Tea at Trianon: Trump Trumps Trump

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 18, 2024

Trump Trumps Trump

From The Federalist:

Instead of rooting out the corruption at the department, most of permanent D.C. did absolutely nothing in response. Yet somehow the chattering class was shocked when Trump nominated loyal foot soldier Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fl., to be attorney general in Trump’s second term and to fix DOJ.

Gaetz had proven to be one of the most effective advocates against corruption at DOJ and was unwilling to back down in the face of overwhelming public pressure. However, Gaetz does not fit the education or experience profile of many previous attorneys general and has limited experience practicing law.

Many Americans are sick and tired of elected officials and media pundits doing nothing as DOJ attempted to destroy the country with its abuse of the rule of law. Among the many powerful figures in Washington, D.C. opposed to the Gaetz nomination are some who are attempting to thwart it by releasing a report from the House Ethics Committee that will attempt to tie Gaetz to salacious allegations involving child sex trafficking.
The report comes years after DOJ dropped its investigation into the same claims on the grounds that the two central witnesses had serious credibility issues. Yet these are the same two central witnesses the House Ethics Committee has relied on for its critical report of Gaetz—the same report it is leaking to compliant reporters as part of a coordinated effort to thwart his nomination as President-elect Donald Trump’s next attorney general. (Read more.)

DOGE. From The Daily Wire:

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort to trim the fat under which the federal government labors — namely, a sprawling bureaucracy and runaway government spending.
Musk spawned the idea for the department and offered to head it up during an X space with Trump back in August. On Tuesday, Trump made DOGE official, saying in a statement that it will “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies” and give government an “entrepreneurial approach.”
“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump said.
The new department has already sparked endless memes — the DOGE acronym is a nod to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Musk is a fan, and briefly changed X’s logo to the coin’s dog meme last year. Another meme making the rounds shows Musk and Ramaswamy as the downsizing consultants from the movie “Office Space,” who famously ask an employee, “What would you say you do here?” (Read more.)

Meanwhile, in Ukraine:

Several mainstream news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Reuters, reported Sunday that Joe Biden's administration has lifted restrictions that had blocked Ukraine from using U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory.
The report originated in typical fashion, leaked to the New York Times by three unnamed deep-state sources.
This development marks “a significant change to U.S. policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict,” Reuters reports, when in fact the U.S. policy was always to escalate the war, with this latest move no doubt planned months ago to be lowered like a hammer on Russia right before Trump takes office.
It’s no surprise. We knew it was coming. We predicted many times that the U.S. government would give the greenlight to such attacks, because we know that the U.S. deep state wants the war to escalate further before Donald Trump takes over the White House. Their hope is that the stampede toward World War III will become so intense by January 20th that Trump will be unable to stop it.
Ukraine plans to conduct its first long-range attacks in the coming days, the sources said, without revealing details due to operational security concerns.
The move by the United States, which comes just over two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, comes after months of requests by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to allow Ukraine's military to use U.S. weapons to hit Russian military targets far from its border. (Read more.)