I’d understand Meg wanting Doria to come to Sandringham last year, but not now, when last Christmas she couldn’t care less whether Doria was or wasn’t alone. And I agree, it’s all to keep her in the headlines and idk, maybe something new is coming from Markles and she needs to show that she’s close to at least one family member.

Christmas at Sandringham is for members of the royal family and the Queen’s relatives. Meghan wasn’t even officially a royal last year, and her being there was considered too early by many people. Kate spent her last Christmas before her wedding–but after her engagement–with her family. If Megs missed her mom that much, then she should have had Christmas with her mom in LA instead. Instead, Megs wanted the photo ops of being with the royals as soon as possible. 

The Middletons don’t attend Sandringham at Christmas, and their eldest grandchild–George–will be king one day. So Doria attending Sandringham at any Christmas is out of the question. 

I’m sure Megs wants it to look like she’s close to her mom, but there aren’t any opportunities for her to pull that stunt again, like she did with the cookbook. Megs isn’t going to be given any future engagements where she can bring her mom along. The UK media isn’t going to publish pap pictures of the two out for a walk together due to pressure from the royal family. So she’s got Sandringham left as her only option, and we can all bet that the Queen is going to say no on that one.

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Doria ain’t coming to Sandringdam. Its just to rile up the Sussex fans & anti-Sussex people. I think its also her attempting to put pressure on the BRF to allow it but my gut tells me it aint happening. I think Doria will come to the UK though but it aint gonna be at Sandringdam House. Itll be a “lets not & say we did”

I suspect Megs is working the refs (Queen, Philip & Charles) to get them to allow her mother to be there. I don’t believe Doria is going to be there. I suspect Doria probably doesn’t want to be there either. But Megs feels she has to keep her names in the headlines, and she had her first Christmas at Sandringham last year with her poo emoji hat. She’s running out of things that will create headlines since she’s burned through all the “firsts” already. 

I’d be very surprised if it did happen though. Like, the only way to prove it would be if Doria attended church with the family on Christmas Day, and I can’t see that happening.

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The USA Today thing is in a video as part of the story.

hunnymae:

countesscuriosity:

youhavebeenmarkled:

houseofbrat:

But which story? I still haven’t been able to find it.

Anyway, here’s a video of Megs bellycupping–specifically, the mons pubis bellycupping–in New Zealand. It looks even more ridiculous in action than single photos.

Who freaking walks like that?  She is Angelina Jolie batshit crazy 

Really how is it that no one else other than this tumblr community thinks the belly cupping is weird.

Hi Brat, is this what you’re looking for?

Here’s the video from USA Today referring to the bump as an accessory. It starts at :11. Thank you!

‘Meghan Markle’s best friend reportedly coming along on Royal tour’

https://www.usatoday.com/videos/life/people/2018/10/15/meghan-markles-best-friend-reportedly-coming-along-royal-tour/38161497/

@houseofbrat

Yeah, that was the one. Thanks @hunnymae !

OMFG,Lainey ”Prince Charles’s 70th birthday party”,it’s not MM fault that HER assistant quit,It’s PC,Will and seniors staff fault LOL”The real gossip behind why Royal Meghan’s assistant quit may not have anything to do with Meghan/It may be a much bigger question about the greater politics and maneuvering happening between the three–perhaps soon to be four–senior royal courts/the courtiers of the top two courts are targeting Meghan right now because she’s new and that makes her vulnerable’LOL

LOL. I’m not surprised. Nothing is Meghan’s fault in Lainey’s world except for bellycupping.

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Nothing is ever Meghan’s fault. It’s just everyone else that is fighting. LOL! She’s just trying to get her mom to visit her at Sandringham this Christmas. *eyeroll* 

After reading that, I’m practically convinced that there will be a new article about Meg’s behind-the-scenes behavior that will drop this weekend. It’s almost as if they’re planning on it with the “victim” angle of competing courts. Somehow, this didn’t really happen when Andrew married Fergie with the “competing courts” claim, of course, because it’s not true. 

Harry’s court isn’t going to be so “senior” given that he can’t get his wife to walk without clutching her barely-there bump. They’re getting sentenced to “Siberia,” which Lainey didn’t even comment on. Can’t say I’m surprised about that because Lainey didn’t cover the royal Remembrance outings this past weekend. She can’t write glowing words about Megs not being on the balcony together with the future queens, or sitting next to the curtains at the concert. I thought that Lainey not doing a write-up about that at the beginning of the week was a glaring omission. And not an accidental one. 

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norwegianroyalfamily:

November 15, 2018 | Queen Elizabeth II and King Harald V attended the Anglo-Norse Society centenary reception at the Naval and Military Club in London. The Centenary Reception offers an opportunity to recognise members of the Anglo-Norse Society who have made a positive contribution to its community and culture over the past 100 years. Queen Elizabeth II and King Harald V are joint Patrons of the Anglo-Norse Society. The Society is a registered charity for the purpose of advancing the education of the citizens of Britain and Norway about each other’s country and way of life.

Queen Sonja had been due to join the pair but had been too unwell according to her husband.

driverdaily:

[Adam]… he’s a beast. That means he’s good. That means… let’s—let’s not get it twisted. You know, different words mean different things in different places, so. And the thing about Adam is his range. I have mad respect for everybody. But some people (holds both of his hands close together), other people (spreads his arms out). Adam’s like, “My arms are wide enough!” – Spike Lee

Facebook’s Tipping Point of Bad Behavior?

jkottke:

The NY Times has published a long piece about how Facebook has responded (and failed to respond) to various crises over the past three years: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis. It does not paint a very flattering portrait of the company. This part is particularly damning (italics mine):

When Facebook users learned last spring that the company had compromised their privacy in its rush to expand, allowing access to the personal information of tens of millions of people to a political data firm linked to President Trump, Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem.

And when that failed – as the company’s stock price plummeted and it faced a consumer backlash – Facebook went on the attack.

While Mr. Zuckerberg has conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.

Are you fucking kidding me? Facebook paid to promote the right-wing & anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that George Soros pays protestors? Shame on you, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the rest of Facebook leadership team. Legitimizing this garbage actively hurts our democracy. On Twitter, The Guardian’s senior tech reporter Julia Carrie Wong gets at what is so wrong and different about this behavior:

There’s something about this Soros story that feels significantly different than the usual Facebook scandal. Most recent negative Facebook stories are issues relating to challenges of scale and a tendency toward passivity.

Facebook’s standard playbook is to admit that they made a mistake by being slow to react, remind us of their good intentions, then promise to do better. It’s the aw geez who woulda thought in the dorm room that we would have to deal with all these tricky issues defense.

This has been very effective for a company that still gets the benefit of the doubt. No one would ever suggest that Facebook *wanted* to bring about the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya or lynchings in rural Indian villages. They just were in a little over their heads.

But this Soros thing is different. This is no passive failure. It’s a malevolent action taken against groups who criticize Facebook for things that Facebook admits it has failed at. It takes advantage of and contributes to the most poisonous aspects of our public discourse.

It makes you wonder if the “ah geez” thing has just been an act all along. Mike Monteiro, who speaks and writes about ethics in the design profession, is surprised that Facebook’s employees haven’t spoken out more.

What surprises me is that Facebook employees are still at their desks after finding that their company was actively attempting to discredit activists. No doubt some of them are shook. No doubt some of them will make public statements against their company’s policy. And those are needed. No doubt there will be internal spirited conversations within the company. And those are needed as well. But there won’t be a walk-out. I say this hours after the article was released. But I doubt that I’ll have to come back to this paragraph and revise it. I wish I wasn’t so sure of that. But I am.

pewresearch:

A new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data finds that the “post-Millennial” generation is already the most racially and ethnically diverse generation, as a bare majority of 6- to 21-year-olds (52%) are non-Hispanic whites. And while most are still pursuing their K-12 education, the oldest post-Millennials are enrolling in college at a significantly higher rate than Millennials were at a comparable age.

The changing patterns in educational attainment are driven in part by the shifting origins of young Hispanics. Post-Millennial Hispanics are less likely than Millennial Hispanics to be immigrants – 12% of post-Millennial Hispanics were born outside the U.S., compared with 24% of Millennial Hispanics in 2002.

More broadly, the post-Millennial generation is being shaped by changing immigration patterns. Immigration flows into the U.S. peaked in 2005, when the leading edge of the post-Millennial generation was age 8 or younger. The onset of the Great Recession and the large decline in employment led to fewer immigrants coming to the United States, including immigrant children. As a result, the post-Millennial generation has fewer foreign-born youth among its ranks than the Millennial generation did in 2002 and a significantly higher number who were born in the U.S. to immigrant parents, though this may change depending on future immigration flows.

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Other key findings:

  • The oldest post-Millennials are less likely than their predecessors to be in the labor force. Only 58% of today’s 18- to 21-year-olds worked in the prior calendar year; this compares with 72% of Millennial 18- to 21-year-olds in 2002. And employment among post-Millennials is less likely to be full-time compared with earlier generations. This is likely due, in large part, to the fact that these young adults are more likely than their predecessors to be enrolled in college.
  • The living arrangements of post-Millennial children are similar to those of Millennials when they were growing up. About two-thirds (65%) of today’s 6- to 17-year-olds live with two married parents, slightly lower than the share (68%) of Millennials in that age range who lived in this type of household in 2002. Roughly three-in-ten post-Millennials ages 6 to 17 (31%) live with a single parent, somewhat higher than the share of Millennials growing up with a single parent in 2002 (27%).2
  • The median household income of post-Millennials exceeds that of earlier generations when they were young. The typical post-Millennial in 2018 lives in a household with an annual income of roughly $63,700 after adjusting for household size. That is slightly higher than the income for the typical household in which Millennials grew up – $62,400 in 2002 in inflation-adjusted dollars – and it far surpasses the income of Gen X and Baby Boomer households when they were growing up. This is consistent with the relatively high education of the parents of post-Millennials.

Continue reading: Early Benchmarks Show ‘Post-Millennials’ on Track to Be Most Diverse, Best-Educated Generation Yet

USA Today in a report on the Oceania tour referred to MM’s baby bump as an “accessory” she brought along. Ouch. This is the consequence of being a publicity hound everything you do is seen as a pr stunt. Says a lot about the media’s perception of MM and this is US press. Meghan won’t be happy with that. The tiara and staff leaving stories IMO signaled to the press they can go after MM now and start saying what they think. The RF won’t protect her.

I tried looking for that USA Today article and couldn’t find it. 

But yeah, the tiara story isn’t a good indicator for her press articles. I’m still wondering if something is going to drop this weekend since Melissa the PA left.

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Harley Quinn Spinoff ‘Birds of Prey’ Casts Cassandra Cain (EXCLUSIVE)

justiceleague:

Newcomer Ella Jay Basco is in negotiations to land the last major role, Cassandra Cain, in Warner Bros.’ Harley Quinn spinoff, “Birds of Prey.”

Margot Robbie is back as Quinn with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Jurnee Smollett-Bellon board as Huntress and Black Canary, respectively. Ewan McGregor will play the film’s villain and Rosie Perez will portray Gotham City police detective Renee Montoya.

Cathy Yan is directing the pic with Robbie producing, along with Sue Kroll and Bryan Unkeless.

In the new film, Robbie, Winstead, and Smollett-Bell team up to protect Cain’s character when she comes across a diamond belonging to McGregor’s Black Mask, a kingpin in Gotham City’s criminal underworld.

In DC Comics, Cain is the daughter of assassins David Cain and Lady Shiva, and is deprived of speech and human contact during her childhood as conditioning to become the world’s greatest assassin. She eventually befriends Bruce Wayne and goes on to become Batgirl. It is unknown whether the Batgirl element will be included in this storyline as WB is already developing a “Batgirl” movie.

Birds of Prey is set to bow on Feb. 7, 2020.

Harley Quinn Spinoff ‘Birds of Prey’ Casts Cassandra Cain (EXCLUSIVE)

It has been obvious for months now MM uses The Express. How freaking stupid is Harry if he doesn’t know what her obvious media outlets are? MM used the same scam to try and get invited to Pippa’s wedding. Create pressure for an invite by using the press. We can see it but Harry can’t? I think Doria has no desire to spend Christmas with the royals.

Yeah, I’m with you. I don’t get it either. I don’t think Doria wants to go. Why would you want to go to Sandringham if you don’t have to? I’ve always heard the schedule is tight, and you have to dress up for events. Why do that when you can stay at home in California in your comfortable clothes?

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robertreich:

THE NEXT CRASH

Sorry to deliver the news, but it’s time to worry about the next crash.

The combination of stagnant wages with most economic gains going to the top is once again endangering the economy. 

Most Americans are still living in the shadow of the Great Recession that started in December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009. More have jobs, to be sure. But they haven’t seen any rise in their wages, adjusted for inflation.

Many are worse off due to the escalating costs of housing, healthcare, and education. And the value of whatever assets they own is less than in 2007.Which suggests we’re careening toward the same sort of crash we had then, and possibly as bad as 1929.

Clear away the financial rubble from those two former crashes and you’d see they both followed upon widening imbalances between the capacity of most people to buy, and what they as workers could produce. Each of these imbalances finally tipped the economy over.

The same imbalance has been growing again. The richest 1 percent of Americans now takes home about 20 percent of total income, and owns over 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.

These are close to the peaks of 1928 and 2007.

The underlying problem isn’t that Americans have been living beyond their means. It’s that their means haven’t been keeping up with the growing economy. Most gains have gone to the top.

But the rich only spend a small fraction of what they earn. The economy depends on the spending of middle and working class families.

By the first quarter of this year, household debt was at an all-time high of $13.2 trillion. Almost 80 percent of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.

It was similar in the years leading up to the crash of 2007. Between 1983 and 2007, household debt soared while most economic gains went to the top. If the majority of households had taken home a larger share, they wouldn’t have needed to go so deeply into debt.

Similarly, between 1913 and 1928, the ratio of personal debt to the total national economy nearly doubled. After the 1929 crash, the government invented new ways to boost wages – Social Security, unemployment insurance, overtime pay, a minimum wage, the requirement that employers bargain with labor unions, and, finally, a full-employment program called World War II.

After the 2007 crash, the government bailed out the banks and pumped enough money into the economy to contain the slide. But apart from the Affordable Care Act, nothing was done to address the underlying problem of stagnant wages.

Trump and his Republican enablers are now reversing regulations put in place to stop Wall Street’s excessively risky lending.

But Trump’s real contributions to the next crash are his sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, rollback of overtime pay, burdens on labor organizing, tax reductions for corporations and the wealthy but not for most workers, cuts in programs for the poor, and proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid – all of which put more stress on the paychecks of most Americans.

Ten years after the start of the Great Recession, it’s important to understand that the real root of the collapse wasn’t a banking crisis. It was the growing imbalance between consumer spending and total output – brought on by stagnant wages and widening inequality.

That imbalance is back. Watch your wallets.

I enjoy reading the charlatan-duchess tidbits that she releases. The one posted today is interesting. The only part I have a hard time believing is PH asking MM “are you leaking to the press again?” MM AND PH have BOTH been leaking to the press since 2016! So why would PH think MM would stop? Why would PH stop? I hope the rest about QE is true. Interesting w/PC’s 70Bday NO pictures were released. Side eye to MM? Maybe the takedown is in progress. The BRF FINALLY have her number?

I feel like it’s an interesting read, but it also seems be written to appeal to what a particular audience wants to hear, which is why I don’t believe it 100%.

Sorry to bug you. But @ladygrayhound reblogged a post that contained the words “mystery meat” in relation to MM and her ask doesn’t work. I just wanted to pass along the messsage that-having been called that to my face-it’s a very dehumanizing term not only because of the racial aspect but because it also implies a threat of sexual violence. I agree MM is a piece of work but no one deserves that, ever.

I haven’t seen the post you’re mentioning, but I agree with what you’ve said.