Tuesday, July 31, 2007

When? Are you sure?

This is too good to believe. Sit down before watching or you'll laugh yourself into a wall.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

I'll take Two!

Looking around at the curios he noticed a very life-like,
life-size bronze statue of a rat. It had no price tag but it looked
so striking that he decided he must have it.

He took it to the owner and asked,
"How much is the bronze rat?
"Twelve dollars for the rat, and a hundred dollars if you bring it back."
"I'll take the rat and I won't be bringing it back."

As he walked down the street carrying the bronze rat, he noticed
that a few real rats had crawled out of alleys and sewers, and began
following him down the street. This was a bit disconcerting, so he
began to walk a little bit faster. Within a couple of blocks, the group
of rats behind him grew to over a hundred, and they began squealing.

He started to trot towards the Harbor. He took a nervous look
around and saw that the rats numbered in the thousands, maybe in the
millions, and they were all squealing and coming towards him faster and faster.
Terrified, he ran to the edge of the water and threw the bronze rat as
far out into Galveston Bay as he could.
Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped into the water after
it, and were drowned.

The man walked back to the curio shop. "Aha," said the owner,
You're bringing it back !"
No," said the man. "I came back to see how much you
want for that little bronze Mexican over there?

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Monday, July 02, 2007

Reagan’s Speech at the Brandenburg Gate


It was on June 12, 1987, that President Ronald Reagan gave his famous “tear down this wall” speech in West Berlin, an event that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

Here are some excerpts from that speech:

“Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same -- still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state.

“Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar…

“…In the 1950's, Khrushchev predicted: ‘We will bury you.’ But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history.

“In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind-too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

“And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom…

“…There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

(SOURCE: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)



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