"What must William, a man who ferociously hides his holidays, think when he reads how Andrew trotted the globe, splurging thousands of taxpayers’ pounds on helicopters, private jets, golf courses..."

"... rejecting cheaper alternatives, while telling everyone he was a great ambassador for us all? And then being so indiscreet and arrogant in front of senior diplomats that onlookers couldn’t believe he would 'speak so openly' about matters of great sensitivity? One consul, on being asked to provide 'blondes,' said: 'I’m a diplomat, not a pimp.'... [N]o one in the Palace would want to tell Her Majesty that in Bangkok her second son had been sent 40 prostitutes. But she must have known about the cash, because when things got really bad, she was the one who bailed them out.... She showered them with gifts, money, land, yet it was never enough. What was she thinking? Nothing, clearly — Andrew’s faults were simply beyond her imagination...."

From "Andrew and Sarah Ferguson? It’s a case for revolution/He hasn’t only disgraced himself — he is trashing Queen Elizabeth’s reputation too" (London Times).

"It’s a tough time to have a civic-minded election about municipal services. If anything takes us down, it’s going to be this 'to hell with them all' approach to government."

Said José Vela III, of the Austin City Council, which voted for a big property tax increase but must abide by Texas law that requires a referendum.

Quoted in "Austin Asked Voters to Raise Taxes for the Homeless. It’s Not Going Well. A proposed tax hike before the city on Tuesday has become a referendum on governance in the fast-changing Texas capital" (NYT).

"As a 'very, very effeminate boy' growing up in Baltimore, Ben Appel was teased mercilessly. At school, where he was regularly bullied, the other kids called him 'Bengay.'..."

"But when Appel later enrolled at Columbia University, eager to learn about the theories behind his activism, the rhetoric he encountered felt more like dogma than inquiry. 'According to queer theory, if you're a man who behaves in "unmasculine" ways or wears eyeliner you must be a woman inside, which I thought was regressive.... Saying that those superficial attributes are what make women women, and that any variation on the rough he-man stereotype means you're not a man, reinforces these rigid sex roles, and I thought we were supposed to be against those.' In his book 'Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic' [commission earned] which comes out next week, Appel argues that gender ideology is 'illiberal, regressive and anti-gay'...."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "The Growing Divide in the Rainbow Coalition/More gay people are speaking out against the gender ideology of trans and queer activists" (Wall Street Journal).

As the headline indicates, there's much more at the link than Appel's story. To quote just a bit:

The Property Brothers take on the White House.

"According to [Virginia] Giuffre, 'Rena,' an 'unusual-looking woman' of 'Asian descent' was to help Giuffre massage Epstein."

"'Jeffrey expected me to walk her through her duties,' Giuffre wrote.... Then Rena 'introduced me to my first taste of S&M,' Giuffre wrote. The book suggested that those interactions took place repeatedly over a period of months, with Rena becoming 'an official.' Rena 'considered herself a dominatrix … She liked bondage, whipping, hitting and eventually cutting her sex partner with little sharp knives,' Giuffre explained before detailing how Rena would end their sessions together by hitting her across the face with the back of her hand. At home in New Jersey, Oh stared at the screen with a sense of creeping dread. She recognised the settings Giuffre had described, she recognised some of the people too, but that was where the familiarity ended. 'The whole thing was made up,' she claims...."

From "I survived Epstein’s harem. Here’s what Virginia Giuffre got wrong/Rina Oh is suing her fellow victim’s estate, accusing her of fabricating stories about their experience in Jeffrey Epstein’s dark world" (London Times)(much more at the link).

Have you found what you're looking for?

Ambient U2 at sunrise as the fog clears on the frosty first morning of Standard Time:

ADDED: I don't know how casual or ritualistic these ablutions were, but let this photo stand for the proposition that the weather was frosty:

"One day last year, when she was hungry, a woman came up to her and offered what sounded like a dream proposition..."

"... would she like to work in a studio, performing on camera and earning good money, in safety, without anyone touching her? She went to the studio: a block of flats where an administrator registered her. She soon realised everything she had been told was a lie.... For the clients who watched her she was a fantasy: a young Colombian woman in her bedroom they paid handsomely to act out their desires. In reality she was a prisoner. For three months Victoria was held captive with five other women on the eighth floor of a block of flats, forced into violent sexual exploitation, on camera, for at least ten hours a day. Her earnings were stolen by the men who controlled her.... Every time she asked for the money she’d been promised, they told her she had debts that she had to work off first: food she’d eaten, paper towels they’d given her. If she cried and refused to perform, they fined her.... "

From "Inside the world sex-cam capital" (London Times)(describing conditions in Cúcuta, Colombia).

"Remember, Republicans, regardless of the Schumer Shutdown, the Democrats will terminate the Filibuster the first chance they get."

"They will Pack the Supreme Court, pick up two States, and add at least 8 Electoral Votes. Their two objectors are gone!!! Don’t be WEAK AND STUPID. FIGHT,FIGHT, FIGHT! WIN, WIN, WIN! We will immediately END the Extortionist Shutdown, get ALL of our agenda passed, and make life so good for Americans that these DERANGED DEMOCRAT politicians will never again have the chance to DESTROY AMERICA! Republicans, you will rue the day that you didn’t TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!!! BE TOUGH, BE SMART, AND WIN!!! This is much bigger than the Shutdown, this is the survival of our Country!"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

1. What does "pick up two States" mean? I think it is a prediction that when Democrats next acquire a simple majority in both houses, they will vote for statehood for Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.

2. What does "Their two objectors are gone!!!" mean? The "two objectors" must be Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski —[but see #8] — but they are not "gone"... if "gone" means no longer in the Senate. But I think it means they count as nothing now, because we have the votes without them. Or it's a Trumpian way to say: Let them go. They're already gone. 

You'll just have to eat their lunch all by yourself....

3. I think Trump is saying all hell will break out anyway, so best to be the first to unleash the hell, and maybe, just maybe, the GOP hell will make life so good for Americans that these DERANGED DEMOCRAT politicians will never again win a majority. Meanwhile, half of America will think the deranged Republicans are destroying America. In the Trumpian vision of life — it's about winning — the question is just which half of America gets to turn America into what the other half regards as Destroyed America. 

4. Or maybe Trump's outburst is just part of the art of the deal — the part where he scares you so badly you accepts the sensible offer you were resisting. Here, the Democrats need only vote to end the shutdown.

5. Another meaning of "gone" — which I don't think is in play here — is the beatnik's "gone." Sample usage, from Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums": "Among the people standing in the audience was Rosie Buchanan, a girl with a short haircut, red-haired, bony, handsome, a real gone chick and friend of everybody of any consequence on the Beach...." Lisa Murkowski is bony and handsome. Forget Rosie Buchanan, Lisa Murkowski is a real gone chick:

6. Since I've said something about feminine beauty, let me provide balance with something about masculine beauty. I watched that Eagles clip, from 1974, and was amazed to see that they'd all styled themselves in the manner of Napoleon Dynamite.

7. But who was Rosie Buchanan? They say it was Natalie Jackson.

8. "Poor Rosie—she had been absolutely certain that the world was real and fear was real and now what was real? 'At least,' I thought, 'she's in Heaven now, and she knows.'"

9. As commenters to this post are pointing out, "Their two objectors" makes much more sense as a reference to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who really are gone from the Senate. They were theirs — the Democrats' — and they actually did object to the Democratic Senators' effort to vote away the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in 2022.