Links - 16th March 2021 (1) (Meghan and Harry)

Prince Harry gives up £50K rifle collection and hunting 'to please Meghan Markle'
"He gave up his family, friends, career, nation, hobbies, military associations, invictus games, commonwealth groups, diet and sson to lose his titles (other than Prince) What has she give up to this relationship"

Meghan Was Devastated When Harry Was Stripped of His Military Titles - "One of the hardest parts of the deal Meghan Markle and Prince Harry struck with the royal family, after the Sussexes stepped down as senior royals? Harry's loss of his honorary military titles, according to biography Finding Freedom (yes, the revelations are still coming!)"

Prince Harry is ‘friendless and missing structure’ after moving to LA - "Prince Harry is reportedly struggling to adjust to his new life in LA, where he “doesn’t have any friends” and is still unemployed after quitting royal life."
He always looks so miserable in pictures nowadays. But she looks happy

Prince Harry may have regrets as he tells friends he ‘cannot believe how his life has turned upside down’ - "Prince Harry may finally be having second thoughts about “Megxit,” as he’s reportedly been telling friends that he still can’t believe “how his life has turned upside down” in recent months."

Meghan Markle's mother Doria Ragland 'has moved in' with Duchess and Prince Harry
"Just when you thought Harry's life couldn't get any worse"

If Harry is unhappy now, he only has himself to blame - "there were only three things you needed to do in order to live the easier life you craved: honour and respect the Queen and Commonwealth, however distantly, avoid hypocrisy like Covid-19, and always, always behave with grace.What you couldn’t do was turn your back on the Commonwealth – and then insult it. You couldn’t publicly take the Queen to task over “branding issues” in a manner of such Kardashian-like crassness that just reading your ‘Sussex Royal’ rhetoric made the country want to bathe in hand-sanitizer. You couldn’t guzzle lobster ceviche (with George, Amal, Oprah or whoever else you felt validated your importance in a city that’s built on schmooze) whilst mourning white privilege, or drive around Beverly Hills in a gas-guzzling six-litre engine SUV, whilst lecturing us about environmentalism. Do you see how that works? Because here’s the funny thing about the British public: they may nit-pick over trivial mistakes, but they will always have your royal back. The love we feel for our monarchy isn’t far off the kind parents feel for their children; it takes a lot to prompt more than fond headshakes. I’d call it unconditional if it weren’t for Prince Andrew: that’s how much it takes to alienate us. So how did Prince Harry get it so stupendously wrong? How did he veer off such a straightforward path, at a time when the Royal Family are more purposeful, necessary and respected than ever – only to find himself “struggling”, “challenged”, “tortured” and “lost” in a stranger’s house and an even stranger city?"

Prince Harry blasted as a 'complete idiot' over his Commonwealth comments by Army hero he worked with on PTSD campaign - "PRINCE Harry has been branded a "complete idiot" by a military hero who once won his backing for PTSD campaign.Former Colour Sergeant Trevor Coult launched an attack on the royal after the former soldier quit the UK to move to the US with his wife... “His comments are disgusting and I for one am pleased he has left the UK. A lot of soldiers in the British Army are from the Commonwealth too.“They fought alongside Harry and he should remember that. He’s having a dig at the Royal Family – his own family.“He says he wants to be left alone to do his own thing but he’s constantly doing Zoom calls."He can’t have it both ways so he’s now classed as what I think is an attention seeker. Every time he speaks these days he loses support massively.“Every time he speaks and insults the Queen, the Royal Family or has a go at the Commonwealth, all that support from all the years is slowly vanishing. It’s sad because he did good work.”... They made the comments as they took part in the Queen's Commonwealth Trust video call, one of the network's weekly sessions set up in response to the growing Black Lives Matter movement.It comes after Harry last week outlined his personal commitment to tackling institutional racism."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are the 'big losers' in the Royal Family, claims royal author - "Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been branded the 'big losers' in the Royal Family amid the coronavirus pandemic, a royal expert has claimed.Author Phil Dampier claimed the Duke, 35, and Duchess of Sussex, 38, have missed out on the opportunity of seeing their public image boosted when they chose to move to LA"

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are 'professional victims' and 'nothing is ever their fault', palace insider claims - "MEGHAN Markle and Prince Harry are "professional victims" who always "saw the negative in everything", a palace insider claims.The ex-staff member said "nothing was ever their fault" after a bombshell new book claimed the couple whined they were victims of a “merciless machine” of aides and courtiers steeped in tradition... Both her and Harry are said to have grown frustrated when they were barred from establishing their own team in Windsor, separate from all others.And the couple were also said to be furious at taking a 'back seat' to senior royals like Charles and William.The Sussexes moaned they’d taken the monarchy to “new heights around the world” and were held back so they did not “eclipse” the family, it’s claimed.A friend of the couple even described the old guard as “the vipers” — while a Palace staffer referred to Harry and Meghan as “the squeaky third wheel” of the family... It follows claims Meghan was branded "Duchess Difficult" after sending emails at 5am to staff - leaving a long line of ex-aides in her wake.The book claims Harry was “p***ed off” when William warned him not to be “blindsided by lust” over new girlfriend Meghan.The actress was dubbed “Harry’s showgirl” by a senior royal, while an aide warned she “comes with a lot of baggage”, it is claimed."

Kate Middleton and Prince William hit back as biography said they shunned Meghan and Harry - "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge last night hit back at claims in a bombshell new biography that they actively spurned Meghan Markle.The authors of Finding Freedom claim relations between the Sussexes and Cambridges became so bitter that Kate humiliatingly snubbed her sister-in-law at Meghan's farewell appearance as a senior Royal.But close friends of William and Kate issued a fierce defence, insisting the couple had 'rolled out the red carpet' for Meghan and 'done all they possibly could' to welcome the US actress into the Royal Family.According to the friends, the Cambridges 'welcomed Meghan with open arms' by inviting her to Anmer Hall, their family home in Norfolk, where Kate personally cooked vegan meals for her brother-in-law's then fiance.William and Kate also invited Meghan's friends, bridesmaids and page boys to a party before her wedding to Harry in May 2018, and keen tennis fan Kate asked Meghan to join her in the Royal Box at Wimbledon for two successive years.'It's just completely wrong to suggest they didn't talk and plain wrong to say the Cambridges weren't welcoming,' a friend told The Mail on Sunday.'How can you say they weren't warm or welcoming when they hosted Meghan for Christmas, invited her into their totally private inner sanctum at Anmer Hall and did everything they could to make her feel at home? They personally cooked her favourite vegan food, they couldn't have been more welcoming.'... a high-ranking courtier was overheard telling a colleague: 'There's just something about her I don't trust.'... allies of the Cambridges accept that the once close relationship between the brothers is now 'strained' and best described as 'on and off'... it was claimed that Harry and Meghan became so frustrated at what they perceived as an unwillingness to discuss their future that they considered arriving unannounced to confront the Queen. They eventually decided against what would have been an extraordinary breach of royal protocol.The book also suggests that the couple were upset when the Queen did not include a photograph of them and Archie on her desk when she filmed her Christmas speech last year... Prince Harry took offence when his 'snobby' brother cautioned him not to rush into marrying Meghan Markle, the new Royal biography claims.In the book Finding Freedom, authors Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie repeat allegations that William questioned the speed at which his brother's relationship with the American actress was moving.According to the book, which is being serialised by The Times and The Sunday Times, Harry took offence when William told him: 'Take as much time as you need to get to know this girl.'Harry is said to have considered the choice of the words 'this girl' to be condescending... In the unclouded months following their fairytale wedding, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex enjoyed blanket adulation... according to the biography Finding Freedom, basking in such goodwill wasn't sufficient for the Sussexes. To many, what they did want seemed unclear and their goals rather ill-formed... the couple mused that they deserved better, that this wasn't a matter of hierarchy, but evidence of darker forces at work.As their popularity grew, so too did their sense of entitlement... Critics will argue that however much they railed against the perceived injustices, Harry and Meghan weren't starring in a Hollywood movie or TV drama but a much longer running show called the Monarchy, with its own time-honoured traditions: duty and tradition chief among them.A strong sense of hierarchy, of course, is also expected.They would add that soon after marrying, rather than being observant of the Monarchy's strictures - knowing their place as some bluntly put it - the couple got above themselves; that they took a 'holier than thou' attitude... Their statement on their reasons for stepping down caused shockwaves. 'The aides, including the Queen's private secretary, Edward Young, were furious,' says the book.'The private offices don't like that type of behaviour,' a source familiar with the negotiations said. 'It is deeply unhealthy and unwelcome.'But it was the Queen and Prince Philip's 'devastated' reaction that surprised Harry and Meghan most.An aide quoted in the book said: 'The Sussexes were very happy when they sent out the statement. They felt they had got back some sort of control.'Was this what she [Meghan] wanted right from the start? But at what price? They deeply wounded the family.'Even the book's authors acknowledge this was a mis-step... 'Even sources close to Harry and Meghan had to admit that the way the couple were forced to approach the situation (mainly in the act of keeping the family and their team in the dark about their website) 'created a lot of ill-will in the household and especially in the family'.'A growing sense of what resembled paranoia enhanced the couple's sense of isolation. And to the dismay of the Palace, they chose to consult less widely. Not that they were in any way receptive to advice. A Palace insider told The Mail on Sunday: 'The idea that anyone could tell the Duke and Duchess of Sussex what to do is just laughable.'They wanted to have all the Royal perks and privileges, yet be able to use that to earn millions of dollars with no oversight. That was never going to be possible.'Now they blame the institution and cry, 'We were left with no choice, poor us'. It's risible.' Before their move abroad, initially to Canada, the couple were 'emotionally exhausted', according to the book. Such was his sensitivity to criticism, Harry even complained about comments made beneath articles about the couple... Finding Freedom is a biography written by journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, who are fans of the couple and have set out to 'correct the record' and shift the spotlight on to their charitable ventures."

Kate Middleton is 'devastated' while Prince Harry and Prince William's conversations are 'stilted' - "the couple haven't issued any statements to suggest the book's content is false.  He said: 'They are quick to sue newspapers and paparazzi photographers. So if they don’t condemn the content, we can assume they have no problem with the narrative.”"

Meghan Markle's bombshell court statement is 'disturbing reading' for 'distressed' Queen - "She has made a number of claims about her time in the royal family, including that she felt "unprotected" during her pregnancy... Lorraine goes on to talk about how it seemed bridges were started to be rebuilt, wondering if this was going to destroy that.Russell said: "I don't think these are just uncomfortable headlines."

Meghan Markle forced to drop claims her dad Thomas was 'manipulated' by the press - "MEGHAN Markle has cut arguments from her privacy case against the press after being forced into a climbdown by a High Court ruling." BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Finding Freedom: Understanding Harry and Meghan - "‘She says, according to the book, Carolyn, I gave up my entire life for this family. Lots of people will say she did no such thing. She insisted on rewriting the rules when she was marrying someone who was not the heir to the throne, was not the monarch themselves and insisted that she knew better about how to do things.’...
‘You and Omid have been very open that this book is designed to correct the record and to do so from the perspective of Harry and Meghan. Phrases like ‘friends of’ are code in journalism, we all know what they mean. They mean the people themselves. You are quoting Harry and Megan repeatedly throughout this book aren’t you?’
‘No, we've never said that. We've, in fact-’
‘You've never said. But I'm suggesting that friends of is a code for that.’
‘Friends are friends as the book states, as are the many, more than 100 sources that we spoke to. It's not code for Harry and Meghan. It's code for many friends that participated that agreed to speak to us about the couple and about their journey.’
‘But what's unusual about this is when you talk to people close to the couple you yourself Omid are close to the couple, when did you last have contact with Meghan?’
‘Am I close to the couple? I think that there's always a line between the Royal correspondent and any member of the royal family as much as I would love to-’
‘Well, I've been a journalist for years but I have never hugged one of my sources, and you hugged Meghan, you've described hugging her just before she left Britain.’
‘That was a very powerful moment, I think within Harry and Meghan's journey. We had obviously, as Royal correspondents been following them for some time. And I think after a while, despite the fact that there's very little conversation that takes place between you and said, Royal principal, there is often that sort of familiarity that you have being on the engagements and that being her last one and everyone in the room receiving a hug from Meghan, who is known as a hugger shouldn't really make it abnormal, I think’…
‘It suits you to, as it were, show that you've got unrivaled access but at the same time to have deniability that they are involved in the project’"

Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Reportedly Kept Queen in the Dark About Their Lucrative Netflix Deal

Do we really need to know about Meghan Markle’s miscarriage? - "It is very sad that Meghan Markle suffered a miscarriage. It is always sad when a happily expectant mother loses her baby. It is also strange, however, that Markle has chosen to write about the miscarriage in such emotionally revealing detail in the pages of the New York Times. I thought Markle, and Prince Harry, wanted privacy? To be left alone by the voyeuristic media? And yet here is Markle inviting not only New York Times readers but also people across the world to observe one of the most intimate moments of her life... There is an undeniable contradiction at play here. Even those praising Markle as ‘brave’ for writing a mini-essay about a miscarriage – the word ‘brave’ is far too promiscuously used these days – must admit that we live under an extraordinary double standard in relation to voyeurism. When a tabloid newspaper publishes a surreptitiously taken photo of Meghan and her son taking a walk, that’s an intolerable invasion of the duchess’s privacy. When the Mail on Sunday publishes a letter that Meghan wrote to her father, and which her father freely gave to the Mail, that’s an act of grotesque voyeurism. ‘Why do a lowly rag and its lowly readers insist on peering into the intimacies of Meghan’s life?’, people ask. Yet when Markle herself opens the door to her innermost emotions and welcomes a vast global audience to observe her pain, that isn’t facilitating voyeurism, apparently. No, it’s brave; it’s ‘raising awareness’... Markle’s very public confession of pain conforms, of course, to what is now considered to be a legitimate, respectable form of voyeurism: the display of one’s wounds and weaknesses to a willing, nosy audience under the banner of ‘raising awareness’. These acts of emotional exhibitionism, where celebrities reveal all about mental illnesses, private griefs, physical ailments and marital crises, are celebrated as empowering, as brave, as a means of prying open the eyes of a public hitherto ignorant (apparently) about these problems. That the end product – emotionally incontinent displays of one’s every trial and malady – is as intrusive, more intrusive in fact, as any sneaky tabloid exposé of a person’s private life is just brushed over. Apparently when the middle classes gawp at the intimacies of respectable famous people laid out in grim detail in the New York Times, that’s brave; yet when tabloid-readers pore over the private feelings of Thomas Markle, that’s scummy. We are often told that swarms of intrusive hacks and newspaper readers are constantly hounding celebs for more and more info, gossip, pictures. But it strikes me that the real problem today is the opposite of this. In the 21st century it is celebs who hound us, cajoling us to read about their bipolar diagnosis, their nervous breakdown, their abusive childhood, their deep emotional agony... Markle goes a step further in her New York Times piece: she ties her personal tragedy to the political moment. So not only does she reveal her inner-most pain – she also politicises it, makes it a part of this strange year of disease, lockdown, culture wars and violence. She ties her ‘unbearable grief’ to the post-George Floyd moment, to the so-called ‘post-truth’ nature of our age, and to the sadness millions are currently feeling as a result of the Covid crisis. She centres her private grief in the very public world of politics. Her suffering becomes symbolic of the suffering of the world. It is a kind of neo-religious idea: this woman shouldering the hurt of us all. Here, private sorrow is not only revealed; it is also made political, seemingly in an effort to elevate Ms Markle into a towering cultural flashpoint in this oddest year of 2020. To me, that seems sad more than anything else. The pressure to reveal all is very strong. Anyone who keeps things to themselves, or shares them only with their intimate circle of friends and family, is seen virtually as disordered. They’re ‘in denial’. Consider how the stiff upper lip of the rest of the royal family is so often demonised, and medicalised, these days. Stoicism is out, self-revelation is in. But we lose so much when we erase the line between private life and public life. When we advertise our private thoughts, emotions and experiences to a detached audience, our private life loses its meaning. It becomes performative, something we do to please others rather than to satisfy our own deeper needs. The private sphere is where we can be open, honest, frank, reflective. Raising the curtain on this world to outsiders will denude it of its sanctity and deprive us of a space in which we can truly be ourselves."

Meghan Markle ‘jumped ship’ the moment she secured her desired US lifestyle: report - "Meghan Markle reportedly fled the royal family the moment she started to believe she had ‘secured’ her desired US based lifestyle.This claim was brought forward by royal commentator Howard Hodgson. He told Express UK, “[She] was very determined, had been advancing her career, was a minor star before she met a royal prince, married a royal prince, stayed as long as is decent in the country she didn’t want to be in doing jobs she didn’t want to do.”“Then there was a short trip to Canada, which was only very short because it was then going to get her back to exactly where she wanted — where she now is, and doing what she wants to do.”“Harry is just being dragged along and will probably, if he’s not very careful, end up with the senselessly sad life that was that of the Duke of Windsor.” Mr. Hodgson isn’t the only royal expert to have commented upon the royal’s hasty decision to “jump ship.” Journalist David Jones conducted a thorough interview of Meghan’s friends and acquaintances within the royal fold and revealed that none of them were surprised by “this free-spirited and untamable, headstrong woman has so prematurely jumped the royal ship.”Even Prince Harry’s close companions “feel sure Meghan will have been the prime instigator of their hasty escape”. One close friend of the Duke admitted to Mr. Jones, “With Meghan, it has always been her way or the highway. She is always the center of the relationship, regardless of Harry’s title. She wants to be in the limelight, but under her own terms.”“Now she will get to make her own rules. It’s perfect for her. Meghan likes to flee when things get heavy, and observe from afar what she has done.”"

Harry and Meghan, patrons of online censorship - "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, having decided to relinquish the day-to-day duties of royalty in favour of a ‘progressive new role’ from their home in California, announced last year that one of their priorities would be eliminating ‘online bullying [and] hate speech’.To that end, they began ‘privately advocating’ for the #stophateforprofit social-media boycott, whose demands, aimed mainly at Facebook, include: fighting ‘misinformation’ by scrapping the fact-checking ‘exemption’ granted to politicians; demanding Facebook accept audits of ill-defined ‘hate’ by lobby groups; and the creation of a form of woke corporate infrastructure in which experts will evaluate products and policies for even the ‘potential’ to cause hate.But it turns out that #stophateforprofit was just a warm-up. Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation – a venture promoting various wellbeing-style initiatives – is about to launch a partnership with a leftist lobby group founded by a pair of academic critical theorists from the University of California. Their mutual aim is the further censorship of the internet.The UCLA Centre for Critical Internet Inquiry, known as C2i2, was created by Safiya Noble and Sarah T Roberts. Those wanting to understand the goals of C2i2 should check out its founders’ work. Take Noble’s own book, Algorithms of Oppression. This claims that ‘search engines, specifically Google, perpetuate discrimination and racism’... Noble sniffs at the naivety of the ‘Enlightenment idea of the “bearer of equal political rights”‘. One can see why a prince might find Noble’s work so appealing... Other C2i2 researchers also work for the Oxford Internet Institute, which has made dubious claims about Western political parties using ‘computational propaganda’ (which turned out to include political advertising and other activities necessary for a functioning democracy). The research, which suggested North Korea had a ‘safer’ internet than South Korea, was removed after the Free Speech Union drew attention to it."

Meghan Markle blames palace for removal of first names from Archie’s birth certificate - "The change was made on June 5 amid rumours of a growing rift between Harry, his brother Prince William and their wives Meghan and Kate Middleton... Lady Colin Campbell, who spotted the amendment, said: “It is extraordinary and raises all kinds of questions about what the Sussexes were thinking.” Expert Ingrid Seward said: “For a royal to change a birth certificate is unprecedented but to remove forenames is remarkable.“Perhaps this is another sign they were desperate to do something different to the Cambridges.”"
So much for the trouble that Markle has brought being baseless, vicious rumours brought by the tabloid press

Meghan and Harry’s Oprah tell-all lands at devastating time, Prince Philip illness - "over the last seven days, running in parallel to Philip’s hospital drama has been a week of Sussex melodrama that was markedly turbulent and messy, even for the Duke and Duchess – which is really saying something – and which saw Oprah Winfrey somehow join the royal inner circle... Before the week was over came the announcement from Buckingham Palace that Harry and Meghan had definitively closed the door on them ever returning to the royal fold and thus they would be (forcibly) relinquishing their remaining official royal roles, namely a number of patronages and honorary military titles.Three minutes – literally – after that palace press release went out, the Sussexes fired back with a seemingly pre-prepared salvo of their own, sullenly taking a jab at the palace saying, “We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.”(What was left out here was the obvious ‘nuh nuh neeee nuh nahhhhh’ addendum.)... In the last year, since moving to the land of sunshine and kale smoothies, Harry has simultaneously started a shiny new life but while increasingly being at highly public odds with his former one.There have been the various comments made during Zoom appearances about the Commonwealth and racism, his controversial wading into US politics and then inking a massively lucrative deal with the same company who had commercialised his family’s history for profit... July 1. That day is Diana, Princess of Wales’ birthday and this year’s celebration would have seen her turn 60 years old. To mark the event, William and Harry, prior to Megxit, commissioned a statue in her honour for Kensington Palace and the beauty will be unveiled on July 1 this year.Again, how will Harry choose between honouring his beloved mother and supporting his very own young family?This thrumming, constant tension is not only of personal consequence. This fraught dichotomy between his US and UK selves will also be tested when in terms of Harry as a public figure. When push comes to shove, will his allegiance lie with his transplanted stars’n’stripes homeland or to the country he actually went to war for? (Twice in fact.) It would seem he is trying to keep a foot on both continents but how realistic is that?What seems heartbreakingly inescapable is that time and again in the future, the Duke will have to answer these prickly, difficult questions. If there is one thing we know about Harry it is that he is a man driven by love: Love for his nation, love for his mother and in recent years, unwavering love for his wife and son. Last year during the debut, and so far only, outing of their very own Spotify podcast, the Sussexes declared that “love wins”. As a guiding principle it might sound wonderfully right but in reality it would seem that following this doctrine is a much, much more complicated undertaking."
If you want to protect your privacy, clearly you go onto Oprah to do a tell-all

Meghan Markle may 'pedal back' on woke speeches, royal expert claims - "Biographer Robert Lacey, whose most recent book Battle of Brothers picks apart the rift between the Princes William and Harry, said it has dawned on Meghan that her speaking out about 'more extreme' subjects could be detrimental to her husband's position within the Royal Family. He also claimed the Duke of Cambridge has been proved 'right' to have concerns about the former actress causing 'problems' within the Firm. Mr Lacey - who is a historical consultant on Netflix series The Crown - states in his book that William asked his uncle Charles Spencer to advise Harry against rushing into his marriage with Meghan...Mr Lacey said he finds the Duke and Duchess of Sussex 'too preachy' and claimed William, 38, who recently launched his ambitious Earthshot Prize, does more for some progressive causes than his brother and sister-in-law... Mr Lacey also claimed Prince William refused to attend a lunch with the Queen and his brother to clear the air before the Sandringham Summit.He said Harry's behaviour 'infuriated William to the extent that when the Queen alright, let's have a meeting to talk about all this - she said, beforehand [the summit] we will have a family lunch to talk things over - William actually said "No, I do not want to come to the lunch, I will come and negotiate over the table" but he would not sit down at the family lunch with Harry'."

Trump slams Meghan Markle and says he is 'not a fan of hers' and says he wishes Prince Harry 'luck' - "'I'm not a fan of hers,' Trump said Wednesday to a question posed by DailyMail.com. 'I would say this - and she has probably heard that - I wish a lot of luck to Harry because he's going to need it.'... Buckingham Palace also distanced itself from Harry's remarks by saying that 'the Duke is not a working member of the royal family' and describing his comments as 'made in a personal capacity'... Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller argued that Harry's warning about 'hate speech' could be seen as an attack on Biden, who leads in the polls.'I'm assuming you're asking me because of Joe Biden's record of hateful and divisive language, particularly toward the African American community?'... Speaking in the video message, apparently filmed from their California home, Harry admitted he was not eligible to vote - adding that he had never voted in the UK either where convention dictates that royals keep well clear of politics.Royal experts told DailyMail.com that the couple should give up their titles and sever their links to the monarchy for good if they wanted to comment on US politics, while insiders told The Times that palace aides would be concerned about their intervention... 'The political arena is very sensitive for all members of the royal family. You cannot have an apolitical institution, which is what a hereditary monarchy is, and have members of the royal family making even slightly political comments'... Royal aides pointed to the couple's commitment in January to 'continue to uphold the values of Her Majesty' after abandoning frontline royal duties... Former Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, the author of the book And What Do You Do? What The Royal Family Don't Want You To Know, said Harry should not speak out about US politics while he is still a 'representative' of the UK.'I think it's appropriate for any private citizen to comment on the US election. The problem is that Harry has retained his HRH status and is not a private citizen but still a representative of this country,' Mr Baker said.'He needs to stop trying to have a foot in both camps - royal when it suits him and private when it doesn't.'Or to turn on its head the old phrase, I agree with what he says but disagree with his right to say it.'... Over the past few weeks, Meghan has taken part in multiple interviews and summits - having reportedly grown 'frustrated' at her inability to get involved in politics while she was working as a senior royal"

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry urged to leave US after election remarks stir chaos - "Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have added fuel to the fire with their recent election remarks in a TV appearance.And while royal fans were already up in arms against the two for ‘breaking royal protocol’ and ‘interfering with US politics’, the US government too has expressed its ire.After US President Donald Trump, his former campaign advisor Corey Lewandowski said he is hopeful that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will now leave the country.Talking to Daily Mail, he said: “They made Britain great again by leaving, I hope they do the same for us.”"

Diana's former secretary makes new revelations about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry - "Princess Diana's former private secretary has made some new revelations about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, claiming that  the Duke and Duchess wanted the 'ego rush' of celebrity and the 'shallow flattery' that came with it.Patrick Jephson reportedly hinted that Harry and Meghan   no longer wanted to be tied to the 'humdrum concerns' of British subjects... He also claimed that the notorious 1995 Panorama interview was the 'death knell' for Diana's career, after which she and Prince Charles were urged to divorce by The Queen.Mr Jephson believes the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are going down a similar path... "As perhaps her younger son Harry has discovered, you can escape the Palace but finding relevance and respect as just another celebrity is much, much harder."Last month, the royal couple hired a new US-based PR team after realising they are 'no longer the golden couple'... The new appointments came days after Meghan and Harry were slammed for releasing pictures from a private Remembrance Sunday visit to a California cemetery.The pair visited the Los Angeles National Cemetery to mark the occasion on November 9.Critics afterwards questioned why they  didn’t 'do it privately' instead of carrying out 'stunts'."
Clearly more baseless rumours, certainly rooted in racism, from someone who doesn't know anything!

Prince Harry's childhood friend 'frozen out' after urging 'caution' over Meghan - "Prince Harry fell out with a childhood friend who questioned the suitability of Meghan Markle as a future royal, a new book has claimed.According to Finding Freedom, Tom “Skippy” Inskip told the Duke of Sussex to be cautious over his then-blossoming relationship with Meghan... In the new book, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of A Modern Royal Family, it's been claimed the Duchess of Cambridge had not “shown much interest” in Meghan.The authors claim Meghan and Kate didn't spend much time together before the Sussexes got married in May 2018 and they didn't get any closer afterwards... A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan has previously said the couple did not contribute to Finding Freedom, but he did not deny the content of published extracts."
Luckily the Sussexes have plausible deniability over Finding Freedom so those who live in Lalaland can continue to claim this was invented by the tabloids

Royal 'revelations' put to the test - "Meghan never researched the Royal Family prior to joining
Meghan said: 'I didn't do any research about what that would mean,' she said. 'I never looked up my husband online.'
Fact check: Unlikely
Meghan's claim that she never researched Harry, nor the Royal Family, before entering into the relationship is at odds with claims made in the couple's biography. Although the Sussexes maintain they did not contribute to Finding Freedom, it was written by friendly journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, who say the book was impeccably well-sourced by those closest to the couple... The duchess said she 'didn't do any research' into the monarchy, 'didn't fully understand what the job was', and did not grow up 'knowing much about the Royal Family'.Friends of the duchess have painted a different picture, revealing that she was fascinated by the royals in her youth. Ninaki Priddy, who was Meghan's maid of honour at her first wedding to Trevor Engelson, said her friend was 'always fascinated by the Royal Family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0'...
Harry and Meghan were actually secretly wed three days before the Windsor ceremony by the Archbishop of Canterbury...
Fact check: Unlikely
Church of England marriages require at least two witnesses and the public must also have unrestricted access to the building during any marriage ceremony to allow for valid objections against the marriage.  At the time the couple were living in the grounds of Kensington Palace, and their residence is off limits to the public. A couple who are already lawfully married cannot choose to re-marry each other, unless there is some doubt as to the validity of the earlier marriage.Reverend David Green, Vicar of St Mary's, West Malling and the Rector of St Michael's, Offham, said it was impossible to have had two weddings, adding: 'I think the Archbishop needs to clarify what did or did not happen three days before.'...
'I was silenced'
Meghan said she was 'silenced' by the institution. 'Everyone in my world was given very clear directive, from the moment the world knew Harry and I were dating, to say 'No comment'.
Fact check: Contested
On the day they announced their engagement, Meghan and Harry gave a lengthy interview to the BBC's Mishal Husain... On their tour of South Africa, they granted interviews to ITN's Tom Bradby, when Meghan memorably told him: 'Not many people have asked if I'm OK.'Royal insiders have stressed that it was very much the case that Harry and Meghan themselves 'called the shots' when it came to publicity, deciding which charities to support, which engagements to go on, and which media to grant interviews to.
Archie has a birthright to be a prince
Meghan said: 'Idea of the first member of colour in this family, not being titled in the same way that other grandchildren would be... It's not their right to take it away'
Fact check: False
Archie did not have a birthright to be a prince, but could potentially become one when Charles accedes to the throne.  That William and Kate's children have the HRH title and are styled as prince and princesses - and Archie is not - stems from a ruling more than 100 years ago. In 1917, King George V issued a written order that only royal offspring who are in the direct line of succession could be made a prince and receive HRH titles...
Archie wouldn't get 24/7 security because he wasn't a prince
Meghan said: 'In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we (had) the conversation of he won't be given security, he's not going to be given a title.'
Fact check: False
Being a prince or princess does not automatically mean royals have police protection. Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie's security is no longer paid for by the taxpayer. Harry and Meghan no longer receive British police protection, and are understood to be paying for private security.
Help for mental anguish
Meghan says she begged in vain for the Palace to help her mental state...
Fact check: Difficult to verify
Meghan was not asked by Miss Winfrey why she went to HR rather than simply ask her GP to make a referral or seek advice from a mental health clinician herself, in the same way she might have done for any other ailment. One insider pointed out that HR exists for Palace employees while the royals themselves have a private office to help arrange everything from booking a holiday to fixing a medical appointment...
Reports of a pre-wedding clash between the duchesses first emerged in November 2018, when sources claimed Meghan had been left displeased with a 'stressful' dress fitting for the flower girls. Accounts differed as to the source of the row...
Harry was financially cut off from the royals
Harry said: 'My family literally cut me off financially, and I had to afford security for us'
Fact check: They wanted to be financially independent
 When Harry and Meghan announced their intention to step back from being senior royals, they said they wanted to be 'financially independent'...
Meghan has not seen Samantha Markle in almost 20 years
Meghan said: 'The last time I saw her must have been at least 18, 19 years.'
Fact check: False...
'Lost' father who staged photos
Meghan said the Press 'created' news about Meghan's father 'to create drama'
Fact check: False
Meghan Markle's estranged father Thomas today denied his daughter's claims he had 'betrayed' her before branding his son-in-law 'snotty' and declaring: 'We all make mistakes - but I've never played naked pool or dressed like Hitler like Harry did'... He also denied the Royal Family - or Britain - is racist, calling Meghan and Harry's claims 'bulls**t' and saying if it is true a royal asked about how 'dark' Archie's skin would be, it was probably just a 'dumb question'...
Meghan's press team didn't defend her when 'things weren't true'
Oprah asked Meghan about stories that she made Kate cry, saying: 'So, all the time the stories were out that you had made Kate cry, you knew all along, and people around you knew that that wasn't true.' Meghan replied: 'Everyone in the institution knew it wasn't true.' And Oprah then said: 'So, why didn't somebody just say that?' Meghan said: 'That's a good question.'
Fact check: Contested
Making a wider point, Mail on Sunday royal correspondent Emily Andrews has said that Meghan's press team did in fact defend untrue stories, saying this was 'just not right'. Ms Andrews said that she interacted with a press team who defended the Sussexes 'again and again and again, told me things were wrong - so didn't publish - and indeed tried to stop me when true.'
Palace lied to protect other members of the Royal Family
Meghan said: 'I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren't willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.'
Fact check: Contested
There was clearly frustration felt by the couple, with some justification, towards the Palace PR machine, which was sometimes reluctant to 'fight every little fire', as one source put it. But the Palace did robustly stand ground on many other stories that the couple insisted were not true, resulting in the media not running them.  The Palace pursued at least one national newspaper all the way to press regulator IPSO over a story about their Frogmore home, and won a decisive victory for Harry and Meghan...
Meghan was banned from going out for lunch with her friends
Meghan: 'I remember so often people within The Firm would say, 'Well, you can't do this because it'll look like that. You can't'... so, even, 'Can I go and have lunch with my friends?' 'No, no, no. You're oversaturated. You're everywhere. It would be best for you to not go out to lunch with your friends.' I go, 'Well, I haven't left the house in months.'
Fact check: Contested...
She was spotted enjoying outings on numerous occasions, including a pub lunch with Harry, going for facials near their Kensington Palace home and shopping trips...
Newspaper held story about Thomas Markle until Sunday before Meghan's wedding
Meghan: 'If we were going to use the word betrayal, it's because when I asked him, when we were told by the comms team, this is a story that was going to be coming out, which, by the way, the tabloids had apparently known for a month or so and decided to hold until the Sunday before our wedding because they wanted to create drama, which is also a really key point in all this.'
Fact check: False...
Far from sitting on the paparazzi story, the Mail on Sunday, which broke it, published within 24 hours of getting the proof."
The fact checks are far too generous, given her lies
The fact that so many people still believe them in the face of all the lies is telling. Given that these people allege racism and/or bash the monarchy, that suggests that they are buying into the narrative because it coheres with their psychological needs

Harry and Meghan, the inconvenient truth - "Reports began to emerge that Meghan had made Kate cry following a fitting for the bridesmaids' dresses (Princess Charlotte was one of Meghan's six bridesmaids).  But Meghan claims that, in reality, 'the reverse happened'... It's therefore perfectly possible that both cried... a third scenario is presented by perhaps the most compelling source of all: Meghan's pet journalist, Omid Scobie.In his biography Finding Freedom, published with Meghan's apparent approval, he confidently declared that no one had cried, saying: 'There were no tears from anyone.'...
Meghan claimed there were 'several conversations' about Archie's skin colour which took place 'in those months when I was pregnant'.But Harry said there was just one conversation 'right at the beginning . . . before we even got married'.A more forensic interviewer than Oprah might have queried this inconsistency. For while Harry and Meghan were 'speaking their truth', they can't both have been right...
Meghan told Oprah 'The Firm' attempted to keep her under effective house arrest.Things got to the stage, she alleged, when she said: 'I've left the house twice in four months.'A striking claim. But does it hold water?There is no official record of her social activities, but on the work front, the Court Circular records Meghan's attendance at official engagements on 73 days in the 17 months between her wedding and the couple's departure for Canada. Of those days, at least 65 involved leaving her home. There are just two apparent gaps in this hectic schedule, both in 2019: from March 22 to July 6; and from July 14 to September 23.The first period includes the run-up to Archie's birth, when she travelled to hospital on May 6, plus at least four private outings: to Windsor Castle on May 8, Trooping the Colour and a baseball game in London in June, and Wimbledon on July 4.In the second period, Meghan managed to holiday abroad four times: in Italy, France, Ibiza and the U.S.In short, there doesn't appear to be any 'four-month' period when she only left the house twice...
The day Meghan joined the Royal Family was, she claimed, 'the last time, until we came here, that I saw my passport, my driver's licence, my keys. All that gets turned over'...
Meghan then added: 'So I remember when you talked to her several times about this [Megxit] over . . .' Harry: 'Two years. 'That suggests they actually began planning to withdraw from full-time royal duties in early January 2018, some four months before they were even married. It is tricky to reconcile this with Meghan's earlier statement.Elsewhere, Meghan suggested the couple were discriminated against when the Queen refused to allow them to combine paid work with occasional royal duties, claiming 'several' family members enjoy this privilege.'I can think of so many — they're Royal Highnesses — who earn a living . . . and can support the Queen if and when called upon.'There are, in fact, only four minor royals who combine (part-time) duties with paid work: Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.The couple said the Royal Family had an 'invisible contract', behind closed doors' with the British Press and throws parties to keep them on side... This was perhaps the most bizarre of the couple's claims. Again, they do not provide a shred of evidence.  So let us be clear: royals do not personally entertain journalists.   And the only 'holiday parties' are occasional receptions given by the various households' communications teams and an annual cocktail party to mark the official opening to the public of Buckingham Palace.  It is true that royals are sometimes present at these events, but it requires an astonishing leap of imagination to conclude that these are personal invitations from individual family members. They are not.
A running theme in Sunday's interview was the host's assertion that Meghan was the victim of racism at the hands of the British press... viewers were presented with montages of supposedly-bigoted headlines.Yet more than a third of those headlines turn out to have been from foreign publications.For example, in a flurry of eight headlines about Meghan 'making Kate cry', five were from U.S. and Australian supermarket magazines. A second montage of eight lurid headlines — such as 'monster Meghan exposed' and 'Harry knocks up TV star' — all came from overseas titles.Even when Oprah did show viewers British headlines, several had been cynically edited, and in one case seemingly entirely fabricated... A Telegraph headline that reads 'The real problem with Meghan Markle: she just doesn't speak our language' was cropped by Oprah's staff in order to make it appear jingoistic. In fact, as the second line of the headline would have made clear (were it not deleted by Oprah's staff), the author was not mocking her race or ethnicity, but was instead making fun of her habit of using what he later called: 'hippie corporate management speak'. Perhaps the most egregious smear revolved around a January 2018 Mail on Sunday story that lead to the resignation of (then) UKIP leader Henry Bolton. The headline used by the newspaper quoted abusive text messages Mr Bolton's girlfriend had recently written. It read: 'Meghan's seed will taint our Royal Family': UKIP chief's glamour model lover, 25, is suspended from the party over racist texts about Prince Harry's wife to be.' In a cynical attempt to portray the article as racist, the production team appear to have removed all but the first seven words, falsely suggesting that the paper had published an opinion article arguing that 'Meghan's seed will taint our Royal Family.'...
It revealed a curious gap in Harry's memory.'The highlight for me is sticking him on the back of the bicycle in his little baby seat and taking him on these bike rides, which is something I was never able to do when I was young.'The implication is that as a child he was never able to enjoy such freedoms — because of the ever-present Press.The truth was somewhat different. As our picture shows, Harry was a contented back-seat passenger as Prince Charles pedalled away on a bike ride with his two sons.The photograph was taken at Sandringham in 1990, when Harry was five and William seven.A year earlier, he had again been photographed in a baby seat behind his father during a half-term holiday with his parents on Tresco in the Scilly Isles.Another charming snapshot shows the then three-year-old Prince being towed in a home-made cart by a kilt-wearing Charles during a summer break at Balmoral...
Prince Harry claimed that his decision to sign lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify came about because: 'My family literally cut me off financially.'... First: once Harry, a family man who was approaching middle age, decided to opt out of being a 'working royal', there was no obvious reason why his family should have continued to provide him with financial support.Second: he was not exactly 'cut off'. Instead, according to informed sources, he received a lump sum from Prince Charles in late March 2020 (towards the end of the 2019-2020 financial year) after announcing his decision to step aside... it was made clear to the couple there would be more resources — if required — in the next financial year.So what is the truth about Harry and his money? The simple fact is that — thanks to his family — he is a very rich man in his own right. Indeed, almost his every expense, until a year ago, was met by Prince Charles.As a result, he has barely had to touch his considerable personal savings until now.His fortune derives from Princess Diana's £21 million estate. After attracting £8 million inheritance tax, the balance of almost £13 million was split evenly between William and Harry, who were 15 and 12 when she died in 1997.The money was invested for the boys by royal advisers, with Harry's share thought to be worth at least £12 million.He was also a beneficiary of his great-grandmother the Queen Mother's will. Known as the Queen Elizabeth Trust Fund this, we understand, provided him with £2 million.Meghan also has a reported personal wealth of £3 million. However, the couple's decision to buy a vast home in an exclusive enclave has left them needing to earn more. Or, as one aide puts it: 'No one told Harry he had to spend £11 million on a mansion with 16 bathrooms. That was his choice.'
Meghan insisted that as a former waitress and actress, the 'grandeur' of royal titles held no attachment to her — until she discovered it meant Archie would not get his own security detail unless he was a prince.She says she was informed in the 'last few months of our pregnancy' that 'he wasn't going to receive security'.But her claims are hotly disputed by royal officials.One described her logic as 'ridiculous', saying it had always been made clear that as long as Harry was a working royal, he, his wife and their children would receive security from Scotland Yard's royal protection squad... A more balanced interviewer than Oprah might have asked Harry why he believed the UK should pay for his police protection, once he had stopped serving the Crown. After all, there are plenty of royals (including Princess Anne and Prince Edward) who do not enjoy round-the-clock protection.Furthermore, Harry appears to have mythologised the idea that security was removed from his mother — leading to her death — when, in fact, Diana asked for it to be taken away, several years before her fatal accident."
It's odd how the liberal media, which fact checked Trump on the most nonsensical things, champions Meghan and Harry's blatant lies

Meghan told Oprah she knew little about royals before dating Harry - but wrote about Kate's wedding on her blog in 2014 - "on her now-defunct blog The Tig, Meghan previously published a post in 2014 about "grown women's" obsession with royalty.Meghan also refers to her now sister-in-law Kate as "Princess Kate" and talks about the "pomp and circumstance" surrounding her.She wrote: "Little girls dream of being princesses. I, for one, was all about She-Ra, Princess of Power... The Tig blog post accompanied an interview with Princess Alia Al-Senussi, a descendant of Libyan royalty, and Meghan claimed she had a “pinch-myself-I’m-emailing-with-a-princess” moment during their correspondence. Meghan’s childhood friend Suzy Ardakani also alleged her pal was interested in the royal family and said the pair would watch Princess Diana's 1981 wedding to Prince Charles... Another one of Meghan’s friends, Ninaki Priddy, revealed her and Meghan were photographed outside Buckingham Palace together during a visit to London in 1996.She claimed: “Meghan was always fascinated by the Royal Family”... biographer Andrew Morton wrote: “Aged 16, she watched the funeral of Diana with her friends, tears coursing down their cheeks at the poignant moment when the cameras zoomed in on the royal coffin.”"

Meghan Markle 'went on 13 holidays abroad' despite claiming royals took her passport - "Every member of the Royal Family, with the exception of the Queen, requires a passport to travel abroad.Royal author Margaret Holder told the Sun: "Of course the Royal Family would want to keep Meghan's passport safe."But it's unthinkable she didn't carry it for personal and private trips such as her New York baby shower, travelling to see friends in Canada, partying in Amsterdam and going to Lake Como with George Clooney.""

Samantha Markle says sister Meghan uses depression as 'excuse' to treat people 'like dishrags' - "Meghan Markle's half-sister Samantha has slammed the royal's bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, saying 'the truth was totally ignored and omitted' while providing photos and documents to disprove each of the Duchess of Sussex's claims about her.The 56-year-old also admitted that she has no sympathy for Meghan, 39, who revealed during the shocking interview that she battled suicidal thoughts during her time as a royal - instead accusing the Duchess of using her 'depression as an excuse for treating people like dishrags'.In newly-released footage from Prince Harry and Meghan's explosive CBS interview, the pregnant Duchess of Sussex told Oprah, 67, that Samantha 'doesn't know' her, claiming she was raised as 'an only child' - but her half-sister has now insisted that couldn't be further from the truth. 'I don't know how she can say I don't know her and she was an only child. We've got photographs over a lifespan of us together. So how can she not know me?' she told Inside Edition, while sharing images of the two women together at different stages throughout their lives - most recently in 2008, just 13 years ago... Samantha provided photos that show them together throughout the years, including one of them at her college graduation in 2008.The Duchess also claimed that Samantha only changed her surname back to Markle after Meghan struck up a romance with Harry - suggesting that her half-sister was trying to capitalize on the public interest in her name.'She changed her last name back to Markle... only when I started dating Harry. So I think that says enough,' she said.But Samantha insisted that this claim was wholly inaccurate, and shared further evidence to refute it.'I was a Markle before she was,' she said. 'I though that was kind of weird that she would say I only changed my name back when she met Harry. Markle has always been my name.'Samantha then showed Inside Edition her petition to change her name that was dated back to December 1997 and her college diploma, which says Samantha M. Markle."
Of course, everyone is lying except for Meghan and Harry. The photographs and documents must be doctored!

Oprah thinks that I ‘attacked’ Meghan? It’s time for me to speak my truth - "Goodness, I murmured. Could it really be true that my column about poor Meghan had helped drive her out of Britain? What an awful thought.On the whole, though, I decided that it was unlikely – for a fairly simple reason.My column was published on December 19 last year, more than 11 months after Meghan announced she was stepping down as a senior royal. So unless Meghan has access to a time machine, I tend to suspect that my influence on her decision was, at most, negligible. Especially as, up to that point, I’d never written a single word against her. Yet here was my column, being held up to the world as a brutal tirade that had helped make Meghan’s time in Britain unendurable. Perhaps Oprah and her team had been so blinded by horror at what I’d written, they hadn’t noticed the publication date. They certainly hadn’t shown the date on screen.Even so, I’m not quite sure why they would have found the column horrifying. Because, as can easily be ascertained by reading it, it was a brief and innocuous piece on the age-old observation that America and Britain are two nations divided by a common language... that was the theme of the column that Oprah and her team singled out. I’m sorry they found it so upsetting. Odd, though, that they should include it among the “attacks” that Meghan suffered “when she joined the Royal family in 2018”.I expect it’s just an innocent misunderstanding. After all, one lesson we were clearly meant to draw from the programme was that, sometimes, sections of the media will misrepresent a piece of information in order to make it fit an agenda.So it’s surely unthinkable that the programme would have done the very same thing itself."

Buckingham Palace to investigate allegations that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, bullied UK staff - "Buckingham Palace said Wednesday it would investigate allegations that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, bullied several staff members after a British media report cited unnamed royal aides saying a complaint had been made against her in 2018... The sources also said they approached The Times because they felt the version of the Duchess that had publicly emerged was only partially true and that they were concerned about how matters of bullying had been dealt with. The report said the sources believed the public "should have insight into their side of the story""
We must believe survivors - unless the one being accused is a "victim". If you bully your staff if you're black, this is "punching up"
Because Meghan is black we must believe what she says without question, or that is silencing a "minority"

DOUGLAS MURRAY: Being told we can't question 'the truth' is more evidence of world's derangement - "What is truth and does it matter? For centuries, civilised society has been founded on the idea that the answer to such questions was ‘Yes’.But now the whole world is in the midst of a deep, cultural shift.For some, it is not merely a battle but a war. We live in an age, whipped along by social media, where the concept of ‘the truth’ has disappeared. Instead of ‘the truth’, we have that wonderful Oprah-ism: ‘Your truth.’... As Oprah was a friend of Meghan, there must have been an attraction in the belief that they were likely to get away with their litany of outrageous claims, unlike if they had faced a more forensic interviewer.The latter would never have allowed them to offer as ‘truth’ whatever they decided it is.They would have been asked follow-up questions and to give hard evidence to back up their assertions. Instead, the couple were free to spin out their sob story in a cascade of subjective truth... people who may know next to nothing about the Royal Family are under the impression that it is ‘institutionally racist’ and senior members have a problem with black people.For anyone who knows the good work that the Royal Family does with communities all over the globe, this is tragic to see. The memories of the crowds cheering Harry and Meghan in Windsor on their wedding day and the fact that it was watched by a UK TV audience of 13 million people lie far in the distance.There was a time when all of this and more could have been pointed out by people with a voice.But no longer, now that we are living in an age with a ferocious culture war. And the reaction to the Oprah interview has galvanised those on one side, giving them more weapons in the battle over issues such as class, identity politics, race and gender.This is a tragedy for everyone who cares about social harmony and rational thought.I have often said that what we are witnessing is nothing less than a ‘great mass derangement’.It’s having a toxic effect, breaking society into myriad interest groups and giving self-ascribed ‘victims of social injustice’ a bogus moral sense of superiority. Add to this the fact that there is a great divide in opinion between the generations on such topics as the Monarchy and free speech, and many of us have great fears about how much damage will be done by all these exploding cluster bombs before a ceasefire can be declared in this crazed culture war.The reaction to the Sussexes’ interview, sadly, won’t be the last explosion. Most worryingly, we are now being encouraged to think that we must never question the ‘truth’ of someone who presents themselves as a victim.Even if it means they can get away with smears and provide no evidence. Anything must be accepted from anyone who cloaks themselves in the garb of victimhood. Inevitably, in this culture war, there has been much collateral damage. TV personality Piers Morgan has lost his job for daring to doubt the Duchess’s testimony, and, in particular, dismissing her claim that she had been suicidal.Morgan’s trademark is his punchy and pungent views. Any sane society would simply allow people to agree or disagree with him. But not in our deranged age.Indeed, supporting Morgan can have profound consequences.His former screen colleague, Sharon Osbourne, stood up for him and demanded that another woman US interviewer should provide evidence if she was going to accuse Morgan of racism. The result? Osbourne was hounded by the online group-think mobs and tearfully felt obliged to issue an apology to the ‘black community’, saying she promised to ‘listen and learn’ and try to be better.Similarly, Ian Murray (no relation to myself), resigned as executive director of the Society of Editors after saying on behalf of the organisation that it was ‘not acceptable’ for the Sussexes to make claims of racism about the British Press ‘without supporting evidence’.And yet the couple themselves were allowed free rein by Oprah Winfrey to imply that British newspapers are racist.What’s more, during their interview by US network CBS, distorted images of Press headlines were used in a montage to support the Sussexes’ narrative.How typical of a culture where selected famous people feel free to make outrageous claims without proof or accountability.Ironically, perhaps we should be grateful for Oprah’s interview. For it has become an exquisite example of this ugly and divisive debate.Maybe we can all use it to learn from the perils of corrupting the truth and setting different parts of society against each other... Many of us still hope for a world where people are listened to for the content of their words and character, regardless of their nationality, class, colour of their skin, religion or politics.A world where people are listened to not because of the chromosomes they were born with but because what they say makes sense and matters just as much as what we think ourselves.In other words, a world where the concept of truth still matters."

Meghan deserves an Oscar for that performance - "Were Meghan Markle to be nominated at this year’s Oscars – as she deserves to be for her CBS feature-length drama, co-starring Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry – the Academy would have trouble choosing which clip best showcases her talent. But in the end, I think we’re all agreed, it would have to be the Little Mermaid scene... Meghan, framed against the chicken coop in her Santa Barbara garden where Oprah is unaccountably holding half a dozen free-range eggs, goes on: “Now who, as an adult, watches The Little Mermaid?” This really is a question, and one which serves to underline her inner child. “But I was, like, ‘Well, I’m just here all the time, so I may as well watch this?’”Should the 48-point font subtext not be clear to all here (and I realise we’re mixing metaphors), Meghan is Rapunzel now, imprisoned in her Kensington Palace tower. Because, as she says elsewhere in the drama, she was only able to leave the house “twice in four months”. Really?But back to the award-winning scene. “And I went: Oh my God? She [The Little Mermaid] falls in love with the prince and, because of that, she has to lose her voice.” Pause. Eye-misting. A small smile pushing through the pain. “But by the end, she gets her voice back.”... Because this interview was as meticulously choreographed as the twin ‘flyaway’ hair strands Meghan uses as a prop throughout her performance, but it’s important for her to show every push and pull of that inner tug of war to up the drama. Just as she needs us to know, time and time again throughout this two-hour emotional tour de force, how “naïve” she was.This would make her unique. After over a decade living in LA – where I’ve interviewed and socialised with actors daily – I have yet to meet a naïve actress. Yet Meghan was so guileless, she assures Oprah, that she knew nothing about either the royal family or what she was getting herself into... She “didn’t have a plan”, and “genuinely hadn’t thought of” profiting from her royal title with whopping Netflix and Spotify deals.Journalists famously ask leading questions. Meghan is the only celebrity interviewee I’ve ever seen to give such leading answers she might as well have been pulling poor Oprah along by a leash. She’d worked out exactly how to throw Kate under the bus while not wanting “in any way to be disparaging about her.” She’s “advocated for so long for women to use their voice”, she says on International Women’s Day (nothing has been left to chance here). “And then, I was silent…” Oh, Meghan, what are you saying? Silent… or silenced? However superb, Meghan’s performance was not without the odd blooper, the odd misstep she might have wanted a second take on, if given the chance. The talking over and interrupting Harry sat awkwardly with her professed vulnerability. The equating of her pain to a pandemic that has killed 2.5 million people around the world was regrettable. The momentary loss of poise surrounding talk of lost titles.And Oprah, usually such a fantastic interviewer, might also have wanted to re-shoot a journalistic misstep of her own. Because when Meghan, back in the chicken coop, explains that: “This morning, I woke up earlier than H and saw a note from someone in our team in the UK saying that the Duke of Edinburgh had gone to the hospital”, did this not beg for one of Oprah’s famous: “Wa-wa-wait a minute! You found that out this morning – and still you went ahead with this interview? Really?”But in the end, as Meghan points out: “Life is about storytelling, right? About the stories we tell ourselves and what we buy into.” So let’s just sit back and watch how this “fairytale” pans out."

The unbearable victim complex of Meghan Markle - "The set-up bordered on nauseating. Here was a duke and duchess in the unimaginably luxurious surrounds of a Californian mansion talking about how difficult their lives have been. In a country where 40million people lost their jobs as a result of lockdowns, this pair who get paid millions for making naff podcasts moaned to billionaire Oprah Winfrey about their oppression by the establishment. Meghan was wearing a $4,500 dress. She’ll probably never wear it again. That’s more than twice the amount that desperate Americans will get in their stimulus cheques to keep them afloat in the next few months. It’s perverse. Then there’s the hypocrisy on the privacy question. Harry and Meghan detest the invasive media – they referred to it as a ‘monster machine’ – and insist they just want a private life. Yet they’re constantly revealing all... we’re witnessing a culture clash. A conflict between the contemporary cults of victimhood and identity politics, as now keenly represented by Harry and Meghan, and the older ideals of duty, self-sacrifice, stoicism and keeping your shit together, as embodied by the queen, and as aspired to by most Brits in recent decades. This internecine clash between the Sussexes and the Palace is really an unspoken civil war between post-Diana New Britain and Old Britain. Last night’s interview, facilitated by that doyen of the new elites, Oprah, was essentially a power grab by Harry and Meghan – their attempt to seize the throne of the victim industry and consolidate their cultural power in the post-traditional world. There is no question that the Oprah interview represents a serious blow to the monarchy. It will badly damage the monarchy’s international reputation, which had held up pretty well even during the divorces, scandals and anni horribiles of recent decades. The interview will contribute to the chipping away of the monarchy’s sense of mystery. The monarchy’s great power traditionally lay in its ability to insulate itself from the external world, to depict itself as being above the flotsam and jetsam of changeable daily life. But that has unravelled in recent decades. The pressures of mass media, social media and, more importantly, the now dominant culture of revelation, of always signalling one’s virtue and advertising one’s wounds, have slowly pushed at the doors of the once mysterious palace... Princess Diana, of course, played a key role... Meghan clearly sees herself as continuing the Cult of Diana’s work, as heir to the victimology and studied ‘authenticity’ that Diana came to represent.This is why she namechecked Diana... Now it won’t only be the cult of victimhood and emotionalism – there’ll be identity politics, too. Witness Meghan’s vague, unsubstantiated reference to a member of the royal family wondering how dark her son Archie’s skin would be. We have no idea whatsoever if this was an innocent, curious comment or an openly racist one. I suspect very much it was the former. But it instantly gets folded into the narrative that best serves Harry and Meghan’s power grab – the narrative of their being ‘victims’ of the old establishment, of the culture of racism, of the ‘colonial undertones’ of the modern media, as Harry put it, which is rich coming from someone who took part in the occupation of Afghanistan. The Oprah chat came wrapped in blather about Meghan telling ‘her truth’. In reality this was a coronation of two leading members of the neo-aristocracy. Harry and Meghan have successfully positioned themselves as key figureheads of the new feudalism in which cultural power resides in the hands of small numbers of very wealthy people around Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and in which the little people’s role is to receive moral instruction from the likes of Facebook, Netflix, Oprah, Harry, Meghan… That’s the great irony of Harry and Meghan juxtaposing themselves to the monarchy, and being witlessly cheered on by the left for doing so: these two behave in a far more old-world monarchical fashion than the queen does. Their punishment of the disobedient media; their conviction that they must instruct the rest of us on how to live, how to travel, how many kids to have; their eye-wateringly arrogant mission of ‘building compassion around the world’ – they make the actual British monarchy, politically neutered by centuries of political progress, seem positively meek in comparison. What we see in Harry and Meghan is the strange, contradictory power of the victim industry. Power today often comes wrapped in claims of suffering. Publicly professed weakness is a precursor to dictating to everyone else that they must open up, change their attitudes, become more ‘aware’. Victimhood is the soapbox from which the new elites, whether lip-trembling politicians or ‘suffering’ celebs, presume to instruct society at large about the right way to think, emote, feel, be. This is why Meghan’s confession of suicidal thoughts was so important. It felt manipulative. It was in essence a declaration of emotional authenticity. Meghan has the right kind of emotional history to inherit the crown of the post-Diana world – that was the message. Even a republican like me can see there is nothing progressive in the current rage against the palace... Harry and Meghan aren’t fighting the establishment; they are the establishment now. Meet the new aristocrats, even worse than the old."

Megyn Kelly trashes Meghan Markle: 'We're supposed to feel sorry for you?' - "“This is a person who had (George) Clooney and Oprah at her wedding even though she didn’t know them, and then covered herself in blood diamonds from the Saudi prince. So spare us that you’re not into any of the grandeur.”Last week, Markle was accused of wearing earrings gifted by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was allegedly connected to the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi.Kelly also took aim at Markle for repeatedly using the interview with Oprah to pay compliments to herself while she enjoyed life “in the castle.”“I was one of the people on the streets rooting for them, delighted that this was happening. She was an American, a person of colour and it looked like the modernization of the British monarchy,” Kelly said. “But what I saw was somebody who is totally un-self-aware, completely unaware of how she sounded.”... Following Markle’s claims that someone in the royal family had allegedly raised issues with the possibility of the couple’s son, Archie, being of a darker complexion, many viewers watching took to social media to accuse Prince Philip, the queen’s husband, as the culprit... But Winfrey confirmed Monday morning to Deadline that the comment about Archie’s skin tone didn’t come from Queen Elizabeth II or Prince Philip. Still, elsewhere in her interview with Good Morning Britain, Kelly said she found Harry and Meghan’s claims of financial hardship laughable.“Harry’s saying, ‘All I had was my mother’s inheritance.’ I looked that up — it’s about $15, 16 million. So you’re telling the American public, the British public, that we’re supposed to feel sorry for you because you couldn’t find a way to pay for your own security when you haven’t had to pay for a dime of your own life so far? The British taxpayers have paid for everything … You can shell out a few dollars to protect your child if you’re that worried about it.”... “It wasn’t predictable at all that to you that when you moved into the palace someone else was going to control the press? My six-year-old daughter knew that before I went off to cover the royal wedding. Everyone knew that!”"

Meghan Markle 'ignored advice from Camilla on handling bad media headlines before her marriage' - "Yet Meghan later complained that she was not supported by the Windsors, famously telling an ITV documentary: 'Not many people have asked if I'm OK.' A friend of Meghan's said: 'Meg was really grateful to Camilla who was very supportive and invited her out for private lunches, particularly around the time of her marriage... When the Duchess of Cambridge married Prince William in 2013, Camilla took Kate out to lunch to offer similar help and advice... Meghan also reportedly felt let down by her sister-in-law, although sources say that Kate offered Meghan help from her own staff and told her: 'Feel free to call me, I'm here for you.'Insiders claim that several meetings were held to ensure Meghan had sufficient resources for the issues that she wanted to promote, such as female empowerment.The Cambridges also invited her to the Hurlingham private members' club in Fulham before her wedding to discuss her role in the Royal Foundation, the charitable vehicle used for their philanthropic work."

Meghan Markle Was Reportedly Not Ok Being Treated 'Second Best' to Kate Middleton - "Her feelings were compounded by the fact that her residence at Kensington Palace was much smaller than the one Kate lived in. Sources revealed that Meghan “lost it” on several occasions and went so far as to raise her voice and stomp her feet when she felt as though she wasn’t being given the same level of attention that Kate received.As one source claimed, Meghan “enjoyed success in Hollywood and had established herself as an emerging figure as an activist. All of that was the polar opposite of her life as a royal where people behave towards you according to where you are in the line of succession. She was never going to be satisfied as long as she felt she was second place to Catherine.”"

Prince Harry faces big tax bill from Uncle Sam if he stays in California

Harry and Meghan's $150m woke TV has 'no chance to fail' with couple under pressure to make a hit - "Harry and Meghan's $150m Netflix TV deal to produce woke documentaries has 'no chance to fail' and there is huge pressure on them to deliver a hit amid hype that could backfire, industry insiders have warned... They will be hoping to avoid the bad publicity given to Prince Edward's production company after he founded it in 1993.Ardent Productions had started well with a documentary on Edward VIII's abdication but was later branded a 'sad joke' by some industry insiders.Backers pumped £2.2million into the project but when it folded in June 2009 only £40.27 was left over... The Sussexes decision to work with Netflix is also a move reminiscent of former President Barack Obama and his lawyer wife Michelle... Tom Harrington, a broadcast industry expert at Enders Analysis said 'The Sussexes may imagine they will dictate the shows they want to make but Netflix will have a firm hand on the tiller.A senior industry source said that Meghan would 'believe she's getting full creative control' but that the executive producer's credits she was likely to receive were 'thrown around like confetti'.'TV networks, Netflix included, don't let the lunatics run the asylum,' the source said. 'Meghan will no doubt want to cast herself as Mother Teresa but that's not how it's going to pan out.'"

Princess Gouramma of Coorg with striking similarities to Meghan Markle - "A historian has revealed the 'intriguing parallels' between Meghan Markle and Queen Victoria's adopted daughter who was given the trappings of royal life but wished for more privacy.Dr Priya Atwal, from London, shared a lengthy Twitter thread online highlighting similarities between the Duchess of Sussex, 39, and Princess Gouramma of Coorg yesterday... 'As a historian of Victorian royalty, I am fascinated by some of the parallels between #MeghanMarkle’s current situation and the little known story of Princess Gouramma of Coorg.'She called the idea that Meghan is the first person of colour to be a member of the Royal Family 'misleading', and pointed to Princess Gouramma, who was born in  1841 in India... Queen Victoria took several young royals from across the empire into her household as godchildren, including Duleep Singh, whose portrait still hangs in Buckingham Palace."
So much for being the first royal of colour

John Robson: I was so wrong about Meghan. She has nothing to say - "Does Meghan Markle have anything to say? It might seem an odd question given the venomous interview “H&M”™ just gave Oprah Winfrey. But if you’d been asked to write a satirical script for a woke snowflake could you have improved on her ingratitude, brittleness and mix of self-absorption and lack of self-awareness as trite as it was appalling?... Somebody somewhere is going to say oh boo you’re a racist don’t you know the Royal Family worried what colour the baby would be? But we have only her word for it, and given the other implausible claims in that interview can we take it as gospel?... Everybody was gaga about her, and her being of mixed race showed how modern the Royal Family had become. And they clasped her to their bosom.As did I, remotely, in very favourable columns on Dec. 5, 2017, and Oct. 23, 2018. The former took a shot at “celebrity gossip” and the latter admitted “You might call covering an actress who married a nobleman the epitome of media triviality.” But I claimed H&M, and then their pregnancy, deserved attention as a fairy tale illustrating the good side of recent social change and defying the bad. Ah, the flavour of crow... She was into the lifestyle and the fame but had no intention of doing the work. Not just showing up at three minor charitable functions a day for the rest of her life looking fascinated... something I noticed on glancing up from my own navel in 2018: “The Royals live almost constantly in the public eye, which magnifies trivia, tragedy and gaffe. When something goes wrong, they must face the music in the most excruciatingly public way imaginable. With an inspirationally stiff upper lip.”Keep calm and carry on? Turns out Ms. Markle was far too modern. And not in a good way. I wrote in 2018 “the price you pay for marrying a prince is to be a princess, expected to set a graceful example even if you feel sick.” She has not.I don’t know where they go from here, and obviously my record on predictions regarding the couple who royal staff supposedly nicknamed “Duchess Difficult” and “the Hostage” is terrible. But my overwhelming reaction to the interview, second-hand as I refuse to watch such things, is they face a rapid downward spiral into triviality. As Cyril Connolly once said, “A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.” And there is nothing original or inspiring about Her Lack of Royal Highness. She’s the very embodiment of Theodore Dalrymple’s lethal phrase “individualism without individuality.”"

BLIZZARD: Buckingham Palace may be reeling, but can't fire back at H&M - "Meghan and Harry’s blockbuster interview with Oprah Sunday night will likely precipitate the most difficult constitutional crisis the U.K. — and by extension, Canada — has seen since the abdication crisis of 1936.That’s when Edward VIII gave up the throne for Wallis Simpson — another American divorcee... Someone asked what skin colour the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s unborn child would have.Oprah later clarified it was not the Queen or her husband Prince Philip — as many had speculated. That points the finger at Prince Charles. That could be unfair.Charles was the person who stepped in to walk Meghan down the aisle with great dignity at their wedding. By not giving specifics and context, H&M have tainted the entire family. The other disturbing allegation is that Meghan contemplated suicide and was denied help. If true, that runs counter to everything Harry and his brother William had worked for in their support of the charity Heads Together, which supports mental health. Harry threw his brother and father under the royal bus.Meghan made it clear she and Kate did not get along, saying Kate made her cry — but then gave no details.Interestingly, Oprah didn’t ask about the story of the tiara Meghan wanted brought to her to try on. When the Queen’s close adviser, Angela Kelly, said no, Harry reportedly told her, “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.”There was no mention of that incident in the interview. Buckingham Palace is reeling. They have no way to respond. They can’t sue, and it would be damaging for them to get into a petty tit-for-tat about who did what to whom.The fall-out will split along national lines.In the UK, where the Queen commands respect and the monarchy is part of the national fabric, I suspect most people will side with her. Americans will view Meghan as a victim of colonialism. H&M, now happily ensconced with Archie, their dogs and their chickens in a multimillion-dollar mansion in California can sit back and watch the fur fly. Meghan told Oprah she likes to rescue things. Archie has rescue chickens. They have a rescue dog. Harry, too, was a rescue, although he said he didn’t know he needed to be rescued until he met Meghan.Meghan said she was naive when she married Harry. C’mon. She was 35, a well-educated divorcee who’d been in the working world for several years. She said she knew nothing of royalty, didn’t Google her husband, and had no idea what she’d let herself in for. Really?... Her assertion that the Archbishop of Canterbury married them in their backyard three days ahead of their fancy wedding seems a bit odd.The Church of England requires two witnesses, so it couldn’t just have been the three of them, as they claimed. And the chances of an archbishop marrying them somewhere other than a church is slim.Meghan and Harry talked about their love and respect for the Queen. Yet they’ve deliberately blown up everything the Queen believes in and has worked for.To suggest she’s racist is preposterous. Her proudest achievement is the Commonwealth — an organization that’s remarkable for its diversity. She’s the person who’ll feel their barbs most deeply. H&M want privacy, but talk to Oprah. They want out of the Royal Family but want their kids to be a prince and princess. They’ve dumped Harry’s family and Meghan said her dad  “betrayed,” and is “lost” to her.Can all those people be wrong? Or could the real problem be Harry and Meghan?"

Meghan Markle Admits She Really Did Help with Finding Freedom - "In documents filed as part of her tabloid trial, her lawyers said she gave details about her relationship with her father with a third party—but did not contact the authors directly... The admission that she allowed a friend to speak on her behalf could impact Meghan’s case against Associated Newspapers, who say that through allowing information to be passed to the authors of Finding Freedom, Meghan has breached her own privacy"

Critic Claims Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Secretly Collaborated on 'Finding Freedom' -- 'It Feels Like an Autobiography'

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ‘always wanted independence AND publicity’ - "Journalist Camilla Tominey noted last month: “Ordinarily, one would expect a pair as fiercely protective of their privacy as the Sussexes to issue a stern legal rebuke to the grotesque intrusion this book so patently represents.”The Sussexes’ spokesperson said the two were not interviewed for the unauthorised book, nor cooperated with its authors, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.But as royal correspondent for The Times Roya Nikkah said: "Harry and Meghan's still-raw rage leaps off the pages."Ms Tominey also noted in The Telegraph, the book “has strangely heralded not a whiff of discontent” from the pair, suggesting that, as the book is sympathetic to their cause, the Sussexes did not protest."

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry break silence on alleged 'publicity stunt' after backlash - "Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, who faced backlash after releasing pictures from their visit to  LA cemetery, have reportedly denied that their Remembrance Sunday photo shoot had been a publicity stunt."
From 2020

‘It’s Hard’: Prince Harry and Meghan Speak of Strain of Royal Life in New Documentary - The New York Times
From 2019 on ITV. Truly, they value their privacy!

Meghan Markle & Prince Harry's Teenager Therapy Podcast Appearance
From 2020

Snap poll: post-interview, the public remain unsympathetic to Harry and Meghan - "YouGov polling conducted last week revealed Britons tended to sympathise more with the royal family over the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and our latest figures show the interview has had little impact on public opinion.Around a third of people (36%) say their sympathies lie mostly with the Queen and the royal household (-2 points compared to 4 March), while 22% of people (+4) say they have more sympathy for Harry and Meghan. Over quarter (28%) feel no sympathy for either of the royal camps."
At least more can generally see through the lies than not, but disappointingly the farcical interview didn't make more wake up

Meghan Markle: A culture-war missile aimed at Britain and Europe - "She’s a one-woman family destroyer, only in this case, the family in question happens to form one of Europe’s most venerable and ancient institutions.For years, Markle has had virtually no relationship with any of her own family. It seems that she wants to ensure that her husband, Prince Harry, similarly has no relations with his. She has sought to sever his blood ties through the medium of Oprah Winfrey.During their interview, Markle showed herself to be a far better actress than her minor TV career might ever have suggested. In her two-hour special, she posed, preened, emoted and made constant unsubstantiated claims. Worst was her claim that someone in the family had asked Harry what he thought their first-born might look like. This was immediately asserted by both Meghan and Oprah to be an example of “racism.”Was it? I very much doubt it. If one of the royals had said anything actually racist, then Markle would have used it to get another wheelbarrow of cash in another of her high-profile attempts to avoid the limelight. As it was, she relied on innuendo. The royal question could have been — most likely was — an entirely innocent inquiry, made in what we used to call “private” (the Duchess will have to look up that word). Prince Harry is ginger-haired. It is conceivable that a family member asked whether he thought the baby would have ginger hair. Given that the baby’s mother is black, the questioner likely wondered, might the baby come out as non-pasty-white? That is the most likely human explanation. Did the unnamed royal family member express disgust at the idea of a mixed-race baby? Of course not. Which is why all Markle offered were teary-eyed non-specifics... So the Queen and her 99-year-old husband, who fought the Nazis in World War II, have to watch their grandson’s nightmare of a wife try to destroy everything they have worked for through these bogus 21st-century racism accusations.And things are getting worse. The atmosphere in Britain is toxic. Toxic like everything that Markle touches. To even say that you doubt Markle is to risk the whole stupid spirit of our age coming crashing down upon you. One of Markle’s claims to Oprah was that she had mental health problems brought on by marrying into the royal family. Her hardships? She didn’t know she had to curtsy when meeting the Queen. She also didn’t know that the British tabloids wouldn’t fawn over her. Had she even heard of the royal family before directing herself straight at the unsuspecting Prince Harry? Of course she had. Can someone as wily as Markle not even use Google? Still, express doubt over any of this and you risk losing everything. Piers Morgan — not generally my cup of tea — was one of the very few Brits who expressed doubt over Markle’s account. The result? Markle complained to his bosses, who promptly defenestrated Morgan’s career.To deny that the British monarchy is racist, when it presides over one of the most diverse group of nations on Earth, the Commonwealth, is to attract the same ire.Well, to hell with these divisive, race-baiting, self-pitying, self-advancing furies. And to hell with those who demand that we all say only one thing and look at the world through only one lens. We have the right to doubt a Duchess. You Americans do, too. Indeed, your nation was founded upon that right."

Meghan Markle Inspires Millions Of Young Girls With Message That No Matter How Famous, Rich, And Powerful They Are, They Will Always Be Oppressed | The Babylon Bee - ""Oppression is inescapable," said Markle, who is married to a prince and worth approximately $50 million. "If you are a woman-- especially a woman of color, oppression will follow you all the days of your life and you will never really be happy."... Markle has promised to continue taking her message of hope to girls everywhere until no one is happy or thankful anymore."It's my true calling," she said."

‘Meghan Will Want Us To Believe That She Is A Wounded Bird’: Candace Owens Slams Markle/Winfrey Interview - "Owens wrote that she had predicted Harry and Meghan would leave their home in Canada and make their way to Los Angeles, noting that after the couple moved out of Kensington Palace and into Frogmore Cottage, Owens turned to her then-fiance (later her husband) and asserted, “Those two will wind up in Los Angeles. I give it three years.”“I was confident that Meghan, a relatively unknown B-list actress, would somehow find a route back to Los Angeles,” Owens stated. “Because there is nothing more traditional, and therefore more repugnant to a Liberal than the concept of a monarchy and all of the ‘broken’ traditions that come with it.” “If peace and quiet really were the Sussexes’ goal, then the woods and lakes of Canada were perfect,” Owens surmised. “But Canada is not Hollywood. And for someone who has spent a lifetime trying to ‘make it’, Los Angeles was always going to be the final destination. Mingling amongst A-list actors and calling A-list actresses her best friends – that was the sort of dream she recognized. And what better companion to have by her side than a genuine Prince, helping secure admission to the sort of social circle she’s unlikely to have entered through her own talent alone.” “Meghan never cared to be a Royal,” Owens opined. “The purpose is to justify the amount of publicity she and Harry will pursue on a go-forward basis. Meghan will want us to believe that she is a wounded bird, just finding her voice. Hollywood-types will praise her and Harry as ‘brave’ and ‘inspiring’ for having the courage to speak out against such a powerful institution.  People will come to understand that Meghan and Harry are pursuing a Hollywood existence – not because she had planned for them to do so all along – but because women, black women in particular, need to find their voice in this important historical moment.” “It isn’t hierarchy that Hollywood types hate. In fact, there is little more monarchical in style than hiding yourself within a £11 million mansion in California, while appealing to the public for love.Yet Meghan continues to cast herself before the world in the leading role of a victimhood series – against the media, The Firm, her sister, her father and now the United Kingdom. If you are as exhausted as I am with these perpetually under-whelming performances, then I’d invite you all to tune out tonight, and watch something else instead”"

CANDACE OWENS: I don't buy Meghan Markle's 'truths' about racist Britain - "What colour do you think his skin will be – lighter or darker?’I cannot tell you how many times I was asked that question while I was pregnant with my son last year.It came from not only my sisters, who are fully black and darker than I am, but also from my husband and from me as we day-dreamed about what our beautiful boy would look like. ‘What colour do think his eyes will be?’ we’d enquire aloud. ‘Will his hair be darker or lighter?’If it needs spelling out, no, I am not a racist black American, nor is the man who happened to marry me a racist Englishman.Instead, we are parents, as my sisters were future-aunts, beyond excited to imagine who our bi-racial, multicultural child would look like. So hearing Meghan Markle frame the questions about her son’s skin colour – however innocently intended – as racist ‘concern’ rather than harmless imagination made my skin crawl.If you have seen a picture of Archie and you believe that he was ever the victim of anti-black racism, then I am a stranded Nigerian prince who needs you to send him your bank account details straight away.At one point during the interview, Meghan, in comparing her experience to Kate Middleton’s, stated quite correctly that ‘being racist and being rude are not the same’.The British press has been rude to Meghan Markle, of that there is no doubt, but they have not been racist.Meghan’s race, which is not to my eyes even immediately discernible, was never at the centre of any piece criticising her.That race would become a tool to deflect criticism of Harry and Meghan was, in my view, inevitable. In fact, I predicted just as much in these pages BEFORE the interview. I also predicted that Meghan would explicitly present herself as a black woman just finding her voice.Admittedly, never in a million in years could I have foreseen her likening herself to Disney’s Little Mermaid, who lost her voice after falling in love with a prince. I was also correct in my forewarning that American viewers would end up distracted from some rather unusual aspects of the relationship – in particular, Harry’s sudden isolation from his friends, family and countrymen. Remove Harry and Meghan from the equation and insert any individual into this plot.Imagine if any person close to you confided that, after meeting his wife, he stopped speaking to most of his family and friends, including his father and brother, and that he now recognised his entire country was fundamentally racist. Would you at all be concerned?But in announcing to Oprah Winfrey and the world that a member of the Royal Family was racist, the effect has been to further isolate Harry from his previous life. Family is sacred. Rifts, which we all have, should never be exposed for public consumption. By way of comparison, it is worth noting that Meghan is half black. I am fully black – like both of my parents.How is it, then, that I have not experienced the racism that Meghan so effortlessly speaks of during my many trips to the United Kingdom?How is it that despite the British press having spent years covering my political commentary, and with at times deeply critical and mean-spirited attacks against my character, I have never interpreted such criticism as evidence of Britain’s inherent racism?Maybe it’s because, through the school of hard knocks, I’ve come to accept that not every person is going to like me. I’m also perceptive enough to conclude that branding every person who dislikes me a racist might be the quickest way to ensure that I really am disliked.Meghan does not seem to have worked through this equation just yet. Nor does she seem to have worked through the more obvious fact that the United Kingdom is not America. The near-obsession that the American media has with race and slavery is lost in translation over the pond.Of most important note – the United Kingdom was among the first countries to abolish the trade across its many colonies. Attempts to export America’s racial issues overseas have been flatly and rightfully resisted by the British people. Meghan is guilty of many things throughout her sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, but chief among them is intellectual laziness. Perhaps she does not wish to consider the many reasons why the British people do not hold her in high favour. Is that why she diagnoses them all as racist?... Like Meghan, I fell in love with an Englishman, but unlike Meghan, I also fell in love with a country, its people, and its traditions. England is a wonderfully diverse nation with traditions that make it unique to any other place in the world.I pity anyone who views Los Angeles, a purgatory of empty souls on a perpetual quest for fame, as some sort of reprieve from the United Kingdom.I’m taking a shot in the dark here, but maybe what the United Kingdom dislikes about Meghan is her character.Maybe it’s the inconsistency of a woman who once posed for tourist snaps outside Buckingham Palace but now claims to have had no idea who Prince Harry was when she fell in love with him.Maybe it’s the disrespect shown to a family who, despite their flaws, have served their country in various ways and throughout the course of many decades.Maybe it’s the cheap Hollywood spin of an innocent little mermaid who fell in love with a handsome prince – but wanted even more. It’s certainly worked, obscuring an attempt by Oprah – the only winner in this train wreck – to help her friends be better received across the Atlantic than they were in the UK. And, of course, in America, race sells.It’s just that I’m not buying it."

Candace Owens on Twitter - "Meghan Markle is less than 25% black. Her son is less than 12% black. Her and Harry implying that everything that happened to them is because of her blackness is a sickening level of scapegoating. What Harry is doing to his family (who cannot respond) is unforgivable."
"But she's not black, at all. She described herself as caucasian in 2013."

Buckingham Palace was dismayed that Royals were not given a chance to reply - "Buckingham Palace was dismayed that Oprah Winfrey's TV production company did not offer the Royals an opportunity to respond to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's devastating claims.Sources confirmed the Palace was not given a right to reply to the accusations, including that an unnamed family member asked 'how dark' Archie's skin might be and that, despite being on the verge of suicide, Meghan was refused help by the Palace's human resources department.It is accepted practice for UK media to provide a right of reply to those accused of wrongdoing."
The right of reply would get in the way of grievance mongering, so

DOMINIC LAWSON: The Duke of Windsor had the decency not to moan about money in public - "When all is said and done, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's complaints about their current predicament, broadcast to the globe via their wedding guest and New Best Friend Oprah Winfrey, come down to money and status.As far as they are concerned, they have been short-changed on both counts.That might seem incredible to those who (unlike Ms Winfrey) are not billionaires, but it is 'their truth'... With an expression of barely contained fury, he told Winfrey that 'my family literally cut me off financially' and that, while the couple were in Canada, 'I then got told at short notice security was going to be removed . . . I never thought that I would have my security removed because I was born into this position.'Well, yes, the Canadian government did not want to pick up the tab for that; and neither would British taxpayers want, in perpetuity, to fund round-the-clock bodyguards for the self-exiling couple.As it happens, even the Princess Royal gets security solely when she is performing royal duties — and Anne is the only member of the Royal Family who has been the victim of a kidnapping attempt. Full-time protection, said to be costing around £500,000 a year, was also withdrawn from the Duke and Duchess of York's daughters in 2011. Prince Andrew was furious about that because it represented a loss of status, not because he could point to genuine threats to the safety of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.In the world of Hollywood and the West Coast media multi-millionaires (where Harry and Meghan have now made their home and their new careers), anyone who doesn't have bodyguards might as well admit to not having access to a private jet. It means you aren't on the A-list. It seems Harry believed that his father should pay the costs the state wouldn't, and fund 24-hour-a-day protection for his family. But Harry is already a very wealthy 36-year-old, thanks in large part to the consequences of the divorce agreed between Charles and Diana... the Duchess of Sussex is thought to be a wealthy woman in her own right, from her successful career as a star on U.S. television.The situation was best summed up last week by a former royal protection officer, Simon Morgan, who said: 'Elton John has to pay for his own security, and so do Harry and Meghan.' But the couple themselves clearly assumed that Prince Charles would step in to fund such services once the royal protection squad had fallen away following Harry and Meghan's retreat from official duties. In his interview last week, Prince Harry also complained that his father had 'stopped taking my calls'. It has been claimed that these calls had all been focused on demands for help with the Duke and Duchess's desired protection.More money, in other words. It is little wonder that Prince Charles, after a while, could not bear to receive any further calls of this sort, especially as he had, according to an official speaking to the Sunday Times, 'continued to provide Harry and Meghan with financial support after their move to America, while they found their feet'.There is a ghostly echo here of the way in which demands for money poisoned the relationship between the Duke of Windsor (as Edward VIII became after his abdication) and his brother, King George VI... The historian Andrew Roberts (a doughty defender of the institution of the monarchy, as it happens) wrote about this episode: 'The way in which some very rich people consider themselves to be strapped for cash is an interesting psychological phenomenon, and it is particularly to be found among members of the royal families.'... The tradition of the British aristocracy is that the firstborn son gets everything: the title, the estates, and all the income that they generate. Viewers of Downton Abbey will be familiar with this... once William became a father, Prince Harry was no longer even the 'spare' (as in 'the heir and the spare' — the term used in English landed families for two male offspring). The line of succession, through the Cambridges' own children, required no input from him.This matter of status does seem to bother Prince Harry, despite his view, as told to Oprah Winfrey, that he is glad to have escaped the system which he claims has 'trapped' his father and brother... Harry had been a little miffed, during his wedding to Meghan Markle, to see William wearing the 'aiguillette over the right shoulder and chest' — the insignia of a personal aide-de-camp to the monarch. For Harry did not have that rank.Apparently, he raised this at the highest level, so that within months Harry, too, was appointed a 'personal aide-de-camp' to the Queen... it is one of the tragedies of Harry's life that he did not remain in the Armed Forces. That world is as far as can be imagined from the PR-led Californian existence that now embraces him.Incidentally, the Sussexes have taken on a large PR team of their own, which includes the Hollywood firm Sunshine Sachs. They do not come cheap.And I imagine these PR advisers had been paid to war-game the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan and Harry: how to make the maximum impact and how best to sway public opinion behind them. It must have occurred to Prince Charles (or certainly those who advise the Prince of Wales) that in giving more money to Harry, he might unwittingly be financing those who were, as we now know, preparing the ground for a calculated trashing of the Royal Family in order to boost the value of their own media brand.No wonder Charles decided to stop signing the cheques.And what a distasteful spectacle was this globally broadcast complaint about money by multimillionaires, when billions across the planet are facing exceptional financial hardship as a result of Covid-19.At least the Duke of Windsor didn't do his money-moaning in public."

Adam Lane Smith on Twitter - "Someone has been doing their research"
"Some women garden or read as a hobby. Others cosplay as their husband’s dead mom."
Maybe this is how Meghan corrupted Harry
Someone posted pictures of Kate doing the same. Except that Kate isn't trying to weaponise Diana's memory

Why is it racist to wonder what colour your child's skin will be? | The Spectator - "I was born in Mauritius. I look Asian. Or brown if you prefer. My wife was born in Slovenia. She is white and blonde.Yes, it is an unusual match. Our respective families are the most open--minded groups of people you could ever meet, however. Never a hint of racism on either side. But have we discussed the skin colours of my kids, since long before they were born? You bet we have, and still do. Before my son Joe popped out 11 years ago, my late mother enquired endlessly what the different colour options were. She went further than the mystery ‘racist’ royal, suggesting that a darker version of brown would be better, as the kid would be more likely to follow the Hindu religion (that of our side of the family).My wife’s family — who could not have been more welcoming to the first brown face that ever entered their remote village in eastern Europe — were hoping for a ‘whiter’ result, thinking that made it more likely he would follow Christianity.I joined in with all this. We had endless family discussions, usually over countless bottles of wine. It was all a great guessing game, and a damn good laugh. I had a side bet running with some friends on what exact colour Joe would be. I guess that makes me racist too. Joe, as it turned out, came out on the whiter side of white. My mother adored him, and promptly joined in the plans for his christening. ‘Second one will be a bit more brown I hope,’ she told me. But her hopes were further dashed when my daughter Evita appeared three years later, also looking ‘a little bit whiter’ than she imagined. She came to that christening too.Things finally became more balanced in 2013 when our third child, Savannah, was born, definitely on the brown side of brown. My mother was thrilled. I lost another bet. My in-laws found it all very amusing and confusing, before we all went to a Hindu temple together.And guess what my close friends did? Exactly what I would have done: made several lurid suggestions about there being no way I could be the father. ‘The colours don’t add up,’ they told me.My kids often point out that within our own family, the five of us are all completely different skin colours. They think it’s really cool, and even cooler to talk about it. For them, it is a source of positive fascination. When it comes to race and religion, they want to know more, learn more, embrace more. At my daughter’s birthday party in February last year in Bolivia (where we live for some of the year), the guests included an indigenous Indian, a black Brazilian and a Bolivian of Japanese ancestry. Many languages, many colours, many questions and many laughs. Did one of the parents go online to see who matched which Dulux paint colour scheme? Yes, guilty as charged. And that makes them racist? Come on. Get real. Context is everything. Nobody actually has a clue what the context of the rogue royal remark was regarding Meghan and Harry’s unborn baby. We probably never will. But you know what? My kids understand context. My wife does. My in-laws and my friends do. So did my mother. But if you look at everything in black and white, then by my count there are a lot of racists in this story. Me. My wife. My mother. My in-laws. My close friends. The guests at the birthday party. We should all be cancelled.Or maybe we should accept the inconvenient truth, which is that none of my friends or relatives is in the slightest bit racist, and that most of us interracial folk like to have a good laugh at our own expense."

Harry and Meghan: Meghan's half-sister claims she and the Duke are heading for divorce - "Samantha, who has accused Meghan of having 'narcissistic personality disorder', also claimed that she 'did a lot of damage' to their father Thomas Markle and called on her half-sister to make a public apology to him. Speaking to TMZ about Meghan and Harry's marriage, she said: 'I see it ending in divorce unless they get extensive counselling and can agree to work on being honest, to work on apologies to everyone that they've damaged in the course of this bull in a china shop two-year spiel. 'I mean, nothing about any of this has been honest, and the damage to the Royals has been massive - especially now.'... 'What man would be happy or comfortable like that? And the minute I believe he starts dissenting or pulling back from her, I think it can get nasty unless he has a really good lawyer or they have really good counsellors.'I don't know what it's gonna take.'...
The Duke of Sussex was accused of 'embarrassing' hypocrisy yesterday for granting his interview to CBS - the same American network that caused outrage by showing a photograph of his mother dying... When the same photo later appeared in an Italian magazine, Prince William and Prince Harry issued a rare statement condemning it, saying they were 'deeply saddened that such a low has been reached'... Royal biographer Hugo Vickers said: 'It is quite embarrassing for Prince Harry. How could he possibly co-operate with an organisation which some years ago was the only outlet to publish a deeply distressing photo of his mother's dying moment?... 'It is pretty hypocritical of him. I suppose he didn't remember, or maybe he had no choice because of contracts signed? If he was still being advised by the Palace, they would have spotted this sort of thing a mile off.'Former Buckingham Palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter said: 'The problem with American networks is that they are all about ratings, and advertising and bringing in money. It is not about decency... It came as a friend of Prince Charles also accused Harry of 'hypocrisy' as he disputed the duke's claim in the interview that his father had 'cut him off' financially.The friend said Charles had continued to support the Sussexes after their move to the US.The friend told the Sunday Times: 'What ****ing hypocrisy. When Harry and Meghan left last year, they wanted to become 'financially independent'.'"
It's just a matter of time. Then she will claim he was unsupportive, racist and sexist
Meghan has alienated just about her whole family on both sides. Naturally this means it's her family's faults
The newest low is weaponising your own mother's death, when you had previously condemned others for doing less

Aruba

So it wasn't just a Singaporean thing.  

From subtle asian traits:

"Hi everyone gather round,

I have another story to tell.

OKAY so when I was 14, I went on a summer exchange program where I would go to GuangZhou/ZhongShan and live with the high school students there. I'd been to China many times before, but I didn't actually hang with locals much or anything, mostly just family trips.

So, my parents thought that it would be a good idea for me to go on this summer exchange program to learn more about Chinese life and culture. I got to live in the same dorms as the high school students there, eat in the cafeteria with them, make friends, etc etc etc.

 

Anyways, one day as we're on a field trip to some park (I forget where we were tbh), they tell me, "hey hey William, let's play Aruba!"

Me: "wtf is Aruba"

My Chinese Friends: "It's a fun game where we all lift you up like a king!"

Me: "o shit okay yeah that sounds fun let's do it"

 

What they ended up doing was ramming my crotch into a tree several times.

 

Apparently it's a common playground game/prank they do in China.

 

And so, I returned to the U.S. with a newfound respect and appreciation for Chinese culture."

Links - 28th February 2021 (Biden-Harris)

Cenk Uygur on Twitter - "There are a million things left to fight for. For progressives, we've just begun to fight (and win). But I have to say that the "return to normalcy" feels amazing. Right-wing madness isn't gone & this won't last, but not having a literal lunatic in charge is unbelievable relief." - Jan 21, 2021
Cenk Uygur on Twitter - "So, @JoeBiden bombs Syria and kills the minimum wage hike, confirming every fear progressives had. Soon they'll renege on getting $2000 checks to everyone in the middle class by limiting who gets it (to appease their donors). The establishment is back! And it absolutely sucks." - February 25, 2021

Joe Biden suggests China’s Uighur genocide is ‘different cultural norms’ - "Mr Biden’s own State Department said it was “deeply disturbed” by reports that Uighur women being held in re-education camps were being systematically raped and sexually tortured."
Since Trump was racist, we know that condemning Uigher repression is racist

Hunter Biden connected to Chinese company implicated in ongoing genocide of Uyghurs

With Donald Trump going, who in the free world will stand up for Uighurs now? - "As reports of concentration camps and unprecedented surveillance emerged from the Uighur region in 2017, thousands of Uighur in exile received final messages from their family, all communicating the same thing: please do not contact us – when things change, we will reach out to you. Since then, testimonies have poured in of people who have escaped the region. As a translator, I hear these stories again and again. East Turkestan has become one giant prison. Everyone is watched, all the time. Thousands upon thousands have been sent to the so-called “re-education camps”. In the name of deradicalisation, they are brainwashed, enslaved and humiliated. They are denied their faith and culture, and torn from their families. This treatment of my people is party policy, even if Beijing still denies allegations of abuse. Leaked high-level Chinese government documents last year quote Xi Jinping himself as saying we should be shown “absolutely no mercy”. China’s state media is even more explicit about what should be done to the Uighur, calling upon the government to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins”. As The Washington Post put it in an editorial: “It’s hard to read that as anything other than a declaration of genocidal intent.”... For years nobody stood up for us. The Obama administration: nothing. The David Cameron government: nothing. Angela Merkel: nothing. Theresa May: nothing. Trump? Under Trump, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, pursued an aggressive line on China, which gave us hope. For the first time, our oppressors were being sanctioned, and real action was being taken to prevent companies sourcing goods made with Uighur slave labour."
I still see tankies pretending that it's all a lie made up by Adrian Zenz

President Biden Argues Equity Policies Are Moral Imperative - "During his first full week in office, President Biden made clear that addressing inequity would be not only a fixture of his presidency, but also the responsibility of the entire federal government... In the weeks and months to come, the Biden administration is expected to take steps to directly address inequity in all parts of life. And Biden has said that equity is at the center of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief proposal... "So just to be clear then, it sounds like racial equity means treating people differently based on their race, is that correct?" Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked her.Fudge went on to say that race was not necessarily the only factor involved in equity."It could be based on economics, it could be based on the history of discrimination that has existed for a long time. It could be based on educational levels, it could be based on many things," she said. Gonzalez said that as president, Biden should be focused on ensuring that "all Americans are equally protected," and that the equity-focused actions "violate cherished notions that millions of Americans have.""

The Washington Post Tried To Memory-Hole Kamala Harris’ Bad Joke About Inmates Begging for Food and Water - "When The Washington Post published a 2019 campaign trail feature about then-presidential hopeful Kamala Harris' close relationship with her sister, it opened with a memorable anecdote in which Harris bizarrely compared the rigors of the campaign trail to…life behind bars.And then proceeded to laugh—at the idea of an inmate begging for a sip of water... Harris made her name as a prosecutor, and her track record includes defending dirty cops and laughing off criticism of her history of throwing poor parents in jail when their kids missed school. The Post profile provided a mask-slipping moment that seemed to perfectly capture a warped sense of justice and lack of basic human dignity—all in just a few hundred words... The original quote might have demonstrated something about Harris—indeed, it suggests why her presidential primary campaign flopped so hard—but its disappearance suggests something about the Post, and about the way traditional political media are preparing to cover Harris now that she's one heartbeat away from the presidency... the memory-holing of the older version of the piece sends a message that the Post is willing to pave over its own good journalism to protect a powerful politician from her own words."

By his own definition, Biden is already governing like a dictator - "“I have this strange notion, we are a democracy ... if you can’t get the votes … you can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We’re a democracy. We need consensus.”Those are the words of Joe Biden. And, no, this isn't a matter of unearthing a clip from the 1980s or '90s in an attempt to play a game of gotcha on some antiquated flip-flop. That's Democratic nominee Biden, less than three weeks before the 2020 presidential election... In President Biden's first week alone, he has signed 37 executive orders and actions as of Thursday. That's 33 more than the guy he indirectly referred to as a dictator, in the form of predecessor Donald Trump. It's 32 more than his old boss, Barack Obama, and 37 more than George W. Bush, who signed zero in his first week as president... Even the New York Times editorial board is calling on the president to pump the brakes on governing exclusively by executive fiat... China will be quite pleased that the U.S. rejoined the Beijing-friendly Paris climate accord... Biden hasn't been asked any direct questions by the press on the job-killing Keystone order, of course. That's what happens when the leader of the free world requires a staffer to call on a predetermined list of invariably friendly reporters, compiled by his team, instead of calling on reporters himself.How friendly? Here's a "question" around the topic of unity posed to him on Tuesday. "Given that unity is such a key part of your message and your promise, can you talk and reflect a little bit more about what is unity when you see it and as you define it?" asked Washington Post White House correspondent Annie Linskey, one of the six reporters permitted to question the new president in his first press conference."

Joe Biden Syria air strikes: Kamala Harris, Jen Psaki old tweets resurface criticising Trump - "Old tweets from US Vice President Kamala Harris and White House press secretary Jen Psaki have resurfaced after air strikes against Syria were launched by US forces on Thursday... critics of Mr Biden’s administration were quick to point out tweets from Ms Harris from 2018, where she questioned strikes ordered by then US President Donald Trump’s administration... In 2017, now White House Press Jen Psaki also questioned the “legal authority” of air strikes against Syria."

DayGloDisastah on Twitter - "Imagine being dumb enough to believe Joe Biden is literally going to "bomb" the Middle East, you all Trumpers are lunatics."

AG Wilson urges Biden to reverse cancellation of ICE operation on convicted sex offenders - "South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson joined a coalition of 18 state attorneys general in urging Biden's administration to reverse their cancellation of Operation Talon, which focuses on removing convicted sex offenders living illegally in the U.S."

Biden Promises Nationwide Mask Mandate And Womandate | The Babylon Bee - ""Listen folks-- we all make mistakes. I realized this morning that my COVID plan includes a mask mandate, but not a womandate. I have amended and also awomended my plan to include a mask womandate," Biden read off his teleprompter. "We will also be adding a mask non-binarydate, a mask genderqueerdate, a mask two-spiritdate, a mask polygenderdate, and a mask non-binarytrans-speciesdate. More 'dates' will be arriving as we continue to do our research to make sure no one is left out." According to sources, the Biden transition team has grown alarmed at the number of times the word "men" appears in the English language. They have been working around the clock to replace all usages of the word "men" in their plan with the word "women." Unfortunately, it was determined that the word "women" is also problematic, they then replaced the word "women" with "people who menstruate.""

1/1024th Liberty Memes - Posts | Facebook - "If headlines were accurate." "The person glorified for drugging and robbing men, discusses police misconduct with the author of the 1994 Crime Bill"
On Cardi B and Biden

Man Who Has Been In Government For Nearly 50 Years Promises To Fix Government | The Babylon Bee - "He also has a cop helping him out, sources confirmed at publishing time."

Man Who Called Half The Country Racists All Year Calls For Unity | The Babylon Bee - "Biden said there are different kinds of unity, from the normal kind where everyone tries to understand each other even though they have different viewpoints, and democratic unity, where the morally correct people throw the morally incorrect people into labor camps. According to the president, he is pushing for the second kind of unity, where the winning side imposes their will on the losing side, or else they get reeducated."

Garbage Human on Twitter - ""First Lady Jill Biden Wore a Scrunchie While Shopping and People Felt So Seen"
"Top tier, hard hitting journalism at its finest.
Hey @ectannenbaum, can you please donate whatever you got paid for writing this article to charity?"
"@ectannenbaum blocked you"
"I guess not."
Comment (elsewhere): "If Melania wore a scrunchie, no doubt she would have been mocked by that same writer "

Watch | Facebook - "Media "REPORT" on Joe Biden Playing Mario Kart
For years, the media complained when Trump would play golf. Now they are writing puff pieces about Biden playing video games."

Biden team disables chat on Zoom conferences to avoid questions from journalists
It's not a war on the press if Democrats do it

Is Joe Biden really 'tough on China'? - The Spectator - "Look not at what he says, but what his administration does... the Biden administration will be a gift to China’s ambitions to reshape the world order... The idea that Trump’s ‘China virus’ rhetoric is xenophobic is puzzling. Naming a virus after the place it was first reported and thought to have originated has been a matter of scientific consensus for over a century. Where was the hand-wringing over the Zika virus or Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome)?... If the term is ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobic,’ surely we must also cease referring to the ‘UK’ or ‘South African’ variant of SARS-CoV-2 as well. This is unnecessary moral posturing. The supposed increase in anti-Asian hate crimes derives from self-reporting via an online portal. No attempts have been made to isolate causation from correlation. Trump is out of office and the Great Digital Crackdown of 2021 has deprived him of the largest social media platforms. So what does Biden’s efforts to advance racial equity by memo really accomplish? He can’t magically banish racist incidents against individuals on the streets by signed decree. If racial equity is really his big concern here, where is the memorandum against racial discrimination against Asian American students by tax payer-supported colleges and universities?... Since he became President-elect, China has approved a law allowing attacks on foreign vessels in the South China Sea, ramped up arrests of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and, most recently, made incursions into Taiwanese air space with over a dozen fighter jets and bombers.These escalating tactics are tests. But the Biden administration has yet to draw up any coherent response"

Joebama W. Trump - Posts | Facebook - "This seems like a good time to remind everyone that Biden's campaign was supported by contributions from Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital, and numerous investment & venture capital firms. Wall Street donors spent more on Biden than Trump, over $74 million."People in the securities and investment industry will finish the 2020 election cycle contributing over $74 million to back Joe Biden’s candidacy for president, a much larger sum than what President Donald Trump raised from Wall Street"

A Wyoming County Predicts 'Total Economic Devastation' From Biden Leasing Ban : President Biden Takes Office

Joe Biden has awkward moment with nurse running vaccine site - "Biden got up to some of his “creepy” old antics when he responded to the nursing supervisor’s detailed description of giving COVID-19 shots by asking her about her age."
It's not sexual harassment if it's a Democrat

WATCH: Joe Biden is still falsely claiming that allegations against Hunter are 'Russian disinformation'

Biden's new education secretary will divide students and curriculum along racial lines - "Biden's pick for Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona is an example of an educator who focuses more on skin color and ethnicity than education or equality.It's not only that race is the top driver in hiring for the Biden administration—it's that their governing methods and goals will be fixated on race as well. Nowhere is that more evident than in the credentials of those being nominated for Cabinet positions, and nowhere is it more dangerous that in the newly nominated Secretary of Education."

Meme - "Joe Biden never called black people super predators. Hillary called black people super predators. He only called them predators. TRUMP'S A RACIST!"

If Biden wins, we all lose - "One of the most revealing justifications for voting for Biden is that he would relieve people of the burden of thinking about politics... the wave of pro-Biden sentiment among vast swathes of the establishment is not merely about changing policy in the White House, as most elections are. (Indeed, it is striking how much of the pro-Biden commentary says Biden’s policies don’t actually matter. ‘It’s not the policies that count’, as the Guardian says.) Rather, it is about negating the ‘feral’ populism of recent years and restoring the rightful rule of the smart set, of those who can be trusted to govern while the rest of us just get on with our lives and never think about politics. A Biden presidency is a ‘protest against protest’, in the words of the Guardian. That is, it would be a protest against the protest votes cast by vast numbers of ordinary people in 2016 for a different, more democratic way of doing politics. There’s a word for ‘protest against protest’, of course: counter-protest, or counterrevolution. That is what the elite Biden wave represents: a counterrevolution against the populist cries and democratic demands of the 2016 era... The desire to make politics diminutive again, to return decision-making to ‘the experts’, speaks to the overarching aim of the technocratic impulse – to insulate political life from the pressure of the masses."

Nicole Arbour on Twitter - "I've been asked by the Biden team to step down as Surgeon General. Its been the honor of my life to serve this Nation, and I will do all I can to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve and maintain health"
"First thing Biden did was fire a black man. 🤦🏼‍♀️ #BLM""

Jason Miller on Twitter - Joe Biden: "Wheels up, folks."
"Yesterday: CLIMATE CHANGE!
Today: FIRE UP THE PRIVATE JET!"

John Kerry family private jet emitted estimated 116 metric tons of carbon over past year - "Data compiled by the flight tracking firm FlightAware and obtained by Fox News show that John Kerry's family Gulfstream GIV-SP spent around 22 hours and 22 minutes in the air over the past year.Using Paramount Business Jets emissions calculator, Fox News found that Kerry's planed accumulated an estimated 116 metric tons of carbon between trips dating from Feb. 9, 2020, to Jan. 10, 2021.For comparison, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year... the Kerry family owned a private charter jet company that the longtime Democratic politician appeared to benefit from financially. As late as 2013, his executive branch personnel financial disclosure showed Kerry owning "over $1,000,001" in assets for the charter company Flying Squirrel LLC through his wife... Private jets have been estimated to emit upward of 40 times as much carbon per passenger as commercial flights.The emissions estimate comes as Democrats consider massive proposals for overhauling the nation's energy economy with potentially skyrocketing costs for households and individual Americans. President Biden's climate proposal would cost at least $1.7 trillion. That could grow, however, depending on how Democrats negotiate with him in Congress, where progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have been adamant about passing the ambitious Green New Deal."
So much for the climate czar

Kamala Harris: We will restore aid to Palestinians, renew ties
Comment: "That's it then. Kamala Harris means forever war and forever conflict in the Middle East."

Biden pick to head DOJ Civil Rights Division wrote Blacks had 'superior physical and mental abilities' - "Joe Biden's pick to run the Justice Department's enormously powerful Civil Rights Division is a woman called Kristen Clarke. Clarke says her job is simple: End hate. But like so many in her world, Clarke is actually an enthusiastic purveyor of what she claims to fight... Clarke wrote a letter to The Harvard Crimson in her capacity as the president of the Black Students Association to explain her views on race science."Please use the following theories and observations to assist you in your search for truth regarding the genetic differences between Blacks and whites [sic]," Clarke wrote. "One: Dr Richard King reveals that the core of the human brain is the 'locus coeruleus,' which is a structure that is Black, because it contains large amounts of neuro-melanin, which is essential for its operation. "Two: Black infants sit, crawl and walk sooner than whites [sic]. Three: Carol Barnes notes that human mental processes are controlled by melanin -- that same chemical which gives Blacks their superior physical and mental abilities."Four: Some scientists have revealed that most whites [sic] are unable to produce melanin because their pineal glands are often calcified or non-functioning. Pineal calcification rates with Africans are five to 15 percent [sic], Asians 15 to 25 percent [sic] and Europeans 60 to 80 percent [sic]. This is the chemical basis for the cultural differences between blacks and whites [sic]."Five: Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities -- something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards."... Even at Harvard, crackpot theories like that were considered deranged and dangerous. After an outcry on campus, Kristen Clarke suggested that she didn't necessarily believe what she had written. The left-wing Harvard Crimson didn’t buy that explanation. "Well, does she or doesn't she?" wrote the editors. "So far, she has given us every indication that she does." Just a month later, Clarke invited the noted Trinidadian anti-Semite Tony Martin to speak on campus. Martin, then a professor at Wellesley College, was the author of a self-published manifesto called "The Jewish Onslaught." In it, Martin chronicled the "escalating Jewish onslaught" against Black people."

Biden pick for Dept. of Justice's top civil rights post has called for partially defunding police

Biden: Administration to make minority and female-owned businesses 'priority,' sparking criticisms of 'discrimination' - "President-elect Joe Biden said his administration will prioritize businesses owned by minority and female Americans, which sparked backlash, with some calling it "discrimination.""

Joe Biden is a Racist Who Loves Police Brutality | Left Voice - "Liberals, seeking moderate and ultimately end the uprisings, are coalescing around a “don’t riot, vote” message, which has been taken up by corporate media figures, regular white liberals, and even former presidents. They’re selling the idea that the solution to police brutality and all the other ills of the racist capitalist system is to vote for Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden for president in November. If we get Trump out, they argue, things can return to “normal”: no more curfews, no more pandemic, no more police brutality. All these problems are caused by Republicans. Biden will save us!Joe Biden is a dedicated, lifelong racist. He won’t save any of us, least of all the victims of police brutality. Biden’s history of enthusiastic racism stretches back decades. From the moment he entered the U.S. Senate in the early 1970s, he vocally opposed busing to achieve school desegregation... Biden represented Delaware in the Senate, a state that essentially refused to desegregate schools through a combination of hair-splitting laws and white parents shifting their children to private schools en masse. Private school enrollment in Delaware is now among the highest in the nation, at 17.6 percent in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington — the vast majority of them white. Meanwhile, disproprotionately Black public schools are systematically starved of funds... Twenty years later, having risen to the prominent position of chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden presided over confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas to become the second Black Supreme Court justice. The hearings became a crucible for the particular combination of racism and misogyny at the heart of the United States when law professor Anita Hill, also Black and who had previously worked for Thomas, came forward with sexual harassment allegations against him. The all-male, all-white committee Biden chaired questioned her in brutal detail. He refused to take her allegations seriously, launched no investigation, and failed to accept testimony from multiple other witnesses and survivors of Thomas’s harassment. With Biden’s collusion, Thomas was confirmed and today is one of the Court’s consistent right-wing votes. Reportedly, he’s also Trump’s favorite justice... Perhaps the most egregious example of Biden’s racist use of power is 1994’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the crime bill he wrote and continues to support vocally to this day. The bill is a laundry list of the worst aspects of the mass incarceration state... Since then, people have died in prison for things like stealing a dollar in loose change from a parked car, possessing less than 1 gram of a drug, and attempting to break into a soup kitchen. Biden had also co-written the Anti-Drug Abuse Act a few years earlier, during the so-called crack epidemic. It amplified sentencing disparities between crack cocaine users, who were mostly Black, and powder cocaine users, who were mostly white. All these new laws affected people of color, especially Black and Indigenous people, the most, leading to a massive increase in incarceration, policing, and the destruction of Black communities. While the crime bill was very popular at the time, it came under heavy criticism from those who knew it would worsen carceral capitalism. Now considered widely to be a racist failure, some previous supporters have disowned it. Only someone truly committed to racism would maintain his support of the bill, as Biden still does... Obama, though, had more power than most liberals and used it to expand a racist system. It cannot be a defense of Biden that he served as vice president — a stepping stone to power in itself — under a Black president who pursued mass incarceration, surveillance, the war against drugs, imperialism, land theft from Indigenous people, and other policies of neoliberalism that disproportionately target people of color... While Biden may have learned the right words to say in 2020 to avoid accusations of racism, as in his “plan for Black America,” he lacks the policies, actions, or record to back them up. Racism isn’t what you say; it’s what you do. And Biden continues to advocate for racist action worldwide, from criminal penalties for immigration to increased military spending, even after his recent and calculated about-face on prisons and sentencing.Biden doesn’t really stand with Black Americans. Faced with the clear choice to stand with protesters fighting racist state violence or with the police brutalizing them, it is no surprise that he sought a pseudo-middle ground, saying, “The idea that instead of standing there and teaching a cop when there’s an unarmed person, coming at him with a knife or something, to shoot him in the leg instead of in the heart. There’s a lot of different things [policies] that can change.”Apparently, Biden thinks the things that can change are limited to what part of an unarmed protester’s body the police should aim to shoot. The only way to read this is that Biden, an enthusiastic proponent of state violence, just wishes the cops would carry it out a bit more politely and with more plausible deniability... Joe Biden has said, “I’m not sorry for anything that I have ever done.” We should take him at his word, and look at his record... The problem isn’t just Joe Biden. When you look across the United States at where police are responding to protests with brutal force, you’ll find many places with Democrats in power... Instead of relying on powerful Democrats to solve problems they have helped cause, we should look to the uprisings. Socialists should work to show the people in the streets that our anger and outrage have an answer — and it won’t be found in voting for Democrats... The only lasting solution is to abolish the police and abolish capitalism the world over."

California will be 'the de facto policy think tank' for the Biden team: Report - "Biden is most likely to adopt California’s approach to climate change, free college tuition, workers' rights, and criminal justice reform.“There is no place the incoming administration is leaning on more heavily for inspiration in setting a progressive policy agenda,” the paper declared.But not everyone agrees California is the place to emulate, with several major tech companies leaving the state in recent months to states with friendlier tax and regulatory policies.People are leaving the state too, with 653,000 residents deciding to call a news state home in 2019 compared to 480,000 that moved into the state.“California is not a good place to live or do business with anymore," one California resident, Jim DeMartini, said of the reason he plans to flee the state. "I’ve been involved in local government here for 16 years, and I see California as just a basket case.”DeMartini joins others who have cited the state's high taxes, business regulatory structure, and “left-wing” politics as enough to push them elsewhere."

Will the media’s Biden sycophancy ever end? - "Now that Donald Trump has left the White House, the media are no longer even pretending to hold the government accountable. Sycophancy has already begun to dominate the airwaves and the press. The media have its man in the White House and we can expect nothing but fawning coverage from here on in... The New York Times, supposedly America’s paper of record, published an article on Tuesday entitled: ‘Biden has a Peloton bike. That raises issues at the White House.’ The ‘issue’, apparently, is that it necessitates ‘regular morning negotiations’ between Mr and Mrs Biden as to ‘who gets to ride’ the $1,900 bike ‘first’. How human and relatable the new first family are! NPR, which outright refused to report on the Hunter Biden scandal during the election – declaring it a ‘pure distraction’ which would waste its journalists’ and listeners’ time – has reported on the ‘indoguration’ of Biden’s German shepherd."

Joe Biden is promoting wokeness on steroids - "In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, a number of anti-woke commentators said people should vote for Joe Biden.A common refrain was that the presence of Donald Trump in the White House was the catalyst for most woke madness and zealotry.Biden, on the other hand, being a moderate and less woke than other Democrats, would diffuse tensions... one of Biden’s first acts as president will be to extend trans students’ access to single-sex spaces... Current guidance leaves it up to individual states to determine their policies in this area. But for Biden, centralising this rule is apparently a major priority for his presidency.This should come as no surprise. Biden has a poor record when it comes to protecting women’s spaces. He declared at an LGBT forum in 2019 that, ‘In prison… your sexual identity is defined by what you say it is, not what in fact prison says it is’. And in January last year, he tweeted: ‘Let’s be clear: transgender equality is the civil-rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.’But it is not just on trans issues that Biden has shown his true, woke colours. Two of the people he has appointed to his new climate team have turned the environment into a woke issue, blaming climate change on racism. Maggie Thomas has been named chief of staff at the Office of Domestic Climate Policy, while Cecilia Martinez has been appointed ‘senior director for environmental justice’... He has also promised that Covid relief funds will be allocated with a view to gender and race, rather than simply on the basis of financial need.Anyone who thought electing Biden would strike a blow against wokeness was sorely mistaken. The madness is only just beginning."

"Biden's climate plan will not address gender and racial inequality" is a real headline we're not supposed to think is ridiculous - "The specific problem they find with Biden's plan to build a "new green energy infrastructure" is that that would provide way too many jobs to men... It gets worse. The money that would go to the solar industry in particular would provide jobs to way too many white men... Think about that. An industry dedicated to the production of solar power does not track the race of the people it hires.Shouldn't we all be thinking about race all the time to be sure we make hiring decisions based on a person's race since that is the most important thing about them?To do otherwise would be racist!... They want to simply hand more money to people already over-represented in certain fields the better to trap them there and keep them hostages to the largess of the state.Totally not condescending, if you were thinking that... are they saying that increasing the available labor supply in a specific industry without any concurrent marginal increase in demand for that labor appears to lower average wages?Okay, we just covered the first week of a Freshman Economics 101 course.Unfortunately, that conclusion is not politically useful. So let's conclude the following instead: That is, the gender wage gap may not solely follow from excluding women from more highly paid fields, but rather that female-dominated jobs are paid less because they are held by women. Keep in mind, one of the authors has a Ph.D. in economics. Well, environmental economics. Maybe the laws of supply and demand don't work in environmental economics, and by "work" I mean "result in politically-desirable outcomes." That, or she got one of those "Jill Biden" Ph.Ds... [Let's] try to achieve political agendas by hijacking totally unrelated bills so as to avoid too much scrutiny.It's the American way!" Trumka, a former coal miner, also signaled his skepticism at Biden’s plan to transition coal, gas and oil workers to clean energy jobs, saying he was subject to a similar failed policy.“You know, when they laid off at the mines back in Pennsylvania, they told us they were going to train us to be computer programmers”... Biden’s climate czar John Kerry was also condemned by Republicans last month as “out of touch” when he suggested that energy and coal workers impacted by climate change efforts could “go to work to make the solar panels.”"

Unions Wanted Biden. Now They’re Blasting Him Over Killing Keystone XL

Joe Biden latest president to flout rule of law when it comes to Canadian relations | The Star - "The Americans won’t share the COVID-19 vaccine they produce with their closest neighbour and ally. They cancel Alberta’s Keystone XL pipeline without even going through the motions of consulting us. In the midst of the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression they impose a buy America policy that flies in the face of our free trade agreement.And this from the U.S. president Canadians cheered for in the recent election because the previous one, Donald Trump, posed a terrifying threat to the entire world. As the old saw goes, with friends like these … Canada has been confronted with surprise tariffs and “buy America” dictats from U.S. presidents.In his inaugural speech, President Biden was clearly proud to announce that America was back — back to participate in restoring the international order of trust, consultation and co-operation.From where Canada sits, he hasn’t made an impressive start on that agenda. Rather, with his first moves in office, Biden appears to prefer another old saw: “do as we say, not as we do.”"

Why the cancellation of Keystone XL is bad for the climate, the environment and Canada - "One of the big claims by opponents of KXL is that somehow the cancellation of the pipeline will reduce oil sands production. I have no clue where this claim comes from because every objective analysis of this topic has come to the same conclusion as the US government did in their 2014 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (2014 SEIS) [which was completed under the Obama Administration] or their more recent 2019 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project (2019 SEIS)... The cancellation of KXL will not affect Alberta oil sands production in any meaningful sense... Oil-by-rail is less safe and has higher GHG emissions than a pipeline. These facts are incontrovertible and dealt with in the SEIS reports. With reference to what cancelling the Presidential Permit means to the movement of Alberta crude, consider that a “rail bridge” was already being planned in 2013 under the concern that KXL would be canceled. Remember, the Presidential Permit only blocks the transportation of oil in a pipeline across the border. Nothing is in place to stop oil producers from moving their product from one pipeline location to another via a rail bridge. Admittedly, doing so will increase the cost and GHG intensity of the oil but given the potential profit this project isn’t really a hard one to envision. To be specific, the 2014 SEIS calculated that the total GHG emissions attributed to using either rail or a combination of rail/pipeline would range from 28% to 42% greater (in the transportation step), than moving that same volume of oil by KXL... by cancelling Keystone XL President Biden will not reduce GHG emissions since the pipeline was intended to move existing production. Rather, the alternatives to KXL will generate higher emissions, at higher risk, while pulling billions from Canada’s economy... As for whether the pipeline was in the US interest lets look at the final paragraph of the Department of State, Record of Decision and National Interest Determination... 'issuance of a Presidential permit for this proposed Project serves the national interest.'"
Pissing off allies is only bad when Trump does it

Joe Biden’s celebrity-packed inauguration is an embarrassing start to his presidency - "Biden has tried the cool card before. In desperate attempts to move away from his reputation as a firm establishment figure with a dodgy history when it comes to race relations and incarceration, he has often attempted to be “hip”. In a toe-curling moment of the presidential race, he told radio host Charlamagne Tha God that voters who were still deciding between him and Trump “ain’t black” in one of the worst street-slang accents imaginable.It’s not just Biden who feels the need to jazz-up his image, either. Vice President Kamala Harris has attempted to drown out her track record of increasing the mass incarceration of young black men by trying to gain cultural kudos. In an interview with Elle magazine, Harris revealed her desperation to be liked when she tried to pass off a Martin Luther King anecdote as her own. King told Playboy in 1965 the story of a little girl telling an officer on a civil-rights protest that she wanted ‘Fee-dom’ (Harris claimed that she had demanded “fweedom” from her stroller on a civil-rights march in Oakland)... Most Americans don’t have short memories – they remember that many of the stars now offering their services to Biden were vocal supporters of the #MeToo movement and conspicuously quiet when allegations were made against him during the presidential race. Neither have they forgotten that Harris, who now acts as if her and the president have been best buds for years, was uncompromising in her criticism of Biden during the primaries for working with former segregationists in the past. If celebrity and fame is mostly about hiding the truth behind a perfect smile, Biden and Harris are pros... the Democrats reliance on celebrity and vengeful attempts at impeachment show that America’s second long national nightmare is far from over. If you’re still kidding yourself that Biden’s term will spell a move to serious political change based on what’s good for working-class Americans, switch over when you see Gaga take the mic."

Biden's HHS pick defended policy of returning COVID patients to nursing homes saying 'the virus was already there' - "Incoming President Joe Biden's pick for Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services came under fire in her home state of Pennsylvania for routinely sending COVID-positive patients back to nursing homes, where they spread the illness... for State Senator Doug Mastriano, this was not a good explanation for why COVID patients were returned to nursing homes to infect more people, and he called for Levine's resignation on May 11.In May, Levine pulled her own mother out of a nursing home rather than leave her to be subjected to her own policies... This was not an option afforded to the 10,022 nursing home residents in the state who died from the virus... Mastriano believed that it was Levine's order that led to more COVID deaths in Pennsylvania nursing homes. "Let me state this clearly," he said, "this order by Secretary Levine is responsible for the deaths of approximately 2,500 of our citizens, and displays the gross incompetence of someone unfit for office. The bottom line is Secretary Levine has failed to protect our most vulnerable population."Biden, who appears to be more concerned with Levine's identity as transgender, said of the pick "Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic—no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability—and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond," Biden said. Many of the news outlets reporting on Biden's pick were far more concerned about Levine's status as a gender-nonconforming male who identifies as transgender and uses female pronouns than Levine's ghastly record in Pennsylvania."
It's all Trump's fault states sent covid patients into nursing homes!

Biden planning on legalizing 11 million illegal immigrants - "the bill is said to make no mention whatsoever of increased security related to immigration, which is another break from the norm of previous years and decades, in more than one country actually."

WATCH: Caravan of illegal immigrants say Biden will help them - "Over 7,000 migrants from Honduras moved to Guatemala over the weekend and are said to be making their way, with difficulty, to the US seeking the very amnesty President-elect Joe Biden campaigned on in 2020... The caravan is reported to have gotten violent with the country's security forces while traveling through Guatemala"
People respond to incentives

Biden Staffer Would Boot Traditional Christians Off SCOTUS - "A Joe Biden staffer suggested that orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims who adopt traditional values are “intolerant,” that their beliefs should be “taboo,” and that they should be disqualified from serving on the Supreme Court. Politico contributing editor Adam Wren noted that President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett “was a trustee at a South Bend private school that described ‘homosexual acts’ as ‘at odds with Scripture’ & said marriage was between ‘one man and one woman’ years after Obergefell v. Hodges.”Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, responded, “Wait, why is this news? Isn’t this the standard position for any orthodox Catholic?” At this point, the Biden staffer chimed in. Nikitha Rai, deputy data director for Pennsylvania at Biden’s campaign, responded to Hamid, saying, “Unfortunately, yes.”Hamid responded, “to be fair, it’s the standard position for any orthodox Muslim or Jew as well…”... Rai has locked her account since tweeting those statements, but Jeremy McLellan, a Catholic comedian, captured screenshots. “Here’s a [Joe Biden] staffer saying that orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Judaism should be made ‘taboo’ and driven from the public sphere,” McLellan noted. “Beneath all the talk of ‘interfaith’ and ‘pluralism,’ this is what they really believe.”... Rai suggested that presidents and the U.S. Senate should apply a religious test for Supreme Court nominations and confirmations. The Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for service in government. Article VI Clause 3 reads in part, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”"

The MSM Is No Longer Covering up Biden's Cognitive Decline - "Biden forgetting part of a stump speech is bad enough, but this is an incident that took place last year, but has only come out now. Biden’s handlers kept it under wraps until now. How many other examples of Biden’s cognitive decline from the 2020 campaign have been covered up? If it was leaked to the media earlier, they didn’t report on it then. The obvious question is “why not?”Obviously, Politico got the memo. The election is over. Trump is out of office. Biden’s cognitive decline is no longer taboo. It can be discussed ad nauseam by the media now because getting Biden into office wasn’t the primary objective of getting him elected.Biden’s sole purpose was to play the role of an “electable” candidate who could appeal to independents and anti-Trump Republicans under the ruse of being a centrist just to get Trump out of office. For all intents and purposes, Biden’s job is complete, and a San Francisco liberal is now waiting in the wings to take his place at the appropriate time.While conservative media outlets didn’t shy away from reporting on Biden’s deteriorating mental faculties, the mainstream media tried to pretend they didn’t exist."

FLASHBACK: Biden’s press secretary mocks Biden for his bizarre flubs - "President Joe Biden's press secretary mocked Biden for his "senior moments" on the presidential campaign trail back in 2019."

Biden Executive Order Killing Keystone XL Pipeline Will Backfire - "President Joe Biden wasted no time after Wednesday’s inaugural ceremonies before getting to work. He signed 17 executive orders and memorandums—by far the most in history on a president’s first day—one of which halted construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried crude oil from Canada through the US...
1. Blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline May Actually Increase CO2 Emissions...
Keystone had already promised to use green technology and eliminate all CO2 emissions from its operations by 2030. And it’s not as if blocking this pipeline will actually mean the oil doesn’t get transported. It will just have to be transported by more costly, less efficient measures like rail shipping.“The Obama State Department found five separate times that the pipeline would have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since crude would still be extracted... Shipping bitumen by rail or tanker would result in 28% to 42% higher CO2 emissions and more leaks.”...
2. Thousands of Jobs Will Be Lost...
The pipeline project would have created 11,000 jobs and $1.6 billion in wages... even left-wing elected officials like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau oppose Biden’s decision...
3. Regulatory Uncertainty Will Discourage Future Business Investment"
People were cheering this even though his cancellation of the pipeline killed jobs

Wilfred Reilly on Twitter - "Powerful explosions thunder in Milam County, Texas, after a train carrying oil products derailed.  It is also reported that fuel trucks also catched."
"Is there any alternative to shipping flammable pure petroleum cross-country in metal train cars?"

Psaki mocks reporter asking about Keystone pipeline job losses - "White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday mocked a reporter who asked when workers on the canceled Keystone XL pipeline would get “green jobs” promised by President Biden.It’s expected that up to 11,000 jobs will be lost following Biden’s day-one decision to immediately shut down construction of the pipeline that was supposed to carry oil from Canada to Texas — leaving South Dakotans reeling and 1,000 people immediately out of work...

'Some premiers want to go to war' over Biden cancelling pipeline deal - "Various premiers met on Thursday and communicated their dismay at the attitude Trudeau is taking over the summary cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline on Wednesday.According to anonymous sources, the discussion got "pretty heated", with many of the premiers being furious over the scuttled deal which threatens to have a very chilling effect on Canada's oil industry... Jason Kenney and Scott Moe, the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan respectively, also publicly slammed both Biden and Trudeau on Twitter"
Some claimed the jobs lost would only be Canadian jobs, so that didn't matter; presumably they had never slammed Trump for pissing allies off

Construction employment declined in 39 states between August 2019 and 2020 - "Thirty-nine states lost construction jobs between August 2019 and August 2020 while 31 states and the District of Columbia added construction jobs between July and August according to a new analysis of Labor Department data released today by the Associated General Contractors of America. The new annual figures detail how the coronavirus pandemic has undermined demand for construction projects after a strong start to the year"
Some crank celebrating the cancellation of the pipeline claimed that the jobs weren't real because they were temporary, that the number of jobs was only an estimate, and that it was a near guarantee that those losing jobs would find a new job within a week. I'm sure people employed on projects would be surprised to know that they didn't have real jobs. I doubt he criticised the Green New Deal's claims about job creation. And clearly, the construction industry didn't get the memo that there's an unlimited demand for their services

Kelly McParland: Exactly who is Joe Biden and what's he going to do? - "Joe Biden has spent so long not being Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, Americans can be forgiven for wondering just who it is Supreme Court Justice John Roberts swore in... The man has policies, lots of policies, but you’d be hard put to pick one that could be defined as Bidenesque, or that hasn’t been floated by others before him. Of 45 previous presidents only Lyndon B. Johnson could challenge his depth of experience as a legislator, yet voters resisted his two earlier bids for the job, finding him … to put it kindly … uninspiring. Johnson quit after five years as president, exhausted by the Vietnam conflict; Biden, at 78 and already looking creaky, may have only a single term to make his mark... Biden likes to boast that, as a senator, he introduced the first bill on climate change “way way back in ’87.” But what’s he got to show for it?... If Trump had a claim to success it was the strength of the economy before the coronavirus arrived. He achieved it by slashing regulations and taxes, pouring money into the economy at the cost of a burgeoning debt. Biden says he’ll undo the cuts and raise corporate rates, similarly pouring the money into the economy while the debt, in all likelihood, continues to rise. Whether his approach proves as effective as Trump’s remains to be seen, but it will again appease the left wing of his party, which has to be kept at bay if he hopes to please the moderate wing that is his natural home... After five decades in Washington he’s not about to change his spots. Given his age and the array of crises he faces, it’s unlikely he’d get the chance anyway."

Joe Biden and the crisis of the New World - "America is saved. The republic has been rescued. The healing of the nation can begin now that authoritarian populism has been defeated and ‘the adults’ are back in charge. That’s the narrative swirling around the inauguration of Joe Biden today. It couldn’t be more wrong. The Biden-supporting woke elites pose a graver threat to the American republic, to its visionary founding ideals, than Donald Trump did. Behind the facade of today’s restoration of normalcy, the New World trembles.The hyperbole has been cranked up to 10 ahead of today’s inauguration. America is talked about as if it were a patient recovering from a bout of madness. Trump was the disease, Biden is the cure... This metaphor of the adults re-entering the room is a revealing one. The vote for Trump in 2016, like the vote for Brexit in the UK in the same year, is clearly viewed by the managerial elites as a temper tantrum, an explosion of rage among overgrown children. The ‘low-information’ electorate chose a ‘low-status’ president, and the consequence was mayhem. So now ‘the adults’ – the expert class, the well-educated coastal elites, those people who declare their pronouns and use all the correct racial terminology – must reassert their rightful authority. This vision of children being reprimanded by Biden, Harris and the rest speaks to an incredibly disdainful view of democracy when the result doesn’t go ‘our way’... yet for all of Joe Biden’s experience, for all his celebrated diplomacy, for all his distinctly post-Trump presidential style, he – and more importantly the elites who secured and support his presidency – threatens to unravel the values and virtues of the American republic far more than Trump did.There’s an elephant in the room in all discussions of the US right now: last year’s rioting. Anyone who raises it is accused of whataboutery, of trying to deflect attention from the despicable, anti-democratic storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on 6 January. But it is important, crucial, in fact, to reflect on the disturbing events of 2020. Not simply to reiterate how violent they were or to point out that they caused more destruction and loss of life than the mob at the Capitol did, but also to draw out what they represented; what ideas they gave violent expression to; what they revealed to us about the liberal elites who, as of today, are in charge of America.That rioting, those weeks and weeks of violent destruction, represented a fusion of the politics of the elites with the resentments of certain sections of society... the rioting and the cultural elite’s apologism for it are important: because they confirmed that there has been a corrosion of belief in the American project across various sections of American society, including at the very top of it... what we have witnessed in our time is not simply expressions of frustration with the slow or partial realisation of American values, but a wholesale questioning of the entire point of America; an intellectual crusade, no less, to overturn our understanding of when America was founded and what it was founded to do. Consider the project launched by the New York Times, the bible of the liberal elites, to reimagine the founding date of America as 1619 rather than 1776. That is, this country was born when slaves arrived, not when revolutionaries drew up the Declaration of Independence. It was founded in sin, not virtue... it helped to fuel last year’s rioting: witness how protesters daubed ‘1619’ on the toppled statues of America’s founders and heroes. The reimagining of America as a continuation of the Old World rather than the first cry of the New World has been gathering pace in academia, the media and the cultural sphere. It is now common to depict America as a nation indelibly stained by the experiences of slavery and racism. It was founded to secure the slave-owning rights of the colonists, we’re told. Its later Civil War was not really an effort to end slavery but rather to discover new ways to repress and exploit African-Americans. Even the Thirteenth Amendment that ended slavery in the US is now seen as little more than an underhand effort to enslave black people in new ways via the prison system. This revisionism comes courtesy of a film distributed by that citadel of the woke elites, Netflix... Their myopic identitarianism, their obsession with ‘white privilege’, their introduction of critical race theory into workplaces and places of education – all of this unravels the promise of equality contained in the founding of America, threatening to replace the New World’s cry of ‘all men are created equal’ with the woke elite’s insistence on organising people according to their racial identity and their placing in the charts of privileged / oppressed.The founding rights of the American republic have taken a beating too. They have always disapproved of the Second Amendment, of course. Now they have sullied the Thirteenth Amendment. Next they will come for the First, the world’s clearest guarantor of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.The claim that dangerous disinformation exploded during the Trump era will be used to roll back America’s founding principle of free expression. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has already won plaudits for her insistence that the media must be restrained. Lawmakers must ‘figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation’, she said. That, of course, would be a blatant violation of the First Amendment’s provision that congress shall make no law ‘abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’.Meanwhile, comic Sarah Silverman says the First Amendment will need to be ‘amended’ post-Trump in order to ensure that dangerous ideas are not given free expression. Imagine if Trump had talked about ‘amending’ the First Amendment. There would have been uproar. But among those who share the new elite consensus opinion that says America’s very foundation is questionable and its constitutional guarantee of liberty is dangerous, it is apparently fine to fantasise about tearing up the Bill of Rights... Washington torn down, 1776 erased, the First Amendment problematised, the Civil War misrepresented, the New World ideal of equality trashed by new forms of rigid racial thinking… and still the woke elites have the nerve to claim that it is Trumpists who threaten to bring down America. The truth is that it is the supposedly ‘liberal’ establishment that now openly preaches loss of faith in the American project and whose political excesses risk undermining the breakthroughs in liberty and equality that America gave to the world. From their neo-racialism to their cancel culture, their depressive historical revisionism to their growing preference for technocracy over democracy, it is the anti-Trump elites whose ideologies chip away at the foundation stones of the American republic... The birth of America was a unique event in human history. This was the first nation founded in the values of freedom and equality. It was referred to as the New World because it was the New World. Hannah Arendt wrote that ‘the authority of the [American] republic will be safe as long as the act itself, the beginning as such, is remembered as the promise it holds out’. But that act, that beginning, is no longer remembered for its promise, but rather is misremembered as a cynical exercise in the preservation of Old World power.And so the ‘authority of the republic’ is no longer secure. Not because of the rupture of the Trump years, but because of the moral and political exhaustion of the elites who are replacing Trump"
We are till told that liberals don't hate their countries

Joe Biden Supports 2 Regulations That Would Destroy Entire Industries—and My Job - "Consider Biden’s stated support for California’s AB 5, a crushing regulation that has killed too many jobs to count in the Golden State. The former vice president has endorsed similar regulation on the federal level. The California bill was supposedly introduced to help the state’s roughly one million independent contractors by severely limiting the amount of work freelancers can do in an attempt to compel employers to add them onto payroll as full-time employees. The rule was supposed to stop “exploitation.” In reality, it stripped flexibility from thousands of Californians who didn’t want to be full-time employees while prompting companies to let contractors go, not hire them on. From artists to musicians to freelance journalists to Uber drivers, thousands of California workers saw their livelihoods snuffed out by this bill. Even the original sponsor of the law, state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, admitted she was “wrong” in response to angry freelancers who lost work... A full-time freelance journalism career under this regulatory regime would, in most cases, be impossible."

WATCH: Press sec shrugs off question about Biden breaking mask rules: 'We have bigger things to worry about' - "After months of Joe Biden touting his plans for a mask mandate as a near cure-all for COVID, it was noticeable to see him unmasked on Weds. Jan. 20 at the Lincoln Memorial. Especially since it was mere hours after signing an executive order making it mandatory to wear masks on federal property. Newly minted Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the administration has "bigger things to worry about."... His unmasked face brings to mind a number of other high profile politicians over the past nearly year of the COVID pandemic who have eschewed their own restrictions when they feel it is acceptable to do so. These include Governors Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo, as well as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as well as other mayors and officials."
Liberal hypocrisy is nothing to worry about!

Vivian Bercovici: Will Biden revert to Obama's Middle East playbook? - "In the Middle East there is tremendous regional support for what is perhaps the key foreign policy legacy of president Donald Trump: the negotiation of the Abraham Accords. This fourth-year accomplishment is in its infancy but showing great promise. It has heralded a seismic shift in the regional geopolitics that will foster greater economic and security cohesion, particularly when dealing with a hegemonic Iran. The negotiation of the accords brought a wave of normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries: the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. It also put the lie to a canard promoted for so long by so many in the foreign policy community — and the Obama administration — that there would never be Mideast peace until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, with finality. Furthermore, Obama officials believed firmly that bilateral agreements between Israel and Arab nations were simply not possible in the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. And, as more than a few Biden cabinet picks were key players in the Obama presidency, the Mideast is paying extremely careful attention to what may transpire with Blinken at the helm. The key question: will he be motivated to expunge key Trump achievements and revert, holus bolus, to Obama’s Middle East playbook?Obama’s approach was based on the view that America had historically been excessively heavy-handed in its exercise of power in the region. The “Obama Doctrine,” as some of his acolytes have labelled his views, held that U.S. foreign policy had offended the dignity of many in the Muslim world, in particular, the brief Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and the decades-old extremist theocracy in Iran. He believed that if shown deference by the United States, Iran and others would moderate their policies and enthusiastically rejoin the “family of nations.” It was this profound belief that led Obama officials to agree to terms in the Iran nuclear deal which did pretty much nothing to prevent Iran from achieving a near-term nuclear weapons breakout capability. And it did less than nothing to address the development of Iran’s offensive arsenal, able to launch and deliver nuclear warheads. The agreement was a capitulation and shameless pander to Iran by an administration determined to have such a “deal” bequeathed as its paramount legacy. And it enraged Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which regard Iran as the most significant military and terrorist threat in the region. So, when president Trump announced that the U.S. was withdrawing from the nuclear deal as of May 8, 2018, there was huge relief in the Middle East. To this day the region remains steadfast in opposing any return to the previous Obama-led framework... The overriding concern of the Saudis and so many Gulf states was aligned with Israel: they feared a powerful Iran, the foremost sponsor and advocate of terrorism in the region. Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, managed their Mideast relationships with astonishing arrogance, treating local leaders as they would swat a fly. And they were supremely confident in their take on things. At a 2016 conference, Kerry famously dismissed any notion of peace between Israel and its neighbours, without a “final resolution” of the Palestinian conflict, as a pipe-dream.Today, that viral clip makes him look like the kid at the back of the class with a funny hat on his head, which is pretty much how he is regarded in the Middle East and likely why he’s been shunted off to the climate file."
Pissing off allies was only bad when Trump did it

Henry Kissinger’s wise warning to Joe Biden on the Iran nuke deal - "Add one more voice of reason to the long list urging President-elect Joe Biden to rethink his plan to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal: Henry Kissinger warns that it could kick off a disastrous nuclear arms race in the Middle East... Biden has said he means to return to it as long as Iran agrees to comply with the restrictions on its actions. But Kissinger notes that the deal’s time limits on key restrictions and “so many escape clauses” render it effectively useless in stopping Iran’s nuclear development. Plus, the accord leaves Iran’s enrichment capabilities intact while banning US economic sanctions — when the ones Trump imposed are hitting the regime hard."

Israeli Minister Warns Potential Biden Policy Change on Iran Could Lead to War - "Hanegbi praised Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, saying it “works and we see results.”"

Iran offers Arabs 'mafia deal' of security or punishment after Trump - "Iran has sought to reach out to its Arab neighbors, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warning them that US President Donald Trump will be leaving in 70 days, but Iran’s regime will remain “forever.” He urged them to realize that “betting on outsiders to provide security is never a good gamble.” In Arabic and English, he called for dialogue and to work together. The message was clearly aimed at Gulf states and others that are partnered with the US. Iran was offering them an opening, a message: Shift and join us, or suffer in the future – the US will not protect you. This is a kind of carrot-and- stick approach, a mafia don offering protection... Zarif’s “good cop” approach clearly leaves the “bad cop” actions in the background. Last year, Iran used drones and cruise missiles to attack Saudi Arabia. It has mined ships in the Gulf of Oman, sent proxies to attack US troops in Iraq, fired rockets at the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil, attacked Kurdish dissidents in Koya, threatened tribes allied with the US in Deir al-Zor and pushed Hezbollah to threaten Israel from the Golan Heights... The quiet message behind this entreaty – to be nice to Tehran as Trump leaves – seems to be that those who don’t accept and bend their knees in submission will face the wrath."

WATCH: White House press throws softball questions at Biden's press secretary - ""On a lighter note, will [President Biden] keep Donald Trump's Air Force One color scheme change?" asked a journalist, for example.Jen Psaki, the new White House Press Secretary as of yesterday, replied:"This is such a good question."... It's also definitely worth noting that the previous Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was treated markedly differently than Psaki is being treated.McEnany even wound up being banned on Twitter once, along with journalists who dared to tweet anything negative about the Biden family. In fact, hosts of shows on the MSM actually went on air and bragged about how they wouldn't have her on their shows"

BREAKING: Antifa trashes Democratic Party of Oregon headquarters to mark Biden's inauguration - "Antifa in Portland, Ore., continued to protest on Wednesday, taking aim at the Democratic Party of Oregon headquarters. Windows and doors were smashed, the building vandalized with graffiti that reads "F*ck Biden." The Oregonian reported that about 200 Antifa activists gathered in Southeast Portland and marched through the streets as part of a J20 protest... Antifa activists grabbed an officer's bike and that the police retreated while Antifa threw things at them."

Portland Police Charge 8 After Demonstrators Vandalize Democratic Party Offices - "More than 100 anti-fascist demonstrators in Portland attacked police and vandalized the city's Democratic Party of Oregon building Wednesday afternoon, breaking several windows in the process, according to police.Police arrested eight people between the ages of 18 and 38, some of whom were armed with knives and long poles, the department said... Police say the demonstrators used similar language in flyers announcing the Jan. 20 event as other rallies held months prior that "were punctuated by violence and destruction."... one of the banners held by the demonstrators said, "We don't want Biden. We want revenge for police murders, imperialist wars, and fascist massacres." Some members of the group then moved dumpsters into the street and lit them on fire before the crowd started to disperse."
When even NPR describes them as "anti-fascist"
They didn't get the memo that now that Biden is in power, the authorities won't close two eyes anymore

Biden Administration Tear-Gassed 'Peaceful Protesters' Just Hours After Inauguration - "A Democratic Party headquarters was damaged, an American flag burned, and marchers filled the streets in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday, following Joe Biden’s inauguration. Antifa was reportedly behind the activities, known during the summer as “peaceful protests.”... There was a huge amount of outrage last summer after President Trump was accused of having “peaceful protesters” tear-gassed without provocation to clear the area so he could “get his photo op” at the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been burned in the riots the night before. The United States Park Police (USPP) denied this allegation and the claim that the D.C. protesters were peaceful was also completely false. Over the course of four days, protesters, armed with baseball bats, metal poles, and glass bottles for projectiles, vandalized property and injured 51 USPP officers. So, where is the outrage over the Biden administration using actual tear gas (according to the New York Times) to break up “peaceful protesters”? They are peaceful, are they not? I mean, that’s what we were told about this behavior all summer. CNN and MSNBC, for example, specifically avoided calling the BLM riots “riots.”MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi even called the riots “mostly peaceful” as he stood amongst rampant violence in front of a burning building."
The media doesn't need to pretend anymore
I saw lots of liberals online telling themselves (and each other) that the rioters were really the Proud Boys

Biden removes Trump’s Diet Coke button from the White House - "A button that Donald Trump used in the Oval Office to request a fresh Diet Coke appears to have been removed by the new president... Mr Trump would reportedly hit the button when in need of refreshment and a staff member would bring in a soda on a silver platter.Former White House aide Chris Sims wrote about the button in his 2019 book Team of Vipers.He said that the twice-impeached president would prank visitors by hitting the button and suggesting it was related to the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal... Mr Biden may have removed the button but is reportedly a soda fan as well and prefers Coke Zero"

BREAKING: New Biden hire allowed Washington state to be defrauded out of millions by Nigerian scammers - "Suzie LeVine, Commissioner of Washington State's Employment Security Department (ESD), will be leaving her post at the end of January to take a position in the Biden Administration.LeVine was directly responsible for the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from Washington state unemployment funds after the agency was defrauded by Nigerian scammers... LeVine and ESD had deliberately bypassed the waiting period for benefits in order to send out unemployment checks faster. That action was taken by ESD director LeVine at the behest of Democrat Governor Jay Inslee. LeVine was a political appointee of Inslee’s who had been a donor to his campaign."

Biden rebukes White House reporter for COVID-19 question - "President Biden displayed his notoriously thin skin while rolling out his COVID-19 plan Thursday, blowing his stack when a reporter questioned whether his target of inoculating 100 million people in 100 days was set too low.“When I announced it, you all said it’s not possible,” he snapped.“Come on, gimme a break, man! It’s a good start.” When Biden took office on Wednesday, a past-week average of 912,497 daily doses were being delivered under outgoing President Donald Trump... This is not the first time Biden has lost his cool with a questioner at a public event.At a campaign event in Wilmington, Del., in June 2020, Biden, 78, lashed out when one reporter asked about people, including Trump, who questioned whether he suffered mental deficits — the questioner noting his own mental deterioration at age 65 and asking if Biden had been tested for cognitive decline.“You’re a lying dog face,” Biden said, apparently irritated that the reporter kept asking questions as he tried to leave the event, before adding that he was “constantly tested.”That came after Biden infamously called a college student a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” at a campaign event in New Hampshire in February 2020.Mercer University student Madison Moore, 21, said it was “humiliating to be called a liar on national TV by the former vice president.”"

Amazon offers Joe Biden COVID-19 vaccine assistance - "Amazon is offering to help President Biden hasten distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, inviting questions about whether the offer was ever made to the Trump administration.Amazon executive Dave Clark pitched the idea to Biden as soon as he took office in a Wednesday letter that also congratulated him on his inauguration.“We are prepared to leverage our operations, IT, & communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts. Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately”... Clark, the Amazon executive who pitched Biden on the idea, was responsible for a December letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that sought help in gaining access to the vaccine for the company’s workers." I guess it was more important to get Trump out than to reduce covid deaths