Quote of the Day and related news

DanielJ says,

Doesn't anyone else understand that "hate speech" is the only speech that needs protecting?

Incogman also weighs in on the "Hate Crimes" bill, championed by the ADL and other powerful Jewish groups.

Justin Raimondo comments on the recently pardoned Israeli spies from our "ally" country in the Middle East, and the unbelievable power that they and The Lobby wield in Washington D.C.

Typical news and culture today

This morning our local radio newscasters were giving the headline teasers. For the first, they warned that Degenerates were becoming much more creative at getting to your children. Then, without a hint of irony, they changed tone and tantalizingly confided that they would also share with us, over the public airwaves, during morning-get-ready-for-school time, the identities of the sexiest flight attendants.

Yesterday afternoon an FM spiritual station (I couldn't truly call anything on the radio "Christian.") interviewed some distinguished empty shirt about the alarming accelerating decline in church attendance. The upshot was that he really didn't know why people were leaving, but he's praying about it and his people should have a committee on the problem soon. And now for something completely different : Coming up next, we will be looking at the progress of ordaining women in the church. The twit behind the microphone intimated that they will explore how to continue bringing them up to the level "that men have always enjoyed." Explore. Progress. Enjoyed.

Who is writing their copy? Lewis Carroll? George Orwell? Sigmund Freud?

A highly rated online German course I recently previewed for my young children has a young German man say some simple sentence auf Deutsch and then has the young British girl arousedly effusing that we, too, could "fall in love" with his "sexy voice" if we would continue with the program. And this was in the introductory first lesson. God only knows what worse follows in the rest of the course, because I shan't.

I don't listen to much radio anymore, and almost no television. Yet I find examples like the ones above most any day, whilst flipping randomly through the channels on the way to work or while searching for the weather report. I can only imagine what degradation young people are discovering and imbibing when they search or when they simply leave their radios and televisions on as most people do.

Dear Parents and Friends, I impore you : Separate, lead, homeschool, now.

By the way, fuer Deutsch lernen, I recommend Gene Moutoux's Essential German course, free online; Essential German Grammar, by Guy Stern and E. F. Bleiler; and Pimsleur German for aural and oral practice.

Why study Latin and Greek?

A great answer from Gail Trimble :

I chose to study Classics at university mostly because of the variety. Already at school in Latin and Greek I could combine language work with studying different kinds of literature, and I liked the idea of being able to study philosophy, history, art and even philology (though at the time I wasn’t too sure what that was) all within one degree.

Nothing brings together school "subjects" as well as a Classical Education does. Bene dictum, Gail.

An encouraging word from Ygg

as we tend the fires and welcome the haggard stragglers back into camp. Thanks to an anonymous fellow traveler and patriot for this from The Seven Samurai by Yggdrasil.

"So in the meantime, it is our duty to wait patiently, and to hold ourselves in readiness.

Every one of you has skills and a role to play.

It is your duty to resist debt and conspicuous consumption. Do not allow your labor to strengthen our Marxist slave masters. Build your resources and contribute to the effort to spread our message to those with the spirit to hear and join our movement.

It is your duty to spread your genes into the next generation.

Any young lady who is willing to interact with you has already inherited the essential core of racial awareness that you seek. Remember, our ideas have been branded as markers of low status and low ability to support and nurture children. Stick to the socially acceptable displays of love, tenderness and dependability that are the psychological markers of evolutionary fitness in the sexual selection process. Display fitness for supporting her and nurturing her children in an appropriate male role.

It is your duty to spread the message of your commitment and your calling in ways that do not diminish your own status or livelihood. Among probable enemies keep your counsel, yet spread the message diligently among our own who display a disposition to understand and respond positively.

It is your duty to accumulate the resources to be a good missionary for the cause and to contribute to the efforts of others who display great skill in that calling.

It is your duty to be patient and to remember that your calling is one of measured and disciplined sacrifice for a nation that will only value that calling in times of emergency and may never acknowledge nor approve your efforts on their behalf.

As the emergency of our people becomes more apparent to all, one from among us will emerge as the Sensei, the Leader, the Fuhrer. We will know him when the time arrives.

And when that Leader emerges, and upon taking diligent counsel announces to us that the time has indeed arrived, then shall we unleash the ancient hammer of Thor - the hammer of our hallowed ancestors and departed heroes! Only then shall we demonstrate to the other nations of the World just how seriously we take the survival of our own, and just how little selfishness and individualism we will tolerate until the emergency has passed and our independence and control over our own destiny have been assured.

To the performance of all of the above duties I strictly enjoin each of you,

as I remain faithfully yours..." -- Yggdrasil

Thanks, I needed that.

Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach

by Heather Mac Donald, from Spring 1998, here. It's a great article and goes well with some of my favorite educational history books such as Richard Mitchell's Gift of Fire and The Graves of Academe; The War Against Grammar, by David Mulroy; and Who Killed Homer, by Victor Davis Hanson.

Schooling was bad in 1998, thanks to the liberalism of the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations. It is worse now, and if the current barrel of monkeys is any indicator, the future looks dark indeed.

Goldman trader shares three big ideas with Lloyd

From ZeroHedge.com:

To: Lloyd Blankfein
Re: Winning the Public Relations War

Six months ago, with what I mistakenly took to be your tacit approval, I attempted to address ordinary Americans, almost as equals. They envied and resented our firm; I sought merely to correct their misunderstandings about Goldman Sachs and send them on their way, so that they might more briskly resume their quest for gainful employment.

In hindsight, I misjudged their ability to see the reality of their situation, and of ours. At the time I accepted your strong suggestion that I never again try to speak directly to mortals -- or, as you referred to them, “The Morts.”

Now our predicament is suddenly more dire. Ordinary Americans wish to control not just our pay but our core values: We at Goldman have long stood for the right of every prop group to trade against its firm’s customers. If we abdicate that right, who are we, deep down?

In just the past few days many of us on the Goldman trading floor have wrestled with that question. We believe that rather than re-think our core values we should re-think our relations with the American public.

Hence this memo. Your recent non-verbal signals -- your habit of passing directly behind my trading desk en route to the elevators, your selection of the urinal adjacent to my own -- convince me that you continue to value my thoughts.

As it happens, I have recently conducted a thorough study of the culture of ordinary Americans. Please take the following ideas in the spirit in which they are intended: a team spirit.

There is no “I” in Goldman Sachs, or in me. Nor will there ever be. more >>

Michael Lewis worked at Salomon Brothers (another gigantic, rapacious Jewish firm) as a bond salesman, quit, and wrote about his adventures there in the humorous 1989 best-seller, Liars's Poker.

Recently, he wrote a note to those Morts who ignorantly bash Goldman Sachs, here.

"Tea Party" protestors silent when Bush was trashing the Constitution

The only things that conservatives really seem to care about these days, now that all real history, Latin, Greek, Bible, and other liberal arts courses have been removed from the public school curriculum and long forgotten, are money and economics, and the associated politics. They have been reduced almost to the level of the soulless, nationless, rational and economic animals that Marxism and Globo-Capitalism assumed they were. I call them ICU's, individual consumer units.

I've said this for years and the tea parties have not changed my opinion. As Timothy Egan reminds us, the Tea party protestors were silent when Bush was trashing the Constitution. They have long been blinded by the RedTeam-BlueTeam game and only after their own pockets were picked did they say anything.

Their only arguments on talk radio are about the economics of a topic, even when it comes to illegal aliens. They still insist they are good multiculti non-racists and loudly proclaim their indifference to the ethnicity of their leader. Principle, culture, European identity and nationhood, freedom of association, et cetera, are rarely used as the basis of their arguments against the latest government intrusion. The spontaneous nature of and anger from tea party protests are real enough. But it is the rare host, caller, writer, or tea party protestor who demands more than his savings back, and rarer still the one who knows the rich culture he has been cheated out of.

The Wall Street Mob

From Busting Out The Joint, by Gonzalo Lira:

Around 1990, I saw “Goodfellas” when it first came out. Scorcese’s quasi-nostalgic take on the Italo-American gangster culture of the 1960’s and ’70’s was like a tricked out Cadillac convertible: Eye-catching and glittery, and very very memorable.

One of the scenes that struck me—and a film-school textbook example of how to stage a tracking shot—was the scene where the mobsters “bust out” a neighborhood restaurant. The camera dollied sideways as it first showed a long line of delivery men bringing in an obviously excessive amount of goods and supplies to the restaurant, then it showed how mobsters were taking those supplies out of the restaurant through the front door and loading them onto the back of a truck, all in one smooth motion.

This was called “busting out the joint”.

In mob parlance, as per Scorcese, “busting out” a restaurant or other business means buying supplies on credit, then stealing those supplies and leaving the business holding the bag. When the credit ceiling of the business is reached, the business is declared bankrupt and the creditors are stiffed. The mobsters, of course, walk away with all the supplies that were bought on credit and sell them off for a 100% profit. The beauty of the scam is that the business (and the business’ owners) are the ones stuck with the legal responsibility, while the creditors are stuck with the tab

...

By whatever means, executives found themselves in control of fairly successful businesses. They had the businesses gorge on credit, while simultaneously paying themselves exorbitant fees and “special dividends”, or else they had the businesses take on suicidal levels of exposure at commesurately huge profit, which they siphoned to themselves in the form of salaries and bonuses. And when inevitably there was a dip and the businesses found themselves unable to pay . . .

These businesses were "busted out" -—just like the mobsters in GoodFellas. ...

...

Based on evidence gathered in the NY Times and Bloomberg—neither of them exactly Conspiracy Theory Central—you could successfully prosecute Maurice Greenberg and Thomas H. Lee Partners and their cronies for what they did to AIG and Simmons respectively. And in all the other cases going on, where Wall Streeters have walked away with obscene pay packages while leaving broken businesses behind, there’s practically a plaintive wail of retribution begging to be assuaged.

Only thing is—nobody is prosecuting anybody.

Of course not. They're all of the same looting, pillaging, raping tribe. Hey, Boy Scout, whaddya expect from this crew? Git ouda heah.

A quotation fit for modern education

Classicists will love this one from Evelyn Waugh. 

[Headmaster]: "Parents are not interested in producing the ‘complete man’ any more. They want to qualify their boys for jobs in the modern world. You can hardly blame them, can you?” “Oh yes,” said Scott-King. “I can and do ... I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.”

This extract could have just as easily come from Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Orwell's 1984, or even Brave New World.  Richard Gamble provides the correct context, along with his comments, here. 

How Goldman Sachs does it

Matt Taibbi explains how they have been screwing us (for trillion$) and how they continue to get away with it. In the first part of this drama, Robert Rubin is Jud Suess, and later he, together with Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers, somehow ends up as Prince Valiant. Typical manipulation of the facts, but then, what should we expect from Rolling Stone?

Notice too that Goldman Sachs is always an "it," a sentient being acting of "its" own volition; there are no responsible human actors inside, only the Golem. We are not told exactly who is doing what inside the monster. Gee, I wonder why.

The articles' explanations about the oil bubble makes pretty good sense. If true, it shows James Kunstler to be not only a foul-mouthed, multicultural, leftist, commie jerkweed, but an incompetent moron to boot. Believe it or not.

Another lesson: if you are inside Goldman and are offered a responsible, high-profile position outside the mother ship, decline it.