October 27, 2008

HousingPANIC Quote of the Day

One more time, a HP classic...


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart
the center cannot hold.


- Yeats

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

--Alexis de Tocqueville

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."

-- C.S Lewis

Anonymous said...

Arrest Bushco and Cheneyburton.

Do it NOW.

Anonymous said...

"...they do so with the approval of their consciences..."

Now THAT was a truly slick PR piece; a crafty variation on the the old cover story of incompetence:

The evil bastards serve not their own greed; they do it because they truly believe yet are misguided.

No.

Anonymous said...

"if you can get someone to eat a spoon full of shit they will eat a barrel full" ... KLP

Anonymous said...

The barbaric Europeans who killed and robbed the brightest most innovative and productive ‘Jewish people’ amongst them, after taxing them to death for hundreds of years are about to learn that one cannot achieve success by stealing from their neighbors.

The massive European economic collapse coming was obvious to anyone who looked at the fundamentals.

Europe will never recover.

God bless all those who left everything everything everything behind on that rotten continent some by choice and some to survive to create a new beginning and shape a Great Country called ‘The US of A’

I bet on the Greenback
I bet the US will come out of this stronger, and an even better place for all its citizens

Anonymous said...

Entropy is natural. Part of the overall scheme. . .

Jersey Girl

Anonymous said...

"...they do so with the approval of their consciences..."

The tyranny in Singapore seems to have worked out quite well.

Anonymous said...

.


When asked if he had a pimple or a boil,

"It was a Gummy Bear"!

Homer Simpson

.

Anonymous said...

A four letter word J-O-B-S

Joe Biden

Anonymous said...

"Kill Whitey"!


every Obama voter

Anonymous said...

New home sales up in Sept. Me thinks the market should rally.
Oh yea...the rest of the world's stock markets are pricing in a devastating recession. I guess Wall Street is populated not just by a$$holes, but by retards as well.
Good Luck

Anonymous said...

Arrest barney frank, nancy pelosi, harry reid, barbara boxer, diane feinstien,Al gore, B Hussein Obama, Ted kennedy, Chuck Schummer, Chris Dodd, Jesse Jackson.....



need I go on?

Anonymous said...

And the name of that poem is...

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


One of my two favorite poems. The other, by Rudyard Kipling, is The Gods of the Copybook Headings, explains what happens to a nation that casts off the moral wisdom of the ages and tries to follow "The Gods of the Marketplace" (ideas that go against the wisdom of history).

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Anonymous said...

"Entropy is natural. Part of the overall scheme. . .

Jersey Girl"

The Second Law of Thermodynamics never sleeps.

Ross said...

ZIRP here we come!

Anonymous said...

I love these quotes. Wish you would post one a day.

Rob Dawg said...

Centre not center.

Anonymous said...

What's happening with Countrywide's loan workouts?

Anonymous said...

Take the opportunity to sell today, Keith, during this fake rally. SELL SELL SELL

edd browne said...

It's unavoidable that some people
lack a developed secular conscience,
and will cause harm to the extent that
they lack fear of serious punishment
or painful regrets through self-review.

(by secular, I mean largely free of
justifications for group; religion; philosophy)

Since those lacking informed secular
conscience are not likely to choose suicide,
we need to prove a system of certain,
timely, and disproportionate pain. Really.

Anonymous said...

What is the difference between a republic and a democracy?

A republic is a nation ruled by law. The highest law in a republic is its constitution. In a republic everyone obeys the constitution.

A democracy, on the other hand, is a nation ruled by men. The highest law in a democracy is the "Will of the People." In a democracy, everyone obeys a man who represents the Will of the People. A man who represents the Will of the People is better known as a dictator.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"

~ Benjamin Franklin, leader of the American Revolution

"We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy... It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."

~ Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury to George Washington, author of the Federalist Papers

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

~ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

~ Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

~ James Madison, 4th President of the United States, Father of the Constitution

"The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived."

~ John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States

"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

~ John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1801-1835

For those who think we live in a "Democracy," read more:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/chu6.html

Anonymous said...

"by secular, I mean largely free of justifications for group; religion; philosophy"

I went to an episcopal church on sunday and they had a guest priest who said: "the church is the only institution which has the purpose of serving the community, not itself."

And then he went on to talk about how attendance at church was falling, worldwide, and how we had to go out into the community and bring them the love of christ.

After the service, I told him about Jesus on the Lake of Galilee and how his homily reminded me that Christians like staying in their boats and draw hard lines between safety and danger so, unlike Christ, we fall into the water when we venture out into the real world.

I sort of implied that he liked staying in the boat and that's why people don't come to church but he wasn't looking for philosophical answers; he just wanted to be seen as being profound and inspirational but he forgot that the emperor's naked.

so, long live secularism! and our ability to see no clothes.

edd browne said...

Wikipedia on "referendum":
"Hitler's use of the plebiscite
is one reason why, since World War II,
there has been no provision in
Germany for the holding of
referendums at the federal level."

Our U.S. Constitution should prohibit
amendment of State constitutions by
ballot referendum.
Constitutions are a foundation of
justice, not majority rule. That's
why amending the U.S. Constitution
is the province of state and federal
legislatures.

Anonymous said...

"I bet on the Greenback
I bet the US will come out of this stronger, and an even better place for all its citizens"

I would certainly hope so because the way the USA is today, it can only go up right?

I mean Europe is toast isn't it? I was talking to a girl the other day and she was like, do they have running water in Germany?

I had to think, do they? I mean I think they do right?

But then I remembered I was at Octoberfest and they had water in the bathrooms and water for rinsing out the beer glasses so I think it's a pretty advanced country.

And the German girls all had very nice teeth to the must be putting flouride in the water there too.

Mind you I had just come from Amsterdam and Germany was still more of a blur to me, Oktoberfest didn't help but I did see a live beheading there. They do it 25 times a day at this one tent I can't remember the name of it. Was very spooky but kinda wish they would bring it back for all the guys like Modzillo.

Anonymous said...

Really folks, other than the sex clubs, Europe has very little, economically over the USA. And from what I'd gathered, there are sex clubs in Australia (more like the US) so Europe doesn't quite have a monopoly over there.

Where the USA has fallen is that we'd gone from GE/GM being technological manufacturing companies to that of financial services. That's the failure, in a nutshell.

If we stick to the things that work, like technology and manufacturing based around tech (and also legalize sex clubs, so that Europe loses it edge), then we'll do just fine for the long haul.

Anonymous said...

I'm gonna need some Cliffs Notes to read this column today.

Anonymous said...

.




J-o-b-s is a three letter word according to Joe the Asshole Biden!!!



Genius I'm tellin ya!

.

Anonymous said...

"Europe will never recover.

God bless all those who left everything everything everything behind on that rotten continent some by choice and some to survive to create a new beginning and shape a Great Country called ‘The US of A’"

Americans are so cute when they forget that they practiced slavery late into the 19th century.