Thursday, July 24, 2003 :::
 

The Charlie Rangel quote

I personally don't get any satisfaction that it takes, you know, 200,000 troops, 250,000 troops, to knock off two bums.

reminds me of a joke that I stole from the internet rather than put in my own words:

There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were
having with one of their multimillion dollar machines.

They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.

The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is".

The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again.

The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for
his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.

The engineer responded briefly:

• One chalk mark $1
• Knowing where to put it $49,999

It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.

(The rare Charlie Rangel comment that was not a joke would, of course, not merit response.)

::: posted by dWj at 10:22 AM

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Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.