Puzzle solved.
And why is this sleezy innuendo-filled thread in General Questions?
because I had failed to read the mainboard topic about secret socieites first, that’s why.
Cecil has all the answers on the mainboard:
I just found out that out of 55 Prime Ministers of England/UK, 41 were involved in some shadowy agency called “Oxbridge.”
Now THAT is a powerful institution.
Clearly he got in on the Foreign-Born Muslim Socialists scholarship.
Blunnnnggggg!
I’m sorry. That was the sound of my eyeballs popping out of my head and hitting the monitor.
You hear that such people exist, but encountering one directly is like finding bigfoot in your bird bath.
From Wikipedia regarding membership in Skull & Bones:
“If the society had a good year, this is what the “ideal” group will consist of: a football captain; a Chairman of the Yale Daily News; a conspicuous radical; a Whiffenpoof; a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a Chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies’ man with two motorcycles; an ex-service man; a negro, if there are enough to go around; **a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever **…”
How could Obama NOT be in such a group! I mean other than he didn’t go to Yale.
It’s also not clear to anyone how I paid for Law School, except for the Law School, me, and my bank. It was all legit, but you may not have the details.
You could make a much better argument that Harvard and Yale law schools now control the U.S., since every single one of the justices of the Supreme Court graduated from one or the another (except that Ginsburg transferred from Harvard to Columbia to stay near her husband):
Why is that? Well, these days the people who get into the top law schools are seldom old-money types. To get into a top law school, you have to have an absolutely stellar academic record through college. While it’s theoretically possible to go to a second-rate law school and then show yourself to be a brilliant legal scholar there and afterwards, that’s quite hard to do. Look at the background up to high school of the current justices. There’s not much in common there except that they did so well in high school that they got accepted to a very good college. Harvard and Yale law schools have the best reputations, so they all applied to them after college and got accepted. If you do very well at those two law schools, you’re put on the fast track to an eventual Supreme Court position. You have a very good chance to get a one-year clerkship to a lower-level federal court judge and a very good chance to get a second one-year clerkship to a Supreme Court justice. Then you can move up in the standard ways by taking a job at a top law firm or teaching at a law school and eventually being appointed a judge at some level.
This doesn’t mean that everyone who graduates with very good grades from Harvard or Yale (or some other top) law school ends up as a Supreme Court justice. Most just end up as well-off but ordinary lawyers or low-level judges or even leave the legal field. Some graduates from second-rate law schools end up as judges. But the fast track to being a Supreme Court justice these days is clearly to go to a top law school (and then to do well at your jobs after that), and just by accident that happens to mean that all the present justices went to Harvard or Yale.
At one point, I actually thought I should go to law school (although eventually I came to my senses and didn’t). But my father wanted me to do so, so he took me to Yale Law School to meet some people. So as I was waiting to meet the dean or associate dean, I studied a picture on the wall of the law school class of 1966. I counted as I went, “Senator, senator, senator, judge, CEO, etc.” It was amazing. I counted about six senators, five members of the House, various judges, etc.
I’ll be happy to talk about how I paid for college and grad school. I grew up on a farm. Neither of my parents went to college. None of my grandparents went to high school. My father was a farmer and a factory worker. (My grandfather could make a living off our seventy-two and a half acre farm. My father couldn’t possibly do it, so he worked full-time in a Ford engine plant and part-time as a farmer.) My mother didn’t work outside the home after she got married because she had eight kids. Despite that, I graduated from a first-rate undergraduate college, got master’s degrees in math and linguistics at excellent grad schools, and got a job as a mathematician which I’ve worked at now for thirty-one years and nine months.
There is no conceivable way that my parents could have paid for any except a tiny fraction of the cost of my education. That must mean that a secret society paid for it, right? Except that that’s nonsense, and it’s insulting nonsense. I paid for college and grad school the way that anyone lucky (and presumably smart) enough who comes from a working-class background does. Ford was offering competitive four-year scholarships to a small set of the children of blue-collar and low-level white-collar employees when I graduated from high school. I was lucky enough to win one. This paid all my tuition and most of my room and board. Even then I had to use loans to pay for the rest of my room and board, my extra expenses, and the cost of my traveling to college, since my parents essentially couldn’t afford any of that. I paid for grad school with some financial aid and with teaching assistantships, plus some money from not very well paying temporary jobs. I made it through because I lived incredibly cheaply for the first twenty-nine years and five months of my life before getting a decent job. I’m not claiming to be a saint for doing that. Lots of people from working-class backgrounds did similar things, and many of them worked harder than me (and are now mostly better off than me). My point is that Obama or anyone else from something less than a rich family could almost certainly find a way to pay their way through a top law school. Incidentally, Obama didn’t come from a working-class background. His mother eventually earned a Ph.D., his father earned a master’s, his stepfather was a well-off businessman, and his grandparents (who he lived with for several years) were well off too.
Coincidentally, a Ford Foundation fellowship paid for my father’s graduate work at Yale Law School.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
My dad was in Skull & Bones about the time of that quote - he keeps a picture of himself and a bunch of other serious kids in suits lined up in front of a Jolly Roger by the front door as a conversation piece. Now, depending on who’s telling the story, dad was there as either the conspicuous radical, or the guy nobody had heard of (or, as I sometimes suspect, the notorious *pothead *with the 94 average); you’d think he was there as the token Jew, but actually, there was another Jewish guy in his class, although *he *may have gotten in on the “jock” and “son of a sports legend” ticket.
Anyway, I can assure you that my dad, while a great guy and a respected member of his community, does NOT control the world, or really anything much beyond his own back yard. He has a few rich friends, though.
Which one, Glenn or Stephen?
Koufax had no children. I checked.
Damn it. I forgot how few American Jewish sports legends there actually are.
Steve, BTW. Nice guy.
!!!
And that’s why I shouldn’t post drunk.
Democratic countries do allow it, and secret societies, sometimes ones that include powerful people and people opposed to their country’s government, do exist in other countries. (They undoubtedly exist in many undemocratic countries too, even those where they are not “allowed”. If they are secret enough, their governments won’t know to close them down.)
Consider the Cambridge (England) Apostles, for example. Many famous and influential people, including at least one cabinet minister, and several spies for the Soviets, were former members. Like the Skull and Bones, its existence has been known about for a long time. As far as I am aware, despite its having produced a few traitors (as well as many people honored and admired by the British establishment) it still exists.
What??!! Citizens in those clubs have the power to vote??!! I say there’s something dangerously wrong in this country when members of fraternities can vote! What’s next? Freedom of speech? Man, someone ought to do something about this. I’m glad you’ve brought it to our attention, Mr. Quatro.