Friday, November 8, 2013

Cousin Hal and Spiro Agnew

I received the notice that my cousin Harold Birnbaum just passed away after a long and happy life.  He is the source of one of my favorite stories, which essentially revolves around Who's Bigger reasoning for the punch line.

Cousin Hal had a engineering firm in Iran, prior to the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi [1347]. He and his local business partner were discussing the fall of Spiro Agnew [3271], Nixon's first Vice President, who was forced to resign for taking bribes.   The amounts involved seem staggeringly small by today's standards, but no one regretted his departure when Nixon himself had to resign just a few years later.

After thinking the matter over, his partner sighed and remarked: ``America.  What a country!  You can buy a Vice President for what it costs us to pay off a building inspector!"

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