Tea at Trianon: Is the System Rigged?

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

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Is the System Rigged?

From Freedom Outpost:

Yesterday, it was reported that Republican "establishment figures" gathered in Washington, DC to "lunch" and foment a plan to derail Donald Trump. Of course, this is only one plan in the works hatched by Republican oligarchs to place their desired "golden boy" or another loser in the election against another Democrat, socialist/communist. Desperation is running rampant among Republicans. The question is "how desperate is the Republican Party to thwart Donald Trump?" On Friday, the Republican National Standing Rules Committee informed its "membership convention delegates are not bound to the will of Americans who voted in the primary." If this is the case, what is the point in having a primary? Infowars.com reports:

Curly Haugland of the Republican National Committeeman for North Dakota said in a letter sent out on March 11 delegates may "vote according to their personal choice in all matters to come before the Republican National Convention, including the vote to nominate the Republican Candidate for President" and disregard voters. Haugland dismisses primaries as "nearly worthless 'beauty contests'" and believes delegates "have been bound only once in the history of the Republican Party."

According to the letter sent by Haugland, "In 1976, the Ford campaign, afraid of losing "pledged" delegates to Reagan forces and having the strength of delegate numbers needed, forced the adoption of the "Justice Resolution" which amended the convention rules to bind the delegates to cast their convention votes according to the results of binding primaries. This historic event was the first convention in the history of the Republican Party where the delegates were denied the freedom to vote as they wished in the nomination vote for President. And, 1976 was also the last time delegates have been bound by convention rules to cast their votes according to the results of binding primary elections, since the 1980 convention rescinded the Justice Resolution entirely restoring the prohibition of binding."

In other words, every delegate is a superdelegate. It is a tactic that has been used by the Democrat Party for years. As Nate Silver explains, "Superdelegates were created in part to give Democratic Party elites the opportunity to put their finger on the scale and prevent nominations like those of George McGovern in 1972 or Jimmy Carter in 1976, which displeased party insiders."