Quotes

"Bill Brasky once used a live rattle snake as a condom!"
"Brasky's family crest is a picture of a barracuda eating Neil Armstrong."
"His poop is considered currency in Argentina."
"I once saw him scissor-kick Angela Lansbury."
"Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Brasky takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half—until sure enough, someone constructs a bar around us. Well, the day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Brasky yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found 'em!'"
"He once punched a hole in a cow just to see who was coming up the road."
"He hated Mexicans! And he was half-Mexican! ...And he hated irony!"
"The character of Johnny Appleseed was based on Brasky... except for the part about planting apple trees... and not raping men."
"He did all the makeup on the Planet of the Apes movies."
"He drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls."
"He used to shoot whiskey into his neck with a syringe."
"He orchestrated the merger between UNICEF and Smith & Wesson."
"They say Gene Roddenberry got the idea for Star Trek by listening to Brasky talk in his sleep."
"Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky went hunting? Brasky decides he's going to hunt down all four of the Banana Splits. He stalks and kills every one of them with a machete. They all begged for their lives...except Fleegle."
"We once had a bachelor party for Brasky. He ate the entire cake before we could tell him there was a stripper in it."
"Brasky named the group Sha Na Na. They did not want to be called that."
"If you drop a phonograph needle on Brasky's nipple, it plays the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds."
"Did I ever tell you about the time he taught his son how to drive? He entered him in the Indy 500. His first race, the kid wrecked and died. Brasky said it would've happened sometime."
"He breastfeeds John Madden!"
"He killed Wolfman Jack with a trident."
"He sleeps eight hours a night! Well, he was pretty normal when it came to that."
"His first name is Bill!"
"All the Yes album covers are Brasky family photos."
"He once breastfeed an injured flamingo back to health."

GORBACHEV (through translator): From the fireside house, President Reagan suddenly said to me, "What would you do if the United States were attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?" I said, "No doubt about it." He said, "We, too." So that`s interesting.

General Patton arose and strode swiftly to the microphone. The men snapped to their feet and stood silently. Patton surveyed the sea of brown with a grim look. "Be seated", he said. The words were not a request, but a command. The General's voice rose high and clear.

"Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American."

The General paused and looked over the crowd. "You are not all going to die," he said slowly. "Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen."

"All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call "chicken shit drilling". That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit!" The men roared in agreement.

Patton's grim expression did not change. "There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily", he roared into the microphone, "All because one man went to sleep on the job". He paused and the men grew silent. "But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did". The General clutched the microphone tightly, his jaw out-thrust, and he continued, "An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!"
The men slapped their legs and rolled in glee. This was Patton as the men had imagined him to be, and in rare form, too. He hadn't let them down. He was all that he was cracked up to be, and more. He had IT!

"We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world", Patton bellowed. He lowered his head and shook it pensively. Suddenly he snapped erect, faced the men belligerently and thundered, "Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do". The men clapped and howled delightedly. There would be many a barracks tale about the "Old Man's" choice phrases. They would become part and parcel of Third Army's history and they would become the bible of their slang.
"My men don't surrender", Patton continued, "I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!"

Patton stopped and the crowd waited. He continued more quietly, "All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, "Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands". But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits'."

Patton paused, took a deep breath, and continued, "Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, "Fixing the wire, Sir". I asked, "Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?" He answered, "Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed". I asked, "Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?" And he answered, "No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!" Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable."

The General paused and stared challengingly over the silent ocean of men. One could have heard a pin drop anywhere on that vast hillside. The only sound was the stirring of the breeze in the leaves of the bordering trees and the busy chirping of the birds in the branches of the trees at the General's left.
"Don't forget," Patton barked, "you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton'."
"We want to get the hell over there", Patton continued, "The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit."

The men roared approval and cheered delightedly. This statement had real significance behind it. Much more than met the eye and the men instinctively sensed the fact. They knew that they themselves were going to play a very great part in the making of world history. They were being told as much right now. Deep sincerity and seriousness lay behind the General's colorful words. The men knew and understood it. They loved the way he put it, too, as only he could.
Patton continued quietly, "Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin", he yelled, "I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!"
"When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!"
"I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!"

"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that."
The General paused. His eagle like eyes swept over the hillside. He said with pride, "There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!"

Usher!

Celebrities Can Just Waltz Into the White House Whenever They Want
By Pareene, 3:08 PM on Wed Apr 22 2009, 1,347 views

So this morning, Usher just showed up at the White House, apparently uninvited, and he and his entourage just walked in the northwest gate. But President Obama wasn't home.
Informed that Obama had just left for Iowa and wouldn't be inside, the singer seemed disappointed.
"He did?" he said.
What an odd story! Usher just came over for a chat, apparently. And there is an open door-to-R&B superstars policy, at the White House, even when the President is a thousand miles away. At least Tiger Woods and the White Sox were actually invited.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5205915/the-magnificent-mercury-seven-nasas-first-astronauts-50-years-ago-today

American-Somali Stand-off Continues while warships rush to the scene.

The crew of the hijacked US-American vessel were reported to have retaken control of the ship, but pirates are continuing to hold the ship's captain hostage in a life boat. Danish owned and US-American operated MV MAERSK ALABAMA, a container ship of 14,120 gross tonnage under US-American flag with a 21 men crew of at least 20 U.S.-American nationals, who are said to be all unharmed according to the company that owns the vessel, had been sea-jacked this morning at 07h30 on the Indian Ocean off the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu and about 280 miles (450 kilometers) south-east of Eyl, a town in the northern Puntland region of Somalia. The vessel was en route to Mombassa, Kenya, when it was attacked about 500 kilometers (310 miles) off Somalia's coast, the statement issued by Maersk Line Ltd. said. The 20 unarmed crew members fought back against the four hijackers and hours later regained control of their vessel, according to second mate Ken Quinn. Quinn, sounding harried in a terse mobile phone call to CNN, said the crew had released one of the pirates they had tied up for 12 hours. But the hijackers were refusing to return Captain Richard Phillips. "Right now, they want to hold our captain for ransom and we're trying to get him back", Quinn told the US network. "He's in the ship's lifeboat", he said, explaining the four pirates had taken the lifeboat off the Maersk Alabama and that Phillips was in touch with his crew via ship's radio. "So now we're just trying to offer them whatever we can. Food. But it's not working too good". Quinn added: "We have a coalition (vessel) that will be here in three hours. So we're just trying to hold them off for three more hours and then we'll have a warship here to help us". Quinn said that all four pirates were on the lifeboat, after sinking their own boat after they seized the container vessel. Earlier, the crew took one pirate hostage, trying to swap him for their captain, but the deal went wrong, he told the American CNN news channel. Though the ship is the sixth seized within a week in the dangerous region around Africa, Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said it was the first pirate attack "involving U.S. nationals and a U.S.-flagged vessel in recent memory". No American merchant vessel has been attacked by pirates since 1804 during the North African Barbary Wars. US-American President Barack Obama's chief spokesman said the White House was assessing a course of action. Press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that officials there monitoring the incident closely. Said Gibbs: "Our top priority is the personal safety of the crew members on board". The White House offered no other immediate details about what actions it was considering. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there has not yet been any communications from the pirates for ransom. But he would not go into military plans. "I'm not going to speculate on any future military actions", Whitman said, when asked what the U.S. military may do. Whitman said there are still no U.S. Navy ships within view of the vessel, and instead they are still "hundreds of miles away. "The nearest U.S. Navy warship was about 300 nautical miles away at the time of the hijacking", other U.S.-American government sources said. No action has been taken so far, a spokesman for the U.S. military's 5th Fleet in Bahrain said first, according to CNN. "There is a task force present in the region to deter any type of piracy, but the challenge remains that the area is so big and it is hard to monitor all the time", 5th Fleet spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said. US Army Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Hibner, a Pentagon spokesperson, said then later on Wednesday that the US Navy destroyer Bainbridge was en route to the scene. The cargo ship is directly owned and operated by a Maersk subsidiary in Norfolk, Virginia, Maersk spokesman Michael Storgaard said. "We have very strict policies on the vessel ... crews are trained to handle these types of situations", Storgaard said from Maersk's headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. He said the company is in the process of contacting the crew members' relatives and setting up assistance for them. No ITF agreement regulates the conditions for the sailors on board, but at least 12 of the Americans aboard the Maersk Alabama are members of the Seafarers International Union, spokesman Jordan Biscardo said. The union is trying to get as much information on the situation as it can, he said. "It goes without saying we're deeply concerned and we're closely monitoring the story", Biscardo said. Biscardo would not immediately release the names of the union members aboard the vessel. The Seafarers International Union represents unlicensed United States merchant mariners sailing aboard U.S.-flag vessels. No action has been taken so far against the pirates, according to a spokesman for the U.S. military's 5th Fleet in Bahrain. "There is a task force present in the region to deter any type of piracy, but the challenge remains that the area is so big and it is hard to monitor all the time", 5th Fleet spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said. He said U.S.-flagged ships are not normally escorted by the military, unless they request it from the U.S. Navy. The 155-metre (511-foot) vessel had been due to dock in the Kenyan port of Mombassa on April 16. The hijacked boxship is run out of the huge merchant and naval base of Norfolk by Maersk Line Ltd., a division of Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk Group and was carrying emergency relief to Mombassa, Kenya, when it was hijacked, said Peter Beck-Bang, spokesman for the Copenhagen-based container shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk, but analysts wondered, since relief food is usually shipped as bulk and not by a rather expensive container-ship. Peter Smerdon, a WFP spokesman in Nairobi, said the cargo included 4,097 tonnes of corn-soya blend which was destined for Somalia and Uganda and 990 tonnes of vegetable oil for refugees in Kenya. He said WFP had 232 containers with mainly the oil out of the 401 on board while the others belonged to USAID, Catholic Relief and [the rather unheard of] Serving God Ministries. Though the shipping company has had some Defense Department contracts it was said this time not to be on a Pentagon job when attacked, a governmental statement read. The high seas standoff drew an expression of concern from Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, who called on the world to unite to "end the scourge of piracy". (own sources, AFP, AP, Al-Jazeera, Pentagon, White House et al.)

Apologizing for America
By Mona Charen

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

One of President Obama's first official acts was to grant an interview to Al Arabiya, the Arabic language network that broadcasts worldwide. It signified, aides explained, the new page that Obama meant to turn in relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds. Just as he did last week in Europe, Obama began the conversation by criticizing America. Asked about relations between Israel and the Palestinians and the appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy, President Obama said " ... what I told (Mitchell) is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating -- in the past on some of these issues -- and we don't always know all the factors that are involved. So let's listen." Throughout the rest of the interview, Obama returned again and again to the word "respect," stressing that his administration -- unlike previous American presidents -- would base relations with the Muslim world on "mutual respect."
In Europe, the president returned to this leitmotif, telling his audience that "there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. He went on to note that Europeans had responded with an anti-Americanism that "is at once casual but can also be insidious." That sounds awfully high-mindedly evenhanded -- except that in Obama's telling, America's arrogance comes first. If that were truly the case, who could blame the Europeans for feeling resentful?
Don't hold your breath waiting for any European to acknowledge that they have been guilty of arrogance. And before giving Obama too much credit for humility, consider that the planted axiom of these declarations is that he is different. It was that ham-handed predecessor of his who blundered through the world, disrespecting allies, needlessly insulting enemies, and crashing through drawing rooms like the proverbial bull, or perhaps like a Texas steer. But as former Ambassador John Bolton reminds us, during the glory days of the Clinton administration, French President Francois Mitterrand said this: "We are at war with America-- a permanent war ... a war without death. They are very hard, the Americans. They are voracious. They want undivided power over the world." Compared with that, the most stinging rebuke to come out of the Bush administration -- Rumsfeld's swipe about "old Europe" -- seems downright polite.
There's nothing wrong with pleasant atmospherics, of course. And if Barack and Michelle Obama wowed the crowds in London and Prague, that's nice. But what you might have missed in all the hyperventilating in the media about the new incarnation of Jack and Jackie was that President Obama was rebuffed by Europe. He had asked them to pass stimulus bills like the one the Democrats passed in the U.S. Germany's Angela Merkel and the others turned that down flat. European nations have even graver problems with promised social safety net programs than we do, and they sensibly decided that further indebting themselves would aggravate rather than alleviate their troubles.
President Obama further requested that more troops be sent to Afghanistan. He wasn't subtle about it either. "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," he said. "This is a joint problem and it requires a joint effort." Adoring crowds notwithstanding, they refused that request as well. Oh, wait. That's not quite true. According to Fox News, "Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and Spain offered 12."
Back to relations with the Muslim world. Lest this slander pass into conventional wisdom, it must be protested. George W. Bush was never disrespectful to the Muslim world. He was extraordinarily careful to telegraph his respect for the Muslim faith -- some thought to a fault. ("Why is it," asked one wag, "that the only people who say Islam is religion of peace are Christians?") Bush made the Feast of Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, an annual White House celebration with prominent Muslim guests. He arguably saved more Muslim lives through the African AIDS initiative than any other world leader could claim. Mrs. Bush made improving the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan her special project. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when this was not an obvious move, he visited the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., to telegraph to the nation that anger toward American Muslims would be a misplaced response to the atrocity.
This caricature of Bush as a heedless militarist and xenophobe -- which no one is doing more to promote than the current president -- is a libel.
There is one other troubling aspect to President Obama's diplomatic debut. Being eager to ingratiate oneself with Europeans is an understandable liberal impulse. The left wing of the Democratic Party reveres European welfare states. But President Obama also bowed low (literally) before the king of Saudi Arabia. That was more than courtesy; it was abasement.

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American Dream

http://www.metlife.com/assets/cao/gbms/studies/09010229_09AmDreamStudy_WEB.pdf