Wednesday, December 30, 2009

They're Back!

December 29, 2009

Rock Groove lichen, Dwarf Wedge mussel, Comal Springs Drypoid beetle, Delta smelt, Delhi fly, Snail darter, and my favorite, the Furbish lousewort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week a Muslim wingnut tried to blow up a Delta jet with 300 passengers inbound to Detroit from Kafiristan. His 72 infidel virgins would have had a purchase price of 300 people. A good deal using the new 3rd world math.

The beast outside the gates, the one with the awful eyes and the unsmiling face, is upon us again.

I wait in vain for a terrorist to be named Slojanowski or Nunzio. Let me know when a jet is hijacked by someone from Finland. Is there anyone from Chile other than a garden variety bank robber on the “Don’t Fly” list?

Beginning with the Munich Olympics in 1972 straight through to Saturday last there is a single thread common to all these despicable acts. Whether it was embassies, war ships, office buildings, airplanes, or Jewish reporters soon to have their heads cut off the sound common to all these things was… Allah Akbar!

I read today that the Rock Groove lichen, the Dwarf Wedge mussel, and the Comal Springs Drypoid beetle have been added to the Endangered Species list. We have been told that Carbon Dioxide is a poison gas. With regards to the former has anyone else noticed that Jabberwocky is the new official language and that the boobies are running the hatch? With regards to the latter can we expect an official ukase from one of the czars limiting exhaling?

We have given Swift - Jonathan, not Taylor - a new dimension. We have allowed the dunces to rule us.

I am in Texas with my 3 granddaughters. I am 61 years older than the youngest. I have been “in disfavor with fortune and men’s eyes” for so long that the estate tax changes will encompass no effect on me at all. The only legacy I can be certain of leaving them is the one I got at birth.

There is much to be learned from Buddhism, from the Hindus and the Shintos. Let whatever Vegans can add to the Western Canon be added to it. Flat Earthers and Truthers should be encouraged to put something into the pot if they can.

Is there a Buddhist Homer? Is there an Antigone waiting to be discovered? Was there a Hindu Cicero of whom I am unaware? Is there a Dante shaped by the people and customs of the Tigris and the Euphrates? How about a Bach? How about a cello? If Allah is so Akbar why would a few cartoons bother him?

If I mention leisure suits, due process, Zippo lighters, canned food for dogs an will have d cats, polio vaccine, the Green Bay Packer sweep, short selling, or walking on the moon I run the risk of being called an elitist.

The line from Jerusalem to Athens to Rome to London to America is both plain and straight and true. Here I enter the obligatory footnote that “Men are not angels” and say that bad things happened. Having said that can someone tell me who else has done what “we” have done? Can someone tell me what other system has lifted so many people to undreamed of heights such as “we” have done?

Rights that were mine at birth, rights that were “a gift from beyond the stars”, these things I want to make sure that Caitlin, Caroline, and Julia will have and can pass on to their grandchildren.

We care more about flora, fauna, and “whether or not the Constable has blundered” then facing down the evil men who want to kill us, who want to destroy our way of life, and who want to salt our fields.

The time for turning the other cheek is gone.

The time for weasel words like balance, fairness, open mindedness and its bitch spawn, multi-culturalism, is gone.

Nolo me tangere cum impecunis


Mecca delenda est.




Kevin Smith

Ellen Goodman The Boston Globe

December 29, 2009


Ellen Goodman
The Boston Globe
135 Morrissey Street
Boston, MA. 02205

RE: Is this the end of “Little Rica”? Is that what your column in today’s Dallas Morning News says? If so, farewell to one of my favorite piñatas.

Ellie! Sweetheart!

Based on the new picture attached to your column a few months ago I know what your new career will be.

You are going to franchise retail Cougar outlets. There may be a market for ancient bearded clams. If so, you are ahead of the curve. Plus there is nothing more carbon neutral.

Colonel Sanders was 65 when he took his birds public. If there isn’t a market for arthritic “Afternoon Delights” the solution is typically American. Create one. Down South they are called ‘Nooners”.

Meanwhile, based on your last column, congratulations are in order.

Your paean to progesterone has, a la James Joyce, expanded our language. Solipsism is no longer an individual trait. You’ve made it a group characteristic.

Whatever progress has been made by women is because of WOMEN.

Am I the first to notice that the chicks’ progress is coincident with your career as an ink stained wench?

I am fighting the temptation to toss in Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc because it came from Dead White European Males. Since you are heading to a new life at the Medicare assisted Mustang Ranch I’ll do my best to overcome this heretofore irresistible impulse.

You say “nearly a quarter-million women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan” and that “120 have died and 650 have been wounded but there is still no ERA”. Logic would dictate that if the Amazon Brigade under the stalwart leadership of Brigadier Bodacia, ably assisted by Gunnery Sergeant Mikulski and Shalala the sublime sapper, were to replace the 173rd Infantry Brigade their casualty rate would go up dramatically. The ERA would become part of the Constitution by acclamation. While you’re at it you could begin to end the gender disparity in Arlington Cemetery.

Your verbal ca-ca includes the oft-repeated shibboleth that chicks are paid 77% of what guys make. If that is the case I can’t imagine how you spent the last 40 years as an underpaid wage slave. Did you have to make coffee for the bosses? Did you have to make meat loaf for the company rarees? Is there anything else you want to share with us?
Were you doing the Monica before Monica? If you did you have an obligation to the newly arriving female scribes. To tell them to keep their MACE and their self respect handy.

You take the obligatory modern American Liberal poke at Sarah Palin by calling her a “Title 1X baby”. You succeed in making it sound like a 4 letter word. How would you describe the “wise Latina” currently sitting on the Supreme Court?

Who gets the credit for Paris Hilton? Are there any volunteers?

Other than you there is only one other columnist in Boston with whom I am familiar. I will send a copy of this farewell note to Howie Carr. I am certain he will pass the hat to help finance your move.

Maybe you could read up on Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher to see how they overcame gender and class to become leaders. Did they have Affirmative Action on the kibbutz or at Oxbridge?

God luck in your new venture



Kevin Smith

Monday, December 28, 2009

Congressman Ron Klein

December 22, 2009

Congressman Ron Klein
800 Broward Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: As is said down South, “It’s nut cuttin’ time”. – A request for the yeas or nays.

Congressman Klein,

If Israel decides to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities will you support their decision?

If American military intervention is required will you support that?




Kevin Smith

Beth Reinhard The Miami Herald

December 22, 2009

Beth Reinhard
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: Tales of “Hootie” and what did Alex Sink do when she worked for him.

Ms. Reinhard,

As a leading regional ink stained wench and as a proud card carrying member of the South Florida modern American Liberal cabal maybe you can get me an answer.

In your column of 12/12/09 you comment on the “white male GOP stronghold” and the futile attempts of Antigone wanabees to gain access to the testosterone laden redoubt. From your vantage point the only requirement to be a member and gain all the benefits appurtenant thereto is to have or to have had a prostate gland.

I have been trying to get an answer on Alex Sink’s acquiescence in this young century’s most blatant exercise of public misogyny.

In the winter/spring of 2003 the New York Times gave equal Page 1 coverage to two upcoming events.

One was the onset of the Congressionally approved war with Iraq. The other was an annual golf tournament held in a privately owned gold club in rural Georgia.

A war with men killing each other, with modern technology perverted to aid in this unholy cause, with an unwise war mongering lout trying to secure oil benefits for his family, with a demonic puppet master Vice President who long ago had sold his soul to the forces of the Dark Side, was one thing to protest. But worse, far worse things were happening.

White guys didn’t want to play golf with chicks. Further, they didn’t want to have lunch with them, particularly in the Men’s Grill. Despite this slap in the face of American women these guys were able to make their tournament one of the premier sporting events in the world. As much as the country celebrated the girls’ soccer team beating the…the…Who the Hell did they beat?...the highlight was the skinny chick taking her shirt off.

It was like central casting, with the able help of NOW and EMILY’S list, had chosen the nickname of the knuckle dragging dude in charge of this affront to American women. “Hootie” was his name. Discrimination was his game. “Hootie” would have to answer for his and his gender’s sins.

Pandora’s Box was open but the task proved too much for Lady Sisyphus.

The ladies did not prevail. They did not get to tee up with the rich White guys. They did not get to slurp down a few see-throughs in the sacrosanct grill. The damage done to them will take generations to repair.

In charge of this was the aforementioned “Hootie”.

Here’s where my unanswered question comes in.

Alex Sink worked for “Hootie” at the Bank of America. One might say that she was his “Gal Friday”. As she pondered the thickets of Glass-Steagel and the intricacies of fractional reserves she may have had to get him coffee and take car of his dry cleaning and dental appointments. I can not attest to the last sentence because I can’t get an answer.

Was “Hootie” always “Hootie”? Was he a woman hater when she worked for him? Did he demean and harass her? Did he tell jokes at her expense? Was she paid as much as her male counterparts? Why didn’t she resign in protest at his antics?

Now that she is running for the Senate she is entitled to a “mulligan” on this. “Mulligan” is a golfing term for “do-over”.

Maybe if you were to ask her we could get to the bottom of this vexing question.

I am not sure how the war will end but it pales in comparison to the brouhaha at Augusta Golf Club.

Besides, if “Hootie” drank in the morning – and she would know, wouldn’t she? - it would explain a lot of things.

Please get back to me before next November’s election.

Thank you.




Kevin Smith


PS – I am having a senior moment. Was it President Carter or President Mondale who appointed Sandra Day O’Connnor to the Supreme Court?

Senator Christopher Dodd

December 24, 2009

Senator Christopher Dodd
30 Lewis Street #110
Hartford, CT 06103

RE: The traditions of the Senate

Senator Dodd,

And a non-denominational carbon free Season’s Greetings to you!

Churchill said that the traditions of the Royal Navy were “rum, sodomy, and the lash”. Who knows what you and Teddy were up to but I digress.

Since you are the only member of Congress ever to lie to my face I have always felt a certain kinship to you. I’ll get to that later.

I read your statement about newer members of the Senate “deeply disturbing” you what with their disregard for tradition or, as you say, a “lack of appreciation for what this chamber means and how we work together”.

If I were to use the word “hubris” you might think me an elitist. I’ll settle for you being enveloped in an aura of “non-malodorous fecal matter”. Some of your bluer collar neighbors by your castle in Ireland would say that you think that your shit doesn’t stink.

It does. In fact, the ordure is redolent to the point of nausea.

Is being a “Friend of Angelo” a tradition of the Senate?

Is having a bogus mortgage transaction a tradition of the Senate?

One of the traditions of the Senate that you have – forgive me – scrupulously upheld, the one taught to you by your father, is, “If it ain’t nailed down, grab it”.

You could be your own Stimulus Package if you were to open your windows and start tossing out $20 bills from the swag you got from Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Sallie Mae, and, since Lard Kennedy was your role model, Ellie Mae.

I’ll say this for you, as far as we can tell, you’ve never killed any of them.

As to your lying to me…

Think back to the summer of 1979. There was fund raiser for you in a luxury Park Avenue apartment. I was with Norman Kelly, a man who had performed some personal service for your mother. Your gratitude to him went from effusive to fulsome.

It turned out we had a lot in common.

Our fathers both were lawyers. We both went to Catholic schools. We both majored in History. We both were in the Peace Corps.

I asked you about Central America in general and Nicaragua and the Sandinistas in particular.

You told me that you would be “tough” on them. Further, you told me that the safety and security of the United States were paramount and that it trumped any other concern. You even expressed some concern over President Carter and his head up his ass views on everything. [30 years later and as one History major to another we can stipulate that he was the worst President of the 20th Century, can’t we?]

Alas, everything you told me was a lie.

You have lived up to that tradition since you have been in the Senate.

30 years of lies, big and small, must be a terrible burden on one’s soul.

May I suggest that you re-read “The Hound of Heaven”?

After the people of Connecticut retire you next November I suggest that a lucrative career awaits you. As the paradigmatic template for the modern American Liberal a telemarketing career as a negative example will enable you to earn the first honest dollars in your life. As far as I can tell your motto since you have been in public life has been “Nothing lost save honor”.

You have lived up to that tradition.





Kevin Smith

Senator Charles Schumer

December 25, 2009

Senator Charles Schumer



RE: Follow the bouncing ball: Putz, dreck, bitch, schmucks

Yo! Chuckie,

You were shocked, shocked in 1996 when Senator D’Amato said you were a putz.

It turned out he was right.

Further, the facts would support the interpretation that you are dreck.

Then you called the flight attendant a bitch.

The above enables a neutral observer to say that the voters of New York are schmucks.

And a non-denominational carbon free Season’s Greetings to you.





Kevin Smith

Monday, December 14, 2009

Navy beat Army on Saturday but can they beat the Manatees?

December 14, 2009

Navy beat Army on Saturday but can they beat the Manatees?

As bad as trying those WOG terrorists in Manhattan will be this is worse.

Friends of the Manatees, or so the Sun-Sentinel tells us this morning, are suing the United States Navy. It seems that their big bad nuclear submarines, the ones that emit death rays that diminish the libidos of the big buck males and cause the cows to shun estrus, are acting as home wreckers.

Would it cause me to be stoned by the “Trousered Apes” who proclaim that Nature is All if I were to say that maybe it’s time for these uglisome hazards to navigation to go, as in extinct? If it weren’t for ohmadahnish bi-peds throwing week old cabbages at them they would have long ago starved.

Speaking of starving, why don’t the alligators take them out? How about loosing some Burmese pythons or, better still, their nastier cousins, the anacondas in the manatee pre-school? Has anybody thought about training some endangered Florida panthers to do their duty?

13 years ago I presented a plan that I was certain would gain national prestige. Since it was presented at the same time that “Midnight Basketball” was offered as sound public policy I thought I would be “Man of the Year” among the few remaining rational adults.

It was simple.

Gather up all the rotten vegetables south of Charleston and bring them here.

Use them for chum everywhere these dullards float. [Who says I am against sound re-cycling?]

Keep herding them into bigger groups in smaller areas. It works with 4 legged cows. Why shouldn’t it work with these bricks?

Force them into 20 foot diameter floating Cuisinarts.

SAUSAGE FOR THE HOMELESS!

I don’t know why it never gained traction.






I tell you that are people in caves in Kafiristan who hear of this story and proclaim that Allah is really, really Ahkbar.

The idea of a Zip-Loc bag and food for dogs and Mozart and leisure suits and representative democracy and microwave pop corn and Zippo lighters and women yelling at men in public and Ronald McDonald and the cathedral at Chartres and James Joyce and barbed wire and synchronized swimming and people shaking their fists at their governments and keeping them attached to their wrists and men always yearning, always striving to be free is alien to these murderers as a pulled pork sandwich.

“The infidels are worried about 1000 pound blobs who think that the high point of their existence is to swim into a whirling propeller. We dream about tearing the finger nails off women who use nail polish. We dream about cutting the heads off unbelievers. We dream of killing all the Jews. We dream of the glorious times before plastic. We will win because God is on our side. I know this because people who build machines that can send men to the moon and bring them back don’t think that way unless Allah, and blessed be his Name, wants them to. Surely the hand of God is present when men who made the atoms dance say that an animal is worth more than their security.”

Somewhere close the 13th Imam is gathering strength. Somewhere close he is waiting to be called to power. The virgins are being gathered up for the martyrs. Who would have thought that a manatee would be this generation’s John the Baptist?

Soon, they will have no guards on the towers. Soon, they will leave the gates open. In the end we will walk in.






Kevin Smith

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Jackie Bueno Sosa The Miami Herald

December 9, 2009

Jackie Bueno Sosa
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: It’s time for you to step up to the plate – Some comments on our failures to strike a blow for drowning polar bears even if they eat those cute baby seals. Thank you for pointing this out in your thoughtful column in today’s Miami Herald.

Ms. Sosa,

I must confess that at the end of the 1970s, a glorious time what with Jimmy Carter in charge and the big climate problem being Global Cooling, I used to squirt Right Guard spray deodorant out my bathroom window every morning. Before I got my mind straight I used to say, “To Hell with the ozone layer”. Who knew?

Page 1 of today’s Miami Herald features the gruesome photo of the rape, looting, and pillaging of the sacred Amazon rain forest. Thank God my children are long gone because the photo reminded me of a still from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The sight of a noble teak and a majestic mahogany accepting their fate like Gandhi was more than I could bear. I folded the first section over and put it in my compost bin.

The only good thing coming from that photo of the flora and fauna Holocaust was that I got to your column quicker than usual.

You chronicle our environmental sins in a most artful manner.

That we are at fault there can be no doubt.

Man’s greed fueled the Industrial Revolution. It ended the era of Man living as Noble Savages. The first Devil’s instrument was the steam engine. Not being quick enough man then spawned the internal combustion engine. It was bad enough that the dinosaurs died out but their bones became yucky hydrocarbons. Having exploited the limited supply of organic plastic to extinction we then combined both Pandora and Prometheus and invented inorganic plastic. Having challenged the Gods we now suffer their wrath.

The noted medieval climatologist, Tony Vivaldi, was the original chronicler of climate change. We ignored him.

You showpiece some revolutionary changes adopted by Miami/Dade county in the early ‘90s. Alas, they were never fully implemented. There are rumors of a hunchbacked gnome known as Cheney the Destroyer who unleashed his dreaded doomsday Halliburton device on the elected officials. They could not resist his proffered lucre and swag. “They” should be tied to the docks behind Herald HQ so they can die slowly once the water from the melting icebergs gets here.

You state, quite correctly, that over population is the problem

Until 4th or 5th trimester abortions are allowed we will have that problem. Perhaps Death Panels can be formed to pick and choose, “cull the herd” as Margaret Sanger suggested. Every 10 years, on our birthdays, we see who makes the cut, so to speak, and who gets the chop. Perhaps coincident with your first Social Security check, gratefully drawn from the sacred Lock Box, your name is entered into a Terri Schiavo reverse tontine. If you draw the short straw you get to starve to death. Your journey to the “undiscovered country” will be made easier by the facts that you are decreasing the world’s carbon footprint and that whatever remains of you will be fed to the endangered Florida panther. You’ll cross the Styx singing Kumbayah.

There is one thing we can do right now.

Since I am neither a media person nor an ink stained wretch the burden falls on you to start us on the path to righteousness.

If you believe in what you write and in what you tell us to do you will no longer live in an air conditioned world.

Did you know that more than 50% of the electricity generated in this country comes from burning coal? Floridians are complicit in the destruction of our planet, and don’t forget that it’s the only one we have, by their acquiescence to this genocide. It’s bad enough our planet is going to burn up but it’s going to burn up in a lung charring smog.

Turn off the A/C in your house. Turn off the A/C in your car. Tell the Big Bosses at the Herald to turn off the A/C where you work. Believe me, they will jump on this cost cutting move the way a drowning polar bear jumps on an injured baby seal.

I loooove it when a plan comes together. Thanks for your column.


Kevin Smith


PS – Enclosed is a letter I sent to your bosses. I am sure they will be most receptive. The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. You go, girl! I’m right behind you.

Senator Max Baucus

December 7, 2009

Senator Max Baucus
122 West Towne Street
Glendive, MT 59330

Senator Baucus,

Congratulations!

Only a United States Senator cruising for and catching the wily bearded clam could knock Tiger Woods off the premier public pussy perch.

You did it.

I read where your lady friend is very smart.

In addition to her law background was she graduated from the Monica Lewinsky School of Knob Polishing?

She got her job the old fashioned way.

She earned it.





Kevin Smith

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Jerry Adler – Senior Editor Newsweek

December 8, 2009

Jerry Adler – Senior Editor
Newsweek
251 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019-1894

RE: How yesterday is Global Warming?

Mr. Adler,

I enclose a copy of the letter dated 1/28/08 that you sent to me. I also enclose a copy of a letter I sent to the Miami Herald on 12/7/09.

About your letter…

The Kyoto treaty was neither ratified nor was it rejected. The President never submitted it to the Senate for its advice and consent as the Constitution requires. The fact that the Senate had just voted 95 to 0 against the general terms of the treaty may have had some effect on its quick trip to the memory hole.

T.E. Lawrence said that very little could be gained from a certain victory but that much could be gleaned from a certain defeat. If ever a Non-Profiles in Courage is published I suggest it could be Chapter 1.

You say that Bush “reversed a commitment in principle” to abide by the treaty.

I seem to recall that President B.O. was signing his Executive Orders undoing Bush’s Executive Orders on the trip from the Capitol to the White House after his inauguration. If you could explain the difference I would be most grateful.

I’ll spare you any homilies on the Rule of Law but I remember Paul Begala, trusted Clinton advisor and a law professor, saying he loved executive decisions. “A flick of the wrist and it’s law.”

Further, your note includes phrases such as “depending on how you read the data”, “believe it is more likely”, “perhaps the effect will be offset”, and “most climatologists see no reason to take that risk”.

Not exactly words and phrases that you will find on a Chemistry or a Physics final, are they?

You said that a lack of food is not a problem.

I immediately reached for my 1969 edition of “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich, Ph.D. To the wild applause of the chattering classes and even Johnny Carson this faker told us that it was a race between starving to death or freezing to death by the year 2000.

My calendar tells me it is 2009 and, if truth be known, I am a bit calorically challenged. Do you think Professor Ehrlich fell for the hockey stick graph before it became popular?

Facts are hard things

That’s why Pi isn’t 3.0. If it were I would have done better in Geometry. The down side of that is that if I built any bridges they would have long since fallen down.

The edges of ancient maps said “Terra Incognita” or “Sunt Leones”.

I thought Ptolemy’s view of the earth, the sun, and the universe was the first great example of “settled science”. I am glad that those original explorers didn’t believe it.

U.K. Prime Minister gave the world 50 days to live beginning with the end of October. I wrote to him asking if he could stretch it a few more days because I wanted to see my family in Texas. I also asked him if he could toss in at least one BCS game.

I haven’t heard back from him.

Do you think I should go to Dallas?




Kevin Smith

The Editorial Board The Miami Herald

December 7, 2009

The Editorial Board
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: GlobalCoolingGlobalWarmingClimateChange – Jabberwocky writ large is bad enough and now you have found co-conspirators in this unholy antinomianalistic crusade against reason.

Sirs,

“Even though the newspapers’ editorial boards may disagree on
Numerous other issues, the evidence – notwithstanding the recent
Brouhaha about quashed scientific memos – does not change the
Reality about the need to reduce our carbon footprint.”
Page 1
Today
You
Italics mine

I wish I could say that I thought what you wrote was funny. It’s not; it’s tragic.

What if your spouse had been diagnosed with a cancer that would have required radical surgery? What if one of the pathologists said he had mixed up the slides and may have come to the wrong conclusion? Would you still go ahead with the operation?

Only a barking mad loon would ever say that “the science is settled”.

Is anyone familiar with the Logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc? It’s been around since the world was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, and tomatoes were poison. I know enough about the Scientific Method to know that correlation is not causation.

In 1997 President Clinton offered a hot August day in Washington as proof that there was Global Warming. I guess it depends on what “hot” means.

Check and see if the Ptolemaic universe – as settled a science as there ever was – is still taught in Astronomy classes.

Find out if the Piltdown Man is still high on the list for the Missing Link theory.

Einstein said that he only had to be proved wrong once. Then, he is supposed to have said, he could “get on to other things”.

I offer you the same plan that I have been offering the Miami Herald since 1997. The term “carbon footprint”, the one you are so desperate to reduce, had not yet appeared.

Turn off your A/C.

Practice what you preach. You would have been 12 years into your campaign to make us better people. Surely your well intentioned plan would have paid dividends by now. Plus, think how much money you would have saved on your electric bill.

Here’s something else you can do.

Go to the roof of your waterfront HQ.

If the icebergs are melting because of man and because of bovine, porcine, and orvine borborygymy tell me how high the water has risen. If all these icebergs are melting the water has to go somewhere. Where the Hell is it?

When St. Augustine was still in his formative years he said, “Lord make me strong. Tomorrow.”

The noise coming from the Amen corner occupied by charlatans, shamans, and profiteers nesting under the tent erected by Chicken Little is cacophonous. It is also wrong.

The world of Climate Change is filled with scientific Bernie Madoffs.

Your joining it doesn’t make it right. It makes you worse.





Kevin Smith

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

December 2, 2009

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pines Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026

RE: Why modern American Liberals need to keep a chiropractor on staff. Some comments on President B.O. and your public reaction to it.

Congresswoman Debbie-Debbie,

You said on 2/??/09 that with a few “minor adjustments” the “problem” – as Speaker Pelosi called it – in Afghanistan would be “solved”.

What took so long?

9 months is the normal gestation period for a woman.

Is 11 months the normal gestation period for the President, any President, to make a decision regarding the safety of our country and the lives of American troops?

Do you think the coming “surge” in Afghanistan will be based on the successful “surge” in Iraq? Alas, my memory fails me. Fill me in. You supported that one, didn’t you?

It is a sign of my naïveté but if it were President McCain suggesting the surge would you still support it?

No wonder your back hurts.


Kevin Smith

Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel

December 4, 2009

Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: Beware of what you ask Santa for Christmas. There may be more in the stocking than you bargained for. Some comments on your column of 12/4/09.

My dear Professor,

First, let me extend a sincere non-denominational Season’s Greetings to you.

Second, let me congratulate you for writing, yet again, a column unencumbered by facts. This one was about the inadequacy of the state tax system. Of course, it goes without saying, which is why I must say it that you find it woefully inadequate in that it doesn’t take all the money produced by the citizens of Florida.

The basic premise of each of your columns is that life would be good, better, indeed it could be heaven on earth, just like that noted labor leader, Jake Kite, said “All them corn fields and ballet at night”, if we could exile every Republican to a minor moon of Jupiter. I say exile because modern American Liberals are opposed to capital punishment – except in the case of Ricky Ray Rector. I wonder if the bullets issued to the American troops who will spearhead Obama’s Afghanistan “surge” will be non-lethal?

Your solution to every political, economic, culinary, cultural, and ethical question is simple: Raise taxes!

What caught my eye as I was wading through your rhetorical incontinence this A.M. was the following throwaway line.

“In addition, it’s about time that Florida taxed internet sales.”

Thank you for giving me, however unintentionally, a “teaching moment”.

It may well be time to tax internet sales.

The problem will not be solved in the legislature. It begins with overturning Gibbons v Ogden. G v O should be a TV series. It involves New Jersey, my home state, and Surprise! Surprise! political corruption. It also involves taxation. Long before Chris Matthews talked about a thrill going up his leg the thought of raising taxes was always greeted by you with a tumescent look of anticipation.

You may remember the questions asked of Judge Roberts and Judge Alito at their confirmation hearings. The term “settled law” was often used. The real question was always about abortion. Would they vote to overturn Roe v Wade?

We were lectured, perhaps hectored is a better word, that Roe v Wade was “settled law”. Some of the more glib modern American Liberals used the term “stare decisis”.

The “settled law” part of Gibbons v Ogden is that no state may tax the transactions of any other state. It has been around much, much longer than Roe v Wade. I’m not sure if seniority attaches to “settled law” but why not?

The Dred Scott case was “settled law”. It was overturned on the field of battle in less than 7 years.

Plessy v Ferguson was “settled law”. It was overturned by the Supreme Court 59 years after it became “settled law”. I would be remiss if I did not point out that the Court that overturned it was led by a former Republican Governor who was appointed by a Republican President. Surely you remember that one of the leading Democrats on that Court, Hugo Black, was a member of the KuKluxKlan.

Who was it who said that they best way to repeal an old law is to enforce it?

Alas, from your viewpoint, the process needed to tax internet sales is the same to undo Roe v Wade.

In the spirit of a “teaching moment” I present you with a choice that only Hobson would relish.

Which would you prefer?

If the people in their wisdom overturn Gibbons v Ogden and give you a tsunami of new tax revenue with which you can fight bullying and non-gendered discrimination would you be OK with Roe v Wade being overturned?


Kevin Smith


PS – Speaking in a reverential tone of things that are “settled”, what’s up with all this cheating on Climate Change? You may recall that the Ptolemaic universe was “settled science”. So was the Piltdown man. We went from Global Cooling to Global Warming to Climate Change before anything could be “settled”. I just hope that all this change doesn’t become too audacious. I wouldn’t want it disrupt your manatee suffrage plan.