Sunday, March 30, 2008

Frank Rich, New York Times

March 30, 2008

Frank Rich

The New York Times

229 West 43rd Street

New York, New York 10036

RE: “You must remember this. A lie is still a lie…” Facts are hard things, particularly when you think that no one will notice that you misstated one in your column on Hillary and her uncanny ability to make Madame DeFarge likeable

Frankie!

Speaking of “misremembering” or, perhaps, “non-remembering”, maybe “disremembering”, you, in your column this AM breathe life into one of the great urban legends of New York.

And I don’t mean the alligators in the sewers.

You say “…just as the Willie Horton ads did when the G.O.P. took out Michael Dukakis”.

For the record Willie’s wonderful adventure began when he was released from prison in Massachusetts for a weekend furlough. He was not in prison for falsifying mortgage applications or for drunk driving. He was in jail for murder. He was a ferociously feral felon.

Governor Wee Mikey, and who can forget him in that tank, was in charge when Willie Boy got out. He went to Maryland where, can you believe this, he raped again. His trip wasn’t exactly like Ferris Bueller’s day off.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse it did.

Relatives of the raped woman from Maryland went to Massachusetts to speak to Governor Dukakis. In keeping with a hard core tenet of modern American Liberalism, that being the one that says intentions, never results, count he refused to talk to them.

Now the question, the unasked question, is how did we learn about the above. You seem to say that Lee Atwater, with the approval of Dick Cheney and some Halliburton cash plus a pre-natal Fox News, ferreted out this information and swung the election to Vice President Bush.

[As an aside isn’t Willie Boy due for another furlough soon? How’s he doing, by the way? I bet he still thanks his lucky stars he didn’t team up with his cousin, Ricky Ray Rector, in Arkansas]

Let me tell you how the name Willie Horton came to be known to the American public.

It seem there was rich White boy, a lad whose first impression of Negroes was when he kept seeing the same elegant Negro man wearing the immaculate white gloves every morning. The man would nod respectfully and tell young Master Albert, Jr. that the orange juice was free from pits and that the toast had its crust removed and was sliced diagonally the way he liked it. He would ask whether he wanted ham, bacon, or sausage with his eggs. The Shoreham Hotel, where young Master Albert, Jr. was raised, was known for their breakfasts. His father, Mister Albert, Sr. was the bag man for Armand Hammer. He was also a United States Senator. Hammer was always proud of the fact that he made Leonid Brezhnev cry when he gave him a letter written and signed by Lenin. Water cress sandwiches for lunch and mango sorbet at recess would normally cause snickers at any public grammar school in D.C. but young Master Albert, Jr. never saw the inside of any public school until he was 32.

Before he invented the Internet he ran for President in 1988.

When he ran in the Democratic Primary in New York in 1988 it was he, now all grown up and soon to be going by the name Alpha Gump, who told the world all about Willie Horton. He kept giving us the details of the murders and the rapes over and over. I mean like everybody, and I mean everybody, knew about Willie’s wonderful ways.

One of Governor Wee Mikey’s campaign themes was that “competence, not character” was what counted. Heraclitus told us and James Madison confirmed it that there is only one test that a candidate, any candidate, has to take and pass. That test is character.

Soon, Hillary will be telling us that she gunned down Milosovic on the tarmac in Tuzla. She had Osama bin Laden in her sights when she was distracted by Ken Starr. She and Big Bill would give any gun owner a night in the Lincoln bedroom if they turned in their weapon. That’s why it is so safe in the nation’s capitol these days. That’s why, should Senator B. Hussein Obama become President, his daughters will attend one of the really fine public schools in Washington.

Now that the TV writers’ strike is over can you tell me when Dancing with Apprentice Angels in America will air? Get back to me, please.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe

March 23, 2008

Derrick Z. Jackson

The Boston Globe

135 Morrissey Boulevard

Boston, MA 02125-3130

RE: Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics - A somewhat sad look about graduation rates of Black college basketball players being more proof why God should damn America.

Mr. Jackson,

“As is my custom, my annual look at the graduation rates focuses

on black players because they are the canary in the coal mine, making

up 57% of Division 1 scholarship men’s basketball players, more than

4 times their share of the U.S. population.”

The Dallas Morning News

March 22, 2008

Page 15A

You

Senator B. Hussein Obama, in a fit of disingenuousness worthy of the Flat Earth Society, said that he never knew any of the really crazy things that Pastor Wright said. In an Ivy League “What me Worry” mode he said he never heard anything untoward in the 20 years he was a member of his church.

That the White man started Global Warming as another way to punish the Black man was something he didn’t have to say. Everybody knew that. What he did say was that Whitey started AIDS, that he imprisoned Mandela, and that he encourages Black men to eat foods high in fats, starch, and cholesterol so as to induce hypertension to make them die young.

Whitey cunningly permitted a system that rewards narcissistic impregnation of Black females and the subsequent abandonment of the children born of those brief encounters. Terrible housing and just plain God awful schools guarantee another generation of serfs. Look at any urban ghetto for the results of this devious plan.

I must add another part of the plan that seems to have escaped Pastor Wright’s notice. Maybe his does but doesn’t care. Maybe he’s part of the problem. Maybe he goes off on his moon bat rants to divert attention from the horror which is all around him that he chooses to ignore.

Pay attention. I’ll write slowly.

You say that Black males make up 57% of the Division 1 male collegiate basketball players. You say that this number is “more than 4 times their share of the U.S. population”. That statement is incorrect. Your failure to include empirical evidence in your premise renders it invalid. Any conclusions reached are therefore incorrect.

Blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population. Half male/half female, correct?

If 6% to 7% of the population makes up 57% of the test sample then it is 8 times the share of the population as a whole.

The above statistic, a statistic that can stand outside scrutiny and independent inquiry, leads us to a wrong that Pastor Wright either is unaware of or, worse, chooses to ignore.

Since 1973 almost 40% of the abortions in this country were performed on Black women. While not quite as impressive a statistic as NCAA basketball players it does give new meaning to the word “final”. If ever an Affirmative Action program has worked this one has.

There is a word that can be used to describe this. It is a word that has lost its shock meaning because of flippant misuse.

Does the word genocide come to mind? If not, why not?

The issue is defined in the starkest terms. It is Black and White and black and white.

Why hasn’t Pastor Wright told us about this?

It is Easter Sunday morning. All over the land pastors are saying “He is risen”. All over the land we are told to go forth and tell everyone. Why hasn’t Pastor Wright told us about 2 generations of Black babies who will not be joining the celebration? How many Division 1 ball players will never put the ball on the floor?

In the Christian universe his job is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and soon to come again. If he does that then the lost sheep will come back to the flock. If he doesn’t then he is made of tinkling brass.

As is his parishioner.

Letter to the Editor of the Miami Herald

March 24, 2008

Letters to the Editor

The Miami Herald

One Herald Plaza

Miami, Florida 33132-1693

EW: A straight up look at look at an upside down editorial on golf course conversion, land use, the legislative process, and unmentioned clear and present dangers as put forward by you on Sunday March 23, 2008 in an editorial entitled “Find Compromise on Golf Course Rule”.

Sirs,

Pray tell but what business is it of the Broward County Commission to “strongly discourage” anything? In the above mentioned editorial you cite Broward County Commissioner Ken Keechl, surely an early favorite in the race for Luddite of the Year, who wants the Broward County Commission to “strongly discourage” the conversion of golf courses to residential development.

Clouded by typical government persiflage the specific target is the Coral Ridge Country Club. The owners of this tract believe that a portion of their property can be developed for residential home sites.

One of the fundamental tenets of our legal system, one that predates the Constitution, one that predates the Magna Carta, one that predates the agora in 5th century Greece is the right of a property owner to dispose of his property as he sees fit. It is a right we have from birth. It is part of the Natural Law; it is a gift from “beyond the stars”.

Commissioner Keechl, surely the poster boy for tree huggers who have no use for the Rule of Law, proposes a Rube Goldberg system for property owners who wish to dispose of their property.

He seems to be saying that should you want to turn your golf course into a homeless shelter, or single family homes, or a hospice for AIDS victims you have to replace the disposed of golf course with a…golf course.

He phumfers something about the “contamination from pesticides and herbicides” and how this must be mitigated. I have a simpler and cleaner solution. If this problem is such a clear and present danger it would not be in the best interests of the people of Broward County for the County Commission to “strongly discourage” their continued use. What the Broward County Commission must do is ban the sale and usage of these products in Broward Country.

Why should ordinary citizens be put in harm’s way so rich White guys can 3 putt a verdant green? For that matter why should people walking in their neighborhood, perhaps with their children or visiting senior citizen relatives, be exposed to the toxic vapor of chemicals designed to prevent crab grass or mealy bugs?

Your editorial says that “governments have the authority to control how land is used for the common good”. If the “common good” is the desired result why stop with land use? We parse the Constitution for language supporting or attacking the right to bear arms. Tobacco kills far more people in a week than a truckload of Saturday Night Specials will in a year. Why not ban the sale and use of tobacco in Broward County? Why not ban the wearing of Spandex by calorically challenged people? The sight of highlighted pudenda and flaccid abductor muscles cannot contribute to the “common good”. Why not ban rude Quebecois from public places in Broward County? We have quite enough home grown boors without having to countenance guttural Frog speaking Gallic wanabees from clogging the aisles at our local Publix.

On the other hand perhaps Commissioner Keechl is on to something here.

There is something to be said for codifying fits of pique with the mantel of the law.

We pledge allegiance to free speech with certain exceptions.

We say that all men are equal before the law but certain men are more equal.

In a period of economic uncertainty, in a time when real estate values resemble a parabolic curve, in a time when cities are desperately looking for something else to tax we place obstacles in the path of risk takers who are willing to put their black chips on the table. All they ask is that the wheel be level and that the croupier be fair. The dealer shouldn’t be able to change the rules after the game is on. To do so makes a mockery of the Rule of Law.

One simple truth is that only wealthy people can enjoy the luxury of “open spaces” and free range roaming but organically fed chicken. Another simple truth is that when wealthy people indulge their fantasies poor people prosper.

We are told that we have an “affordable housing” crisis. Paraphrasing James Madison, a person with whom Commissioner Keechl is not the least bit familiar, “I am unable to lay my finger on that apart of the Constitution that says”…I can sell my house for considerably more than I paid for it. The market is “solving” the housing “crisis” by egregiously increasing the pool of potential buyers. The market, a thing which all card carrying members of the modern American Liberal fuzzy thinkers despise because it defies top down ukases, is speaking. We try to legislate away the discomfort caused by this at our own peril for two reasons: #1 – We can’t. #2 – The self induced chaos is worse than the problem that led to the “solution”. The sad History of 70 years of public housing in this country is the classic translation of res ipso loquitur. Of course, past failures are looked on as a reason to try more of the same, only much more. Such are the thought processes of the dunces we put in charge of the cookie jar.

If perpetually rising prices for housing is looked on as a “good” thing for all concerned why aren’t perpetually rising gasoline prices accorded the same respect? If the common good of clean air leads to fewer drowning polar bears why do we object to the trade off of sky rocketing grain prices as we divert more and more grains to making fuel friendlier to said polar bears? The more corn we divert to making ersatz gasoline the more difficult we make it for 3rd worlders to feed themselves. It’s that simple and that complex. The Law of Unintended Consequences is afoot here.

If Commissioner Keechl is concerned with keeping green space green and clean air clean why doesn’t he “strongly discourage” the use of air conditioning in buildings owned by Broward County this hot season? Half the electricity generated in this country comes from burning coal. Everybody knows how dirty that is. Why not be a trend setter and turn the A/Cs off for the months of July, August, September, and October? Think how much better all the employees will feel about saving the planet and cutting back on harmful expenditures.

As a serendipitous addendum we will have a 4 month long furlough from regulators whose goal in life is to “strongly discourage” behavior that they don’t like.

Commissioner Keechl’s time would be better spent by preparing a referendum on manatee suffrage. That’s a task worthy of his ample talents.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Commissioner Cindi Hutchinson

March 20, 2008

Commissioner Cindi Hutchinson

101 North Andrews Avenue

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

Commissioner Hutchinson,

First, let me congratulate the city for having a heavily French accented person answering the Commission phone. Who dares to say that we are Francophobic?

I was reading this month’s copy of Las Olas Community news with increasing trepidation.

There was a story about drowning polar bears. It was written by somebody whose business is selling solar panels. The more solar panels we have the fewer polar bears will drown is the only reasonable inference I can draw from that story. No conflict of interest there, right?

Then I read a story about an exercise method called Pilates. Considering that this is Holy Week – and I hope I haven’t offended any Islamic sensitivities by so saying – I wonder if the advanced stages of the program involve carrying a cross.

The there was a story about a Broward County Commissioner who strongly favors a county resolution that “strongly discourages” a property owner from enjoying the fruits of his labor with regards to his property. Machiavelli told us that ‘the wish of the Prince has the force of law”. Funny, but I thought we had come some distance from the gilded age of the Medicis. Alas, one more disappointment in life. I imagine it would be pearls before swine if I were to suggest that the role of an law making body is to either pass laws of repeal them. Resolutions “strongly discouraging” or, perhaps worse, “strongly encouraging” a particular course of action are just another example of the “rhetorical incontinence” that befoul the political atmosphere. Dante has a special circle reserved for those who won’t take a stand whether they are in public life or private.

By the time I got to your article on surviving the property tax amendment I was prepared for the worst. I’ll say this about you. You delivered the worst. In the process you show why blondes don’t do well on Jeopardy.

Putting us “near the top of the chart[s]”, those charts being Moody’s and Standard & Poor, is like being almost a virgin. The difference between the top of the chart and “near the top of the chart” can be, over the 30 year life of a bond issue, be hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s what the real world calls real money.

I ‘m glad you said that you weren’t “putting a happy face on the situation”. I am not really sure what the “situation” is but I think I can guess. Employment at any government entity, be it Federal, state, county, or municipal involves the mutual “willing suspension of disbelief” involving the laws that govern gravity. What goes up must never come down. Ever.

Napoleon would execute 3 soldiers chosen at random before a battle for cowardice. He said “it encouraged the others”.

Delta Airlines has 60,000 employees. It told 30,000 of them this week not to buy any green bananas.

I read today that the population of Broward County has gone down. I know that the school enrollment in Broward County has been declining for 4 years.

It would be tough to put a happy face on that situation but somebody is laughing out loud. In fact, somebody is probably wetting their pants.

Has any budget in Broward County gone down in the last 4 years?

I am too old to ask that question seriously but it’s fun to think about it.


PS – 2 things:

Do you, in your heart of hearts, believe that “new developments” on Sistrunk Boulevard will work? Why not give the job of answering the City Commission’s phones to somebody who is from Sistrunk Boulevard rather than Bordeaux or Quebec?

Michael Mayo, The Sun Sentinel

March 20, 2008

Michael Mayo

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: “Academic Freedom” & “Mumbo Jumbo” – A somewhat different take on your world weary column about those dolts who do not sacrifice at the altar to the great God Darwin.

Mr. Mayo,

Whenever I see the “Academic Freedom” and, forgive me, buzz words such as “mumbo jumbo” I reach for my copy of “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich.

Can you believe it was only 40 years ago that this Ph.D. charlatan, a man who was a regular on that great cauldron of ideas, the Johnny Carson Show, told us that we would either freeze to death or starve to death before the year 2000. Maybe it was starve and then freeze. Either way it is 2008 and I am calorically challenged plus I have the A/C on.

By the way I know why Oedipus went to Colonnus. I can explain, probably even to you, the Rule of 78. I am conversant with the 4 source theory of Pentateuch Composition. I know how to attack a 2 deep zone. And the last time I handled a snake was when I danced with a lithe, mush brained modern American Liberal lady.

The problem with academic freedom is that it is or it isn’t. You pick your head up from the microscope and say it is cancer or it isn’t. No maybes.

You say that “if it’s OK for science teachers to discuss the holes in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, it should be OK for health teachers to discuss the shortcomings with ‘abstinence only’…”

You are correct. What you just used was a Rhetorical device called tu quoque. That’s from the Trivium.

Since we’re stretching the boundaries of Academic Freedom let’s include the following.

#1 – It was a commonly accepted fact that tomatoes were toxic. If you were a botanist and you didn’t kneel at that altar you were shunned a la the skeptics of Global Warming and its high priest, the former Vice President, Alpha Gump.

#2 – The Department of Social Sciences should examine how the racial views of Margaret Sanger became the basis for Hitler’s Nuremberg Race Laws. She advocated unlimited abortion as a means of culling the herd of “undesirables”. She championed euthanasia as a way to dispose of less than perfect human beings. It didn’t take a giant step to get from there to Auschwitz, did it? You probably knew that, right?

#3 – The Department of Can’t We All Just Get Along should investigate why Black women who make up about 6% of the population account for 35% of the abortions in this country since 1973. Is this genocide? Watch out when Pastor Wright finds out about this. Boy oh boy but will he be mad.

#4 – Here’s one for the Math Department and the Department of Philosophy. The population of Broward County went down last year. The Broward County school population has been going down for 4 years. The budgets of neither entity, said budgets being those of the Broward County Board of Education and of Broward County, have gone down. If you have fewer people to serve would not Logic dictate that at the very worst case scenario the budget would be flat, would be even? How can it go up? Can we infer that Logic never enters into discussions concerning public budgets?

I even know the difference between Chiaroscuro and Caravaggio.

I know that we went from a universal knowledge of physics to turning Hiroshima and Nagasaki into the world’s largest stir fry pit in about 41 months. Maybe somebody can tell me why the Theory of Evolution is still called the Theory of Evolution. It’s been 154 years since it was first posited. We flew to the moon, walked around for a few days, picked up some souvenirs, and then came home. That took, start to finish, from idle thought to done deed, a bit more than 8 years. It’s about time for the secular humanists among us to step up to the plate and hit it out of the park. Think Newton. Think Einstein. Think of the joy of shutting up all those red necked huckleberries. 154 years. It’s time to hit the passing gear. A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

From the Scientific Method methodology it is not my job to disprove it. It is someone else’s job to prove it. Maybe it’s time to get’er done.

If it is so obvious that we can’t even discuss the possibility that just maybe it ain’t necessarily so why can’t somebody just prove it? I am not a big fan of Intelligent Design when we get down to the design of the knee. On the other hand I don’t like being told that I am descended from apes. Bears, maybe. Apes, never.

How’s that for mumbo jumbo?

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Senator Charles Schumer

March 18, 2008

Senator Charles Schumer

One Park Place

Peekskill, New York 10566

RE: Sticks and stones may break my bones but…

Senator Chuckie,

I have heard you in the last 2 days, in your typically engaging New York modern American Liberal style of “rhetorical incontinence”, persiflaging on and on about the travails of the capital markets.

It was the normal yada-yada caca until you said that President Bush was like President Hoover. That put your toes up on the line of the politics of personal destruction. If you really wanted to heap the billingsgate on our beloved President you would have compared him to President Carter.

President Hoover’s faults were mostly limited to these shores. President Carter’s bill of indictment as the worst President of the 20th century includes many foreign misadventures. That’s why he was/is/shall be known as the “Putz from Plains”.

Thank you for your restraint.

Also, you said “staunch” when you meant to say “stanch”.

No big deal. After all, it is close enough for government work.


S – If memory serves you had some past difficulties with “putz”. If you are still unclear of its meaning send a SASE.

Daniel Vasquez, The Sun Sentinel

March 17, 2008

Daniel Vasquez

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316

RE: Congratulations! A triumph of the human spirit! A week without gas!

Mr. Vasquez,

One of the benefits of being a curmudgeon, admittedly an erudite, engaging, and an unbelievably multi-tasking interesting curmudgeon, is that you get to give awards. Back when I lived in Area Code 201 I began giving out the following honors.

Horse’s Ass of the Week

Pompous Fart of the Month

Smarmy Bastard of the Year

Believe me when I tell you that my standards were stricter than Florida’s FCATs. All they try to do is make sure that Johnny can read, write, and add up a column of figures. I was giving the winners a shot at the Hall of Fame, a shot at immortality.

I have added some special awards for especially egregious undertakings. If I say that you are “the smartest bear in the zoo” it doesn’t mean that I am a big fan of animals. If I say an accomplishment like that is akin to being “the tallest building in Wichita, Kansas” I am damning with faint praise. Sort of like a reverse litotes.

Your article on your week long boycott of oil companies and your week long bike trips caused me to reach for a new award.

“I did it” is how you began your article about feeling good, feeling really really good, about your successful oil company boycott and your week long jaunt into aerobic exercise plus the vagaries of public transportation. “I did it” brings you perilously close to the treacherous shoals of narcissism. If you are “iron bottomed and copper sheathed” it is but a short jaunt to solipsism. “Not that I have a problem with that” but they don’t belong in a news article.

Do you think that the Sun-Sentinel should mandate that all its employees, particularly those who like to hector their readers about social responsibility, must use public transportation? How about turning off the air conditioning as Sun-Sentinel World HQ this summer? Think of all the sweat pouring off the brows of wage slave serfs as penance for the profligate use of petroleum in generations past. Focus on the amount of CO2 not released into the beleaguered atmosphere as a life preserver for drowning polar bears. This may not be good news for those really cut baby seals but, What the Hell, every war has its casualties, right? A society that can afford “Midnight Basketball” can afford vegan lessons for polar bears, can’t it?

[As an interesting aside you mention “A mother of two young children…on her way to parenting classes when we met one day on the bus”. You don’t tell us if she had her “2 young children” with her when you met. If they weren’t with her, where were they? At the risk, a risk I freely take, of violating some sensitivity guidelines don’t you think she should have taken “parenting classes” before the first of her 2 children?

You end your article by compromising your quest. “But I won’t give up my car permanently.” That’s like being almost a virgin. Saint Augustine covered it nicely when he implored the Lord, “Make me chaste Lord. Tomorrow.”

Accordingly, I hereby award you the first

ORDER OF THE INK STAINED BIKE RIDING BOOBS

In keeping with our joint concern for the environment the award will be a garland. It is organic and biodegradable.

Alas, there will be no cash with your gift. I have a gas guzzling SUV that must be fed.

The original Doctor J. covered my award and your articles when he spoke about the phenomenon of “women preaching” by comparing it to a dog walking on its hind legs. “It is not how well he does it but, rather, why does he do it all?”


PS - As one concerned with the environment do you think the United States Navy should enforce the admittedly unilateral no drilling edict in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico? How about we shell some of their Chinese manned drilling rigs? Then we can ride our bikes – like the French did in 1914 – across Alligator Alley to fight them in Naples.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Marti Merzer, The Miami Herald

October 22, 2007

Marti Merzer

The Miami Herald

One Herald Plaza

Miami, Florida 33172-1693

RE: “Women Rising” + “Cuban Elections” – A Page 1 “Jump the Shark” moment for American journalism in general and the Miami Herald in particular.

Ms. Merzer,

Was any consideration given to “Women on Top”? Talk about “Riding Saint George”. I mean the rocket is long and sleek and powerful and capable of awesome thrusting. It could have been designed by Ayn Rand. What a smoke after blast-off!

Your sub-headline about women astronauts [Astronettes? Astrosansnuts?] sits alongside, like a turd in a punchbowl, the Page 1 story about “Cuban elections”. The word Cuban and the word election in the same sentence are beyond parody. Was Page 1 put together by George Carlin with the able assistance of Professor Irwin Corey? I glad to see that the old tradition of gin, a lot of gin, before making up the paper is still held in high esteem at the Herald.

I could start with the Greeks but then we get caught up in 25 centuries of DWEM [Dead White European Male] achievements. If I did that I would run the risk of starting off on the wrong foot so let’s start with Newton.

There he was, minding his own business, power napping under an apple tree, when he gets hit by a bloody falling apple. Voila!, and that’s the last time I’ll say something nice about the Froggies, gravity.

A strong case could be made for all of mankind’s - OOOPS! – humankind’s efforts at physical science since his bonking has been to study gravity so as to overcome, indeed conquer is a better word, it.

My father, the legendary Judge Smith, was born before men flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. He lived to see men walking on the moon. In that 66 year period humankind –see how gender sensitive I am – not only defied gravity, they conquered it and, not necessarily in a fit of pique, bitch slapped it.

My father also thought that some of the strange weather patterns of the early ‘70s – Remember Global Cooling? – were caused by rockets poking into the upper atmosphere and beyond. Who is to say? If he had lived a few years more he might have won world wide scientific acclaim. With jeremiads about bears drowning and cows farting former Vice President Alpha Gump won a Nobel Prize.

We, sensate cognitive bi-pods, overcame earth’s gravity. We escaped our planetary orbit. We orbited another object, our moon, in our galaxy. We landed on that object. We walked around for a few days helping ourselves to a few souvenirs. We escaped the gravitational pull of said moon and returned to the earth. Just like a walk in the park.

My son Sean, AKA the World Famous Attorney, decided at the age of 4 that, the moon already having been trod upon, Mars was his choice of extraterrestrial spring break destination.

Are you telling me that we did all this, that we are doing all this, and that we tax ourselves to do this so that we can achieve gender equality? “Bedlam” awaits.

If a word other than “bullshit” can be found in the English language to explain all of your flap-doodle clap trap it has escaped me. Please believe me when I tell you that my lexicographic Odyssey, unlike the mighty Odysseus’s, is never ending.

Logic, and why do I think that it is a discipline totally unknown in the news rooms and editorial rooms of the Herald, dictates that if gender equality is the goal why not start at Arlington National Cemetery? Kipling, our first multicultural poet and champion of diversity, told us that the female is “the deadlier of the species”. Who knew they could fly too?

Let’s name the next spacecraft “Antigone”. That’s a chick we can all get behind.

Leonard Pitts Jr., The Miami Herald

March 16, 2008

Leonard Pitts Jr.

The Miami Herald

One Herald Plaza

Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: Preparations for the Presidency – A somewhat different take on your column on why Senator B. Hussein Obama’s lack of serious credentials, however they are defined, should not be an impediment to his election. Plus, some nit-picking corrections.

Mr. Pitts,

You may not know this but in the three wars that had the most casualties for America [The Civil War, World War 2, World War 1] none of the Presidents had combat experience. Lincoln had some military training. Roosevelt and Wilson did not.

Chester Arthur is one of my favorite 3 forgotten Presidents. He was a consummate local pol. He was thrust onto the national ticket to get him out of town. In his short term he had many accomplishments that I will leave for you to discover. His own Party denied him a second term.

Abraham Lincoln did not need a 19th century version of the Patriot Act to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and to arrest a Congressman who opposed him. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves where he couldn’t and didn’t free them where he could. He did it because it advanced the Union’s war aims. Speaking of that war, and I have a relative who is still at Gettysburg “wrapped in his faded coat of Blue”, he was vehemently opposed by the Democrat party and the New York Times. They couldn’t call him Hitler because he wasn’t born yet but he was regularly called him a baboon. He really did think he was going to lose the 1864 election until he received a telegram that began with the famous words “I beg to present you the city of Atlanta…”. It was signed by General William Tecumseh Sherman. Shortly after that feat of arms Sherman led a successful “surge” that shortened the war by at least a year, saved at least 100,000 lives and did free the slaves. Incidentally, it took Lincoln 35 months to find the right General. Grant took command in March, 1864. Plus, he knew when to die. He would have fared no better than Andrew Johnson after the war. The Gods do have both a sense of humor and a sense of irony.

Richard Nixon may have said something about but the definitive statement about was made by James Madison. When asked what was the most important trait to seek in any candidate for any public office he replied, “Character. Character is all.” Since he, like all the Founding Fathers, was well versed in Greek and Roman History he was borrowing from Thucydides who said, “Character is destiny”.

You omit some important facts about Lyndon Johnson. He lost the election for the Senate in 1948. He sent Abe Fortas to Duval County where he found missing ballots sufficient to give him an 87 vote margin of victory. He survived the sobriquet “Landslide Lyndon” and wound up as President. Who knows what would have happened if the typical Democrat Party solution to a close election – keep counting until you get the right count - was not applied? Certainly Hecate Hillary would not have been criticized for her remarks about “it took a President to get the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s passed”. Johnson would not have been President.

The fact is that sometimes we try to fill an inside straight when we elect someone. That we do could be taken as proof that God does bless America. That phrase was written by an immigrant.

It’s what makes us the envy of the world.

Carl Hiaasen, The Miami Herald

March 16, 2008

Carl Hiaasen

The Miami Herald

One Herald Plaza

Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: Call me Sisyphus and let me tell you that shoving that rock is getting to be quite a pain in the ass. – Yet again a short note on the “crisis” facing the Democrat Party and as the late progressive social activist, Lenin, said in a delightful little tract “What is to be Done”.

Mr. Hiaasen.

Maybe it’s time to take the two by four to the mule. You can’t reason with him until you get his attention. Listen up.

#1 – Wounds such as these are always self inflicted

#2 – There is no #2. There is only #1.

My political DNA is impeccable.

I was born and raised an Irish Catholic in Bayonne, New Jersey. I was genetically inclined to the Democrat party or, as they said in Hudson County, “Row A All the Way”. Row A was the slot that the Party had from 1916 to 1978. The only other entity with a better record is the Israeli Air Force. Bayonne is at the good end of Hudson County. I had the privilege of seeing the Democrat party up close and personal in my impressionable years.

Street crime was below the national average. Perhaps the Hudson County Police, the Hudson County Park Police, and the Hudson County Boulevard Police had a hand in this. Don’t ask. Each town, including East Newark, a town the size of small WAL*MART, had its own police force.

The County Jail was known as the Taj Mahal.

The installation of self service elevators at the new Court House did not cost one elevator operator his job.

The undertaker who had the contract for burying the poor used to put at least two stiffs into the same coffin. Yes, he did bill for 2 funerals and 2 coffins.

Casement windows at a new school cost $950 each. Installation was extra. Wastebaskets cost $85. The year was 1959.

Hot stoves and the pennies on a dead man’s eyes were fair game.

Yet there was a moral clarity there that is not here. Hinnisy, the Publican, covered it nicely. “I seen me opportunities and I took’em.”

I got to Florida and the chief local political sport is “pissing on my back and telling me it’s rain”.

The Democrat Party in Broward County consists of modern American Liberals who will fight to the death for aging greyhounds and drowning polar bears. They would vote for Dr. Mengele because of his progressive position on abortion. The Terri Schiavo reverse tontine solution for crowded nursing homes is on the not too distant horizon. We shall shortly see manatee suffrage on the ballot. Homeless shelters are built on toxic waste dumps, such dumps not being found in Weston, Lighthouse Point, or Las Olas. The only way a Republican got on the County Commission was when a Democrat member went to jail and he was appointed by a Republican Governor. The Democrats in Broward County tried for 4 years to give a hotel to a Black man. That he didn’t have the good sense to say “Yes” was taken as a black mark against them.

Why should the National Democrat Party be any different?

After the first Gulf War the general in charge of the British forces in theatre said of Schwarzkopf, “He was the man for the match”.

Say hello to Howard Dean, MD.

Bad enough that he suffers from terminal “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome” [??s – Send a SASE] but he has his head so far up his ass he could remove his own tonsils from the inside.

The cause of the problem is easy to detect.

The Democrats don’t trust the people. Worse, they don’t trust their own people.

The reason for the creation of SUPER DELEGATES was simple. They were there to correct any mistakes the people in the cheap seats made when they voted.

I paid dues to two unions neither of which was a sissy union like the Teachers or the Welfare Check Dispensers. Why is their vote worth more than the working stiff who is exploited by WAL*MART? Modern American Liberals send their kids to private schools [Kennedys, Clintons, Gores, Obamas, inter alia] Why should a teacher union SUPER DELEGATE have a vote that is worth more the vote of a parent who puts her kids on the yellow public school bus in the AM?

I paraphrase James Madison, a name as anathema to modern American Liberals as holy water would be to Dracula, when he says “I am unable to lay my finger on that provision of the Constitution that says”…New Hampshire gets to vote first.

Have you been to New Hampshire in January? No one would go there unless they wanted to live in the White House.

Howard Dean, MD – and I know a Broward proctologist who would like to extract any colonic polyps Dean might have with an environmentally sensitive weed whacker and a 9 pound Oreck – issues a ukase commanding the tide to stop. It didn’t.

As that revered political sage, Oliver Hardy, said to his faithful companion, Stan Laurel, “Well here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

This is a Spanish language friendly place. I search in vain for the Spanish translation for schadenfreude. “Joy at the travails of others.” This is not the death of a child. This is not one of those terrible plane accidents.

This was caused by adults who knew that they knew better than the people they were supposed to serve.

Now they are acting like 6 ruttingly rabid badgers meeting up with 6 wolverines with tooth aches. They are stuck in a broom closet and they are on national TV. Who cares if the writers stay on strike forever?

Soon, Archie Bunker and Bull Connor will endorse Hecate Hillary. OJ, Idi Amin, and Michael Jackson are waiting in the wings for the nod from Senator B. Hussein Obama.

Can it get much better than this?

Isn’t Governor Spitzer, he of the wandering one-eyed trouser snake with an appetite for $5,000 hookers, a SUPER DELEGATE?

Yes and Yes.

Congressperson Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

March 14, 2008

Congressperson Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

10100 Pembroke Pines Boulevard

Pembroke Pines, Florida 33028

RE: Campaign Strategy

My Dear Ms. Wormwood,

BRILLIANT!

ABSOLUTELY FRIGGIN’ BRILLIANT!

Like the mother cobra in Rikki Tikki Tavi…like Elsa teaching her cubs how to take down a gazelle…like they have done since the early days in Arkansas…”Fly not to the devil you know not”…Whatever it takes to get’er done…Just do it…brilliant.

By the time we get to the Pennsylvania primary there will be pictures of Mrs. B Hussein Obama working the pole at Bada Bing South. There will be pictures of his whelps learning pick pocket techniques at Camp Grifter. There will be DNA evidence that his father’s uncle was Idi Amin. His membership card in the “GO OJ” fan club will mysteriously reappear. Brilliant.

Getting Geraldine Zucchini-Fellini to put her good set of robes son may have been a bit over the top but, compared to what’s coming, it will look like a day at the beach.

I understand that Archie Bunker will be endorsing Hillary the Hecuba in exchange for getting the first official Paki-Bashing franchise.

Next out of the box will be Senator Robert Byrd [Democrat – West Virginia] He will sing Dixie while he burns a cross. Out of deference to younger viewers the only person he will flog will be a cast iron, nappy headed lawn jockey who answers to the name Dred Scott.

Brilliant!

Meanwhile, back in Broward, a problem, “slightly larger than a man’s fist against the horizon”, is simmering.

If you take just the voting records Broward County is Malibu East or Zabar’s South. The intellectualoids down here would vote for Dr. Mengele because of his progressive views on abortion. Alas, in terms of everyday applications of modern American Liberal promises of Kumbaya, they are about as reliable as the marital vows of the Governor of New York or, in a bow to Affirmative Action, the Mayor of Detroit.

I’ve been here since 1996. There are two things I still don’t quite get.

#1 – Hospital districts

#2 – Unincorporated areas

Let’s leave #1 alone for the nonce.

I remember that certain “unincorporated areas” put themselves up for bid in the late ‘90s. Contiguous towns assemble packages as if these areas were like NFL Pro Bowl free agents. It became obvious that no one wanted the…what term can we use without offending anyone?…drat…there isn’t any…Black areas.

The prosperous Black areas had sewer connections while the poorer ones had septic systems. Some of the areas made Section 8 housing look like Weston. A twice removed step child was treated better. This didn’t seem to bother the Broward modern American Liberal collective conscience like aging, soon to be Terri Schiavoed, greyhounds did.

After all the low hanging fruit was plucked the problem of what to do with them was still there. Like a big bobbing turd in the punch bowl it kept coming back at the worst time.

One of the unwritten rules of modern American Liberalism is that down South White folk don’t care how close Black folk get as long as they don’t get too big. Up North White folk don’t car how big Black folk get as long as they don’t get too close.

To answer the unasked question Broward County is part of the North.

Faulkner, Tate, Warren, Percy, the list could go on and on, but they would not recognize Broward County. It may be in the South but it is not of the South. The waxing and the waning are of the modern American Liberal Northern tradition. Harriet Van Horne would have loved this place.

Thus, the Broward County legislative solution of what to do with “them” was brilliant. I mean it was beyond brilliant.

Stacy Ritter.

They put Stacy Ritter in charge of finding a legislative solution to annexing unincorporated areas.

Her only chance of answering the question “What color is an orange?” if it were multiple choice. Professor Irwin Corey writes her speeches. The woman regularly gets lost on a ladder. The placement of the limo [that’s the big car with the family in it] and the hearse [that’s the not quite as big a car with the guest of honor in it taking a horizontal nap] in a 2 car funeral would cause her to have a near terminal case of the vapors. She is the poster girl for dumb blondes. She is the paradigmatic template of, as Johnson said, “an unidea’d girl”.

Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

That’s not the Broward issue I want to tell you about.

School enrollment in Broward has been declining for 4 years. Lenin, the noted social activist and Obama campaign volunteer, said “People vote with their feet”. Tumultuous real estate markets and crazy mortgage issues notwithstanding, people make decisions on where to live based on what schools their children will go to. [This wouldn’t affect you since your children don’t go to public school. It is one of the little mysteries of life why the Teachers union, surely as special an interest group as any of the “bad” interest groups, don’t confront you on this. I suspect something Mephistophelean may be afoot here]

The net result is this. 3 high schools are bursting at the seams while one – Plantation - their nickname is “The Colonels”, something that should warm the hearts of all Hillary supporters – is fast emptying out. It will be the next Dillard or Boyd Anderson. That is to say, it will have a 104% African-American student body for whom the FCATs will be deemed the moral equivalent of the Runaway Slave Law. Here’s hoping they don’t have Pass Laws.

Even though the total number of students in Broward is declining the total number of dollars spent on education will not go down. The amount per pupil will go up. That number will still pale in comparison to the per capita student expenditure in Washington, DC. Why not have Harridan Hillary go to the school that the Obama girls will go to should their father be elected? Why not have her say that if she could do it over her daughter would go there? The bobo boobs will eat it up.

I thought I’d let you know this because you have so much on your plate what with getting George Wallace and Bull Connor gussied up for the endorsement photo of them with Hillary.

My ideas are starting to flow like spring wine. Stay tuned. They are all predicated on the moral relativism – My favorite color is plaid – genetically implanted in modern American Liberals.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Fred Tasker - Head Wine Taster, Miami Herald

March 9, 2008

Fred Tasker – Head Wine Taster

The Miami Herald

One Herald Plaza

Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: You are my American Idol and is Jake O’Shaughnasey’s still in Seattle? A comment on your critique of wines grown in the State of Washington.

Mr. Tasker,

I am coming out of retirement [virtual] to announce the formation of the

FRED TASKER FAN CLUB

I am a calorically challenged, folllilcley challenged, and biblically bearded recovering wine snob. Since I am comfortably on life’s back nine I am qualified, I dare say uniquely qualified, to spot another like soul. Since it is bad form to be President of your own fan club I will take on that additional load.

All I can say is “What a country”! As my friend, the legendary restaurateur and sportsman, Big Mike from Bayonne, still says, “That’s why you never see anybody swimming to Cuba”.

That you managed to get a company, a public company, a company that files 10Ks and such, to pay you to drink wine and then write about it makes you my hero.

The club rules are simple.

#1 – Buy from the top or bottom of the list. Never in the middle.

#2 – Drink white when the red runs out.

#3 – Pavarotti was Burgundy. Domingo is Bordeaux.

Dues are optional. If you send me some money I’ll put it to good use.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Some comments on the letter of John L Simon in today’s Sun-Sentinel

March 10, 2008

Letters to the Editor

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: Some comments on the letter of John L Simon in today’s Sun-Sentinel.

Sirs,

I once bought a drink from a big, out going bartender named Moynihan in a saloon on 8th Avenue in Manhattan. He went on to do other things such as being a tenured professor at Harvard, Ambassador to India, Ambassador to the United Nations, and then a United States Senator.

One of his favorite sayings was “You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to y our own facts”.

You crammed a lifetime of errors into 5 paragraphs. Actually, if you discount the rather smarmy introductory paragraph it’s only 4.

Let’s start with Churchill.

The Northwest Frontier, Omdurman, Cuba, the Boer War. That’s 4 wars before he was 25. 4 wars on 3 different continents. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up”.

He led a cavalry charge against the Fuzzy-Wuzzies at Omdurman. He had a price on his head in the Trans-Vaal.

Why do I just know that you would have thought highly of the Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain?

In 1915, when he left the Cabinet but while he still was a sitting member of Parliament, he returned to his Regiment, said Regiment being on the Western Front in France. He served in a front line unit for almost a year. In 1940 he urged his countrymen to take pistol lessons. He kept a 6 inch .45 Colt revolver close at hand.

That’s a bit more than “a smattering of fighting” that you gainsay.

Of the 3 wars in American History with the largest casualties, the Civil War, World War 2, and World War 1, the country was led by Presidents who had no combat experience. Only one, Lincoln, had any military experience. Roosevelt’s greatest job was hiring George Marshall who hired everybody else. Chester Nimitz, who turned down the Pacific Command in early 1941, was told by Roosevelt in late 1941 to go to Hawaii and not to come back until the war was over. Nimitz used Plan Orange, a plan that was devised by the Naval War College in 1923, a plan that laid out the road map that ended in Tokyo Harbor on September 2, 1945. Wilson hired Pershing and didn’t second guess him when it was still considered smart to have infantry attack 5 miles of machine guns. His failures came not in war making but, rather, in peacemaking.

General Eisenhower led 10,000,000 men in combat. Eleven months and 2 days after invading Western Europe Germany surrendered. [Incidentally, D-Day was June 6, 1944. I mention that in case you’ve forgotten it and because my wife’s father, Lt. Cdr. Walter Chapman, was there as an active participant.] Eisenhower was highly decorated by this country and its allies. One of the decorations he did not wear was the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. It is given only to men who have come under enemy fire. Eisenhower never was.

As a matter of fact neither was Margaret Thatcher nor was Golda Meir nor was Queen Elizabeth the First.

Lady Thatcher managed to cobble together an invasion force of 15 ships and 8,000 men over a long weekend and dispatch them on a 7,000 mile trip to the Falkland Islands. They returned triumphantly.

Golda Meir never flinched when it came to signing the butcher’s bill when it was presented to her. She allowed Israeli artillery to all but level Alexandria. When Israeli athletes were slaughtered at Munich she took the adage Nolo me tangere cum impecunis to heart. She specifically authorized the formation of Israeli hit squads to track down the assassins and kill them. It took 3 years before that bill was stamped Paid in Full. She brooked no nonsense about waterboarding, due process, or rights of the accused. She said if you kill a Jew a Jew will kill you.

It is doubtful if Queen Elizabeth the First ever went aloft to set some sheets on the yardarm. That didn’t prevent her from hiring Drake to handle the Spanish Armada in 1588.

These 3 ladies had zero combat experience and no military experience. That didn’t prevent them from doing their job when the tocsin sounded.

Grant was a hard core combat veteran of the Mexican War. He did one thing superbly well. He led men in combat. That’s why he is on the $50 dollar bill and not McClellan. McClellan was known as the “Boy Napoleon”. He excelled at getting his men killed with nothing to show for it. In 1864 he ran for President with the support of the Democrats and the New York Times. He and the editorial board opposed the war, opposed Grant, and vehemently opposed Lincoln. Lincoln, by the way, was regularly called a “baboon”. Sherman, Grant’s good and great friend and leader of the first “surge”, was thought to be from a different planet. And to think that some people think that History doesn’t repeat itself.

As to Grant’s Presidency I have come to the conclusion that he was more sinned against than sinning. One thing he did that other administrations could have learned from was to make everything available to any Congressional investigations. His memoirs are a delight to read. He was far and away the best prose writer of any President. That he had Mark Twain as a copy editor couldn’t have him either.

You say that Grant’s administration was “inept”. For me the standard, the benchmark, the template for ineptitude, was the Carter administration. He set the bar so high as to discourage other competitors. The man couldn’t find his ass using both hands. He was graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a degree in civil engineering with a concentration in nuclear physics. He later served on a nuclear submarine. He couldn’t get 5 helicopters in a row to work in Iran. So much for military experience as a prelude to command.

You end by saying that President Bush “shouldn’t have been in the same room with the decorated veteran John Kerry”. President Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard as a pilot. He was criticized for not serving in Vietnam. Another candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2000 did the same thing. Senator Bill Bradley served in the New Jersey Air National Guard as a wing wiper. This enabled him to continue his day job with the New York Knickerbockers as a small forward or 2 guard. Did you level any criticism at him then?

There is one thing that every person mentioned in the above has in common. I can find no record of any of the named individuals saying that they “loathe the military”. People who have seen combat generally loathe war. But as Plato said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war”.

Nowhere, beginning with Herodotus and Thucydides, can I find someone saying that “I loathe the military” and then wind up commanding an army.

If President Bush shouldn’t have been in the same room with Senator Kerry President Clinton shouldn’t have been in the same area code with Senator Kerrey, Senator Dole, or Senator Inouye.

Why do I just know that you never mentioned this?

Maybe because I read History.

Congressperson Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

March 9, 2008

Congressperson Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

10100 Pembroke Pines Boulevard

Pembroke Pines, Florida 33028

Congressperson Wasserman-Schultz,

I just watched you talking to Brit Hume on Fox – Here’s a strange thought. Senator Clinton won’t talk to them. You are a big time mahac in her campaign. If you can talk to the enemy why can’t she? – about the Florida primary or the Florida non-primary or perhaps the Florida “Mulligan” primary or, maybe better put, The Great Florida Primary Clusterf**k.

Several points.

#1 – You say this is “the most important election in our lifetime”. I heard that in 1960 when Eleanor Roosevelt said it. She backed Adlai Stevenson. I heard it in 1964. I was told that if Barry Goldwater won we would have 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots. Boy oh boy but am I glad that I didn’t vote for him. I heard it in 1980…but I digress. The only good thing Peckerhead Carter did was make it easy for the Great Reagan to mop up the mess that Jimmuh made. Speaking of Carter have you read his book on Israel and Apartheid?

#2 – You said that the hoist on one’s own petard fiasco now playing was foisted on Florida ‘by the Republican legislature and the Republican Governor”. Back in my other life civil fraud could be committed by omitting a material fact, that is to say you could lie by not saying something. You lied by not saying that the legislation to move the date was co-sponsored by a Democrat. Before it got to the Republican Governor for his signature the vote in both Houses was but one shy of unanimous. Exactly one Democrat voted against it. Either your former colleagues in both Houses were asleep at the switch or acquiesced in its passage. Either way you told a lie. Maybe that’s why you feel so comfortable with Hillary who couldn’t lie straight in bed.

#3 – Based on my past experiences with you I don’t think you are too familiar with James Madison. He’s the little guy for whom the capitol of Wisconsin was named. He did good work in Philadelphia one hot summer a long, long time ago. I’ll borrow part of a sentence he wrote years later. “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that part of the Constitution that says” New Hampshire has to go first. Would the heavens have crumbled if they didn’t? Why, for a political party that prides itself on being the first to overthrow traditions and one that shows contempt for the “permanent things”, did they put their private parts into the grinder?

#4 – You were quite engaging when you phumfered on Brit Hume’s question “What now”? You sounded like you had your teeth upside down and in backwards as you tried to explain how you were going to square the circle. Nice touch.

#5 – Should Senator B. Hussein Obama wind up as a tenant in largest one family, multistoried dwelling on the register of public housing I hope that you will join with the other tenants of public housing in Washington, D.C. and demand that his daughters go to one of the very fine public grammar schools in the District. It’s OK that your kids don’t go to public schools here but the President should be held to a different standard, don’t you think?

#6 – I am enclosing a copy of a letter I sent to Michael Mayo of the Sun-Sentinel this morning. Since it covers the same subject I thought it might be of interest to you.

#7 – Love your hair. Don’t ever change it.

Fred Tasker, The Miami Herald

January 30, 2004

Fred Tasker

The Miami Herald

RE: Beer, Shakespeare, “de gustibus...” - Your tasty tract about beer in yesterday’s Herald.

Mr. Tasker:

“Light beer”? An oxymoron with which I will have nothing to do.

How can Gablinger’s have gone down the memory drain so completely and so suddenly? It was brewed by the Rheingold Brewery in Orange, New Jersey in the mid to late 1960s. Among other of their products was a catchy tune, “My beer is Rheingold the dry beer....”. And, of course, the Miss Rheingold contest. It was billed as a diet beer a la Tab. I bought a six pack and drank one. I dumped the other five. The father of a close friend, a fraternity brother, whom I have not spoken to in more than 10 years for whatever reason, was the head of sales for Rheingold. He would get us some of the non-diet suds from time to time.

A century ago Newark and surrounding Essex County had 100 breweries. It was the water. A lament that all New Jersey émigrés bewail constantly when they arrive here. There is but one left about which more later.

Shakespeare’s line from Henry the Sixth about “killing all the lawyers” is well known. Like most things quoted but seldom read it is the line before that is more important. “I shall make it a crime to drink small beer.” Even then those despoilers of tradition were peddling their wares. All serious readers of Shakespeare know that “small beer” was the Elizabethan equivalent of “light beer”.

The sad fact that the gates of Traquhair Brewery are still closed is yet one more reason to mourn the passing of Charles the First the anniversary of whose beheading in 1649 we mourn today. Perhaps lifting a pint would be order. Or two.

One more point.

Anyone attempting to smuggle any Anheuser-Busch product of any type or name - including the nuts - into my house will be throttled and dealt with severely. Very severely. As in “I see you like to shake hands with your foot, peckerhead.”

At the reception following my daughter’s wedding Anheuser-Busch products were banned as a condition of contract. “Why?”, asked the banquet manager. “3 reasons. #1 - The beer is terrible. #2 - The company is terrible. #3 - It’s my party.”

“Done that way,” said he.

If, as you say, “beer wenches” make $70 an hour waiting in line for beer at Australian cricket matches, is there any chance that my wife and I could qualify as the first “beer wench-beer dude” Yankee ex-pats down under? Other than our son Sean, AKA “The World Famous Lawyer” and our electrician, nobody makes $70 an hour.

And where are the snows of yesteryear when growlers with butter rubbed on the edge to keep the head down and plumber’s helpers were rites of passage in Bayonne, New Jersey, a legendary beer town. The Speedway, where Billy kept a book on open tabs. It was 5 years between visits - a wife, a child, another child - and when I walked in the first thing he did was get the book. My slate was clean.

Other places of note were Harry’s at Hanover Square in downtown Manhattan. I was one of an elite clique that got tossed out of Harry’s in Venice for asking why I couldn’t use my tab at Harry’s NY there. The Cornerstone in Carlstadt, NJ, particularly after Frank got rid of Jerry makes the short list also. Places where the beer was fresh, cold, and served well.

When my son was growing up in West Orange, NJ there were many places to get a drink. There were Damn few saloons. And there were far fewer flowing taps. I always felt I failed him there. His sister wound up running a great beer place - great if 20 flowing taps begin to constitute greatness - McDuffie’s, in Tempe, Arizona.

“More good has come from an inn, sir, than any other invention of mankind.”

A great article, sir.

Michael Mayo, The Sun Sentinel

March 9, 2006

Michael Mayo

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316

RE: A “Primary Mulligan” and how much better can it get for a founding member of “vast Right Wing conspiracy” as Howard Dean orchestrates a drive-thru colonoscopy followed up by a mail order lobotomy – Some comments on your column on the self inflicted wound of the Florida primary.

Mr. Mayo,

First, I am in the throes of terminal schadenfreude. It impairs my judgment. That’s why I will not operate heavy machinery today. Not that I was going to operate heavy machinery today. Rest assured, however, that if I were I wouldn’t.

Flash back to the first use of the term “mulligan” and the Clintons. Big Bill from Hot Springs used to take about 6 a side. Sometimes he’d tell the other golfers and sometimes he wouldn’t. If you are not a golfer ask some folks familiar with the game what they think about people who do that.

As to your suggestion that “Rush Limbaugh and his dittoheads” pay for the Florida primary “mulligan” I think George Soros would be a better bet. If he’s too busy trying to prove that President Bush really is Hitler try the former Vice President, Alpha Gump. Ask somebody who writes in the Business section – not H.Vasquez. He’s too busy leading a boycott of Exxon – about the Gumpster’s coming stock offering. His prospectus says it’s OK to steal a hot stove PLUS the pennies off a dead man’s eyes as long as polar bear drowning is outlawed and proper hospices are maintained for both nesting turtles and spotted owls. If he pulls this deal off he’ll have enough money to cobble up a ticket of O.J. Simpson and Rosie O’Donnell.

I may be on to something with those two above mentioned worthies. The sight of those two duking it out to see who’s on top should be on Pay Per View. That would pay for the Florida primary plus Michigan’s.

Since your column focuses on elections in Florida I would like to remind you of the highlight of the 2000 brouhaha.

The sight of man named Daley, a Daley from Chicago, a Daley from Cook County, Illinois, a Daley whose father said after the polls closed in the 1960 Presidential election, “Who says resurrection is dead?”, saying to a worldwide TV audience “Let’s count the votes”, was, to use an oft misused word, “unique”. That the live audience did not have simultaneous enuresis combined with projectile vomiting is a tribute to senses dulled by too much of Bill and Hillary. Remember, it was 2000.

Hanging chads and retired NYC people [Do you remember how Bernie Nussbaum was called “a New York lawyer” when Vince Foster ate his gun and managed to get his blood to run uphill? Do you think “New York lawyer” was a buzz word for something else? I do. Just imagine if anybody other than off the record White House Democrats had said that.] duped into voting for Satan, AKA Pat Buchanan, in Palm Beach were not caused by the ghost of Lee Atwater. The Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections was a Democrat.

SUPER DELEGATES, the modern American Liberal answer to the potential wretched excess of the people, is today’s best example of a petard. It is ironic that a party that pays lip service to participatory democracy didn’t, wouldn’t, and worse, couldn’t trust its own members to pick a candidate. After all, Father knows best.

Solzhenitsyn, after 5 years of fighting Hitler and 10 years in the Gulag for raising an eyebrow at Stalin, said after viewing the charnel houses caused by an excess of isms, “All this happened after man turned away from God”.

In secular America, a place where God is not tolerated unless His name is Allah, such thoughts are not permitted.

In the utopia envisioned by the modern American Liberals who make up the Democratic Party, a utopia where all it takes to “Speed the Plow” is good people wishing to do so, The Democrats turned away from the people.

Only someone who believes, who believes very deeply, that for every problem there is a solution best devised and implemented by the government, someone like you, could make the following statement.

“My proposal: Seat the Florida and Michigan delegations based

on the January results, which favor Clinton. In return, Obama would

get John Edwards’ 39 delegates, along with 40 percent of the delegates

in Michigan, where Obama’s name wasn’t on the ballot and

40% of the voters chose “uncommitted”.

The Sun-Sentinel

Page 4B

Today

You

It must have been 5:00 somewhere when you wrote that. On second thought it was 5:00 everywhere. And I thought that Tosspot Ted, the hero of Chappaquiddick, was the only guy who had the recipe for gin soup. Did you begin your adult life by arranging 2 car funerals to see how many ways you could screw them up? It’s like the credit card commercial. Priceless.

What about the Kucinich voters? Who speaks for them? How about Mike Gravel? Shouldn’t he get an Affirmative Action bite of the primary apple?

Do you remember the scene in “Shogun” when one of the Gomers tries to sell out the big guy? It doesn’t work out the way it was planned. These things seldom do. Either he does a Vince Foster or they’ll saw his head off with a wooden spoon. The last thing he can do is can do is teach the younger Samurais how to commit hara-kiri [seppuku for the purists] with some style and grace. Exit with a bit of panache, so to speak. He does. You won’t.

Another ninny, State Representative Dan Geber says, “I’m trying not to look backward. Let’s move forward and figure out what our best option is.” Clearly he helped you on the placement of the hearse and the limo. If he didn’t he spent a lot of time trying to make time run the other way.

Meanwhile, the OJ Simpson and Rosie O’Donnell ticket looks better and better.


PS – Two things: How fitting that the other story on the second page of your column says SEA TURTLE DAY – BOCA CELEBRATES. Let’s just take that as further proof of the ungildability of lilies. As to utopia its meaning hasn’t changed in at least 25 centuries. It still means nowhere. At least you’re making good time getting there.

Bobby Henry, Sr. & Mother Russia

March 8, 2008

Bobby Henry, Sr.

Westside Gazette

545 NW 7th Terrace

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311

RE: Things get “curiouser “and “curiouser” when some speech is free and some isn’t and how are people in Russia supposed to “get” it when people in Fort Lauderdale can’t.

Mr. Henry,

Mike Lynn is a good friend who has gone from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Denver, Colorado to teaching at a university in Russia. Despite Mrs. Obama’s whining and caterwauling about how bad things are in this country my friend tells me that America is looked on with wonder, like Cortez’s men, “with a wild surmise”, at least in Russia.

I found out a long time ago that while it was deuced difficult to explain the Electoral College to foreigners it was impossible to explain the primary process and candidate forums. Each state has its own rules and each county, each city, and each special interest group has rules that pertain to them and to them only. Perhaps the contradictions are one of the things that make this country so great and so fascinating to foreigners. Like my good friend, the legendary Big Mike from Bayonne, is wont to say, “That’s why you never see anybody swimming to Cuba”.

How, for example, will my expatriate friend, the American professor in Russia explain the following statement?

“Bobby Henry, Sr., publisher of the Westside Gazette, said the

newspaper planned to conduct more forums and debates this year,

but limited its first forum to black candidates because the

contests were in many areas with large black populations.”

The Sun-Sentinel

March 7, 2008

[italics mine]

Would it not therefore follow, Logically, that white audiences should only hear white candidates?

I am certain that one of the bright Russian lads will ask if every black voter in America votes for Senator B. Hussein Obama will that number be sufficient to elect him the President of the United States. If he needs white people to vote for him would it not be in Hillary Clinton’s interest to deny him exposure to white only audiences?

The question trips deliciously off my tongue.

What if a white moderator forbade him an audience because he was the wrong color?

It is like pregnancy. Either you are or you aren’t.

Either speech is free or it isn’t.

And to think that you are in the newspaper business, a business that is oh so quick to hector us mere mortals with Eeyoreish predictions about treacherous slippery slopes and its dreaded cousin, the chilling effect.

It doesn’t seem to bother modern American Liberals who proclaim without a hint of irony that all candidates are equal but some candidates are more - or less - equal than others.

What can I tell the Russians other than doz vadania?

Friday, March 7, 2008

Representative Dan Gelber

March 6, 2008

Representative Dan Gelber

1920 Meridian Avenue

Miami, Florida 33135-1818

RE: I know that my redeemer liveth because my cup runneth over. The Hollywood writers should go back on strike because truth is stranger and funnier than fiction when it involves the contortions of modern American Liberals – South Florida coven.

Representative Gelber,

I am reluctant to say it can’t get any better but since I revel in the lunacies, both large and small, of modern American Liberals who occupy South Florida I say…There’s No Business Like Show Business subtitled Send In The Clowns.

The specifics are below.

#1 – Should the votes in the Florida primary count? – Like Madison, I am “unable to lay my finger on that part of the Constitution that says” New Hampshire gets to go first. The place is barley tolerable in the early fall. Who the Hell would go there voluntarily in January unless they were made to do so every 4 years? Like fish on Friday was a Papal accommodation to Iberian fishermen I am sure the fix was put in by Granite State hotel keepers and restaurant owners.

In deference to the ukase of the Democratic National Committee Hillary the Hecate, in her good days perhaps harridan would better describe her, pledged not to campaign in Florida. She shows up in Florida three days before the election at a fundraiser in Coral Springs. She took parsing lessons from her bottom line guy, Big Bill from Hot Springs, AKA “The King of the Oval Office Trouser Snakes”. She says from a handy balcony a la Evita, “I did not campaign in that state…Florida”. That rhyming scheme sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Close your eyes and she reminds you of Nixon. Smart, perhaps too smart by half, methodical, complicated, and, yes, she will kick you when you are up or when you are down as Senator B. Hussein Obama is about to find out. Plus, she and the old Trickster share one common trait. Either they both were born absent the likability gene or they had it Lasered out of them. Either way when they smile cream curdles. She’s the main reason the aforementioned Senator B. Hussein Obama is so popular. She could make OJ and Michael Jackson popular. The only way Saturday Night Live could have made her popular would have been if the audience were given hatchets and were told that she was Lizzie Borden’s mother.

Today, in the Sun-Sentinel, fellow modern American Liberal Michael Mayo, he of the perpetually sanguinary brow, tells us of the high dudgeon of one Barbara Effman of Sunrise for being “disenfranchised” by the Democratic National Committee. Although he doesn’t tell us it is beyond doubt that she is a Hillary supporter. Both were publicly humiliated by their husbands. Hillary had the added anguish of the national TV reptiles examining her and husband the way a surgeon examines a lump. Barbara Effman only had local coverage. Her husband was a noted divorce lawyer. When he would read his briefs to his female clients he would suggest that they shed theirs. Once they lost their knickers he gave them lessons in the horizontal tango. As they say, “A slice off a cut loaf is seldom missed”. He then billed them “for services rendered”. Nothing like a deeply penetrating argument to bring certain messy proceedings to a climax. Another example of adhering to the highest standards of the Bar.

No wonder she likes Hillary.

The goal of modern American Liberals is power. To get this they tell their supporters else wise. They know that “any public policy that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support “. The people who support them do really believe that all lunches should be free and that money from home, ‘free’ money from home, is a basic Right and ought to be writ large in the Constitution.

Despite cries of “Taxes are too low” and “Profits are too high” the big shots of the Democratic Party were loath to flesh out “Power to the People” to the people. They created SUPER DELEGATES to shape the will of the people. They created SUPER DELEGATES because sometimes the people don’t do what they should do. Surely the thing would be wrapped up by the time the convention came around. Nut cutting time would be a day at the beach.

Like I said it couldn’t get any better.

What should we do about Florida and Michigan?

Easy.

Affirmative Action. Goals, not quotas. “Mend it, don’t end it.” A leg up rather than a hand out. Level the playing field. Maybe you should let Jimmy Carter pick the nominee.

Go to it guys. The whole world is watching. Will Pudenda Power trump Black Power? How good is this going to be?

#2 – Anti-Semitism is down. How do you suppose Bush did that?

#3 – Schools – One of my favorite movie scenes is when Jimmy Durante is tip-toeing out of a circus tent. He is holding one end of a very long piece of rope. The other end is tied around the neck of a very large elephant. He is inches away form a clean getaway when a policeman says, “Where are you going with that elephant?” Durante looks around and says. “Elephant? What elephant?”

Rudy Crew, who gives tangible proof to the song “If You Can’t Make It in New York You Can Still Make It In Miami” was at Edison High School last night and said “Elephant? What elephant?” He stood in front of students, parents, and teachers and said he was proud of the 10th grade achievement in lowering cholesterol, of the building not burning down so far this year, and that “felonies are within the acceptable level”.

“What elephant?”

Two days ago there was a bit of a dustup at Miami Edison High School. The police handcuffed 24 revolting students. The reason for the protest was that the students decided that they didn’t want the Vice Principal that they had. They had a food fight like Animal House and they went outside and blocked traffic. Perhaps the police overreacted. Perhaps not.

On one h and I would be in a revolting mood also. At some point in their mid teens these kids realize that they have been had. 2 years from graduation and they know that they don’t know. Further, they know that most of the teachers don’t know either. The FCATs reflect this. The educational/poverty complex reacts as they always do. Break the mirror and yell for more money. Always include racism in the mix.

You are very proud that your daughters are going to the same public grammar school that you did.

Try to guess where I am going here.

I don’t think it would be audacious of me to hope that should Senator Barack Obama, AKA “Bambi”, and his charming wife Michelle the Whiner find themselves in the White House that their 2 daughters will attend one of the really fine public grammar schools in Washington, DC. The litmus test for modern American Liberals when it comes to education is money spent per pupil. That’s why the District of Columbia, with spending approaching $23,000 per pupil, has the phenomenal reputation that it has.

I can’t imagine why the Clintons and the Gores chose to send their children to private schools particularly when they were tenants in public housing who never paid nay rent. Maybe they were “special needs” students. Hey! Who knows?

You can do your part for public education by pledging here and now and absolutely in public that your daughters will go to Miami Edison High School. Busing worked in Boston, didn’t it? I am sure your daughters will be the better for it. The goal of education, or so I am told by modern American Liberals, is increased self esteem. What better way for your daughters to realize their full potential than be spending cross cultural sleepovers in Liberty City? I am sure the charming Mrs. Gelber will go along with this plan for her children. After all, it’s for the children.

It seems that Hugo Chavez, the good friend of a lot of House Democrats, wants to start a war with Columbia. Wars are not good. We all know that. Why not get the two leading Democrats to send some of their friends down there to stop it? Bambi can send Louie Farakhan. Hillary can send Norman Hsu. Maybe Jane Fonda.

That will show how serious Democrats are.

Thanks for listening. I hope to see all of you mud wrestling over who gets to vote at the convention. Ideally, Bambi and the Hecuba will act like rabid wolverines fighting over a baby lamb.

Maybe former Vice President Alpha Gump will step in. Maybe Toper Ted, AKA Senator Lard of Chappaquiddick glory, will step up. Here’s hoping it’s a long, very long, hot, very hot summer.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Judge Robert Zack

Judge Robert Zack

201 SE 6th Avenue

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: Is Castro right? What’s that smell?

Judge Zack,

In a galaxy far, far away my son Sean, not quite 7, asked me why that lady was crying. “Because Poppy is sending her son to jail”, was my answer.

“Poppy” was my father, Judge Martin J. Smith. Poppy’s first grandson Sean is now a member of the Bar in 3 states, those states being Virginia, New Jersey, and New York. I mention them to show that the likelihood of him ever appearing in your court room is remote, very remote. I say that because I would not want him to be in the same court house, let along court room, let alone with you presiding over anything judicial. He has strong memories of his grandfather. He was a good and decent man. His judicial conduct added to the traditions of both Bar and Bench. He enhanced the aura that society believes should come when you don Black robes and pick up a gavel. As a Judge you are called on to weigh doubts against certainties and do things that affect the lives of those in front of you. Those people assumed that regardless of the outcome they were given a fair hearing. They assumed that you did really believe that “equal protection under the law” would preclude the things that you did with astonishing regularity.

You abused your trust and insulted those who put such trust in you.

You should be driven from the court house by outraged citizens. You should be flogged on the steps for violating the sacred trust of the Bench. Better you should have held up a 7-11 or stole a widow’s Social Security check. You could say you were hungry or that you were a drug addict. Better that you took the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.

My father did not go to high school until he was 26 years old. He had a natural sense of “balance” that Aristotle spoke of in his “Ethics”. Later, when he became familiar with his writings, he regarded it as yet another proof of his correct choices in life. You, on the other hand, must live in an ethical Gehenna. Right, wrong, and maybe change places so many times in your universe that Dante would have to figure out a new circle for you.

You “borrowed” money from a bail bondsman 6 years ago. You skated on that. You “borrowed” money last year from a lawyer who was trying a case in your court room. You skated on that one too.

Not being a lawyer I am better able to see the difference between law and justice. What you did was contemptible. It was akin to a teacher buggering a 6th grader. You violated the delicate trust that exists in any court room. It is assumed that both sides will present their case vigorously and zealously. It is assumed that both sides will follow the rules both written and unwritten. It is assumed that the Judge will keep the ball in bounds and allow the tale to play itself out. One of the lawyers had a marker, a chit, an IOU, in his pocket from you. It is inconceivable that it was not a factor in the trial. You let this lawyer buy you dinner and pick up your bar tabs. You sat there like a Black robed turd in the punch bowl pretending that all was well.

It was not.

Who knows what other evil things you have done?

I look back on all the times I was in a court room and ask myself if the Judge was under someone’s thumb. You say “it was probably not a very good idea to be letting litigants before him take him out for meals”. You’re right on that.

There is an old law covering the above.

#1 – Thou shalt not steal.

There is a scene in “A Man For All Seasons” when Thomas More, knowing that all is lost, knowing that he going to be executed, asks what is the chain of office around his accuser’s neck. “Sir Richard is made Attorney-General for Wales”, is the answer.

“For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… But for Wales!

At least that Judas got a country. You got some blue tarp and some whiskey. How little you valued your office. You should have held out for a new bathroom and a week in London. May be you could have seen where they put Thomas More’s head.

You stole from the people of Broward County. You stole from the traditions of the Bar. Most importantly, you stole from the legacy of my father.

Castro, our bearded thug neighbor, has a special loathing for Florida Judges. This episode has been like an elixir for him.

“You have raised a stink in the nostrils of honest men.”

“There is nothing lost save honor.” Go. Go quickly. Flee now lest your foetid ordure make the court house uninhabitable. You have already made it unbearable for honest men.

That smell is you.

Daniel Vasquez, The Sun Sentinel

March 4, 2008

Daniel Vasquez

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: Sequitur – Your second lesson in what makes the dog hunt.

Mr. Vasquez,

Your concern for the poor and their long suffering cousins, the old, the halt, the lame, senior citizens condemned to living on a fixed income in an inflationary age, the calorically challenged, the follliclely challenged, unwilling teenage victims of the obesity scourge, drowning polar bears, and any other certified “victim” groups that I failed to mention, was made manifest yesterday in, so help me, the Business section of your employer, in your B minus polemic against the evil oil companies.

I await, eagerly, your impassioned take on the earnings of Publix Super Markets as reported in the Sun-Sentinel, your employer, this morning.

Not only did Publix make money they made a lot of money.

On gross sales of $5.9 Billion [that’s $5,900,000,000] Publix had a net income of $291 million [that’s $291,000,000]. The numbers, gross and net, were up from the previous year. Remember the words “gross” and “net”. There will be a test. It’s not the dreaded FCATs. It’s called life in the real world.

Since you want to investigate the oil companies for “profiteering” don’t you think the piercing spotlight of the 4th Estate should be turned on Publix?

Think how many of the undeserving poor in Florida could be fed on the $291,000,000 of profits they made. Wouldn’t it be “fair” if Publix just passed on food to the undeserving poor without marking it up to make a profit. I am sure they could get their employees to work for free once they were made to understand why certified victims deserve this little break from the rigors of life.

Full disclosure demands that I reveal two things.

#1 – I succumbed to Publix’s devious advertising on Sunday last and bought some freshly picked Florida strawberries. They were deliciously superb. I know, I know that they were probably drenched in pesticide and that they were picked by immigrant workers who are treated like serfs. I know that they were transported to my local Publix in trucks that belch CO2, said trucks contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer, the continued drowning of the helpless polar bears, AND the obscene profits of the evil oil companies. In a moment of weakness I bought them and ate them.

#2 – I have been a regular patron of Publix for 12 years. I don’t want to put too much on your plate but I have had a trade deficit with them since 1996. In that way I resemble the relationship between the United States and China. At least twice a week I give Publix money and, in turn, they give me food and stuff. 12 years is a long time. Wouldn’t it be “fair” if Publix would give me a dividend towards the continued purchase of their products? In addition to being a long term customer I am a senior citizen who is disabled. Shouldn’t I get 3 bites of the apple? I mean what’s “fair” is “fair”, right?

Senator H. Rodham Clinton and Senator B. Hussein Obama are carping about NAFTA. To be precise, they yowl about in Ohio and they whisper about it in Texas. I’m not sure why that is but I hope someone will explain that to me. If “all politics is local” why isn’t some candidate speaking out on my behalf? I’ll be in thralldom to Publix until I go horizontal. I’m not sure what can be done about that but I am sure that it is not “fair” and once something is shown to be “unfair” something must be done to make it “fair”.

You have a decidedly Rawlsian view of “fairness”, a view that would be better served on the editorial page along with other moon bat, wing nut modern American Liberals such as Nutty Professor Stevie Goldstein, AKA “Screwtape”, and his disciple Douglas Lyons, AKA “Wormwood”. May I suggest that you request a transfer?

Your readers who live in the real world would be better served if you kept your musings – all of which qualify as non sequiturs – to your self. The editorial page, a place where gravity is a concept but not yet a law, awaits. Adults who have live in the real world and have scars honorably earned from it would be most appreciative. If not appreciative they would most assuredly be relieved of your Jeremiads about how bad they are.

Scratch Jeremiah. That might be blasphemy. Substitute Eeyore.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Daniel Vasquez, The Sun Sentinel

March 3, 2008

Daniel Vasquez

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: About rising gasoline prices and as Lenin, the noted social activist asked, “What’s to be Done” as outlined by your astonishing column in today’s Sun-Sentinel

Mr. Vasquez,

I am far too old and I have seen far too many credits become debits to rely on assumptions, particularly unfounded assumptions.

I assume that if I read an article about television in the Sun-Sentinel that the writer knows something about television. I assume that if I read an article about travel in the Sun-Sentinel that the writer knows something about travel. In the two above mentioned subjects that is the case. Both subjects are covered by knowledgeable men who write very well about their subjects.

How easy it was for me to fall for the trap set by you and your employer. I assumed that an article in the business section would have been written by someone who…y’know what I’m saying?…like Wow!...knew something about business and about the way the world works. Not the way you want it to work, not the way you think it should work, but the way the damn thing, “warts and all”, works.

Simple things like knocking on the door of a perfect stranger and asking him to buy something from you. Simple things like trying to put together a budget. Simple things like trying to figure out how to get a customer to pay. Simple things like trying not to piss off a numbskull bureaucrat. Simple things like meeting a payroll. Simple things like trying to make sense of a tax code “designed by Martians for Martians”. Simple things like fully understanding from the evidence of your own eyes what the word “margin” means.

You would think I would have known better. Hell, I have more experience than Hillary Clinton. Mea culpa, my fault.

Your column is predicated on nobody noticing that based on what you write, have written, and will continue to write you have no experience in the arena.

I have no idea what your educational background or job background is. I know from your columns that you confuse correlation with causation thus indicating that Logic is Terra Incognita to you. I know that your solutions are predicated on “Balloon Juice” nostrums that would require the suspension of all the laws governing gravity to have any chance of succeeding.

Today’s economics lesson will be short and not so sweet. Think about the last time you were punched in the mouth.

When the price of any commodity spikes two things happen.

#1 – Demand drops.

#2 – Supply increases.

Am I going too fast for you?

The marginal user stops using as much. Does this fall disproportionately on the poor, the old, the halt, and the lame? Of course it does. There was a judge in Paris who said that the rich and the poor have an equal right to sleep under the bridges over the Seine. “The rich in the summer; the poor in the winter.” Does that sound cruel? If it does maybe you can explain why nobody swims to Cuba. Why are the swimmers always heading North?

“How sad of all the things that men endure

how few laws or kings can cause or cure.”

One of the vexing questions facing Western man has been the lack of bones to feed the dogs when the dinner bell rings. Do you decrease the number of dogs or do you increase the number of bones? Or do you try to allocate the number of bones going to each dog to make sure that each dog has its “fair share”? I leave it to you to explain to Thunder, the Bull Mastiff why FiFi, the 6 pound poodle gets first dibs on the left over ribs.

You may recall that I mentioned Lenin. His successor Stalin had a solution, unfortunately not unique, to a wheat shortage in Ukraine. He killed all the successful farmers. That solved the shortage problem. The technical terms for that solution are famine and genocide. [Google Kulaks]

One of your solutions is predictable in its simplicity and total disregard of facts, experience, and History. “Of course, we all should demand that Congress investigate oil profiteering.”

I have yet to see a declarative sentence defining what “profiteering” is. I have yet to have a satisfactory definition of “fair rate of return”.

You say that an inordinate increase in the price of gasoline is – pick one or pick them all – mean & rotten, illegal, and/or unfair. If the price of gasoline should fall it would greatly benefit the consumer. Would it not therefore follow Logically that the collapse of housing prices should be greeted with open arms and Te Deums? Would not the group of possible home buyers be expanding geometrically? Is not the problem of the lack of affordable housing curing itself as we speak? Of course, if your outrage about prices is eclectic then all bets are off.

You seem to be saying that oil companies make too much money. Should they be punished by the tax code or by increased mind boggling regulation would you be as kind as to explain to me how this will decrease the price of gasoline at the pump? Please tell me how, should your legislative kneecapping of oil companies succeed, this will lead to a new Spindletop, a new Elk Hills, or a new North Shore?

As a stop gap solution may I suggest that if gas goes above $4 per gallon that we put the Post Office in charge of the oil companies? If the price continues to climb let’s bring the very bright people from the Department of Motor Vehicles. They’re always looking for a new challenge.

18 centuries ago Diocletian’s answer to rising bread prices was to mandate a “fair” price. His solution for any baker not following his “guidelines” was to cut their hands off. No bread followed by no bakers. That was a plan. Talk about getting carbs out of your diet!

May I suggest that to show your solidarity with those “unlucky in life’s lottery” you get your employers to shun air conditioning in Sun-Sentinel world HQ this summer? Half the electricity generated in this country is used to air condition buildings. Half of power generated comes from burning coal. To Hell with SUVs and $4.00 a gallon gas to make them run. Coal is dirty. If you want to show your solidarity with drowning polar bears and the “wretched of the earth” turn off the A/C and wear loose fitting garments this summer.

May I suggest that your employer ban the use of private automobiles by its employees? The net effect on demand will be negligible but it will send a message to all like minded people.

Limiting the number of dogs at dinner time we can make the bones last longer is a premise both invalid and untruthful.

Economic progress comes from the Rule of Law, social mobility, and the simple dictum of what you have you keep. Your property rights are not predicated by the right Party being elected. It has only worked everywhere it has been tried. You seem to have wound up in the business section of the Sun-Sentinel without knowing any of this.

Accordingly, I name you

HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK