Its practical function, as the leaked emails showed in 2010, was often to shape messaging in ways that helped Democrats and hurt Republicans. When Barack Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright threatened his 2008 campaign, some participants did not simply analyze the story, they proposed a tactic, pick a conservative critic and call him a racist in order to change the subject and make the controversy about bigotry rather than about Obama’s judgment. Others brainstormed ways to discredit Sarah Palin before she had said much of anything. The point here is not that every member of JournoList agreed with every strategy, it is that a large group of ostensibly independent commentators explicitly discussed how to coordinate lines of attack and defense for one party’s benefit. (Read more.)

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Star of the Sea: Marian Devotion through the Prism of a Medieval English Hymn

 From Avellina Balestri at Fellowship and Fairydust:

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary has played an integral role in Christian devotion since the early days of the Church, and continues to be a vital part of the daily devotions of Catholic, Orthodox, and even some denominations of Protestant Christians to this day. Once a year, during the season of Christmas, even those who typically do not engage in Marian devotion find reason to shed a spotlight on this Jewish maiden’s role in the salvation of mankind. But it is my firm belief that all Christians should have ample cause to honor her all year long, particularly during the Lenten and Easter seasons, as a vital thread in the fabric of our spiritual lives.

     I find particular inspiration in the soaring poetry of the Middle Ages in honor of the Virgin and believe it to be a wonderful method of sharing the Catholic understanding of Mary’s place in the Christian life and why we pay her homage. Harkening back to the Age of Chivalry, we can see how the culture telescoped (and indeed, colorfully kaleidoscoped) the various attributes of the Blessed Mother in light of their own understanding of the world around them, still grounded in a monarchical system. As such, she is seen as the highest of all Queens, and given royal adulation. 

     One hymn in particular, “Star of the Sea”, captures the freshness and vigor of the Marian devotion in the age of a united Christendom and explains quite poetically and movingly the feelings of the Catholic populace of medieval England. The lyrics are a mix between Latin, the language of the Church, and Middle English, the language of the people which had come into vogue in legal and liturgical works alike during the reign of King Henry V (1413-1422). For the purposes of this analysis, I will use the translation into modern English. 

      The hymn begins by hailing Mary as “Fairest and brightest of them all, even the star of the sea, brighter than the daylight.” This is a testament to the belief in the Immaculate Conception. This teaching, simply explained, means that for the special calling assigned to Mary to be mother of Jesus Christ, she was preserved from the stain of Original Sin, that inheritance of susceptibility to temptation that has plagued humanity since the first fall of Adam and Eve. Cooperating with this singular grace, applied to her ahead of time through the future death of her divine son, she lived a life free from sin and full of grace. (Read more.)

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The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

The Bells of St. Mary's is often referred to as the film which most exemplifies the mythological Church of pre-Vatican II days, the Church That Never Was, so to say. It is seen as idealizing priests and nuns and parish life when in reality, as we are continually being told, priests were abusive monsters and nuns were shrewish old hags. However, every time I see The Bells of St. Mary's I am struck by how many things about the film resonate with my own experience of Catholicism over six decades. The nun friends that I have had laughed together just like those in the film, especially in the scene when the cat got inside Fr. O'Malley's hat on the mantelpiece. And the striving of the parish to keep the school open is not unreal either.

It is always surprising how familiar some of the characters in the film are to me. Yes, when I went to parochial school there were some cranky old nuns. My former spouse has stories of his school days and encounters with grouchy teaching sisters that make one's hair stand on end. All the same, over the years I have known several nuns like Sr. Benedict, energetic, cheerful, and beautiful in every way. I have certainly encountered priests of the Fr. O'Malley variety, full of blarney at times, but able to connect with people from all walks of life. And what rectory does not have the occasional eccentric characters associated with it, such as the St. Mary's housekeeper Mrs. Breen, played to the hilt by the pixillated Una O'Connor. "You don't know what it's like to be up to your neck in nuns," she warns Fr. O'Malley, as he readies himself to embark on one of the most famous power struggles in filmdom.

Bing Crosby is not half so annoying as he was in Going My Way, the prequel of Bells. The fact that Ingrid Bergman was not a raised a Catholic and was not an especially devout person is testimony to her superb acting ability. Her composed deportment is right on target, restrained without being stiff. Sr. Benedict is able to gently impose a sense of discipline and order on the children while at the same time letting them know that they are loved unconditionally. I have known nuns just like her. She is based upon director Leo McCarey's aunt, a nun who helped to build Hollywood's Immaculate Heart Convent before dying of typhoid fever.

Sr. Benedict and Fr. O'Malley, like so many dedicated religious and clergy with whom I have been acquainted, interact with a variety of people with a plethora of problems, from the troubled young girl to the cranky old Bogardus. The story is fictional, meant to be entertaining and light-hearted but it touches upon very real quandaries. Sr. Benedict, who after overcoming many obstacles saves the school, has to lose it by going away. She is heartbroken and finds it hard to give up her own will, thinking that Fr. O'Malley has arranged her transfer on purpose. Discovering the truth at last helps her to accept everything that has happened in a spirit of faith. The look she gives Fr. O'Malley before walking away, eyes full of tears but radiant with peace, contains in it an ocean of sacrifice. In that sense, The Bells of St. Mary's is not only about the Church that was, it is about the Church that is, and that ever will be. Share

Whither the Mass of Vatican II?

 From Dom Alcuin Reid at The Catholic Herald:

Sixty years ago today Pope Paul VI offered Mass in St Peter’s Square before presiding over the ceremonies formally closing the Second Vatican Council. “The Mass was not the kind of solemn pre-conciliar ceremony once sung by the Pope and the Julian choir,” one observer remarked, “but a simple sung Mass to which the entire assembly responded.” “It was a reminder of another fruit of the Council, its Constitution on the liturgical renewal” (Council Daybook, III, p. 284).

For December 1965, such an assertion seems quite reasonable. The verbal participation in the Gregorian chant of the more than 2,400 Council Fathers (i.e. the world’s bishops) and of the numerous others present would have been quite an impressive change, and not necessarily a bad one, especially for a Mass outdoors. After all, widespread participation in the Church’s Latin chant was an early and sound goal of the liturgical movement from the beginning of the twentieth century. Experiencing this at a Papal Mass on such an historic occasion would certainly have conveyed a sense of progress and of true achievement according to the mind of the Council.

1965 had seen much progress in the liturgical reform. In January the Holy See officially published a new Order of Mass, instructing that it be included in all future editions of the Missal. The language of its promulgation, and its widespread reception at the time, suggested that this was the reform of the Mass called for by the Council. The changes it made were foreseen at the Council, and none of the world’s bishops would have been surprised by it. Herder & Herder even published a sturdy volume entitled The New Liturgy introducing it and documenting its genesis.

At the Council itself the Fathers, having been assured that “the current [i.e. 1962] Ordo Missæ, which has grown up in the course of the centuries, certainly is to be retained”, approved the simplification in the number of signs of the cross, the kissing of the altar, bows, etc; the shortening of the prayers at the foot of the altar; the reading of the readings facing the people towards whom they were to be announced; the introduction of an offertory procession as in the Ambrosian rite; the revision of the offertory prayers so as to be more sensitive to the offering of the gifts after the Consecration; the praying of the super oblata prayer aloud; an increase in the number of prefaces; the praying of the Doxology at the end of the Canon aloud with the people responding “Amen”; the abolition of the signs of the cross in the Doxology and reduced throughout the Canon itself; the reciting of the Embolism following the Pater Noster aloud, as also the Fraction prayer and its conclusion; the Fraction and the Pax were to be rearranged in a more logical manner; restrictions on which faithful may receive Holy Communion in which Masses were to be abolished; Holy Communion was to be distributed with the formula from the Ambrosian rite: “Corpus Christi. Amen”; and the end of Mass was to finish with the blessing followed by the “Ite missa est”. A simplification of the rubrics, including in pontifical rites, was also foreseen, as was the extension of the possibility of sung Mass with a deacon (without a subdeacon) beyond the Holy Week ceremonies for which this practice had been authorised in the 1950s. (Read more.)

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Europe’s Unending Tragedy

 From Chronicles:

There are times when Europe succumbs to an urge for self-destruction that defies rational explanation. The Thirty Years’ War provides a particularly tragic example. It went on long after its early instigators and key participants were all dead. Rational actors could have brought it to a close well before it entered its most destructive phase in the 1630s, yet the leaders’ ability to strike a balance between ends and means was lost to audacity, fear, greed, and fanaticism. 

That war became infamous for its violence even before the Peace of Westphalia. In subsequent decades, Europe experienced several armed conflicts, but they were limited wars for limited objectives, fought within the balance-of-power system by adversaries of similar temper and mindset. 

A new pancontinental carnage played out to the beat of “La Marseillaise” in 1792. Revolutionary levée en masse produced the first million-strong army—turning France into a veritable “nation at arms”—and the first modern-era genocide, in the Vendée. The mayhem took at least 7 million lives before it ended at Waterloo, 13 years later. 

The ensuing peace lasted, with some adjustments and five localized wars, until 1914. Thanks to the skill of the four key players at the Congress of Vienna, the long 19th century brought Europe 99 years of unprecedented flourishing across all fields of human endeavor. It was truly the golden age of European civilization, perhaps of all civilization in all times. It ended, abruptly, in a new nightmare. 

The “Second Thirty Years’ War” started with the lights going out all over Europe in 1914. It ended in 1945, with the continent in ruins, physically and spiritually. Its subsequent economic recovery was impressive, but the old intellectual and moral vigor was gone. This is especially evident in the low quality of the political class. No European leader of our time comes even close to the stature and vision of Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer, or even of their early successors. As a result, eight decades after the Red Army marched into Berlin, Europe’s politicians are displaying the same old mix of audacity, fear, greed, and fanaticism. It has the potential to result in a new, truly final, catastrophe. (Read more.)

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Mary Was Not an Unwed Mother

 From Catholic Answers:

Jewish weddings have two distinct stages: kiddushin and nisuin. After the first stage, there is a legal marriage that only death or divorce can break. These days, the two stages typically occur in a single ceremony, but because “bachelor pads” weren’t really a thing in antiquity, first-century husbands had a short time (upwards of a year) after the wedding to prepare a home for his new wife. By bringing his wife into the home and beginning married life together (nisuin), the marriage process was completed.

Thus, when we hear Jesus saying, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:2-3), we should recognize the marital imagery. He’s saying to the Church that she’s already his bride, and that this life is the short space between the kiddushin and the nisuin—the wedding ceremony and the marital homecoming.

That’s also where we encounter Mary and Joseph on their journey towards Christmas. When we hear that Mary is “betrothed” to Joseph (Matt. 1:18, Luke 1:27), this is a poor translation. They’re not “betrothed” in the sense of a modern “engagement.” They’re legally married, and could licitly have sexual relations. That’s why Joseph considers a quiet divorce: because he’s “unwilling to put her to shame” (Matt. 1:19). There was no shame, because everyone would assume that Mary’s child was the son of Joseph (Luke 3:23), and it was perfectly acceptable to get pregnant by your husband in the time between the kiddushin and the nisuin.

And so the first thing we notice is that Mary and Joseph are legally married, and were free to have sexual relations. The second is that, for some reason, they don’t. We see this in the responses of both Mary and Joseph. Yes, the RSVCE records Mary as asking Gabriel, “How can this be, since I have no husband?” (Luke 1:34). But as we just saw, she does have a husband. What she actually says is, “How will this be, since I know not a man?”

In other words, she’s not saying that she doesn’t have a husband. She’s saying that she doesn’t have sex with the husband she has. That’s a much stranger response, but it’s consonant with Joseph’s own response. Remember that he knew both a) that everyone would assume the child of Mary was his, since they were married, and b) that the child couldn’t possibly be his. The only reason he wouldn’t assume he was the father of the child is if he weren’t (public assumption to the contrary) having relations with his wife.

Early Christian texts claimed that Mary had taken some kind of vow of perpetual virginity in the temple. Whether that’s true or not, we know this much: Mary and Joseph are free to be engaging in licit marital relations, but aren’t. They aren’t at the time the angel Gabriel shows up, and they aren’t after the nisuin, when they start living together. (Read more.)

 

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary is the constant and ancient teaching of the Catholic Church. This de fide teaching is in the Catechism:

The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the "Ever-virgin."

 

Here are some beautiful quotes from Fathers of Church upholding the same teaching:

Believe in the Son of God, the Word before all the ages, who was...in these last days, for your sake, made son of Man, born of the Virgin Mary in an indescribable and stainless way, -for there is no stain where God is and whence salvation comes.... (St. Gregory of Nazianzen, Oration on Holy Baptism, 40:45; 381 AD)

According to the condition of the body (Jesus) was in the womb, He nursed at His mother's breast, He lay in the manger, but superior to that condition, the Virgin conceived and the Virgin bore, so that you might believe that He was God who restored nature, though He was man who, in accord with nature, was born of a human being. (St. Ambrose of Milan, Mystery of the Lord's Incarnation, 6:54; 382 AD)

Who is this gate (Ezekiel 44:1-4), if not Mary? Is it not closed because she is a virgin? Mary is the gate through which Christ entered this world, when He was brought forth in the virginal birth and the manner of His birth did not break the seals of virginity. (St. Ambrose of Milan, The Consecration of a Virgin and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, 8:52; c. 391 AD)

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The Netflix 'New Yorker at 100’ Doc Omits Russiagate, Kavanaugh Debacles

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

It’s a shame, because The New Yorker at 100 does cop to serious mistakes - most obviously, the fact, revealed years later, that parts of Truman Capote’s 1965 crime story In Cold Blood were made up. One editor even admits that they are elitists. Yet the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, won’t face the two biggest blunders in recent years.

In the March 12, 2018 New Yorker, writer Jane Mayer published an exclusive piece: “Christopher Steele, the Man Behind The Trump Dossier.” It was a profile of Christopher Steele, a former British spy who had produced a dossier claiming that Trump had been involved with Russian prostitutes and that the Kremlin was using the information to blackmail the president. In the years since the dossier story has collapsed. Many journalist,s including Matt Taibbi, challenged Mayer’s reporting. With more and more revelations turning up about it every week, it’s now accepted by all sane people that Hillary Clinton set the entire thing up, and the charges are nonsense. It was a hoax.

Ronan Farrow is also featured in The New Yorker at 100. Farrow’s New Yorker coverage was called into question in 2020 by Ben Smith, a media reporter at the New York Times. According to Smith, “if you scratch at Mr. Farrow’s reporting in the New Yorker and in his 2019 best seller, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, you start to see some shakiness at its foundation.” Farrow, noted Smith, “delivers narratives that are irresistibly cinematic — with unmistakable heroes and villains — and often omits the complicating facts and inconvenient details that may make them less dramatic. At times, he does not always follow the typical journalistic imperatives of corroboration and rigorous disclosure, or he suggests conspiracies that are tantalizing but he cannot prove.” (Read more.)

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Jane Austen’s Happiness

 From The Conversation:

Given that happy endings in Jane Austen’s novels chiefly revolve around a love match with the desired hero, some might conclude that as Austen remained a lifelong spinster, happiness must have eluded her. But this groundbreaking writer was a woman who filled her life with meaning through interests, friendships, socialising, travel, and most of all, a purpose.

Of course Austen had her fair share of worries. This was especially true after her father died, and she, her mother and her sister Cassandra found themselves in much reduced circumstances in less salubrious lodgings in Bath and then Southampton. A life of genteel poverty was leavened by her close relationships with the women in her life, including her good friends Martha Lloyd and Anne Sharp, a fellow writer with whom Austen could discuss the business of writing.

Much like her lovelorn heroine Anne Elliot, Austen had little affection for Bath. She missed the verdant Hampshire countryside of her youth and found the city oppressive, despite its lively social whirl. After eight years she returned to her beloved county when her brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a house on his estate at Chawton.

Here the women settled into a more comfortable life, allowing Austen the space and peace to write. It was at Chawton in 1815 that she wrote her final novel, Persuasion – the story of happiness lost and regained. The world-weary Anne Elliot, whose bloom has withered and is considered past her prime at 27, is still pining for Frederick Wentworth, the man she was persuaded to give up years before, when he re-enters her life as a dashing naval captain. (Read more.)

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Christian Themes in Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'

 

 From Magis Center:

The Cratchit family are the only characters to get the best eating scene. While it is very humble in portions, their feast contains roast goose, mashed potatoes, plum pudding, and gin punch. It is a vivacious scene. Their name is a spin on the English word “cratch,” which means to “eat heartily.” A “cratcher,” then referenced a “hearty eater.” But the symbolism comes along with both words being a variation of the word “cratch,” which comes from the old french term “creche,” which referenced where animals eat from: a manger.

“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.”
—Luke 2:7

The name Ebenezer also carries biblical symbolism. In the Books of Samuel, “Eben-Ezer” is mentioned as the location of a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines. Samuel prayed for God’s protection during the battle, and He answered: the Philistines retreated back to their own lands.  

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’”
—1 Samuel 7:12

Ebenezer, then, is a stone that is set up as a reminding monument—set up by the receiver—that retells the help given by God. As a result, his name alludes to the fact that Dickens wants his readers to understand that God is the helper and Ebenezer will be the vessel. (Read more.)

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Birthright Citizenship at SCOTUS, Returning to Text, History, and Allegiance

 From Amuse on X:

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment contains fourteen words before the comma, and three of them still do most of the work. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. Those words are spare, yet they direct the reader toward a demanding idea, citizenship follows allegiance. President Trump’s Executive Order 14160 asks whether a birth that occurs while both parents lack any lawful and durable tie to the US satisfies that condition. The answer, rooted in text, history, structure, and the very logic of membership, is no. The Supreme Court has now agreed to decide this question. Oral argument is expected in spring 2026, and a final ruling will likely arrive by early summer. This is the first time since 1898 that the Court will squarely face the constitutional meaning of birthright citizenship. The moment is overdue.

 Begin with the text itself. If the framers meant that every birth on US soil confers citizenship, the qualifying phrase would serve no function. They did not say, all persons born in the United States are citizens. They wrote, born here and subject to the jurisdiction. Senator Lyman Trumbull explained the point with clarity, being subject to the jurisdiction required owing no allegiance to any other sovereign and being under the complete jurisdiction of the United States. The 1866 Civil Rights Act used an almost identical formula, all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are citizens. The drafters understood the phrases as equivalent. Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the Clause, described its scope as excluding the children of foreigners, aliens, and families of ambassadors or ministers. Senator Reverdy Johnson agreed and tied jurisdiction to allegiance to the United States at birth. Representative John Bingham had earlier distilled the same idea, citizenship attaches to those born here of parents not owing allegiance to a foreign sovereignty. The shared theme, expressed again and again, is allegiance rather than geography. (Read more.)

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From Balmoral to Franco: Spain’s ‘Cursed’ British Queen

 From The Sunday Times:

Arantxa Domingo, curator of the exhibition Victoria Eugenia at the Royal Collections Gallery in Madrid, said: “She is a very attractive figure who is unknown in Spain. We felt that she deserved to be rediscovered because she played an important role in the modernisation of Spain and the monarchy.

“In a very subtle way, with great agility and tact, as probably characterised the English character, she knew how to introduce changes that we can still appreciate in Spanish society today.”

She was born at Balmoral and her life stretched from the final decades of the Victorian era to the birth of the current king, Felipe VI, before her death in 1969 aged 81. Felipe opened the exhibition this week at the royal palace, pausing before its photograph depicting Victoria Eugenia holding him in her arms at his baptism. (Read more.)

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Advent Newsletter

  

Mailchimp appears to have ceased to be reliable so I am posting my newsletter HERE.

On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus solemnly defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Here are the majestic words of the Vicar of Christ which echoed throughout the galleries and domes of St. Peter's in Rome:

...By the authority of Jesus Christ Our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: We declare, pronounce, and define that the...most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her Conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

The Holy Father explained the consequences of rejecting the dogma in very strong terms.

...If anyone shall dare- God forbid- to think otherwise...let him know that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he is separated from the unity of the Church....

The pontiff hoped that the declaration of the dogma would bring many blessings to the Church, which in the mid-19th century was already beleaguered by modernism.

We have complete confidence that this most Blessed Virgin will ensure by her powerful patronage that all errors will be dissipated...Under her guidance...nothing is to be feared, nothing is hopeless.

Although the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had been believed and taught since apostolic times, at least implicitly, it was during the turbulent modern era that Pope Pius IX saw the necessity of declaring it a matter of faith. Why? Fifty years later, Pope St. Pius X in his encyclical Ad Diem Laetissimum (1904) explains that belief in the Immaculate Conception is a remedy for the ills which flow from modernist, secular thinking.

What in fact is the starting point of the enemies of religion in spreading great and grievous errors by which the faith of so many is shaken? They begin by denying that man has fallen by sin...they regard as mere fables original sin and the evils that are its consequence.

St. Pius affirmed that belief in the Immaculate Conception will restore belief in original sin and in the need for Christ and His Church in order to be saved. "Thus Rationalism and Materialism will be torn up by the roots and destroyed...." He goes on to speak of the disobedience to authority, so prevalent in modern times, which leads to anarchy.

Now the evil which is equally fatal to society at large and to Christianity is dispelled by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by which we are impelled to recognize in the Church that power to which not only must the will be subject but also the mind.

The holiness of God demanded that His Mother be conceived without original sin. That this honor would be conferred upon a member of our race was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. Pope St. Pius mentions several prophetic incidents:

Adam, the father of mankind looked to Mary crushing the serpent's head...; Noe thought of her when shut up in the ark of saftey...; Moses was amazed at the sight of the bush which burned but was not consumed...; Elias as he looked at the little cloud that rose out of the sea.

Carmelite tradition has also long asserted that Elias had a prophetic glimpse of the Immaculate Virgin in the cloud from the sea. It is one reason why Carmelites long defended the belief in the Immaculate Conception. She who was hailed "full of grace" by the angel Gabriel experienced that fullness from the first moment of her existence. The evil one never had any part of her. How powerful is her prayer with God! As Pius IX concluded in Ineffabilis Deus: "What she asks, she obtains. Her pleas never can be unheard."

(All quotations from Papal Teachings: Our Lady. Monks of Solemnes, St. Paul Editions, 1961)
 

Here is J.R.R. Tolkien's poem entitled "Noel":

Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o’er hill and dale.
The world was blind,
the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

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"Affordability"

 From Tierney's Real News:

Trump has stopped massive immigration at the border and is deporting millions of people responsible for driving up prices and driving down wages. He has put in place tax policies which will kick in next year and provide refunds and incentives for the lower and middle classes.

President Trump signed the largest middle-class tax cuts in American History, including No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, and No Tax on Social Security.

If you file a 1040 in early 2026, with the Federal Government, for 2025 income you will be able to pay NO federal tax on tips, overtime and social security (with limits of course.)

That will be reflected in your adjusted gross income.

Let’s say you’ve been paying withholding on ALL your income for 2025.

Let’s use this example. Let’s say you earned $25,000 in overtime, tips or SSI in 2025 and are in the 10% tax bracket. If so, you will save $2,500 in taxes on a Federal level. You will receive a refund of $2,500 in 2026 for 2025 taxes.

Let’s say you live in a blue state that charges an 8% state tax and they disallow that $25,000 Federal exemption for their calculation purposes.

Therefore you will pay 8% of $25,000 to the state because they want to penalize you - or $2,000 in tax - because the blue state wants to screw you and defy Trump.

HOWEVER, the blue state will NOT be able to reverse the $2,500 that the IRS will send you for your Federal return. Got it?

In other words, the entire savings would be $4,500 but the blue state just took $2,000 of that away from you to screw Trump.

BTW - this is a good example of why President Trump wants to get rid of income tax altogether and go with tariff revenue for America. So they can’t play these games and screw We the People. He’s already brought in almost $400 BILLION in tariff revenue in just 7 months! (Read more.)

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Is Technology Destroying Children's Education And Mental Health?

 From Jan Greenhawk at The Easton Gazette:

One issue that never was dealt with before or since the pandemic, but was often brought up by teachers, was the fact that students didn't actually learn any better with computers. In fact, test scores kept declining and students became less inclined to do their own work. The system removed cursive writing, memorizing math facts, doing research in a library with books, using textbooks etc. Who needed that with a computer at your desk?

Twenty years later, we are finding that those things we have outlawed, along with explicit instruction from a live human being, are critical to human learning. Technology, according to Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, is not only detrimental to human learning but the mental health of our young people.

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath is a neuroscientist, educator, and author specializing in the science of learning. He is best known for bridging brain research with classroom practice and for his book Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Insights from Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick. (Read more.)

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Christmas Charities of Marie-Antoinette

While surfing the internet, it is all too common to see Marie-Antoinette characterized as someone who ignored the plight of the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her charities were quite extensive and are a matter of public record. She also took great care to instill a love of the needy in her children. At Christmastime, during a particularly brutal winter, the queen had them renounce their Christmas gifts in order to buy food and blankets for the destitute. As Maxime de La Rocheterie relates:

One year, on the approach of the 1st of January, she had the most beautiful playthings brought from Paris to Versailles; she showed them to her children, and when they had looked at them and admired them, said to them that they were without doubt very beautiful, but that it was still more beautiful to distribute alms; and the price of these presents was sent to the poor.
(The Life of Marie Antoinette by Maxime de La Rocheterie, 1893)

Another biographer Charles Duke Yonge discusses how the queen's generosity was well-known by her contemporaries, in spite of her efforts to be discreet, and the efforts of her enemies to portray her as a decadent spendthrift.

By the beginning of December the Seine was frozen over, and the whole adjacent country was buried in deep snow. Wolves from the neighboring forests, desperate with hunger, were said to have made their way into the suburbs, and to have attacked people in the streets. Food of every kind became scarce, and of the poorer classes many were believed to have died of actual starvation....Not only were Louis and Marie Antoinette conspicuous for the unstinting liberality with which they devoted their own funds to to supply of the necessities of the destitute, but the queen, in many cases of unusual or pressing suffering that were reported to her in Versailles and the neighboring villages, sent trustworthy persons to investigate them, and in numerous instances went herself to the cottages, making personal inquiries into the condition of the occupants, and showing not only a feeling heart, but a considerate and active kindness, which doubled the value of her benefactions by the gracious, thoughtful manner in which they were bestowed. She would willingly have done the good she did in secret, partly from her constant feeling that charity was not charity if it were boasted of, partly from a fear that those ready to misconstrue all her acts would find pretexts for evil and calumny even in her bounty. One of her good deeds struck Necker as of so remarkable a character that he pressed her to allow him to make it known. "Be sure, on the contrary," she replied, "that you never mention it. What good could it do? they would not believe you;[9]" but in this she was mistaken. Her charities were too widely spread to escape the knowledge even of those who did not profit by them; and they had their reward, though it was but a short-lived one. Though the majority of her acts of personal kindness were performed in Versailles rather than in Paris, the Parisians were as vehement in their gratitude as the Versaillese; and it found a somewhat fantastic vent in the erection of pyramids and obelisks of snow in different quarters of the city, all bearing inscriptions testifying the citizens' sense of her benevolence. One, which far exceeded all its fellows in size--the chief beauty of works of that sort--since it was fifteen feet high, and each of the four faces was twelve feet wide at the base, was decorated with a medallion of the royal pair, and bore a poetical inscription commemorating the cause of its erection:

"Reine, dont la beaute surpasse les appas
Pres d'un roi bienfaisant occupe ici la place.
Si ce monument frele est de neige et de glace,
Nos coeurs pour toi ne le sont pas.

De ce monument sans exemple,
Couple auguste, l'aspect bien doux pur votre coeur
Sans doute vous plaira plus qu'un palais, qu'un temple
Que vous eleverait un peuple adulateur.[10]"

(Life of Marie-Antoinette by Charles Duke Yonge, 1876)

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The FBI Turned Reporters Into Weapons Against Conservatives

 From Amuse on X:

The most troubling revelation to emerge from the decade of investigations and counter-investigations tied to Russiagate is not the now familiar list of intelligence failures. It is the discovery that the FBI quietly transformed segments of the American press into tools of disruption, a tactic with deep historical roots and a corrosive effect on democratic accountability. To understand the scale of this transformation we must trace the origins of disruption itself, how it was abandoned after the Church Committee, and how it resurfaced during the Obama years with a sophistication that rivaled foreign influence programs once aimed exclusively at adversarial regimes overseas. The logic behind disruption was simple, if an official believes a political movement or individual poses a threat, he may decide it is safer to shape or sabotage that target’s environment before any crime occurs. The Church Committee concluded that this logic leads inevitably to the abuse of surveillance powers, political labeling, and the trampling of civil liberties. The FBI agreed in public and shelved the program. It returned when the war on terror hardened the belief that prevention is superior to prosecution. Under Obama this mindset widened until it blurred the line between intelligence and politics, especially when the rise of Donald Trump was interpreted inside parts of the bureaucracy as a national security emergency.

During these same years the US government funded thousands of journalists overseas through USAID. The program supported 6,200 journalists, 707 media outlets, and 279 media NGOs across Europe, Asia, and South America. In Ukraine roughly 80% of reporters were paid by the US government. America defended these activities by arguing that funded journalists helped build civil society in fragile states. The problem is that the model rewarded journalists who produced stories that undermined regimes the US opposed and elevated those who favored American objectives. This pattern began to influence how intelligence bureaucracies viewed the American press itself. Rather than a civic institution, they saw an operational asset. The FBI learned from USAID’s experience overseas and began cultivating domestic reporters in ways that would have been unthinkable after the Church Committee. The goal was not bribery or control but something more subtle, shaping news flow, feeding narratives, recruiting independent reporters, and using their stories as both catalysts and justifications for investigative action. (Read more.)

 

From Mark Judge at Splice Today:

As I reported earlier this year in Chronicles and in Splice Today, David Enrich, an “investigative reporter” at The New York Times who helped cover the Brett Kavanaugh nomination in 2018, apologized to me for his inaccurate reporting. Friends have told me that collecting his scalp is a rare win—liberal reporters just don’t admit they are wrong—but I’m not stopping there. I expect an apology from Sally Quinn. I also expect one from Jennifer Rubin.

Rubin’s the deranged former writer at The Washington Post. She’s the author of the terrible book Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump. Like Enrich, Quinn, and most of the media—even some on the right—Rubin isn’t competent. In the fall of 2018 during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, hearings that I was dragged into when I was accused of witnessing Kavanaugh sexually assault a girl in 1982, leftist nuts like Rubin claimed that I wasn’t participating in the hearings because it’d be bad for Kavanaugh. Rubin was wrong. I didn’t say anything, it was a fraud. Rubin had a chance to report on this, but because she’s a dingbat, she didn’t.

On October 3, 2018, in the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, TV blowhard Joe Scarborough revealed that he’d been to some social events in Washington. He heard people expressing doubt about the stories told by Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. Scarborough said: “Quite a few people that we talked to, and I think a lot of them were registered Democrats, raised questions about Dr. Ford’s story. Now that’s something in 24/7 news coverage, at least in mainstream media, you never hear anybody talk about. They won’t talk about it. They feel that if anybody sticks their neck out and says they disbelieve any part of her story or talk about how there are no corroborating witnesses, well, they’ll get absolutely slammed.” (Read more.)

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How Ken Burns Turned The American Revolution Into Woke Propaganda

 From Amuse on X:

Ken Burns’ new six part, twelve hour PBS series The American Revolution arrives with the familiar promises. It will be definitive. It will scrape away myth. It will finally tell “everyone’s” story. At the level of production values, it delivers exactly what viewers expect. The maps are elegant, the voice over is confident, the selection of anecdotes is often moving. Roughly 80% of the factual scaffolding is solid. Yet precisely because the scaffolding is solid, the remaining 20% matters. Burns uses the trust he earns with competent narrative history to smuggle in a present day ideological project, one that quietly teaches viewers to be embarrassed by the American founding and to transfer moral credit for its achievements away from the people who actually built it.

The core problem is not that Burns includes Native Americans, enslaved Africans, women, and dissenters in his story. Any honest account should. The problem is how he includes them, and how he frames everyone else. Again and again, the series moves from careful description into unargued assertion, from history into catechism. The pattern is simple. First, offer a conventional fact. Second, attach to it a tendentious gloss. Third, omit the evidence that would let a viewer test that gloss. A well produced documentary becomes a vehicle for a subtle but thorough rewriting of the American Revolution along contemporary ideological lines.

Consider the very first move the series makes. Before the colonies are even on screen, we are told that the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy had a thriving democracy and that later the Founders would create a similar union. The unmistakable implication is that we owe our constitutional order, in significant part, to the Haudenosaunee. This is presented in the magisterial tone that Burns has perfected over decades, as if it were a settled finding of the historical profession rather than a contested, fringe thesis. No primary source is quoted on screen, no debate acknowledged, no footnote even hinted at. The viewer simply absorbs that American self government is derivative of indigenous models.

This suggestion collides with the documentary record. If the Iroquois design played a real role in the creation of American federalism, one would expect it to surface in the immense paper trail of the founding. Yet the Journals of the Continental Congress, the records of the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates, and the public essays of the period are silent on any Iroquois template. The authors of the Federalist Papers explain their influences in great detail. They cite Montesquieu, Polybius, the Dutch Republic, the Swiss cantons, and of course the English constitution. They do not cite the Great Law of Peace. Individual colonists knew the Iroquois well and sometimes admired their discipline, but admiration is not intellectual dependency.

Burns’ one concrete hook is a line from a 1751 letter, in which Benjamin Franklin notes the practical fact that six nations of what he calls “ignorant savages” had managed to form a union, and remarks that it would be strange if the colonies could not do the same. The letter is an admonition, not a citation. Franklin’s point is that if even people he regards as backward can coordinate, then Englishmen with parliaments and printing presses have no excuse for their disunity. To treat this as proof of direct borrowing from Iroquois constitutional theory is to misread a scolding remark as a philosophical footnote. Burns never explains this, because explanation would reveal how thin the evidence really is.

Equally misleading is the description of the Iroquois system as a “thriving democracy.” The confederacy had no written constitution, relied on hereditary clan structures, and vested decision making in a small council of sachems selected by clan mothers. Ordinary Iroquois did not cast votes in anything like our sense. It was an impressive indigenous polity, but calling it democratic in the modern sense stretches the term past usefulness. Here again, the series chooses the vocabulary of contemporary legitimacy rather than the vocabulary that best fits the 18th century reality.

Why does this matter? Because the opening move sets a tone. If the American founders merely borrowed their institutional imagination from the Iroquois, then the uniqueness of the American experiment is diminished, and so is the moral credit we extend to the founding generation. The point is not to honor the Iroquois as such, who deserve study on their own terms, but to recenter the story away from the people who actually wrote the Declaration, fought the war, and built the Constitution. It is a redistribution of prestige, and it is accomplished by selective quotation and silence rather than by argument.

The treatment of slavery reveals the same habits in a more serious register. When Burns turns to the Atlantic slave trade, he speaks in the passive voice. Tens of thousands of Africans, we are told, were captured and put in chains. The obvious question, captured by whom, is left unanswered. The effect is not accidental. A viewer who has not studied the trade will naturally imagine European raiding parties sweeping through African villages. Burns knows this. He also knows that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the first act of enslavement was carried out by Africans themselves. (Read more.)

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How Marie Antoinette Shaped Centuries of Fashion and Design

A young Marie-Antoinette in formal court dress, which she disliked.

 

Marie-Antoinette at 19 in a formal court gown for a state occasion, corseted with panniers (side hoops), jewels, rouge, and very elaborate hair. Some people think this gown was what she wore to her husband's coronation.

The Queen with her two oldest children in the less formal attire she preferred.

 

There are not many of Marie-Antoinette's gowns left because the really fine ones were made into Mass vestments and donated to the Church. The other gowns were given to her ladies, particularly the lady in charge of the Queen's clothes, who could then sell the gowns for extra income. From History:

“Court fashion was highly prescribed. Marie Antoinette wanted to break free of that and express herself,” says Jeffrey Mayer, professor of fashion history at Syracuse University. Her style signaled a departure from the Baroque era (17th–18th century), which was defined by lavish ornamentation. Instead, she embraced "an elegant, fresh, feminine style, made provocatively modern,” says Cox.

Inspired by Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the queen embraced all things pastoral. She regularly used printed cottons such as toile de Jouy, a fabric depicting monochromatic pastoral scenes. Her playful style drew from the Rococo movement, an 18th-century decorative trend that featured curved lines, pastels, wooden marquetry, ribbons and florals. Marie Antoinette's embrace of these motifs helped popularize the style and laid the groundwork for the “French country” aesthetic. At the Petit Trianon, the queen’s personal retreat in Versailles, she harmonized interior design with fashion. Motifs like her beloved cornflowers adorned everything from her custom tea set to her gowns. Although earlier royals used monograms, she emblazoned “M.A.” on everything from banisters to cosmetics, creating a lasting association between monograms and luxury, says Cox. 

 [...]

The palace of Versailles was open to the public (as long as you met the dress code), and visitors could tour the queen’s closet. They could also visit the Parisian shop of Rose Bertin, Antoinette’s stylist and unofficial “Minister of Fashion.” They could even commission a copy of her latest look…as long as they waited the mandated two weeks after the queen debuted it.

Bertin’s Paris shop, Le Grand Mogol (The Grand Mogul) “functioned as an early couture salon, showing new collections each season and maintaining a fully staffed workroom. This was the blueprint for the modern 'fashion house' or maison de couture,” says Mayer. (Read more.)

The young Queen with flowers replacing jewels.

At a costume ball, escorted by her brother-in-law, the Comte d'Artois (Charles X)

In simple attire, no jewels, hair unpowdered.

Marie-Antoinette in simple attire, hair unpowdered, no jewels. But the portrait was seen as being disrespectful to her queenly status.

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"Politically incorrect"

 From Tierney's Real News:

Many so-called ‘influencers’ and the fake news are finally reporting about the Somali community in Minnesota as if it’s ‘breaking news’ and all this just started yesterday.

NOPE, it started around 20 years ago and has gotten increasingly out of control every year! I was one of the FIRST to cover it in Minnesota in 2018 and I couldn’t get ANY of the local news outlets to cover my reporting. They were all afraid to be called racists.

You can thank President Trump for being “politically incorrect” enough to get the fake news to cover it now!

8 years ago, in 2018, I reported a conversation on Facebook that I had with two local Somali men in Minneapolis as well as with their “handlers” in the Minnesota Koch Libertarian party.

Here’s my personal experience talking to Somalis in Minnesota from 2018:

TIERNEY: “Yesterday, I had long social media conversations with two Somali Muslim gentlemen from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I asked them about their goals for improving Minnesota and how they feel about being an American. I also asked them about the million dollar upgrade at Cedar Riverside public housing that Mayor Jacob Frey promised its majority Somali residents this week. After I was called a racist, a fascist, a bigot, stupid and old, here’s what else they shared with me. Nearly verbatim.

SOMALI MEN: “Get with the program, miss. We are here to stay. We never left our Somali heritage or culture. That’s what America is missing. Please stop forcing us to your ways. You’re old and have very old ideas. Get with the program. I’m trying to have my son to be the first Muslim black governor of the state of Minnesota in next 20 years. He’s gonna run as a Democrat.

Oh, and on those upgrades at Cedar Riverside. They better give us those upgrades and changes if the Mayor wants to earn our votes. Or else we can always get another Mayor next time around. You see how being an American works? I told you lady please get with the program because Somalis are the latest addition to black folks.

Why should we assimilate? Do you know how stupid you sound? Guess what? We’re here to stay and will transform America for the better. Get that through your thick, ignorant skull. You need to see a doctor. It’s inevitable that Somalis will be taking over and there isn’t anything you can do about it.

Again, what’s wrong with Somalis taking over? It is inevitable! This land doesn’t belong to either of us. It is our time to populate it and rule it. Go back to Europe or wherever you’re from if you don’t like it.”

Then I was contacted by two Somali leaders working with a Libertarian organization (the Koch Libertarians were helping the Somali leaders behind the scenes - contrary to what they said publicly) who asked me to support security at Cedar Riverside because the Somali elders feared their own Somali youth! (Read more.)

 

From Overton News:

That’s when Secretary Kristi Noem dropped a bombshell that shook the Cabinet Room.

She revealed that President Trump asked her to investigate billions in taxpayer fraud in Tim Walz’s Minnesota, and what she uncovered is shocking.

Then she took aim at Walz directly and TORCHED him in front of everyone.

“You know, you told me to look into Minnesota and their fraud on visas and their programs.”

“50% of them are fraudulent, which means that that wacko Governor Walz either is an idiot or he did it on purpose…and I think he’s both, sir.”

“He brought people in there illegally that never should have been in this country. Said they were somebody that they’re not. They said they were married to somebody who was their brother or somebody else.”

“Fraudulent visa applications signed up for government programs took hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers.”

“And we’re going to remove them and we’re going to get our money back, and we’re going to this next year, make sure that we only put people in leadership positions in this country that love this country and have its back.”

Noem’s remarks landed like a political thunderclap. (Read more.)

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