Tea at Trianon: More Of A Disaster Than People Realize

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, November 28, 2022

More Of A Disaster Than People Realize

From The Federalist:

After it trained upwards of 50,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and other roles for ongoing citizen engagement in the election process over the year leading up to the 2022 midterms, the Election Integrity Network sent out a survey to its on-the-ground volunteers following Election Day to gauge how things went. The responses from election workers in key battleground districts and states around the country showed a mostly calm election cycle compared to 2020, with one massive and overwhelming exception. In Maricopa County, Arizona, election workers were appalled and aghast at how things had been run there.(Read more.)

From Just the News:

The inspector at another vote center that Sonnenklar visited "had a messy pile of spoiled ballots next to her chair, many of which had not been marked 'Spoiled,'" he recounted, adding that she periodically "left those unspoiled ballots unattended while she was working in other areas of the vote center."

Several voters asked the inspector to spoil their ballots. "Each time, the Inspector took the ballot and put it on top of her pile without actually spoiling it," Sonnenklar observed. He added that nearly all of those voters waited "awkwardly" for the inspector to spoil their ballots, "and it was only then that the Inspector would write 'Spoiled' on the ballot."

Sonnenklar noted that before leaving the vote center, he asked her "if she was going to spoil all of the ballots in her pile." She "got defensive," he reported, and said that "she hasn't spoiled the ballots yet only because she keeps getting pulled away by her staff." Another vote center Sonnenklar visited had 115 spoiled ballots and 116 misread ballots dropped into Box 3, to be counted later. (Read more.)