Remember Prince William’s trip to New York last fall? It was basically Huevo’s attempt at a “revenge tour,” only it could have been an email. He ordered his wife to stay home so he could get all of the attention. He did a photo-op at a New York fire station. He lied about going for a run in Central Park. He tried to get a photo-op with Mayor Eric Adams, who canceled at the last minute. He got a very quick photo-op with the UN Secretary General, part of a cattle call of statesman wannabes who want a photo to show that they “took meetings at the UN.” Even more bizarre, William’s staff arranged a “meeting” with Ecuador’s President Lasso at the British Consul General’s apartment (located in a building across from the UN) and then announced that William “held an audience with President of Ecuador, Lasso Mendoza at the UN General Assembly.” President Biden was in town, speaking at the General Assembly. William wasn’t there. He was in some conference room at the Plaza, looking awkward and hateful.

Why this walk down memory lane? Well, it might happen again. The whole reason for William’s pathetic “I wanna be a global statesman like HARRY” visit to NYC last year was that he staged this sad little “Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit.” Which, again, could have been an email instead of a costly and wasteful PR-related flight to New York. Well, William hasn’t confirmed his appearance at this year’s summit, but I imagine he will move heaven and earth to try this “statesman” thing yet again.

Prince William’s Earthshot Prize is returning stateside! On July 30, the Earthshot Prize and Bloomberg Philanthropies announced that they will co-host the third annual Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit on Sept. 24 in New York City. The Prince of Wales, 42, launched the contest in 2020 to promote impactful approaches to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, with plans to award $1 million Earthshot Prizes in five flagship categories annually until 2030.

It remains uncertain whether Prince William will attend the event this year as he did in 2023. The late September date falls after his children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis return to school following the summer holidays. Additionally, no expectations have been set for Kate Middleton’s return to public work as she continues cancer treatment.

Continuing tradition, the cohort of 15 finalists for the next Earthshot Prize will be revealed at the meeting. It was previously confirmed that the awards ceremony for the fourth cycle of Prince William’s prestigious environmental prize will be held in Cape Town, South Africa, in November, setting the stage for the news to be a highlight of the summit.

[From People]

The “no expectations have been set for Kate Middleton’s return to public work” thing reminded me that it was actually a big deal in the British media last year that Kate skipped the New York trip AND the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Singapore. Now that we’ve seen how everything has panned out this year, I feel certain that A) Kate was already having health issues last year and they were withholding that information and B) Kensington Palace already had a plan in place and that’s why they were already telegraphing that William would be doing a lot of stuff solo from now on. All of which to say, of course William will come to New York again in September. I cannot wait to see what kind of silly stunts he tries to pull this year.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.

Lord Robert Fellowes passed away on Monday. Fellowes was Queen Elizabeth II’s private secretary – basically her chief of staff – during a tumultuous time in the 1990s. He remained close to QEII for the last half of her life. He passed away at the age of 82. He leaves behind his widow, Lady Jane Spencer. Jane and Princess Diana were sisters, making her Aunt Jane to Prince Harry and Prince William. Fellowes was also brother-in-law to the Earl Spencer, who paid tribute to the man by saying: “My absolutely exceptional brother-in-law Robert is no longer with us. A total gentleman, in all the best meanings of that word, he was a man of humour, wisdom and utter integrity. I’m deeply proud to have been his brother-in-law.”

So now they’re turning Robert Fellowes’ passing into yet another opportunity to barrage Prince Harry with demands. This is yet another “thing” for which Harry “must return.”

Prince Harry faces renewed pressure to come home and face his family following the death Monday of his and Prince William’s uncle, Lord Robert Fellowes, at the age of 82. Harry’s representatives were not immediately able to say whether he would attend the funeral of his uncle, a date for which has not been announced. Fellowes was not only married to Princess Diana’s elder sister, Jane Fellowes (née Spencer), but was also the late Queen Elizabeth’s private secretary for nine of the most tumultuous years of her reign, from 1990 to 1999.

He was widely credited with persuading the queen to return to London after Diana’s death in 1997 and crafted the bulk of the extraordinary speech Elizabeth gave, live, to the nation in the wake of Diana’s death in which she paid tribute to Diana as an “exceptional and gifted human being” and memorably described herself as “a grandmother.”

Diana was not fond of Fellowes, whom she regarded as one of the faceless “men in grey” and was said to have even suspected him of being involved in tapping her phone calls.

Fellowes, who was said to have coined the phrase “We don’t have protocol here, just bloody good manners,” remained firmly aligned with the palace, but his wife, Jane, 67, became a close and supportive presence in the life of her late sister’s bereaved sons, particularly Harry. Indeed, Jane gave a reading at Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018, highlighting her important place in their lives.

A former friend of Harry’s who has fallen out of touch with him since he left the U.K. told The Daily Beast: “The death will be a huge blow to the Spencer family. In normal times it would be unimaginable that Harry would not be there to support Jane. Of course he would want to be there. It will be a huge gathering of the Spencer clan. But these are not normal times and it may well be that everyone feels Harry’s attendance would just create too much drama. It will be very sad for him if he can’t make it.”

[From The Daily Beast]

My gut is telling me that Harry will send his best regards to his beloved aunt and he will absolutely not fly to the UK for the funeral. There’s just way too much drama around his security, and at a technical level, he’s currently in a holding pattern with RAVEC and the Metropolitan Police where he has to give four-weeks notice before coming to the UK. There would be exceptions for funerals, of course, but those exceptions would have to be granted by none other than King Charles. The same King Charles who wants nothing to do with the Spencer family, and absolutely does not want Harry flying back for a Spencer family funeral. Also: notice that no one is speculating about whether William will attend a Spencer funeral. Everyone knows that William’s three-month summer vacations are sacrosanct and he will never interrupt his holidays for anything.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Getty, Cover Images.

Wednesday morning, I read this Page Six story about the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) embroiled in a big controversy. The NABJ’s annual convention is being held in Chicago this week, and the organization extended an invitation to Donald Trump to sit for a Q&A session before an audience. The fact that NABJ’s leadership invited Trump was the controversy – the man is a bigot, a racist and a misogynist who has a long history of harmful words and actions towards Black and brown people. Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah stepped down as co-chair of the NABJ convention. It’s a real controversy within the NABJ community, whether their organization should give Trump any kind of platform. My take? I’m going to stay out of Black folks’ business and I’ll wait to see how it all plays out. I strongly suspect that NABJ’s leadership will be in flux shortly.

In any case, Trump accepted the invitation, which was his first mistake. His second mistake was believing he didn’t need to be prepped for this discussion. His third mistake was the 35 minutes he spent on the stage, denigrating Black women, lying about Vice President Kamala Harris and being a complete freak. He was supposed to be up there for an hour but his team pulled him out of there faster than the Secret Service moved on him when he got “shot.” Trump was absolutely catastrophic on that stage. Aaron Rupar created a supercut of Trump “self immolating.”

Putting Donald Trump on a stage with three Black women was… a choice. As I said, I’m staying out of the NABJ’s business, and I assume that all three women knew what they were going to be put through as they tried to do a Q&A session with Trump. The three women: Rachel Scott, Harris Faulkner and Kadia Goba. Scott is the one moderating and sitting the closest to Trump. After he disparaged the NABJ, ABC News and the journalists personally, he then turned his racist ire to Vice President Kamala Harris. That’s the big headline. Trump said, on stage, “Is she Indian or is she Black? She was Indian all the way, and all of a sudden she made a turn and became a Black person.” Kamala Harris is both Indian and Black. Her father was Jamaican, her mother was Indian. Kamala Harris has always proudly identified as both Indian and Black. She graduated from Howard, an HBCU. She is a member of a Black sorority, AKA. Here was the response from the Harris campaign:

“The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people.

“Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency – while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in. Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.

“Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign. It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10.”

[Via Twitter]

I understand the Harris campaign using this moment to press this giant p-ssy on the debate, but I also just kind of wish the campaign had let Trump’s words hang in the air for a moment. He could have gone in so many other directions, but no, he decided to question Kamala Harris’s Blackness and status as a biracial woman. Like… is that the plan? Is that the scheme? Are the Republicans going to spend the next three months claiming that Kamala Harris is not, in fact, a Black and Indian-American woman?

We now know Kamala’s brave story. When did the rest of you “turn” black? How old were you? Where were you when the blackness finally took over your body? Share your stories. This is a safe space. #WhenITurnedBlack pic.twitter.com/URBx3fqcbh

— Roy Wood Jr- Ex Jedi (@roywoodjr) July 31, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

I covered the main excerpt from People Magazine’s cover story yesterday. The cover story is all about Prince Harry’s relationship to his father, King Charles. Harry and Charles have apparently not spoken or communicated in months. Whenever Harry calls his father, he’s told Charles cannot speak to him. Harry’s letters go unanswered. Last week, Harry’s interview within ITV’s Tabloids on Trial aired and Harry’s comments became a sh-tstorm for the palace. Harry said it plainly: he will not bring his wife to the UK because of the danger. His legal actions around his security situation in Britain have shown that there is a high-level campaign to keep Harry away from the UK and to keep putting his family in a constant state of danger. Charles could very easily change the security situation and Charles chooses not to, so Charles’s idiotic “why won’t Harry let me see the grandkids” campaign is a mess of Charles’s making. So, what does Meghan think of all of Harry’s many legal dramas and family dramas? More from People:

Meghan Markle wishes that Prince Harry didn’t have to carry the weight of litigation as he fights for greater security protection for their family of four.

The Duchess of Sussex “supports Harry 100 percent, but she wishes he could let go of these lawsuits, be happy and live in the moment,” a former employee of their Archewell Foundation tells PEOPLE in this week’s exclusive cover story.

“She wants him to be free of all of this, but she also knows that because of everything he’s been through and his love for [her and their children], he can’t. She wants him to live in a world where he is not burdened by this,” says the former staffer.

Multiple well-placed insiders in the Duke of Sussex’s circle tell PEOPLE that Harry believes his father has the power to reinstate his security. Buckingham Palace will not comment on security provisions, but a palace source tells PEOPLE the notion that Harry’s security is in Charles’s hands is “wholly incorrect.” The issue has created an impenetrable wall between Harry and Charles. The conversation has now shifted from frustration to “complete silence” from the King, claims a friend of Harry’s.

The echoes of the 1997 death of Prince Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, in a high-speed car chase also weighs heavily, particularly now that he is a parent. “As a dad and husband, Harry is determined to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself,” the friend says.

However, if the matter of security is resolved, “it’s ‘swords down,’ ” says Harry’s friend, as nothing “would give [Harry] more happiness than being able to rekindle his bond with his father.”

[From People]

I tend to believe that Meghan wants to look forward and live in the moment as well. I also believe that those sh-theads over there have been trying to bait her into engaging with them or suing them, and she’s not going to ever take the bait because she’s protecting her own peace. On the tabloid lawsuits, I understand Harry’s crusade and I think he has an enormous amount of courage to fight those battles. On the legal actions about security… that’s what bugs me, and I wonder if it bugs Meghan too. Like, Harry needs to take the hint. Charles and William are perfectly happy to put him in danger. They are not going to ever give him security nor do they want Meghan and the kids over there. Nor does Meghan want to visit the UK and she absolutely does not want her kids over there. I wonder if Harry will ever just let that part go. I know it must be so tough for him, I’m not saying “ugh, why can’t he just let it go.” But his father and brother are horrendous people and he needs to make his peace with cutting them out of his life.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Backgrid.

The early years of Prince William and then-Kate Middleton’s courtship have been analyzed ad nauseum, but Robert Jobson tried to dust off some old stories and make them new. Jobson’s new book is Catherine, the Princess of Wales: The Biography, and the Mail has spent several days publishing excerpts from the book. There’s apparently a big section about Will and Kate’s big 2007 breakup, and just how nervous the Middletons were that Kate couldn’t land the plane and get the ring. In all of the many books about their courtship, I’m always struck by the sheer short-sightedness of the Middletons’ endeavors to get the ring. Yes, they put a lot of time, money and effort into catching a prince, but they had no idea what to do once they got him. A tale for another day perhaps. Some highlights from Jobson’s book:

The 2007 breakup: She’d waited several years for him to make up his mind, and quite suddenly he had. Prince William, then the world’s most eligible bachelor, had decided it was just too soon to be tied down to Catherine Middleton. He celebrated their break-up with an alcohol-fuelled night at the Mahiki nightclub in Mayfair with his close pals. ‘I’m free!’ he shouted as he slipped into a drunken version of the robot dance. He then told his friends that they should all ‘drink the menu’, which they more or less ended up doing. Naturally, Catherine got to hear about these juvenile antics. They seemed to mark a humiliating end to the romance that had begun when they were both students at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

The pursuit of Isabella: The gossip columnists had a field day. Some claimed William ‘had his head turned’ by another young woman — the beautiful socialite Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. They’d met years before on holiday in Greece. But despite being single at the time of William and Catherine’s break-up, Isabella was apparently unkeen on becoming a royal girlfriend, feeling it would limit her career prospects as an actress. This did not cool William’s ardour: he reportedly tried to woo Isabella, visiting her several times at her family home. Despite his evident crush, she apparently rebuffed his advances.

When Will & Kate met for the first time: What’s less well known is that Catherine and the Prince first met when she was at Marlborough, and it was then that they actually became friends. ‘There was plenty of socialising [between pupils at both schools] back then, and they were known to each other,’ said a senior source close to the Middletons. ‘I understand he invited her on a few things.’

Kate’s university switch: Initially, Catherine set her sights on Edinburgh University to do a History of Art degree, even confirming her place. But doubts crept in at the eleventh hour, and she decided to take a gap year first, which she largely spent abroad. Why then, on her return, did she subsequently apply to the University of St Andrews? The gossip mill would later go into overdrive, not only alleging she’d changed her mind because she’d heard William was going there, but that her mother had encouraged her to catch the eye of the Prince. This is ‘utter nonsense’, said a source close to the family. Indeed, it had been confidently expected the Prince would attend Trinity College, Cambridge, like his father.

The courtship years: Already — with no sign of an engagement — Catherine was being labelled Waity Katie, and criticised for first working for her mother’s Party Pieces business rather than starting a career, then taking a part-time job as an accessories buyer at Jigsaw. There were also ‘raised eyebrows’ in the Royal Family over her frequent trips to Mustique in the southern Caribbean. Her boss at Jigsaw had given Catherine the use of her luxurious villa on the island for private romantic holidays with the Prince — hardly a perk afforded to most employees. Catherine knew William wasn’t in any hurry to propose, and the truth is she was prepared to wait until he was ready. After all, they were in love — weren’t they?

The breakup phone call: As Catherine approached her 25th birthday in January 2007, he unexpectedly cancelled plans to attend a New Year gathering in Dundee, arranged by the Middletons. She sensed something was wrong. It certainly wasn’t helping that newspapers were confidently predicting a royal engagement. Soon afterwards, seemingly out of the blue, William — now a 2nd Lieutenant in the Blues and Royals — telephoned her to suggest that they split up. He told her they both needed ‘a bit of space’ to ‘find our own way’, and he was unable to promise her marriage. In an emotionally charged 30-minute conversation, they both acknowledged they were on ‘different pages’. It was a devastating blow to Catherine, who felt doubly let down at being dumped over the phone. Though it wasn’t the first time William had called time on their relationship, it felt final.

[From The Daily Mail]

Jobson also did a lot with “how Kate won William back” in 2007 – she listened to Carole’s advice and Kate went out partying as often as possible, especially with William’s friends. Jobson claims that William was worried that he would have to work hard to woo Kate back, but she literally came back to him as soon as he snapped his fingers. It’s an interesting sliding-doors scenario to consider: what would have happened if Kate hadn’t gone out drinking and partying constantly after the breakup? What if William had his head turned by someone else who was actually into it? Anyway, Will and Kate were always ill-suited for one another. Carole is the only one who ever thought they would be perfect together.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, archived photos courtesy of WENN.

One of the craziest/funniest parts of this whole JD Vance mess is that it wasn’t just one mistake, one bad moment where he said the wrong thing and accidentally offended a huge voting bloc. Vance’s rage towards “childless cat ladies” has been a feature of his ideology for years now, and it’s a subject he has returned to in many interviews and public statements. Meaning, try as he might, he can’t effectively backtrack, not that he would even want to, because that’s the way he really feels. He really wants people to know that he believes that “childless people” don’t have a personal and direct stake in the future of the country. He really believes that the Democratic Party is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” Well, it turns out that JD Vance also believes that childfree people are deranged sociopaths and “psychotic.”

Unearthed video: JD Vance says people who don’t have children are “sociopathic,” “psychotic,” and “deranged” pic.twitter.com/jaqL6BsXXF

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 30, 2024

“I worry that [not having children] makes people more sociopathic,” unlike JD Vance, who wants to ban IVF, abortion, all fertility treatments, all forms of contraception and have the government track and monitor American women and girls’ fertility, menstruation and pregnancies. That’s not sociopathic in the least. That’s not deranged in the least, right?

CNN is doing genuine reporting on this front, and they’ve got a story about Vance’s repeated comments about “childless people” and how he connects childlessness with sociopathy. They transcribed the comments in this “unearthed” video, and also point out that Vance included language about the “radical childless leaders in this country” in his campaign emails!! In September 2021, he tweeted “cat ladies…must be stopped” in response to “a report that a higher percentage of Americans fear having children because of climate change.” He also tweeted: “Our country’s low birth rates have made many elites sociopaths.” This guy is such a f–king freak.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Donald Trump and his MAGA cult members don’t know what to say about Vice President Kamala Harris and they’re trying and failing to find ways to attack her. As Democrats have found a line of attack which works – “these people are weird” – the MAGAts are crying about “DEI hires” and trying to make VP Harris’s stepmother credentials into a negative. It’s been sort of a quieter story, but even hardline conservatives in the media have been trying to tell the Trump campaign that these sexist and racist attacks are not landing. Well, Lara Trump hasn’t heard any of that. This is the woman married to Eric Trump, which speaks volumes. The door prize for f–king Eric is apparently “co-chair of the Republican Party” and she quickly became one of Donald Trump’s blondest soldiers. This is what she said when asked about VP Harris.

Lara Trump, the Republican Party co-chair and former President Donald J. Trump’s daughter-in-law, compared Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday to a fashion designer’s faux “trash bag” that gained notoriety for its nearly $1,800 price tag.

Ms. Trump, speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News, complained that Ms. Harris was now being championed as “some sort of amazing political figure” by people who had harbored doubts about her before President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her to be the party’s presidential nominee.

“It reminds me of — there was this bag that a very famous designer designed — this was several years ago,” she said. “And it literally was a trash bag, but they sold this thing for like $2,000, thinking that people would actually buy it. It’s a similar situation with Kamala Harris.”

Ms. Trump, who was installed in March as a top G.O.P. leader and married Mr. Trump’s middle son, Eric Trump, was referring to a faux trash bag that was introduced in 2022 by Balenciaga. It turned heads on the runway and drew derision in the tabloids.

[From The NY Times]

Me, trying to relate to peasants: remember that $2000 Balenciaga bag which was mocked in French Vogue?

Honestly though, this See-You-Next-Tuesday just wanted to say “Kamala Harris is a trash bag,” but in the most elitist and confusing way possible. Anyway, you’d think that Republicans would avoid speaking this way about the sitting vice president when they literally tried to assassinate the last sitting VP. But I digress. Lara Trump is a racist moron, a product of nepotism and she looks like she gets her cosmetic work in the back alley of a Florida strip mall.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

King Charles spent this past weekend in Sandringham while his wife cavorted with her ex-husband at the races. Charles and Camilla will soon make their way up to Balmoral, or rather, Birkhall. Charles doesn’t care for Balmoral, so he allows the extended family to stay at the main house while he and Camilla are “cozy” in Birkhall, which is also a pretty grand property. I think they’re planning to spend some time at Castle of Mey too. The point is that while Charles is late in starting his summer holiday, he will be in the Balmoral area in August. As such, there’s already something big on the agenda: a family meeting-slash-state-of-the-union. You see, these dumbasses are still *surprised Pikachu* that Prince Harry hasn’t come crawling back to them, so even though it’s been four and a half years since the Sussexes skedaddled, the family needs to have a “summit” about What To Do About The Sussexes.

The upcoming Royal Family gathering at Balmoral Castle in mid-late August is set to be more than just a traditional summer get-together. Sources claim it will serve as a pivotal summit for the strategic planning of the monarchy’s next decade. Hosted by King Charles and Queen Camilla, this meeting comes at a time of significant transition and offers a unique opportunity for the Royal Family to chart a course for its future amid great difficulty.

The Firm is not only dealing with the ongoing ‘Sussex problem’ but also facing health challenges, with two senior figures announcing cancer diagnoses and Princess Anne suffering a head injury from a suspected horse kick. If the slimmed-down monarchy wasn’t thin on the ground, it most certainly is now.

One notable aspect of this year’s Balmoral gathering will be the absence of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from the main family celebrations. Their exclusion signifies a deliberate move by the monarchy to distance itself from the couple, who have been a source of controversy and media scrutiny since they stepped down as working royals in 2020. This decision could be seen as a reaffirmation of the Royal Family’s commitment to maintaining a united front and focusing on its key players who are dedicated to royal duties and who respect the crown.

[From The Daily Express]

“Their exclusion signifies a deliberate move by the monarchy to distance itself from the couple…” I am announcing to the world that I am excluding Clive Owen from my panties, you guys. I am stating this loud and proud: I want to distance myself from Clive Owen, and it’s been four and a half years since I’ve even been in the same country as Clive Owen, but he needs to know that I am the one keeping my distance from him. That’s what this whole royal summit sounds like. Obviously, I know Clive is never coming back to me, but I’m not about to call a summit about it and announce to the world that I’m snubbing HIM. Like, are the Windsors really this pathetic? I guess they are. They’re still holding summits to discuss What Do We Do About The Sussexes. My god.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Robert Jobson’s new royal biography is Catherine, The Princess Of Wales. Jobson’s book was excerpted in the Mail, and from what I’ve seen, the excerpts have landed poorly all around. Royalists are mad that Jobson’s narrative is so Sussex-focused and so uncomplimentary to the Waleses, and Sussex people find it hilarious that Jobson is trying to push those narratives. Because I’ve been doing this for years, I once again have to point out that Jobson wrote a biography of Prince William a few years ago which got the same reaction – it was basically a hit job on William from sources deep within King Charles and Queen Camilla’s camp, at least that’s how it read to me. Jobson’s Huevo biography was largely buried too. Anyway, this excerpt is all about how dear Catherine wanted to move to Windsor specifically because Queen Elizabeth was doing so poorly, health-wise.

The death of her beloved Philip hit the late Queen very hard. She’d also lost several close friends, who’d died in quick succession around the same time, and as a result felt increasingly isolated. In her final years, she took to inviting former members of her staff to come to visit her in her private apartments to talk about the old times. One of them revealed later: ‘She told me she didn’t know anybody [her staff and servants] any more.’

The brightest light on her increasingly limited horizon was regular visits and several phone calls a week from her grandson William, which brought them closer than ever.

Catherine had instantly grasped that it was important for her husband to be geographically closer to his grandmother in her final months, so they’d decided to move early to Adelaide Cottage, a four-bedroom house close to the castle on the Windsor estate. This made a real difference.

‘[Prince William] knew his time with his grandmother was precious and he is delighted they, as a couple, made that decision,’ said one aide.

Behind the scenes, Queen Elizabeth was feeling terribly frail. Her final appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony, as the finale to the Platinum Jubilee, took real courage as she was in constant pain from a form of myeloma, a bone-marrow cancer.

Her health deteriorated rapidly over the following three months. She struggled terribly with failing eyesight, and had difficulty even lifting a teapot to fill her cup.

‘Her Majesty could hardly see and just didn’t have the strength,’ a source close to the late Queen said. ‘She would get terribly frustrated as she hated causing a mess, pouring it over the tray. She asked for a smaller pot and would get frustrated when the staff forgot and brought the big one.’

She knew she was dying. But as her strength ebbed away, it brought her immense comfort to know the monarchy could be entrusted to the next two generations.

[From The Daily Mail]

Keep in mind, William and Kate officially moved into Adelaide Cottage at the last minute, kicking and screaming, in late August 2022, and QEII died in Scotland just a couple of weeks later. The “kicking and screaming” part is because they wanted (or rather, Kate wanted) to be given a much grander home on the Windsor property but she and the kids were shuffled off to Adelaide just days before the kids started their school term. This narrative about “William and Kate were physically closer to QEII in the months before her death” is BS. They were in Norfolk, QEII was in Scotland. Also: the whole rationale behind the Waleses move to Windsor was NOT “they want to be closer to QEII” back in 2021-22. The rationale was “Kate wants to be closer to her parents” and “Kate wants to send the kids to a school outside of London” and “Kate and William believed they would be given Windsor Castle when QEII died.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Kensington Palace.

I still remember when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. My first instinct was dread – that McCain’s gambit might work – but then soon after, I felt nothing but relief. Palin made a horse’s ass out of herself at every turn, and she went down as one of the biggest cautionary tales for presidential candidates. Well, Donald Trump didn’t get that memo. McCain choosing Palin looks positively brilliant compared to Trump choosing JD Vance. Vance gives Trump nothing but financing from Peter Thiel. Vance doesn’t help with fundraising, Vance brings zero enthusiasm and the (racist) base hates Vance and his Indian-American wife. Republicans have a major case of buyer’s remorse. Since Vance entered the national stage, the Trump campaign has been on the back foot, trying to deal with all of the crazy sh-t Vance has said for years. It’s gotten so bad that now Trump (!!!) has to provide cover for his VP candidate:

Donald Trump on Monday defended his running mate’s claims that “childless cat ladies” had destroyed American values, but also said he believed adults without children were just as good as parents. JD Vance’s 2021 comment that Vice-President Kamala Harris and other Democrats were “a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives” resurfaced after Trump selected the Ohio senator as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. In a Fox News interview on Monday, Trump said that Mr Vance “likes families”, but Trump also said he did not place a higher value on parenting.

“You know, you don’t meet the right person, or you don’t meet any person. But you’re just as good, in many cases, a lot better than a person that’s in a family situation,” he said. Trump said Mr Vance was simply trying to show how much he values family life.

“He grew up in a very interesting family situation, and he feels family is good. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying that,” Trump said. “All he said is he does… like I mean, for him, he likes family.”

Asked by Fox News television host Laura Ingraham on Monday whether he could vouch for Mr Vance as an “excellent pick” for the November election, Trump said: “He’s got has tremendous support, and he really does among a certain group of people – people who like families. That does not mean that people who aren’t members of a big family… he’s not against anything. He loves family, it’s very important to him.”

[From BBC]

I cannot stop laughing about this. “You know, you don’t meet the right person, or you don’t meet any person. But you’re just as good, in many cases, a lot better than a person that’s in a family situation.” So true, I’m a childless cat lady (according to Vance) and yet, according to Trump, I’m “just as good, in many cases, a lot better than a person that’s in a family situation.” Yes!! Trump is making the bold decision to go in the other direction and talk about how childfree people are probably better off (many such cases) than parents. He’s talking about himself too – someone said that Trump is stuck with another idiot son in Vance, and he probably wishes he was childfree right about now. You know his idiot sons convinced him to pick Vance as well (LMAO).

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