IF YOU can make people believe ugly is beautiful, you can make them believe anything. See more hideous selections from the runways in Paris.

  ERIC writes: I will match Seattle's public "art" with the worst of them. The former Experience Music Project, now the Museum of Popular Culture, is a monstrosity all it's own. It looks like a giant glob of metallic snot. I went to a function in this building and felt so ill at ease I had to leave. Our downtown library is also a disaster:   Here's more:

GEORGE WEINBAUM writes:

This is the most absurd mass shooting story ever. If Stephen Paddock killed 59 and wounded 527, that’s 586 “hits.” If he was firing a weapon “full auto” he would be very lucky to get a “hit” for every five rounds fired. More likely one hit in 20 rounds fired. Using five, I get 2,930 rounds fired. Supposedly, 223 and 308 rounds were fired. For simplicity sake, let’s assume they were all 223 rounds fired from 30-round magazines, I find Paddock had to change magazines 97 times. All this in 10 minutes? He changed magazines 9.7 times per minute? Could an Army Ranger or Green Beret do that?

How many magazines did the Las Vegas (LV) police find in the hotel room? Remember, the magazines had to have been loaded BEFORE the shooting began. How many spent shell casings did the LV police find?

This story is unbelievable. (more…)

MODERN SOCIETY exalts efficiency and expertise over wisdom and holiness.

That’s why a woman such as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux could not easily be produced by our age.

St. Thérèse, born in 1873 France, lived only to the age of 24, and the last years of her life were spent in a cloistered convent, but she has nevertheless had a powerful influence on millions of people.

Her spiritual doctrine is so simple that, at first glance, it seems like nothing. Only on close examination does one find its profundity.

Thérèse, charmingly known as the Little Flower, believed the path to heaven lay in recognizing one’s littleness and doing everything, the smallest action — especially those which are painful or annoying — out of love for God. Not everyone is called to heroism, but all of us are called to endurance and confidence. The small matters of life can be transformed into acts of love. These have eternal ramifications for ourselves and others. Thérèse offers an antidote to the quest for man-centered utopia and the drugs of contemporary psychology, which she turns completely on its head, directing human actions upward and leaving nothing, no suffering, that is without great purpose and resolution.

Here on the feast day of this remarkable woman is food for thought from her letters and her book Story of a Soul:

“‘Remaining little’ means—to recognise one’s nothingness, to await everything from the Goodness of God, to avoid being too much troubled at our faults; finally, not to worry over amassing spiritual riches, not to be solicitous about anything. Even amongst the poor, while a child is still small, he is given what is necessary; but, once he is grown up, his father will no longer feed him, and tells him to seek work and support himself. Well, it was to avoid hearing this, that I have never wished to grow up, for I feel incapable of earning my livelihood, which is Life Eternal!”

…

By telling us that a single hair can work this wonder, He shows us that the smallest actions done for His Love are those which charm His Heart. If it were necessary to do great things, we should be deserving of pity, but we are happy beyond measure, because Jesus lets Himself be led captive by the smallest action. . . .

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I have definitely schooled readers of this site in the art of manipulated news enough for them to reject, or be extremely skeptical of, reports that 58 people were killed, and some 200 wounded, Sunday night at a country music concert in Sin City, capital of organized crime and the perfect setting for another criminal and treasonous mass hoax. We cannot know all that transpired, but we can know that this is extremely fishy. Trump has paid his dues and now it is time for the deception artists in the government, police and controlled media to let loose, as they did under Obama.

How can we tell that this was another orchestrated effort to create mass fear, panic and distraction? Let’s list a few reasons:

*** The absolute implausibility of anyone quickly killing that many people from the 32nd floor. Most experienced soldiers, acting alone, could not have that kind of instant kill rate, let alone a 64-year-old retired accountant at such a distance. [Update: See this report on the physical impossibility of it. Were there multiple gunmen?] In order to kill someone instantly with a gun, in this day of advanced medicine, you have to hit him right in the head or the chest.

*** The implausibility of the scenes depicted on camera, which show no real carnage, no real gunshot wounds and just lots of people running and screaming. Do you have any idea what a scene in which 58 people have been shot dead and 200 wounded looks like? Sorry to be specific, but there would be blood, intestines, and brains everywhere, not dribbles of what appeared to be red tempura paint. I await that evidence, and suspend final judgment until it appears, as sad as it would be. The grisly scene, featuring heads blown apart and chest cavities ripped open, would have been captured by dozens of smart phones. Real life is not a movie. (more…)

BISHOPS of the Vatican II Church corrupt Scripture to justify unlimited illegal immigration. Interestingly, they have a huge financial incentive to support open borders. See more at One Peter Five.

While statues of great men are torn down across the West, our cities are littered with meaningless, soulless and ugly so called 'Public Art.' -- Architectural Revival

  GRANDMA’S ROSARY AND MINE When Grandma goes to say her Beads For all our family and our needs, She sweetly says to me: “My dear, Play nicely with your dollies here Until I call. Then come to me, And bring your little Rosary.” I help her (Grandma says it’s true) With Aves ten, when she’s most through. She lays her hand, her gentle way, Upon my head. “When children pray,” She says, “The guardian angels take The whispered Aves, and they make (They do, indeed, right then and there) The loveliest rosebud of each prayer: Some rosebuds white, some rosebuds red,— Red as the lips the Aves said. Then, with the posy, off they fly, Those happy angels, to the sky.” And all that Grandma says is true I see it in her eyes—so blue And clear and deep and kind— That look right into mine, and find Those thoughts that can not see a way To get out in the words I say. I see her sitting over there In her old-fashioned rockingchair,— The place (so I’ve heard father say) She taught her babies how to pray. And now the rosy altar light (She keeps it burning day and night) Sends rays that give the softest kiss To her gray head — like this and this. -- C.M.C.

"In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet [Isaiah] to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.” Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job, in fact, he had asked for it, but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so, if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start, was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can.…

ALAN writes:

What Jacob Hornberger wrote  [“Iraq and the National Security State”, Sept. 21] about the radical expansion of government power after World War II is right on the mark.

I expressed a similar judgment in part two of my essay looking back fifty years [the first part of which was “When I Was Seventeen”, Sept. 12].  Here is the second part:

FIFTY YEARS AGO  (Part Two)

         “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments,” said George Washington.

The current fake “war on terrorism” is a prime example.  The Vietnam War was another.

In 1967, when I watched the nightly Huntley-Brinkley news report on NBC television, I had the impression I was living in never-never land.  I hated the Communists, had no sympathy for “Hanoi Jane” Fonda and her crowd, but I also opposed any involvement of Americans in the Vietnam War.  I was more appalled by the “Conservatives” than by the “Liberals”.  Exactly what are the “Conservatives” conserving?, I wanted to know.  They failed to keep tens of thousands of Americans alive at home instead of dead in Southeast Asia.  I should respect such people?

The Vietnam War offered a classic example of the false alternative:  In one camp were the hippies, the “students”, and the “Liberals”.  In the other camp were the hard hats and the “Conservatives”.  I thought neither camp had the slightest claim to credibility.

Nor was I a pacifist.  If any part of my nation was attacked, I would gladly have seen the attackers annihilated.

But what Americans were doing in Vietnam was something very different.  I favored self-defense; I opposed self-immolation. (more…)

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MARRIAGE “EXPERTS” are often frustrated by the fact that “the uneducated” just don’t get it.

Ordinary people who will never be lawyers or human resource directors, and may even only be able to finish a mere 13 years of schooling (horrors!), just don’t get the Modern Marriage Rules. Here is the path to a happy marriage and family, promoted by the marriage “experts:

— Go to an overpriced institution of “higher education” to get a degree.

— Devote years of peak fertility to career-building.

— Then and only then, after secure in a well-paid and satisfying job, find a loving and devoted spouse.

— Then and only then, have a baby.

The uneducated won’t do all this. Despite enlightened instruction from marriage experts and enough cheap contraceptives to prevent human birth altogether, they move in with a “fiancé or “fiancée” and have children at a way too early age and without marriage or their eternal salvation secured by a good job. Are these people stupid, or what? How many times do we have to repeat the words, “condom” and “abortion,” “college” and “career,” before these idiots catch on? Do they actually like working at McDonalds to support their ill-timed brats? 

Well, let’s not put it that way. Let’s just say, um, “marriage has become a mark of privilege:”

Just over half of adolescents in poor and working-class homes live with both their biological parents, compared with 77 percent in middle- and upper-class homes, according to the research brief, by W. Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies. Thirty-six percent of children born to a working-class mother are born out of wedlock, versus 13 percent of those born to middle- and upper-class mothers.

The research brief defined “working class” as adults with an adjusted family income between the 20th and 50th percentiles, with high school diplomas but not bachelor’s degrees. Poor is defined as those below the 20th percentile or without high school diplomas, and the middle and upper class as those above the 50th percentile or with college degrees. (more…)

AMERICAN football fans have reacted with justified outrage to the anti-white bigotry and anti-police hate campaign of spoiled black NFL players. Too bad, though, that Mr. Patriotic American subverts so much of his protest energy and team spirit into watching these gladiators in the first place.

Mike King at The Anti-New York analyses the football protests and Trump’s criticism of players who refused to stand for the national anthem:

Trumpstein’s declaration of war and call for a boycott on the NFL & NBA represent a classic case of a clever politician doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. With his conservative / nationalist core constituencies shrinking due to his tiresome buffoonery, leftward movement and broken promises, this calculated move to fire-up the patriotard base may turn out to be a stroke of political genius for Ivanka’s daddy. Though Sugar and I, er, “The Editorial Board” of The Anti-New York Times can see right through the Orange Clown’s tactical trickery, any damage done to the National Felons League will come as a welcome side-effect. (more…)

  SOME important facts about North Korea are highlighted in this video. (Sorry for the one vulgarity.)

MANY who fled Syria have returned. But few Christians have gone home to war-torn Iraq: In a World Watch Monitor article, human-rights lawyer and genocide expert Ewelina Ochab made this conclusion after interviewing Christians from Iraq who had fled to Kurdistan or become refugees in Jordan: She stated that Iraqi Christians have faced persecution since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003. Christians were blamed for the invasion, and in the ensuing chaos, various Islamic extremists destroyed their churches, stole their homes and drove them out of the nation to either northern Iraq (Kurdistan), Jordan or Lebanon. In the article, Ochab was quoted as saying that the reality for Syria is different because “Assad is perceived as the defender of Christian minorities.” She went on to say that, “Many Syrian Christians worry that once Assad is gone, they will face the same fate as Iraqi Christians suffered after Saddam Hussein’s fall.” [Source]

  CALL ME JORGE writes: Where’s the ADL of B’nai B’rith? And the Southern Poverty Law Center? Have you seen national news coverage, evening after evening of the growing anti-Catholicism in the United States?