Tea at Trianon: Beating Biden

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, March 20, 2023

Beating Biden

From New York Post:

Trump has been campaigning since last year’s midterms and takes every opportunity to bash younger Republican leaders who might challenge him for the nomination, above all Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Democrats have no one who can plausibly wrest the nomination from the 80-year-old incumbent. Biden may be old, but he’s tough. He didn’t run for president three times over 32 years just to hand his prize over once he’d snatched it.

Biden’s approval ratings are anemic. Yet he has reason to be confident that the 2024 electoral map will return him to office. He thinks he has a special affinity for the state of Pennsylvania. Other states that flipped from Republican to Democrat between 2016 and 2020 — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — all elected Democratic governors or senators, or both, in last year’s midterms.

Georgia re-elected a Republican governor as well as a Democratic senator last year. But Biden can afford to lose Georgia, or even Georgia and Arizona, and still win in 2024, if he keeps his grip on the Rust Belt. Those industrial states, hard hit by globalization, delivered the White House to Trump in 2016 — and took it from him in 2020. A Republican either has to win back the Rust Belt or widen the battleground map to prevail next year. Trump received more electoral votes in 2016 than George W. Bush did in his successful 2004 re-election effort. The Trump map remains the best map for the GOP. (Read more.)

Meanwhile, are we facing WWIII? From Human Events:

Biden said he would not send American F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. He said it in January, and he said it again in February. Now, a report out from NBC shows that Ukrainian pilots are in the US to learn how to fly these high-tech military planes. Biden previously promised that US Abrams tanks would not be sent to Ukraine, and that has been reveresed. And on February 24, 2022, Biden told the American people that "Our forces are not going to fight in Ukraine."
He backed down on his promise to not send tanks, actions by the military are indicating that he's going to do an about-face on the promise to not send F-16s. How soon before the promise to not waste American lives in a foreign border war is broken as well?

On January 30, Biden spoke off the cuff to reporters outside the White House. When he was asked if the US would send the fighter planes that Zelensky was demanding, Biden said "No." When asked the same question in February, Biden said Zelensky "doesn't need F-16s now," going on to say "I am ruling it out for now."

Fast forward to 10 days later and it turns out that Ukrainian pilots are being trained in how to use the planes they "don't need." NBC sourced unnamed congressional officials and a senior US official when reporting that "The Ukrainians’ skills are being evaluated on simulators at a U.S. military base in Tucson, Arizona, the officials said, and they may soon be joined by more of their fellow pilots."

In January, a US official told reporters that Abrams tanks would not be sent o Ukraine, but by January 25, Biden announced that 31 Abrams tanks would be sent to Ukraine. "Today," Biden began, "I'm announcing that the United States will be sending thirty-one Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion." (Read more.)