President Reagan: The Reagan Wit

Workplace humor

A Man rings his boss and says, “I have to take a day off work, because my wife and I are having a baby.”
“oh, ok.”
The next day the man comes to work and his boss says, “Is it a boy or a girl?”
The man says, “I dunno, I’ll tell you in 9 months.”

Actual Federal Employee Evaluation Quotes

• Works well only when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap
• His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity.
• I would not allow this employee to breed.
• This employee is really not so much of a has-been but more of a definite won’t be.
• Since my last report, he has reached rock bottom and has started to dig.
• When she opens her mouth, it seems that this is only to change whichever foot was previously in there.
• He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle.
• This young lady has delusions of adequacy.
• She sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.
• This employee should go far-and the sooner he starts the better.
• This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.
• Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
• Got into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn’t watching.
• A room temperature IQ.
• Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thing to hold it all together.
• A gross ignoramus-144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus.
• A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on.
• A prime candidate for natural deselection.
• Bright as Alaska in December.
• One-celled organisms out score him in IQ tests.
• Donated his brain to science before he was done using it.
• Fell out of the family tree.
• Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train is going nowhere.
• Has two brains, one is lost and the other is out looking for it.
• He is so dense, light bends around him.
• If brains were taxed, he’d get a rebate.
• If he were any more stupid, he’d have to be watered twice a week.
• If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you’d get change.
• If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean.
• It is hard to believe that he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm.
• One neuron short of a synapse.
• Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, he only gargled.
• Takes him 1 1/2 hours to watch the 60 minutes program.
• Was left on the Tilt-A-Whirl a bit too long as a baby.
• Wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.

Rules For Work

1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 4:00 and then bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.
2. If it’s really a rush job, run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to inquire how it’s going. That helps. Or even better, hover behind me, advising me at every keystroke.
3. Always leave without telling anyone where you’re going. It gives me a chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.
4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books, or supplies, don’t open the door for me. I need to learn how to function as a paraplegic and opening doors with no arms is good training in case I should ever be injured and lose all use of my limbs.
5. If you give me more than one job to do, don’t tell me which is priority. I am psychic.
6. Do your best to keep me late. I adore this office and really have nowhere to go or anything to do. I have no life beyond work.
7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. If that gets out, it could mean a promotion.
8. If you don’t like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular in conversations. I was born to be whipped.
9. If you have special instructions for a job, don’t write them down. In fact, save them until the job is almost done. No use confusing me with useful information.
10. Never introduce me to the people you’re with. I have no right to know anything. In the corporate food chain, I am plankton. When you refer to them later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.
11. Be nice to me only when the job I’m doing for you could really change your life and send you straight to managers’ hell.
12. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it’s nice to know someone is less fortunate. I especially like the story about having to pay so much taxes on the bonus check you received for being such a good manager.
13. Wait until my yearly review and THEN tell me what my goals SHOULD have been. Give me a mediocre performance rating with a cost of living increase. I’m not here for the money anyway

Sports Wipeouts

On This Day, 3-30-08: 15th Amendment

Japanese set up puppet regime at Nanking

On this day, Japan establishes its own government in conquered Nanking, the former capital of Nationalist China.

In 1937, Japan drummed up a rationale for war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China (claiming Chinese troops attacked Japanese troops on maneuvers in a so-called “autonomous” region of China) and invaded northeastern China, bombing Shanghai and carving out a new state, Manchukuo.

Money and supplies poured into Free China from the United States, Britain, and France, until the Burma Road, which permitted free passage of goods into China from the West, was closed after a Japanese invasion of Indochina. Making matters more difficult, Chiang was forced to fight on two fronts: one against the Japanese (with U.S. help in the person of Gen. Joseph Stillwell, Chiang’s chief of staff), and another against his ongoing political nemesis, the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Tse-tung. (Although the United States advised concentrating on the Japanese first as the pre-eminent threat, Chiang was slow to listen.)

The Japanese proceeded to prosecute a war of terror in Manchukuo. With the capture of Nanking (formerly the Nationalist Chinese capital, which was now relocated to Chungking) by the Central China Front Army in December 1937, atrocities virtually unparalleled commenced. The army, under orders of its commander, Gen. Matsui Iwane, carried out the mass execution of more than 50,000 civilians, as well as tens of thousands of rapes. Nanking and surrounding areas were burned and looted, with one-third of its buildings utterly destroyed. The “Rape of Nanking” galvanized Western animus against the Japanese.

On March 30, 1940, Nanking was declared by the Japanese to be the center of a new Chinese government, a regime controlled by Wang Ching-wei, a defector from the Nationalist cause and now a Japanese puppet.

“Japanese set up puppet regime at Nanking.” 2008. The History Channel website. 30 Mar 2008, 02:14 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6758.

1492 – King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed a decree expelling all Jews from Spain.

1533 – Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

1814 – The allied European nations against Napoleon marched into Paris.

1867 – The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars.

1870 – Texas was readmitted to the Union.

1905 – U.S. President Roosevelt was chosen to mediate in the Russo-Japanese peace talks.

1950 – U.S. President Truman denounced Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.

1972 – The Eastertide Offensive began when North Vietnamese troops crossed into the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the northern portion of South Vietnam.

1993 – In the Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown hit his first home run.

1998 – Rolls-Royce was purchased by BMW in a $570 million deal.

King George endorses New England Restraining Act

Hoping to keep the New England colonies dependent on the British, King George III formally endorses the New England Restraining Act on this day in 1775. The New England Restraining Act required New England colonies to trade exclusively with Great Britain as of July 1. An additional rule would come into effect on July 20, banning colonists from fishing in the North Atlantic.

“King George endorses New England Restraining Act.” 2008. The History Channel website. 30 Mar 2008, 02:15 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=326.

15th Amendment adopted

Following its ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, the 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment reads, “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” One day after it was adopted, Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote under the authority of the 15th Amendment.

“15th Amendment adopted.” 2008. The History Channel website. 30 Mar 2008, 02:16 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4876.

President Reagan shot

On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr.

The president had just finished addressing a labor meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel and was walking with his entourage to his limousine when Hinckley, standing among a group of reporters, fired six shots at the president, hitting Reagan and three of his attendants. White House Press Secretary James Brady was shot in the head and critically wounded, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy was shot in the side, and District of Columbia policeman Thomas Delahaney was shot in the neck. After firing the shots, Hinckley was overpowered and pinned against a wall, and President Reagan, apparently unaware that he’d been shot, was shoved into his limousine by a Secret Service agent and rushed to the hospital.

“President Reagan shot.” 2008. The History Channel website. 30 Mar 2008, 02:17 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6852.

On This Day, 3-28-08: Jesse Owens

Nuclear accident at Three Mile Island

At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry begins when a pressure valve in the Unit-2 reactor at Three Mile Island fails to close. Cooling water, contaminated with radiation, drained from the open valve into adjoining buildings, and the core began to dangerously overheat.

The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant was built in 1974 on a sandbar on Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River, just 10 miles downstream from the state capitol in Harrisburg. In 1978, a second state-of-the-art reactor began operating on Three Mile Island, which was lauded for generating affordable and reliable energy in a time of energy crises.

After the cooling water began to drain out of the broken pressure valve on the morning of March 28, 1979, emergency cooling pumps automatically went into operation. Left alone, these safety devices would have prevented the development of a larger crisis. However, human operators in the control room misread confusing and contradictory readings and shut off the emergency water system. The reactor was also shut down, but residual heat from the fission process was still being released. By early morning, the core had heated to over 4,000 degrees, just 1,000 degrees short of meltdown. In the meltdown scenario, the core melts, and deadly radiation drifts across the countryside, fatally sickening a potentially great number of people.

“Nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.” 2008. The History Channel website. 28 Mar 2008, 12:17 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6850.

1774 – Britain passed the Coercive Act against Massachusetts.

1834 – The U.S. Senate voted to censure President Jackson for the removal of federal deposits from the Bank of the United States.

1854 – The Crimean War began with Britain and France declaring war on Russia.

1865 – Outdoor advertising legislation was enacted in New York. The law banned “painting on stones, rocks and trees.”

1898 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the U.S. to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen. This meant that they could not be deported under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

1917 – During World War I the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was founded.

1933 – In Germany, the Nazis ordered a ban on all Jews in businesses, professions and schools.

1941 – The Italian fleet was defeated by the British at the Battle of Matapan.

1942 – British naval forces raided the Nazi occupied French port of St. Nazaire.

1945 – Germany launched the last of the V-2 rockets against England.

1986 – The U.S. Senate passed $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras.

1990 – Jesse Owens received the Congressional Gold Medal from U.S. President George Bush.

Funeral held for the man behind the guillotine

The funeral of Guillotin, the inventor and namesake of the infamous execution device, takes place outside of Paris, France. Guillotin had what he felt were the purest motives for inventing the guillotine and was deeply distressed at how his reputation had become besmirched in the aftermath.

Guillotin had bestowed the deadly contraption on the French as a “philanthropic gesture” for the systematic criminal justice reform that was taking place in 1789. The machine was intended to show the intellectual and social progress of the Revolution; by killing aristocrats and journeymen the same way, equality in death was ensured.

The first use of the guillotine was on April 25 1792, when Nicolas Pelletier was put to death for armed robbery and assault in Place de Greve. The newspapers reported that guillotine was not an immediate sensation. The crowds seemed to miss the gallows at first. However, it quickly caught on with the public and many thought it brought dignity back to the executioner.

However, the prestige of the guillotine fell precipitously due to its frequent use in the French Terror following the Revolution. It became the focal point of the awful political executions and was so closely identified with the terrible abuses of the time that it was perceived as partially responsible for the excesses itself. Still, it was used sporadically in France into the 20th century.

“Funeral held for the man behind the guillotine.” 2008. The History Channel website. 28 Mar 2008, 12:24 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=952.

1939: Spanish Civil War ends

In Spain, the Republican defenders of Madrid raise the white flag over the city, and the bloody three-year Spanish Civil War comes to an end. The conflict began in 1936 when General Francisco Franco led a right-wing army revolt in Morocco, dividing Spain into two camps, the Republicans and the Nationalists. The Republicans, made up of Catalonian and Basque patriots and an uneasy alliance of leftist radicals, suffered steady losses against Franco’s Nationalists. Franco appealed to the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy for help, while the USSR aided the Republican side. In addition, thousands of idealistic radicals from France, America, and elsewhere formed the International Brigades to aid the Republican cause. In early 1939, Catalonia fell to Franco; soon after, Madrid fell too. Up to a million lives were lost in the conflict, the most devastating in Spanish history.

http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/this_day_in_history/

Although I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either.
Jesse Owens

Driving humor

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

How To Identify Where A Driver Is From

One hand on wheel, one hand on horn: Chicago One hand on wheel, one finger out window: New York One hand on wheel, one hand on newspaper, foot solidly on accelerator: Boston One hand on wheel, cradling cell phone, brick on accelerator: California. With gun in lap: Riverside Both hands on wheel, eyes shut, both feet on brake, quivering in terror: Ohio, but driving in California. Both hands in air, gesturing, both feet on accelerator, head turned to talk to someone in back seat: Italy One hand on latte, one knee on wheel, cradling cell phone, foot on brake, mind on game: Seattle One hand on wheel, one hand on hunting rifle, alternating between both feet being on the accelerator and both on the brake, throwing a McDonalds bag out the window: Texas city male One hand constantly refocusing the rearview mirror to show different angles of the BIG hair, one hand going between mousse, brush, and rattail to keep the helmet hair going, both feet on the accelerator, poodle steering the car, chrome .38 revolver with mother of pearl inlaid handle in the glove compartment: Texas female Four wheel drive pickup truck, shotgun mounted in rear window, beer cans on floor, squirrel tails attached to antenna, cousin/spouse in passenger seat: Arkansas Two hands gripping wheel, blue hair barely visible above window level, driving 35 on the interstate in the left lane with the left blinker on: Florida.