The Results Are What Matter

A must-read. From The Spectator:

Every American President has complained about the cheating and imbalance — the NATO penny-pinching-cheapness, the tariff and trade imbalances. In more recent years, the various Bushes complained about it. Even Obama complained about it. But they all did it so gently, so diplomatically. They would deliver the sermon, just as the pastor predictably tells the church-goers on Sunday morning that he is against sin, and the Europeans would sit quietly and nod their heads — nodding from sleeping, not from agreeing — and then they would go back out and sin some more. Another four years of America being suckered and snookered. All they had to do was give Obama a Nobel Peace Prize his ninth month in office and let Kerry ride his bike around Paris.

So Trump did what any effective negotiator would do: he took note of past approaches to NATO and their failures, and correctly determined that the only way to get these penny-pinching-cheap baseborn prigs to pay their freight would be to bulldoze right into their faces, stare them right in their glazed eyes with cameras rolling, and tell them point-blank the equivalent of: “You are the cheapest penny-pinching, miserly, stingy, tightwadded skinflints ever. And it is going to stop on my watch. Whatever it takes from my end, you selfish, curmudgeonly cheap prigs, you are going to pay your fair share. I am not being diplomatic. I am being All-Business: either you start to pay or, wow, are you in for some surprises! And you know what you read in the Fake News: I am crazy! I am out of control! So, lemme see. I know: We will go to trade war! How do you like that? Maybe we even will pull all our troops out of Europe. Hmmm. Yeah, maybe. Why not? Sounds good. Well, let’s see.”

So Trump stuffed it into their quiche-and-schnitzel ingesting faces. And he convinced them — thanks to America’s Seedier Media who are the real secret to the “Legend That is Trump” — that he just might be crazy enough to go to trade war and to pull American boys home. They knew that Clinton and Bush x 2 and Kerry and Hillary and Nobel Laureate Obama never would do it. But they also know that Trump just might. And if they think they are going to find comfort and moderating in his new advisers, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, alongside him….(Read more.)

Meanwhile, every American should be alarmed by certain text messages in the Russian probe. From The Hill:

Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the reported FBI lovebirds, are the poster children for the next “Don’t Text and Investigate” public service ads airing soon at an FBI office near you. Their extraordinary texting affair on their government phones has given the FBI a black eye, laying bare a raw political bias brought into the workplace that agents are supposed to check at the door when they strap on their guns and badges.

It is no longer in dispute that they held animus for Donald Trump, who was a subject of their Russia probe, or that they openly discussed using the powers of their office to “stop” Trump from becoming president. The only question is whether any official acts they took in the Russia collusion probe were driven by those sentiments. The Justice Department’s inspector general is endeavoring to answer that question. For any American who wants an answer sooner, there are just five words, among the thousands of suggestive texts Page and Strzok exchanged, that you should read. That passage was transmitted on May 19, 2017. “There’s no big there there,” Strzok texted.

The date of the text long has intrigued investigators: It is two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and the Russia campaign. Since the text was turned over to Congress, investigators wondered whether it referred to the evidence against the Trump campaign. This month, they finally got the chance to ask. Strzok declined to say — but Page, during a closed-door interview with lawmakers, confirmed in the most pained and contorted way that the message in fact referred to the quality of the Russia case, according to multiple eyewitnesses. (Read more.)

From The Daily Caller:

The frenzied furor and fomented outrage over President Donald Trump’s reluctance to express blind trust for our “intelligence community” defy reason and reality. In their choreographed cries of contempt for Mr. Trump, the “left’s” increasingly shrill proclamations of political apocalypse make “Chicken Little” look rational. At least we’ve moved on from the impending annihilation from the nuclear war with North Korea.

Power is the only thing leftists worship, and they are unraveling in front of our eyes without it. They can’t control Mr. Trump. That alone drives them insane. They have no policies that work. Cities and states they control are criminal sanctuaries and bankrupt cesspools. Check out San Francisco, Portland and Chicago.

Each of the president’s remarkable accomplishments — from unprecedented high employment, our booming economy and the tax cuts to his historic summit with Kim Jong-un — highlights their abject failures and serves to prick their narcissistic egos. The country is doing better without them every day. Even worse, they are desperate to keep their countless crimes and abuses covered up. We know that there are many honorable, dedicated and legitimate members of our multiple intelligence and law enforcement agencies who strive to protect us the right way every day. So, why might any of us not just declare blind trust for our “intelligence community” writ large? Let me count the ways. (Read more.)

A eulogy of a scandal. From Zero Hedge:

From the latest joke-indictment by Robert Mueller to the hysterical press-coverage of the Trump-Putin summit, the way establishment media has been acting over the past week has been apoplectic. One might imagine, given their response, that the end was nigh and Putin personally commandeered the four horsemen of the apocalypse or something equally Biblical.

However, the certifiable insanity characterizing the media’s reaction to these events is not the focus of this article. Instead, we ask, how is it that the Russiagate issue is still being discussed in the first place? How did we get here, to the verge of a neo-McCarthyist second-coming, despite all aspects of this issue being repeatedly dismissed in the light of evidence? When we part the curtain of staged madness, designed to provoke fear in the gullible and outrage in the skeptical, what do we actually glimpse?

The reality is that Russiagate, the neoliberal war-cry, is only spurred on by a constant shift in narrative focus. Yesterday we saw farcical indictments; today we are consumed by a summit. If the pattern holds, then tomorrow we will be delivered a new take on Mifsud, tailored to deceive and mislead once again.

In a recent Memorandum to the President penned by Bill Binney and Ray McGovern, they noted: “We now have forensic evidence that shows the data provided by Guccifer 2.0 had been manipulated and is a fabrication.” The memo, published with Consortium News, continued: “If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand close scrutiny. It could also be because special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have never bothered to investigate what was once the central alleged crime in Russia-gate as no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team.”

First, as mentioned by McGovern and Binney, we have the thoroughly debunked Guccifer 2.0 hacking narrative. But wait, we also have the collusion narrative spawned by the dossier produced by Christopher Steele, likewise discredited. Time to focus on a mutated and contradictory version of the Guccifer 2.0 narrative! Before anyone can notice the holes, we are spun back to a new incarnation of the Trump-Russian collusion scandal, Mifsud the most mysterious and magical scholar of them all! Do we sound like a street hawker yet?

In Mifsud, we saw a narrative built to replace the collusion allegations first based on the debunked, laughable Steele dossier. The corruption involved in framing Mifsud as a Russian intelligence asset also became painfully evident, in light of his close ties with UK and Western intelligence figures, and his long-standing history at campuses where these same intelligence agencies – including the CIA and FBI, conducted training programs. This statement brings us to the crux of this piece: what do the unfolding chapters of the Russiagate fairytale have in common?

Each of them has a critical lack of evidence supporting their thesis and has been countered by credible evidence that would require a book to recount in full. Each of these branches has been shoved into the fore of press attention when convenient, for a brief moment becoming the singular focus of the establishment media’s echo-chamber. When their credibility quickly fails in the light of credible countering evidence, they are whipped from view, to be replaced by a freshly fabricated aspect of a different arm of the scandal. Focus shifts like eyes at a tennis match, between the Russian hacking narrative and the Trump-Russia collusion fantasy. (Read more.)

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Justice Department Reopens Emmett Till Murder Investigation

It should have been reopened decades ago. What a travesty. From NPR:

Nearly 63 years after the brutal, racist killing of Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi, the Justice Department has reopened the investigation into the killing. The department says it has received "new information" in the case but cannot provide any details about the reactivated investigation. The reopening was announced in an annual report to Congress in March and widely reported on Thursday. Last year, a new book on the killing, The Blood of Emmett Till, combined archival research with new interviews; members of Till's family had hoped the book would lead to the case being reopened. Till's death in August 1955 was followed by an open-casket funeral, which famously laid bare the savagery of his killers. (Read more.)

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Creating a Gracious Home

I love the toile. From Victoria:

When lending her talents to a project, Marsha recognizes that the dwelling must suit its dwellers. “A space that is not livable serves no purpose, no matter how beautiful it is,” she says. The designer considers carefully how each room will function—factoring in clients’ stage of life and way of life—to satisfy unique priorities. In her own quarters, where hospitality is prized, slipcovers give a polished appearance to Chippendale chairs but allow for easy cleaning. She recommends carrying out this idea in washable fabrics with dressmaker details, such as covered-button closures. (Read more.)

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Selling Out to Russia

From Front Page Mag:

Oddly enough the media had no problem with Obama running on a reset with Russia. The reset blamed the bad relationship on Bush and the Iraq War. That wasn't treason.
And here's what happened when Obama met with Putin.

“I’m aware of not only the extraordinary work that you’ve done on behalf of the Russian people ... as president, but in your current role as prime minister,” Obama said during a breakfast meeting at Putin’s country home on the outskirts of Moscow. “We think there’s an excellent opportunity to put U.S.-Russian relations on a much stronger footing.”

Where were the same media trolls shrieking now about praising dictators? Or a failure to defend America?

Obama met with Medvedev at the Kremlin, while Putin received him at Novo-Ogaryovo, where a sumptuous breakfast with caviar was laid out. Trying to make conversation, Obama began by asking rhetorically, “How did we get into this mess [in U.S.-Russian relations]?” In response, Putin gave him an hourlong lecture as to how precisely it had happened. Obama listened without interrupting.

What did Putin get from Obama?

1. A free hand in Georgia
2. A free hand in Syria
3. The betrayal of Poland vis a vis the missile shield
4. The betrayal of Ukraine by refusing to provide its governor with useful weapons
5. A whole bunch of our uranium via Uranium One
6. A deal allowing Russia's Iranian allies to go nuclear
7. Failure to do anything about the same Russian actions that the media is now blaming Trump for. Instead his administration actually issued a stand down order.

What has Trump given to Putin? Nothing. He's come to the defense of Poland and Ukraine when Obama wouldn't. (Read more.)

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George IV and the Marine Pavilion

From Regency History:

Henry Holland was the architect that George chose to redesign the pavilion. Holland had already completed the transformation of Carlton House into a Neo-classical masterpiece and it was the same Neo-classical inspiration that influenced his designs for the pavilion.

He built a rotunda over the grand saloon to the north of the existing building and then added an extra wing beyond that to balance the original farmhouse, thereby creating a symmetrical building. The old wing contained the prince’s private apartments whilst the new wing provided space for an eating room and a library. The rooms to the north and the south of the rotunda were bounded by a corridor to the west which enabled easier access.

Holland’s design incorporated bow windows and iron balconies which have become indicative of regency style, with French windows along the whole of the Steyne front. He used cream-glazed Hampshire tiles to cover the walls of both old and new buildings to create a uniform whole.

During 1787-8, £21,454 was spent on redecorating the villa and fitting it out with expensive French furniture. (Read more.)

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Madame de Staël in London

From All Things Georgian:

14^th July 1817 saw the demise of the Swiss author, woman of letters and political thinker, aged 51, Madame Germaine de Staël.  She was regarded as a witty socialite and always wore the most fashionable if daring clothing. Living through the French Revolution and opposed to Napoleon, she spent much of the time in exile. In late June 1813, she arrived in London, with her daughter and was seen at all the fashionable places and social events, proving herself to be exceptionally popular and invited to all the best society parties. The newspapers were full of details of her attendance at events – everyone wanted to meet her. (Read more.)

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MS-13 is a “Ticking Time Bomb”

From Judicial Watch:

A violent street gang energized by the steady flow of illegal immigrant minors is terrorizing a public middle school less than 10 miles from the nation’s capital while administrators cover up the problem and the feds ignore the crisis. Teachers are afraid, drugs are sold, gang graffiti litters the area surrounding the campus and gang-related fights are a daily occurrence, according to a lengthy mainstream newspaper report published this week. Most of the dozens of teachers, parents and students interviewed for the story refused to be identified for fear of losing their jobs or being targeted by the gangbangers that have taken over at William Wirt Middle School in Riverdale, Maryland. Wirt is part of the Prince George’s County Public School system, which has more than 130,000 students. “The school is a ticking time bomb,” according to one educator quoted in the article.

The culprits belong to the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), a feared street gang of mostly Central American illegal immigrants that has spread throughout the U.S. and is renowned for drug distribution, murder, rape, robbery, home invasions, kidnappings, vandalism and other violent crimes. The Justice Department’s National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) says criminal street gangs like the MS-13 are responsible for the majority of violent crimes in the U.S. and are the primary distributors of most illicit drugs. Judicial Watch has reported extensively on how Barack Obama’s open border policies helped criminal enterprises like the MS-13. When the barrage of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) began four years ago, Homeland Security sources told Judicial Watch that the nation’s most violent street gangs—including MS-13 and the 18^th Street gang—were actively recruiting new members at U.S. shelters housing the minors. (Read more.)

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How to Accept a Compliment With Class

From The Art of Manliness:

Sociolinguists have found that Americans respond to compliments with a deflecting response a whopping two-thirds of the time. While this kind of response may be popular, it’s not very smart or even polite. This is an area where you should definitely try to break the mold of the mainstream. Here’s why.

Denial and deflection insults the giver. When someone offers you a compliment, they’re saying that they’ve observed and assessed a praiseworthy quality in you. When you deflect or deny that praise, you’re basically contradicting them; you’re saying that they don’t have good judgment, discernment, or taste, or that they’re insincere – that they don’t know what they’re talking about. You’re returning their kind words with an insult.

Denial and deflection make the giver feel uncomfortable. When we dismiss a compliment because it makes us uncomfortable, we simply transfer that discomfort to the giver. Not only do you insult them, but as Paterson puts it, rejecting a compliment often makes the giver feel “awkward, uncomfortable, stupid, or frustrated.” Where do they go from there? They’re now stuck with the tiresome task of offering reassurance of their sincerity…”No I really do think so…” (Read more.)

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Letter from Louis XVI on July 13, 1789

Here is a letter written by Louis XVI to Maréchal de Castries, asking him most politely to come to Versailles. It is written by the King's own hand, not by a secretary. Notice his small, neat and orderly script, except for his large signature. The letter shows that Louis was concerned about a potential uprising and wanted to have his best officers and advisors at hand. Perhaps the errors betray his agitation; he was obviously aware a crisis was escalating. In French it says:

Vous savez M. le Maréchal le cas que j’ai toujours fait de vos services et de vos talents. Vous n’ignorez pas les circonstances qui m’ont déterminé à changer le Ministère. J’ai mis le [Maréchal] de Broglie à la [tête] de l’armée et M. Foullon sous lui pour les détails, en supprimant le Conseil de la Guerre. J’ai rappelé le Bon de Breteuil au conseil en lui donnant la place de Chef du Conseil des Finances comme l’avait eu M. de Vergennes et j’ai donné les Affaires Étrangères à M. de la Vauguillon. Vos n’ignorez pas non plus [monsieur le Maréchal] l’état de fermentation et de désordre où sont les [têtes]. C’est dans ces moments-là que j’ai besoin de personnes qui me sont vraiment attachées auxquelles je puisse prendre confiance et qui jouissent de l’estime publique. Il y a longtemps que je songeais à vous mais tant que M. Necker était ici, comme vous étiez son ami mais d’avis différents, je n’ai pas voulu vous en parler de peur de vous mettre dans l’embarras vis-à-vis de lui. M. de la Luzerne m’a aussi donné la démission de sa place. Je désirerais [monsieur le Maréchal] que vous reprissiez votre place au Conseil et le département que vous avez géré avec distinction pendant 7 ans, ce serait un vrai service que vous me rendriez et j’aurais le plus grand plaisir à vous voir ici, mandez-moi quelles sont vos vues.

A translation:

You know, M. le Maréchal, the case I have always made of your services and your talents. You are aware of the circumstances that led me to change the Ministry. I put [Marshal] de Broglie at the [head] of the army, and M. Foullon under him for the details, by suppressing the War Council. I recalled the Baron de Breteuil to the council, giving him the place of Chief of the Council of Finances, as had M. de Vergennes, and I gave Foreign Affairs to M. de la Vauguillon. Do not ignore either the state of fermentation and disorder where the leaders are. It is in these moments that I need people who are really attached to me to whom I can gain confidence and who enjoy public esteem. I've been thinking about you for a long time, but as long as Mr. Necker was here, as you were his friend but with different opinions, I did not want to talk about it for fear of embarrassing you or him. M. de la Luzerne also gave me the resignation of his place. I would like you to take your place on the Council and the department you have managed with distinction for 7 years, it would be a real service to me and I would have the greatest pleasure to see you here, and ask you about your views.

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