Tea at Trianon: Final Predictions on Election 2024

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

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Final Predictions on Election 2024

From Tierney's Real News:

Remember, most of the pollsters and pundits are not in the business of telling us the truth until they have to. They are in the business of doing the bidding of whoever pays them the most and “course correcting” at the last minute so they can claim they were right all along. I wrote and fielded research surveys in my marketing career and I know how easy it is to manipulate a poll result by using skewed questions or databases. They all do it. Even worse - today they can’t reach people like they used to with land lines so it’s a nightmare to even find people to poll. In 1980, the pollsters said Reagan was going to lose big time to Carter until the last week. (Read more.)