Posts
September 29, 2009
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: To drill or not to drill. That’s the question. Some thoughts on your editorial on the subject of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico off the pristine coast of Florida.
Sirs,
Wait a minute. There is drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama permit, I dare say encourage, drilling off their coasts.
Tourism, particularly beach tourism, is a vital part of their economy. I can walk to a restaurant from my home that features sea food from the Gulf of Mexico. They advertise where in Louisiana their oysters come from.
How do these states manage to combine tourism, a thriving seafood industry, both commercial and sport, and off shore drilling?
Speaking of off shore drilling, what will Florida do Cuba starts to drill? They have contracted with a Chinese company to drill on their sovereign territory. Short of leasing some United States Navy warships – a carrier, an attack submarine, and a frigate would do nicely – how can we stop them? Further, should an accident occur do you think they will subject themselves to the jurisdiction of American courts?
Would not Logic and a loosely defined Moral Imperative demand that since Florida will not permit drilling it should eschew any of the benefits gained from those states that do?
How about a special tax on sea food products from any state that permits off shore drilling?
How about 2 or 3 days a week without air conditioning?
How about a speed limit of 30 miles per hour?
Think of the benefits.
We would reduce our carbon footprint.
We would save the drowning polar bears.
We would be able to extend the life of our crumbling infrastructure because we wouldn’t be using it as much.
We would be secure in the knowledge that we were in the forefront of the great crusade to return to the glory days before the Industrial Revolution, before trains and planes, and before plastic. Speaking of plastic try to imagine a hospital without plastic. You can’t.
Florida has been getting a free ride on oil and gas and the benefits from them.
Either we pay our way or we stop living off the work of others.
Kevin Smith
PS – Shouldn’t we stop using electricity made in coal burning plants? Shouldn’t we stop using electricity made in nuclear plants?
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
September 27, 2009
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pembroke Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: “Government can…improve one’s quality of life” – Some comments on your homily in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Congressperson,
So soon after the anniversary [9/18/01] of you sending the police, men with badges, guns, and “the force of Law” to my house because you didn’t like something I wrote you are back with the rhetorical incontinence for which you are justifiably famous. Since you are the poster girl for modern American Liberalism, the “triumph of hope over experience”, the paradigmatic template for intentions not results being the measuring stick, the political mindset that means you never have to say you’re sorry whenever you mess up a two car funeral, I could only expect the worse.
I’ll say this for you.
You never let me down.
Your second sentence says “Our soldiers were dying in a war of choice that most Americans opposed”. Facts are hard things. I suppose it’s the burden of flying with Congressman Meek, to and from Washington, D.C. that has dulled the memory part of your brain. 3/4s of the Congress voted to send American soldiers into that war. Don’t you remember? You can check the Congressional Record. It’s there.
You said in February that “some adjustments” were all that was needed to finish the job in Afghanistan. Those “adjustments” now include 40,000 additional troops. I hope that that change is minor because I would hate to see a major change.
Speaking of that neck of the woods, do you think we should encourage the Israelis to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities? They have the experience. You remember the raid at Osirak, don’t you? Imagine if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons?
I know that you have your lovely knickers in a row over the minor dust up in Honduras. Whatever else they do down there they don’t flog women for being raped or stone them for adultery. Is there an Iranian clone of Barney Frank in their legislature? Can Christians or Jews publicly profess their faith anywhere in that country? Bibles and flags are regularly burned in our country. When they run out of toilet paper like Cuba would it not be environmentally wise and sensitive to use old Korans?
Why don’t we give the Israeli Air Force the green light? Our lips will say no but our hearts will say yes.
They’ll get the bad press but they will also get the silent thanks of the Saudis and the Egyptians. But enough about foreign policy.
You say that “Americans want to believe that their government is on their side, working for them”.
Shall we use the Post office as an example? How about AMTRAK? On the local level let’s include any Motor Vehicle office. If 4 levels of government couldn’t get a truck filled with ice and water across one bridge into New Orleans after Katrina why do you think they can manage health care?
One solution is close at hand. Put Granny and Gramps on the last unmelted iceberg. Float them out to sea towards some undrowned polar bears. Let the bears eat them. Offer them a credit against their death tax. [Who says the Lord Barack the Beneficent is opposed to all tax cuts?] There are multiple benefits there. By decreasing the surplus population you lessen the strain on Medicare. The notorious carbon footprint is diminished. The bears don’t eat the baby seals. Maybe Margaret Sanger was right. A periodic culling of the herd is good for society. At least that’s what her apt student, an out of work author named Adolph Hitler, thought.
If the government were to run health care the way they run public education I tremble. The main reason that Johnny can’t read is because failure is not punished. A good teacher is paid as much as a bad teacher. That is offensive to Logic and detrimental to the common weal. Bad football coaches are fired, sometimes in the middle of the season. What a high colonic it would be if group of parents were to toss the worst teacher in each school out the front door. They could have a raffle to see who gets to throw the pie at that thief of dreams.
Will bad doctors have tenure like bad teachers? Will pediatric patients have to sing the praises of Barack Hussein Obama to get their meds? Will welfare mothers be spayed after 2 births?
You end your hagiographical account by telling us what makes Little Debbie run.
You say that “I entered public service 17 years ago for the same reason that I remain in public service today: I want to help people make their lives better, and I believe that government can and should improve one’s quality of life.”
Not since I heard Bill O’Reilly say “I’m looking out for you” have I been so moved.
Here’s a plan to help make peoples’ lives better.
It concerns the Swine flu vaccine.
Get TV coverage for when you take your kids out of the public school they attend, they do attend public school, don’t they, and bring them over to the nearest clinic for their flu shots.
You will inspire all working moms to do the same.
I sent a note to Speaker Pelosi asking her to come down to Broward County. Now that she has “drained the swamp” and “changed the culture of corruption n Washington” she may have some spare time on her hands. It seems that some of your lodge brothers and sisters have raised the bar for stealing hot stoves. I wish I could say that the corruption is bi-partisan but it been so long since any Republicans have been in a position to steal that they probably have forgotten the play book. They would need at least a full term before they could get up to speed.
Meanwhile, the Affirmative Action tableau played out at the Federal Courthouse gladdens my heart. One woman and two African-Americans doing the perp walk was a refreshing sight.
Who says women and minorities are second class citizens here?
Kevin Smith
PS – Your detritus made it into the Miami Herald. In an article about the differences in health care in Hialeah and Weston you say that insurers cannot be allowed to exclude anyone for a pre-existing condition. Would not the Logic of your statement dictate that multiple offense drunk drivers be able to get automobile coverage? Would not the hospices be able to turn a profit if they could sell guaranteed issue life insurance to their patients? Just asking.
Does Weston have any low income or senior citizen housing? Why not put some of the “undeserving poor” from Hialeah on environmentally sensitive hybrid buses and send them to Weston? Just asking.
The average income in Weston is $99,000. The average income in Hialeah is $31,000. Why should Westoners have so much? Wouldn’t the quest for a “level playing field” demand that Weston give up a lot so that Hialeah can get more? Just asking.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pembroke Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: “Government can…improve one’s quality of life” – Some comments on your homily in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Congressperson,
So soon after the anniversary [9/18/01] of you sending the police, men with badges, guns, and “the force of Law” to my house because you didn’t like something I wrote you are back with the rhetorical incontinence for which you are justifiably famous. Since you are the poster girl for modern American Liberalism, the “triumph of hope over experience”, the paradigmatic template for intentions not results being the measuring stick, the political mindset that means you never have to say you’re sorry whenever you mess up a two car funeral, I could only expect the worse.
I’ll say this for you.
You never let me down.
Your second sentence says “Our soldiers were dying in a war of choice that most Americans opposed”. Facts are hard things. I suppose it’s the burden of flying with Congressman Meek, to and from Washington, D.C. that has dulled the memory part of your brain. 3/4s of the Congress voted to send American soldiers into that war. Don’t you remember? You can check the Congressional Record. It’s there.
You said in February that “some adjustments” were all that was needed to finish the job in Afghanistan. Those “adjustments” now include 40,000 additional troops. I hope that that change is minor because I would hate to see a major change.
Speaking of that neck of the woods, do you think we should encourage the Israelis to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities? They have the experience. You remember the raid at Osirak, don’t you? Imagine if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons?
I know that you have your lovely knickers in a row over the minor dust up in Honduras. Whatever else they do down there they don’t flog women for being raped or stone them for adultery. Is there an Iranian clone of Barney Frank in their legislature? Can Christians or Jews publicly profess their faith anywhere in that country? Bibles and flags are regularly burned in our country. When they run out of toilet paper like Cuba would it not be environmentally wise and sensitive to use old Korans?
Why don’t we give the Israeli Air Force the green light? Our lips will say no but our hearts will say yes.
They’ll get the bad press but they will also get the silent thanks of the Saudis and the Egyptians. But enough about foreign policy.
You say that “Americans want to believe that their government is on their side, working for them”.
Shall we use the Post office as an example? How about AMTRAK? On the local level let’s include any Motor Vehicle office. If 4 levels of government couldn’t get a truck filled with ice and water across one bridge into New Orleans after Katrina why do you think they can manage health care?
One solution is close at hand. Put Granny and Gramps on the last unmelted iceberg. Float them out to sea towards some undrowned polar bears. Let the bears eat them. Offer them a credit against their death tax. [Who says the Lord Barack the Beneficent is opposed to all tax cuts?] There are multiple benefits there. By decreasing the surplus population you lessen the strain on Medicare. The notorious carbon footprint is diminished. The bears don’t eat the baby seals. Maybe Margaret Sanger was right. A periodic culling of the herd is good for society. At least that’s what her apt student, an out of work author named Adolph Hitler, thought.
If the government were to run health care the way they run public education I tremble. The main reason that Johnny can’t read is because failure is not punished. A good teacher is paid as much as a bad teacher. That is offensive to Logic and detrimental to the common weal. Bad football coaches are fired, sometimes in the middle of the season. What a high colonic it would be if group of parents were to toss the worst teacher in each school out the front door. They could have a raffle to see who gets to throw the pie at that thief of dreams.
Will bad doctors have tenure like bad teachers? Will pediatric patients have to sing the praises of Barack Hussein Obama to get their meds? Will welfare mothers be spayed after 2 births?
You end your hagiographical account by telling us what makes Little Debbie run.
You say that “I entered public service 17 years ago for the same reason that I remain in public service today: I want to help people make their lives better, and I believe that government can and should improve one’s quality of life.”
Not since I heard Bill O’Reilly say “I’m looking out for you” have I been so moved.
Here’s a plan to help make peoples’ lives better.
It concerns the Swine flu vaccine.
Get TV coverage for when you take your kids out of the public school they attend, they do attend public school, don’t they, and bring them over to the nearest clinic for their flu shots.
You will inspire all working moms to do the same.
I sent a note to Speaker Pelosi asking her to come down to Broward County. Now that she has “drained the swamp” and “changed the culture of corruption n Washington” she may have some spare time on her hands. It seems that some of your lodge brothers and sisters have raised the bar for stealing hot stoves. I wish I could say that the corruption is bi-partisan but it been so long since any Republicans have been in a position to steal that they probably have forgotten the play book. They would need at least a full term before they could get up to speed.
Meanwhile, the Affirmative Action tableau played out at the Federal Courthouse gladdens my heart. One woman and two African-Americans doing the perp walk was a refreshing sight.
Who says women and minorities are second class citizens here?
Kevin Smith
PS – Your detritus made it into the Miami Herald. In an article about the differences in health care in Hialeah and Weston you say that insurers cannot be allowed to exclude anyone for a pre-existing condition. Would not the Logic of your statement dictate that multiple offense drunk drivers be able to get automobile coverage? Would not the hospices be able to turn a profit if they could sell guaranteed issue life insurance to their patients? Just asking.
Does Weston have any low income or senior citizen housing? Why not put some of the “undeserving poor” from Hialeah on environmentally sensitive hybrid buses and send them to Weston? Just asking.
The average income in Weston is $99,000. The average income in Hialeah is $31,000. Why should Westoners have so much? Wouldn’t the quest for a “level playing field” demand that Weston give up a lot so that Hialeah can get more? Just asking.
Carl Hiaasen The Miami Herald
September 27, 2009
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Live sighting confirmed. Now what?
Mr. Hiassen,
Yesterday, around 2:00 PM, I serendipitously encountered a group of what you would call “beet faced droolers”. They were at the corners of Oakland Park Boulevard and what native Floridians, with the obviously ingenious Tequestas excluded, call Federal Highway.
I heard no Wagner. I saw no goose stepping. No one was waving a little red book. I saw no Trotskyites. No one was doing a Robert Byrd impression with the white sheets, the pointed hoods, and the burning crosses. There were no children there chanting “Barack Hussein Obama, we love you dear leader”.
One of the non-ACORN protestors was carrying a neatly printed sign that said
3 LITTLE WORDS
“WE THE PEOPLE”
Please advise.
Your favorite Broward County
“beet faced drooler”
Kevin Smith
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Live sighting confirmed. Now what?
Mr. Hiassen,
Yesterday, around 2:00 PM, I serendipitously encountered a group of what you would call “beet faced droolers”. They were at the corners of Oakland Park Boulevard and what native Floridians, with the obviously ingenious Tequestas excluded, call Federal Highway.
I heard no Wagner. I saw no goose stepping. No one was waving a little red book. I saw no Trotskyites. No one was doing a Robert Byrd impression with the white sheets, the pointed hoods, and the burning crosses. There were no children there chanting “Barack Hussein Obama, we love you dear leader”.
One of the non-ACORN protestors was carrying a neatly printed sign that said
3 LITTLE WORDS
“WE THE PEOPLE”
Please advise.
Your favorite Broward County
“beet faced drooler”
Kevin Smith
David Bositis Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
September 22, 2009
David Bositis
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
1090 Vermont Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005-4928
RE: Mea Culpa or, lest you think me a loutish elitist who is blissfully unaware of modern argot, My Bad.
Mr. Bositis,
Thank you for your delightful letter of September 8, 2009.
The reason I didn’t get back to you sooner was that I was asked by the White House to find the one day in September that would signal the death, dismemberment, and environmentally sensitive disposal of the remains of Ramboism, Reaganism, and the Dark Age of George W. Bush. [I was able to include President Kennedy “We will pay any price and bear any burden in defense of liberty…”, remember? and President Truman “If the A-Bomb works, use it.” at no additional cost. My check will come from the Stimulus Program – Cash for Clunkers section soon or so I am told.]
The day I chose, September 17, was easy. That was the day in 1939 that Stalin, Hitler’s pal, invaded Poland.
I doubt if you will know who said “They are a far away people of whom we know little”. I’ll end the suspense. It was Neville Chamberlain, freshly returned from Munich to a hero’s welcome .The only dissenting voice in Parliament that day in 1938 was from Winston Churchill. He told the House “We have had to choose between shame and war. We choose shame; we will have war.”
I feel honored that Lord Barack the Beneficent, and blessed be his name, took my advice and announced the end of the SDI program in Eastern Europe on said day. It was a two for one offer. The Poles and the Czechs are now comfortably under the bus that is in the back of the White House. It is soon to be replaced with a larger, more environmentally sensitive version, one that is powered by windmills producing “balloon juice”.
I had a suggestion about ACORN that, alas, could gain no traction. It involved SBA loans, necrophilia, bestiality, and harvesting manatees to make sausage for the homeless. The “vast Right-Wing conspiracy”, the snake handling, gun toting racists who run everything, thought it to be a bit much.
They went with tax fraud, bank fraud, and underage and undocumented 3rd World prepubescent hookers.
Based on results to date it worked. That’s why they get the big bucks.
As you can see my plate has been quite full since Labor Day. In the tradition of modern American Liberals everywhere I am sorry only if I offended you by not getting back to you sooner.
But let me tell you the real reason why I write.
I have 3 awards, highly prized and much coveted, that I dispense, Ulysses-like, unto an increasingly savage race. With the exception of the Kennedy family, all of whom are awarded all of them at birth, people come by them the old fashioned way: They earn them. You have already received one – HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK.
As official keeper of the scrolls of the Guardians of the Permanent Things [soon to be a 501C thing] I hereby award you the second laurel. You are now recognized as and are entitled to all the goodies of a POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH.
With two awards in hand I can guarantee that you will win the next one. Soon you will be named SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR.
America is still the land of opportunity. That’s why, in the words of Big Mike from Bayonne, the legendary sportsman and restaurateur, “You never see anybody swimming to Cuba”.
We’ll meet on the barricades at the Death Panels.
Kevin Smith
PS – Your ankle biting comment about my ass cut me to the quick. I must tell you that it is an object of admiration, affection, and in certain circles, awe. I await undismayed your continued assault on same.
That Jimmy Carter was the worst President in the 20th Century there is neither doubt nor dispute. Say what you will about him, and there are so, so many bad things to say about him, he never let his brother live in a mud hut and worry about being eaten by a lion. He encouraged him to make a few bucks by selling his beer and being photographed sitting on his porch scratching his ass while he shilled for Kadaffi. I guess Chicago tough trumps brotherly love. It was said of the “clod populist from Plains” that he changed the world. Under his rule it was marginally dangerous to be an enemy of the America but it was fatal to be a friend.
Think of all those sphincters tightening in the Republic of Georgia and Ossetia. They are even further away than Prague was.
David Bositis
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
1090 Vermont Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005-4928
RE: Mea Culpa or, lest you think me a loutish elitist who is blissfully unaware of modern argot, My Bad.
Mr. Bositis,
Thank you for your delightful letter of September 8, 2009.
The reason I didn’t get back to you sooner was that I was asked by the White House to find the one day in September that would signal the death, dismemberment, and environmentally sensitive disposal of the remains of Ramboism, Reaganism, and the Dark Age of George W. Bush. [I was able to include President Kennedy “We will pay any price and bear any burden in defense of liberty…”, remember? and President Truman “If the A-Bomb works, use it.” at no additional cost. My check will come from the Stimulus Program – Cash for Clunkers section soon or so I am told.]
The day I chose, September 17, was easy. That was the day in 1939 that Stalin, Hitler’s pal, invaded Poland.
I doubt if you will know who said “They are a far away people of whom we know little”. I’ll end the suspense. It was Neville Chamberlain, freshly returned from Munich to a hero’s welcome .The only dissenting voice in Parliament that day in 1938 was from Winston Churchill. He told the House “We have had to choose between shame and war. We choose shame; we will have war.”
I feel honored that Lord Barack the Beneficent, and blessed be his name, took my advice and announced the end of the SDI program in Eastern Europe on said day. It was a two for one offer. The Poles and the Czechs are now comfortably under the bus that is in the back of the White House. It is soon to be replaced with a larger, more environmentally sensitive version, one that is powered by windmills producing “balloon juice”.
I had a suggestion about ACORN that, alas, could gain no traction. It involved SBA loans, necrophilia, bestiality, and harvesting manatees to make sausage for the homeless. The “vast Right-Wing conspiracy”, the snake handling, gun toting racists who run everything, thought it to be a bit much.
They went with tax fraud, bank fraud, and underage and undocumented 3rd World prepubescent hookers.
Based on results to date it worked. That’s why they get the big bucks.
As you can see my plate has been quite full since Labor Day. In the tradition of modern American Liberals everywhere I am sorry only if I offended you by not getting back to you sooner.
But let me tell you the real reason why I write.
I have 3 awards, highly prized and much coveted, that I dispense, Ulysses-like, unto an increasingly savage race. With the exception of the Kennedy family, all of whom are awarded all of them at birth, people come by them the old fashioned way: They earn them. You have already received one – HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK.
As official keeper of the scrolls of the Guardians of the Permanent Things [soon to be a 501C thing] I hereby award you the second laurel. You are now recognized as and are entitled to all the goodies of a POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH.
With two awards in hand I can guarantee that you will win the next one. Soon you will be named SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR.
America is still the land of opportunity. That’s why, in the words of Big Mike from Bayonne, the legendary sportsman and restaurateur, “You never see anybody swimming to Cuba”.
We’ll meet on the barricades at the Death Panels.
Kevin Smith
PS – Your ankle biting comment about my ass cut me to the quick. I must tell you that it is an object of admiration, affection, and in certain circles, awe. I await undismayed your continued assault on same.
That Jimmy Carter was the worst President in the 20th Century there is neither doubt nor dispute. Say what you will about him, and there are so, so many bad things to say about him, he never let his brother live in a mud hut and worry about being eaten by a lion. He encouraged him to make a few bucks by selling his beer and being photographed sitting on his porch scratching his ass while he shilled for Kadaffi. I guess Chicago tough trumps brotherly love. It was said of the “clod populist from Plains” that he changed the world. Under his rule it was marginally dangerous to be an enemy of the America but it was fatal to be a friend.
Think of all those sphincters tightening in the Republic of Georgia and Ossetia. They are even further away than Prague was.
Steve Rothaus The Miami Herald
September 12, 2009
Steve Rothaus
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Matthew Shepherd & Jesse Dirkhising – Some comments on your article in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Rothaus,
Why brush up against the 3rd rail of American culture, that rail being the one that says remarks critical of any aspect of homosexuality will not be tolerated, when you can do a back flip right on to it?
Mathew Shepherd – and please, please correct me if any of my facts are wrong – was a 21 year old homosexual who was picked up by 2 heterosexuals in a bar that catered to homosexuals. They tortured him, “pistol whipped” him as you say, and left him to die tied to a fence.
Jesse Dirkhising – and please, please correct me if any of my facts are wrong – was an 11 year old boy, thus a pre-teen and legally incapable of consenting to any sexual activity be it heterosexual or homosexual, was kidnapped by 2 predatory homosexuals. For 2 days they raped and sodomized him. They suffocated him by stuffing rags soaked with drain cleaner into his mouth.
Which one is more dead?
Why was one a victim of a “hate crime” while the other was not? I’ll end the suspense. The 21 year old bar hopper is now in the hagiography of victims. The 11 year old is in free fall down the memory hole
You end your article by praising Matthew Shepherd’s mother who says “she’ll keep fighting until the Federal law is in place and gays have full protections”. I may be showing my naïveté but do you think any law could have prevented the murder of Matthew Shepherd? What law could have protected Jesse Dirkhising?
The Kellogg-Briand Treaty outlawed naval warfare. Why did the Japanese and the German navies try to sink the ship my wife’s father sailed on? There are a large number of laws that cover bank robberies. Banks still get robbed.
“How sad of all the things that men endure
how few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
There is no law against the moral and intellectual dry rot of “eclectic indignation”. It allows you to mourn the loss of Matthew Shepherd while forgetting the death of…of the kid what’s his name.
One will wind up on a stamp; the other will soon need Google and a GPS system to bring his tale of woe to light.
I’ll say a prayer for the repose of the souls of both.
Kevin Smith
Steve Rothaus
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Matthew Shepherd & Jesse Dirkhising – Some comments on your article in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Rothaus,
Why brush up against the 3rd rail of American culture, that rail being the one that says remarks critical of any aspect of homosexuality will not be tolerated, when you can do a back flip right on to it?
Mathew Shepherd – and please, please correct me if any of my facts are wrong – was a 21 year old homosexual who was picked up by 2 heterosexuals in a bar that catered to homosexuals. They tortured him, “pistol whipped” him as you say, and left him to die tied to a fence.
Jesse Dirkhising – and please, please correct me if any of my facts are wrong – was an 11 year old boy, thus a pre-teen and legally incapable of consenting to any sexual activity be it heterosexual or homosexual, was kidnapped by 2 predatory homosexuals. For 2 days they raped and sodomized him. They suffocated him by stuffing rags soaked with drain cleaner into his mouth.
Which one is more dead?
Why was one a victim of a “hate crime” while the other was not? I’ll end the suspense. The 21 year old bar hopper is now in the hagiography of victims. The 11 year old is in free fall down the memory hole
You end your article by praising Matthew Shepherd’s mother who says “she’ll keep fighting until the Federal law is in place and gays have full protections”. I may be showing my naïveté but do you think any law could have prevented the murder of Matthew Shepherd? What law could have protected Jesse Dirkhising?
The Kellogg-Briand Treaty outlawed naval warfare. Why did the Japanese and the German navies try to sink the ship my wife’s father sailed on? There are a large number of laws that cover bank robberies. Banks still get robbed.
“How sad of all the things that men endure
how few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
There is no law against the moral and intellectual dry rot of “eclectic indignation”. It allows you to mourn the loss of Matthew Shepherd while forgetting the death of…of the kid what’s his name.
One will wind up on a stamp; the other will soon need Google and a GPS system to bring his tale of woe to light.
I’ll say a prayer for the repose of the souls of both.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald
September 20, 2009
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Happy Eid-al-Fatir” – What your Sunday morning Page 1, above the fold headline means for America, the world, and the universe in this, the first year of the soon to be known as the Golden Age of Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name and perhaps it’s time to update and revise Gibbon.
Sirs,
Why do I just know that Happy Eid-al-Fatir doesn’t mean Happy Halloween, Good Shabos, or Have a Great Arbor Day?
It has something to do with Islam and Muslims.
The latter, true believers in the former, invaded Europe less than a century after their first Friday noon prayer service. Christianity was 1000 years old before we invaded the Middle East. We went, also on divine command [Deo vult] to secure our sacred shrines. They, having no footprint in Europe, were there to slaughter our forebears into submission and salvation.
I don’t imagine it means “Wait ‘til Next Year” when thinking of Tours, Lepanto, or Omdurman.
It probably doesn’t refer to the unasked question of what the peace loving Muslim were doing at the gates of Vienna when Bach was constructing his immortal offerings. Had they prevailed would we even know of Bach?
If it means that Islam and its Muslim adherents are now full participants in the irregularly shaped, part political, part cultural universe known as secular humanism can we not apply the same rules to them that we apply to other religions in America?
#1 – Tax payer funds have been used to publicize an artist’s [Robert Serra] offering called “Piss Christ”. It shows a crucifix suspended in a see-through vat filled with urine. Would not fairness, diversity, and the always desirable level playing field call for an offering suited to Muslim tastes? How about a Koran suspended in a see-through vat filled with piggy pee? It might be a signal that they have arrived. Why should Christians have all the fun?
#2 – Do you remember Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live? How about a character based on Imam Abdul Humpagoat? The CD would go Platinum and I smell Pulitzer.
#3 – If the Miami Herald can proclaim “Happy Eid-al-Fitr” on Page 1 perhaps you can tell me which Muslim controlled country has a newspaper that proclaims, also on Page 1, “Merry Christmas” or “Good Yunteff”? Take your time.
#4 – Does “Happy Eid-al-Fitr mean that you will be finally publishing the over the top, outrageously funny, God mocking cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed? It has been said that he favored bums, particularly on little boys. I can’t imagine why newspapers such as yours, once thought to be paradigmatic templates for free speech and how it makes us better and stronger people, have not published them yet. Silly me!
The possibility exists that Allah and his ass kissing “piss boy”, toad Mohammed, are only minor league deities. The Judeo-Christian God survived Dante’s La Commedia. A case can be made that it strengthened it. Since you had to have been dead by 1300 A.D. to get a mention in his book it signaled the beginning of the Renaissance. 14 centuries after Mohammed went to the mountain, said mountain having failed to come to him, we await anxiously a book, any book, from Islam that parallels the one that starts with “Half way through my journey I found myself in the dark wood of error”.
I run the risk of slip-sliding an argument based on “post hoc…” into this message. Since Logic does not exist in the Muslim-American world that would be taking unfair advantage
I suppose “Happy Eid-al-Fitr” doesn’t mean “Let’s Find a Muslim Swift” either.
Pity.
Kevin Smith
PS – How about a bumper sticker that says “Allah is not so Akbar”?
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Happy Eid-al-Fatir” – What your Sunday morning Page 1, above the fold headline means for America, the world, and the universe in this, the first year of the soon to be known as the Golden Age of Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name and perhaps it’s time to update and revise Gibbon.
Sirs,
Why do I just know that Happy Eid-al-Fatir doesn’t mean Happy Halloween, Good Shabos, or Have a Great Arbor Day?
It has something to do with Islam and Muslims.
The latter, true believers in the former, invaded Europe less than a century after their first Friday noon prayer service. Christianity was 1000 years old before we invaded the Middle East. We went, also on divine command [Deo vult] to secure our sacred shrines. They, having no footprint in Europe, were there to slaughter our forebears into submission and salvation.
I don’t imagine it means “Wait ‘til Next Year” when thinking of Tours, Lepanto, or Omdurman.
It probably doesn’t refer to the unasked question of what the peace loving Muslim were doing at the gates of Vienna when Bach was constructing his immortal offerings. Had they prevailed would we even know of Bach?
If it means that Islam and its Muslim adherents are now full participants in the irregularly shaped, part political, part cultural universe known as secular humanism can we not apply the same rules to them that we apply to other religions in America?
#1 – Tax payer funds have been used to publicize an artist’s [Robert Serra] offering called “Piss Christ”. It shows a crucifix suspended in a see-through vat filled with urine. Would not fairness, diversity, and the always desirable level playing field call for an offering suited to Muslim tastes? How about a Koran suspended in a see-through vat filled with piggy pee? It might be a signal that they have arrived. Why should Christians have all the fun?
#2 – Do you remember Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live? How about a character based on Imam Abdul Humpagoat? The CD would go Platinum and I smell Pulitzer.
#3 – If the Miami Herald can proclaim “Happy Eid-al-Fitr” on Page 1 perhaps you can tell me which Muslim controlled country has a newspaper that proclaims, also on Page 1, “Merry Christmas” or “Good Yunteff”? Take your time.
#4 – Does “Happy Eid-al-Fitr mean that you will be finally publishing the over the top, outrageously funny, God mocking cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed? It has been said that he favored bums, particularly on little boys. I can’t imagine why newspapers such as yours, once thought to be paradigmatic templates for free speech and how it makes us better and stronger people, have not published them yet. Silly me!
The possibility exists that Allah and his ass kissing “piss boy”, toad Mohammed, are only minor league deities. The Judeo-Christian God survived Dante’s La Commedia. A case can be made that it strengthened it. Since you had to have been dead by 1300 A.D. to get a mention in his book it signaled the beginning of the Renaissance. 14 centuries after Mohammed went to the mountain, said mountain having failed to come to him, we await anxiously a book, any book, from Islam that parallels the one that starts with “Half way through my journey I found myself in the dark wood of error”.
I run the risk of slip-sliding an argument based on “post hoc…” into this message. Since Logic does not exist in the Muslim-American world that would be taking unfair advantage
I suppose “Happy Eid-al-Fitr” doesn’t mean “Let’s Find a Muslim Swift” either.
Pity.
Kevin Smith
PS – How about a bumper sticker that says “Allah is not so Akbar”?
The Editor The Miami Herald
September 24, 2009
The Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
Now that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi has successfully completed her Washington, D.C. mission of “draining the swamp” and “changing the culture of corruption” perhaps she should visit Broward County.
This morning’s headlines about the arrests of local pols, that is to say grifters, poltroons, and in a bow to diversity, ladrones show that the supposedly mythical headline of “World Ends” – Women and Minorities Suffer Disproportionately, may not be that far from the truth. A woman and two Black men were led into Federal Court handcuffed and shackled.
Let’s start with the dopey broad.
Beverly Gallagher, a member of the Board of Education, therefore a person with one vote, was approached by an unctuous dude who gave her a “white envelope” – I’m from Hudson County, New Jersey. “White envelopes” is a euphemism for the accepted method of pols getting their cut – before the dessert course was finished. I say “one vote” because the envelope would have to weigh 2, maybe 3 stone for there to be enough to swing the entire Board. Who knows? Maybe it was and she did. Assuming she has competent counsel she will start her acapella solo by tomorrow morning.
The Broward Board of Education has an operating budget of more than 3,000,000,000 dollars [that’s b as in billions and billions] Despite 4 years of declining enrollment there has been no corresponding drop in any portion of said budget. People who shop every week know that if you have fewer kids at the dinner table you will spend less for milk and bread.
Since government loot, both state and Federal, is based on attendance there doubtless will be a peek at whether or not ACORN and SEIU were piggybacking busload of vertically challenged members from school to school for a recount. I would imagine that 32 4th graders with 5:00 shadows at lunch time should have raised eyebrows but hasn’t “Heather Has Two Mommies” taught us anything?
After her sentencing to dumb broad prison, the one where Martha went, she should be made to sit backwards on a trusty steed and be paraded around the Board of Education HQ for 3 days. She must wear a sign that says “I am a dumb broad. I am a mare’s ass.” Broward school children should have a lottery to see who gets to hit her with bags of cat scat and fish heads. Since we are told that we must use foreign law in our courts perhaps she should be flogged. A dozen well laid on should be sufficient.
She is dumber than a box of hammers. I hope her kids were adopted.
Let’s take a peek at Fitzroy Salesman.
Not since Ima Hogg has there been a name like his. Was his mother’s name Saleslady?
Anybody from New York will remember how bad the football Giants were. It was more than 20 years between play off appearances. They were so bad that the NFL stepped in and appointed George Young to become the GM. The league took operational control away from the owners, the Mara family. In the 1920s the Maras were known as good bookmakers and honest bootleggers. I quickly add that both were honest professions. That is to say that they paid off their winning bets and their bar customers didn’t go blind after 2 drinks. They were the original “outreach” providers. Their knowledge of their neighborhoods was such that ACORN copied them.
They had so much money that they named the eldest son Wellington. The only other Wellington was the Iron Duke who put a major league can of whup ass on Napoleon. The Maras were Irish Catholic. All their children went to Catholic schools. As an alumnus of an all male Catholic high school I can assure you that young Wellington went through Purgatory every day. I can tell you that it took until the end of his second semester as a junior at Fordham before Wellington Mara didn’t have to run a gauntlet of noogies at the dining hall. His classmates came to realize that his father and uncle were sitting on the one commodity that forgave all sins: unlimited beer. His revenge was simple. He gave New York almost 25 years of rotten football. It didn’t cost him anything. The Giants games always sold out.
Fitzroy Salesman learned from him.
There are many reasons for carrying and using a gun in Winn-Dixie.
Brown lettuce, stale bread, surly help, inter alia, are reason to bring assault weapons into the stores. May be if a few of the cashiers were shot it might “encourage the others” as Napoleon said about his policy of executing 3 randomly selected soldiers before a battle. Scratch that. That’s mean spirited and may be a hate crime. Just pistol whip them.
Fitzroy Salesman’s conviction for brandishing a weapon in a Winn-Dixie came about because the incident was caught on tape. The heretofore unreleased audio portion of it reveals that it just wasn’t line jumping that caused the OK Corral face down. He said to the 2 teenagers, “My name is Fitzroy Salesman. You wanna make something of it”? The only possible defense, and one that if I had been on the jury I could guarantee that he would have been acquitted and carried out of the court room on the shoulders of a grateful jury, would have been if they were Quebecois. They weren’t. He was found guilty.
Good ole Fitzroy knew that the end of politics is to get jobs for his pals and to get markers from those who got the jobs. He then uses those makers to climb the ladder of success. Thus, when he got 10 Benjamins from the sting dude for some city work, he called a pal to close the deal. He told the Stinger that the guy on the other end of the phone “owes him”. “After all”, he added, “I got him his fucking job”.
Fitzroy Salesman’s biggest selling job will soon he upon him. It will consist of Uncle Bubba asking him politely if he could please pick up the soap. Life consists of being either a pitcher or a catcher. His choice will be upon him soon.
I save the best for last.
Broward County Commissioner Josephus Eggelettion should be keelhauled before his trial. He gets – I didn’t say earns – more than $200,000 from his two employers. #1 is the Broward County Board of Education where he is, so help me, a “diversity expert”. Who knows? Maybe he and Fitzroy Salesman had a deal going. He is also a Broward County Commissioner. That means he has hasn’t done an honest day’s work since Jimmuh Carter was turning the thermostat down in the White House while he was playing tonsil hockey with Brezhnev.
Both lactating mammarys were and are kept overflowing by taxpayer dollars.
Little Joe took his show on the road.
He was doing deals in the Bahamas laundering US dollars. Further investigation may show that he was responsible for the banking meltdown.
You may recall that a few years back he got his dick caught in the wringer by double billing for some trips overseas. A trip to Tokyo, a trip to Rio, and an $800 dollar computer case caused a tilt on the audit machines of two agencies. Obviously the audit was done by a rookie. Where do you think the Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name got the bus that he uses to toss people under? On the local level the bus doubles as a shredder.
The worst part of his scams was that he wasn’t a “stand up guy” about it.
He blamed two secretaries. One worked for the Board of Education while the other worked for the County Commission. Sheriff Ken Jenne, AKA Emperor Beppo, learned from him. He used his secretary as a cut out when he got money from a friend doing business with his office.
I am reminded of Thomas More when he realized he was doomed because of false testimony from Sir Richard Rich. He asked which seal of office was Rich wearing. “Sir Richard is appointed Attorney-General for Wales”. More replies that it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world …but for Wales”!
At least he got a country.
These 3 stooges, having sold their souls for not even a whole bowl of porridge, are part of the growing tapestry of shame – local version. There will be enough work here for two or three Penelopes
One party dominance leads to inbreeding. Faulty genes are no excuse for thievery.
I have been her 13 years. The only time a Republican was on the County Commission was when a Democrat went “inside”. A Republican Governor appointed his successor. He was turned out by the voters at the next election.
Come on down Speaker Pelosi. Fertile fields await.
Kevin Smith
The Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
Now that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi has successfully completed her Washington, D.C. mission of “draining the swamp” and “changing the culture of corruption” perhaps she should visit Broward County.
This morning’s headlines about the arrests of local pols, that is to say grifters, poltroons, and in a bow to diversity, ladrones show that the supposedly mythical headline of “World Ends” – Women and Minorities Suffer Disproportionately, may not be that far from the truth. A woman and two Black men were led into Federal Court handcuffed and shackled.
Let’s start with the dopey broad.
Beverly Gallagher, a member of the Board of Education, therefore a person with one vote, was approached by an unctuous dude who gave her a “white envelope” – I’m from Hudson County, New Jersey. “White envelopes” is a euphemism for the accepted method of pols getting their cut – before the dessert course was finished. I say “one vote” because the envelope would have to weigh 2, maybe 3 stone for there to be enough to swing the entire Board. Who knows? Maybe it was and she did. Assuming she has competent counsel she will start her acapella solo by tomorrow morning.
The Broward Board of Education has an operating budget of more than 3,000,000,000 dollars [that’s b as in billions and billions] Despite 4 years of declining enrollment there has been no corresponding drop in any portion of said budget. People who shop every week know that if you have fewer kids at the dinner table you will spend less for milk and bread.
Since government loot, both state and Federal, is based on attendance there doubtless will be a peek at whether or not ACORN and SEIU were piggybacking busload of vertically challenged members from school to school for a recount. I would imagine that 32 4th graders with 5:00 shadows at lunch time should have raised eyebrows but hasn’t “Heather Has Two Mommies” taught us anything?
After her sentencing to dumb broad prison, the one where Martha went, she should be made to sit backwards on a trusty steed and be paraded around the Board of Education HQ for 3 days. She must wear a sign that says “I am a dumb broad. I am a mare’s ass.” Broward school children should have a lottery to see who gets to hit her with bags of cat scat and fish heads. Since we are told that we must use foreign law in our courts perhaps she should be flogged. A dozen well laid on should be sufficient.
She is dumber than a box of hammers. I hope her kids were adopted.
Let’s take a peek at Fitzroy Salesman.
Not since Ima Hogg has there been a name like his. Was his mother’s name Saleslady?
Anybody from New York will remember how bad the football Giants were. It was more than 20 years between play off appearances. They were so bad that the NFL stepped in and appointed George Young to become the GM. The league took operational control away from the owners, the Mara family. In the 1920s the Maras were known as good bookmakers and honest bootleggers. I quickly add that both were honest professions. That is to say that they paid off their winning bets and their bar customers didn’t go blind after 2 drinks. They were the original “outreach” providers. Their knowledge of their neighborhoods was such that ACORN copied them.
They had so much money that they named the eldest son Wellington. The only other Wellington was the Iron Duke who put a major league can of whup ass on Napoleon. The Maras were Irish Catholic. All their children went to Catholic schools. As an alumnus of an all male Catholic high school I can assure you that young Wellington went through Purgatory every day. I can tell you that it took until the end of his second semester as a junior at Fordham before Wellington Mara didn’t have to run a gauntlet of noogies at the dining hall. His classmates came to realize that his father and uncle were sitting on the one commodity that forgave all sins: unlimited beer. His revenge was simple. He gave New York almost 25 years of rotten football. It didn’t cost him anything. The Giants games always sold out.
Fitzroy Salesman learned from him.
There are many reasons for carrying and using a gun in Winn-Dixie.
Brown lettuce, stale bread, surly help, inter alia, are reason to bring assault weapons into the stores. May be if a few of the cashiers were shot it might “encourage the others” as Napoleon said about his policy of executing 3 randomly selected soldiers before a battle. Scratch that. That’s mean spirited and may be a hate crime. Just pistol whip them.
Fitzroy Salesman’s conviction for brandishing a weapon in a Winn-Dixie came about because the incident was caught on tape. The heretofore unreleased audio portion of it reveals that it just wasn’t line jumping that caused the OK Corral face down. He said to the 2 teenagers, “My name is Fitzroy Salesman. You wanna make something of it”? The only possible defense, and one that if I had been on the jury I could guarantee that he would have been acquitted and carried out of the court room on the shoulders of a grateful jury, would have been if they were Quebecois. They weren’t. He was found guilty.
Good ole Fitzroy knew that the end of politics is to get jobs for his pals and to get markers from those who got the jobs. He then uses those makers to climb the ladder of success. Thus, when he got 10 Benjamins from the sting dude for some city work, he called a pal to close the deal. He told the Stinger that the guy on the other end of the phone “owes him”. “After all”, he added, “I got him his fucking job”.
Fitzroy Salesman’s biggest selling job will soon he upon him. It will consist of Uncle Bubba asking him politely if he could please pick up the soap. Life consists of being either a pitcher or a catcher. His choice will be upon him soon.
I save the best for last.
Broward County Commissioner Josephus Eggelettion should be keelhauled before his trial. He gets – I didn’t say earns – more than $200,000 from his two employers. #1 is the Broward County Board of Education where he is, so help me, a “diversity expert”. Who knows? Maybe he and Fitzroy Salesman had a deal going. He is also a Broward County Commissioner. That means he has hasn’t done an honest day’s work since Jimmuh Carter was turning the thermostat down in the White House while he was playing tonsil hockey with Brezhnev.
Both lactating mammarys were and are kept overflowing by taxpayer dollars.
Little Joe took his show on the road.
He was doing deals in the Bahamas laundering US dollars. Further investigation may show that he was responsible for the banking meltdown.
You may recall that a few years back he got his dick caught in the wringer by double billing for some trips overseas. A trip to Tokyo, a trip to Rio, and an $800 dollar computer case caused a tilt on the audit machines of two agencies. Obviously the audit was done by a rookie. Where do you think the Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name got the bus that he uses to toss people under? On the local level the bus doubles as a shredder.
The worst part of his scams was that he wasn’t a “stand up guy” about it.
He blamed two secretaries. One worked for the Board of Education while the other worked for the County Commission. Sheriff Ken Jenne, AKA Emperor Beppo, learned from him. He used his secretary as a cut out when he got money from a friend doing business with his office.
I am reminded of Thomas More when he realized he was doomed because of false testimony from Sir Richard Rich. He asked which seal of office was Rich wearing. “Sir Richard is appointed Attorney-General for Wales”. More replies that it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world …but for Wales”!
At least he got a country.
These 3 stooges, having sold their souls for not even a whole bowl of porridge, are part of the growing tapestry of shame – local version. There will be enough work here for two or three Penelopes
One party dominance leads to inbreeding. Faulty genes are no excuse for thievery.
I have been her 13 years. The only time a Republican was on the County Commission was when a Democrat went “inside”. A Republican Governor appointed his successor. He was turned out by the voters at the next election.
Come on down Speaker Pelosi. Fertile fields await.
Kevin Smith
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Congresswoman Debbie-Wasserman Schultz
September 17, 2009
Congresswoman Debbie-Wasserman Schultz
10100 Pembroke Pines Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: An important date for both of us
My dear Congressperson,
Time flies. I mean it really, really flies when you’re enjoying yourself. It’s been 8 years [September 18, 2001] since you sent two men from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, men with badges and guns, to my house to question me about something I wrote to you.
I am not sure if men with badges and guns, Agent Mineva and Agent Thomas, constitute a “slippery slope” or a “chilling effect”. I will share with you for the first time that one of the men with a badge and a gun told me that his department loved my letters to you.
Your response to criticism was, of course, the typical and expected response of any modern American Liberal to any dissent. It consists of, to paraphrase Nat Hentoff, “free speech for you but not for me”. Orwell told us that a “boot in the face” is the hallmark of modern politics. I always like to comment on the claim you make in your resume that you have two degrees in Political Science. To me it is inconceivable that you would not be aware of Sophocles who said 25 centuries ago where Political Science began that “Free men speak with free tongues”. It would be as easy for me to believe you if you said that you loved the cello but never heard of Bach.
It is a hard learned lesson that not all brown shirted fascist thugs wear boots and speak a foreign tongue. Some wear designer clothes and speak of equality.
That was then; this is now.
Two things.
#1 – In February, when all things were possible at the beginning of the reign of Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name, you said that once “some adjustments” were made in Afghanistan the problems there, in what modern American Liberals called the “good war”, would be solved. Lions would lay down with lambs and the call for Farsi and Pashto speaking ACORN community organizers would be a stimulus program all in itself.
7 months later the “adjustments” now include 40,000 more United States troops. I suggest that 40,000 more troops is a bit past an “adjustment”.
Since “You lie” is now the headline du jour I must tell you that a case could be made that you lied in February. Federal statutes say that fraud is committed by commission or omission. Put differently, if you had knowledge of a material fact and didn’t tell your constituents you would be guilty of fraud. Seven league boots are not required to say that fraud is the same as a lie.
If you had no knowledge of any military changes – adjustments if you will – and still you spoke you would be guilty of chicanery.
Either way it is still a lie.
Since you have zero knowledge of History it is my civic duty to tell you that Lyndon Johnson was the peace candidate in 1964. It was said that if Barry Goldwater had been elected we would wind up with 500,000 men in Vietnam. I believe the dry hand of Clio says that had Goldwater been elected U. S. involvement in Vietnam would have been over by July 4, 1965.
Will Cindy Sheehan’s lamentations be any less mournful, any less lachrymose, if a Democrat is in the White House? Will there be a new row of headstones in Arlington Cemetery for soldiers killed for an “adjustment”?
The country is owed an explanation of the overall strategy in Afghanistan and the tactics that will be employed to implement same. Franklin Roosevelt told Chester Nimitz on Christmas, 1941 to go to the Pacific and not to come back until he had beaten the Japanese.
Lyndon Johnson bragged that a North Vietnamese “shithouse wouldn’t be bombed unless he approved it”. At the very least the Congress should have a voice in this escalation. John Kennedy said that “anyplace is defensible if free men choose to defend it”.
We cannot send people into harm’s way and tell them that you can only bomb the north side of the marketplace on alternate Tuesdays. Sometimes a butcher’s bill is required. You may wish to read up on Grant and Sherman. If you think the bill might be too high your obligation is to speak out against incurring it. If you favor some half-assed, half-way measure you will be complicit in the future deaths of American soldiers.
#2 – Do you know who said “They are a faraway people about whom we know little”? It was Neville Chamberlain explaining to Parliament why he signed the Munich Pact and why he was at ease with the disappearance of Czechoslovakia into the voracious, never satisfied Nazi maw. There was one dissenting voice. “We have had to choose between shame and war. We chose shame; we will have war.” History has proved Churchill right.
Now we have the Obama administration announcing the abandonment of the missile shield for Eastern Europe. Once again the Czechs are abandoned. We tossed the Poles in for free. It is particularly ironic that today is the 70th anniversary of Russia invading Poland. Stalin let Hitler, his ally, do the initial heavy lifting.
A case could be made that this country has abandoned Eastern Europe, the first time through the Yalta agreement and the second time by withholding our technology. In the case of Yalta History tells us that several million Russian troops were already there. Today we did it because we forget an old Russian proverb that says “just because a wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling”.
Only people with no sense of History, people like the modern American Liberal now running amok in the White House, think that appeasing Putin will result in him helping us in Iran.
There is a straight line running from Munich to Auschwitz. In addition to 30,000,000 military casualties Hitler put 12,000,000 people in the oven. Half of them were Jews.
Does anyone think that the Israelis will wait until the latest train schedule is posted?
Western civilization was diminished by what it did and, more importantly, what it didn’t do in the 1930s. The poet was right when he called it a “low dishonest decade”.
It is said that Daniel Webster comes back from the grave every now and then. He stops the first person he sees and asks “Neighbor, how stands the Republic”?
Another equally timely Russian proverb is “Keep your ax handy”.
From “adjustments” in Iraq to realpolitik in Europe you have a chance to answer Webster’s question the way he always wanted it answered. “Iron bottomed and copper sheathed.” Perhaps today marks a return to the glory years of the Carter administration. The effect of its foreign policy was simple. It may have been dangerous to be an enemy of the United States but it was fatal to be a friend.
If I have said anything that makes you reach for the phone I must tell you that I live on the water. This time send some SEALS.
Happy Anniversary!
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie-Wasserman Schultz
10100 Pembroke Pines Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: An important date for both of us
My dear Congressperson,
Time flies. I mean it really, really flies when you’re enjoying yourself. It’s been 8 years [September 18, 2001] since you sent two men from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, men with badges and guns, to my house to question me about something I wrote to you.
I am not sure if men with badges and guns, Agent Mineva and Agent Thomas, constitute a “slippery slope” or a “chilling effect”. I will share with you for the first time that one of the men with a badge and a gun told me that his department loved my letters to you.
Your response to criticism was, of course, the typical and expected response of any modern American Liberal to any dissent. It consists of, to paraphrase Nat Hentoff, “free speech for you but not for me”. Orwell told us that a “boot in the face” is the hallmark of modern politics. I always like to comment on the claim you make in your resume that you have two degrees in Political Science. To me it is inconceivable that you would not be aware of Sophocles who said 25 centuries ago where Political Science began that “Free men speak with free tongues”. It would be as easy for me to believe you if you said that you loved the cello but never heard of Bach.
It is a hard learned lesson that not all brown shirted fascist thugs wear boots and speak a foreign tongue. Some wear designer clothes and speak of equality.
That was then; this is now.
Two things.
#1 – In February, when all things were possible at the beginning of the reign of Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name, you said that once “some adjustments” were made in Afghanistan the problems there, in what modern American Liberals called the “good war”, would be solved. Lions would lay down with lambs and the call for Farsi and Pashto speaking ACORN community organizers would be a stimulus program all in itself.
7 months later the “adjustments” now include 40,000 more United States troops. I suggest that 40,000 more troops is a bit past an “adjustment”.
Since “You lie” is now the headline du jour I must tell you that a case could be made that you lied in February. Federal statutes say that fraud is committed by commission or omission. Put differently, if you had knowledge of a material fact and didn’t tell your constituents you would be guilty of fraud. Seven league boots are not required to say that fraud is the same as a lie.
If you had no knowledge of any military changes – adjustments if you will – and still you spoke you would be guilty of chicanery.
Either way it is still a lie.
Since you have zero knowledge of History it is my civic duty to tell you that Lyndon Johnson was the peace candidate in 1964. It was said that if Barry Goldwater had been elected we would wind up with 500,000 men in Vietnam. I believe the dry hand of Clio says that had Goldwater been elected U. S. involvement in Vietnam would have been over by July 4, 1965.
Will Cindy Sheehan’s lamentations be any less mournful, any less lachrymose, if a Democrat is in the White House? Will there be a new row of headstones in Arlington Cemetery for soldiers killed for an “adjustment”?
The country is owed an explanation of the overall strategy in Afghanistan and the tactics that will be employed to implement same. Franklin Roosevelt told Chester Nimitz on Christmas, 1941 to go to the Pacific and not to come back until he had beaten the Japanese.
Lyndon Johnson bragged that a North Vietnamese “shithouse wouldn’t be bombed unless he approved it”. At the very least the Congress should have a voice in this escalation. John Kennedy said that “anyplace is defensible if free men choose to defend it”.
We cannot send people into harm’s way and tell them that you can only bomb the north side of the marketplace on alternate Tuesdays. Sometimes a butcher’s bill is required. You may wish to read up on Grant and Sherman. If you think the bill might be too high your obligation is to speak out against incurring it. If you favor some half-assed, half-way measure you will be complicit in the future deaths of American soldiers.
#2 – Do you know who said “They are a faraway people about whom we know little”? It was Neville Chamberlain explaining to Parliament why he signed the Munich Pact and why he was at ease with the disappearance of Czechoslovakia into the voracious, never satisfied Nazi maw. There was one dissenting voice. “We have had to choose between shame and war. We chose shame; we will have war.” History has proved Churchill right.
Now we have the Obama administration announcing the abandonment of the missile shield for Eastern Europe. Once again the Czechs are abandoned. We tossed the Poles in for free. It is particularly ironic that today is the 70th anniversary of Russia invading Poland. Stalin let Hitler, his ally, do the initial heavy lifting.
A case could be made that this country has abandoned Eastern Europe, the first time through the Yalta agreement and the second time by withholding our technology. In the case of Yalta History tells us that several million Russian troops were already there. Today we did it because we forget an old Russian proverb that says “just because a wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling”.
Only people with no sense of History, people like the modern American Liberal now running amok in the White House, think that appeasing Putin will result in him helping us in Iran.
There is a straight line running from Munich to Auschwitz. In addition to 30,000,000 military casualties Hitler put 12,000,000 people in the oven. Half of them were Jews.
Does anyone think that the Israelis will wait until the latest train schedule is posted?
Western civilization was diminished by what it did and, more importantly, what it didn’t do in the 1930s. The poet was right when he called it a “low dishonest decade”.
It is said that Daniel Webster comes back from the grave every now and then. He stops the first person he sees and asks “Neighbor, how stands the Republic”?
Another equally timely Russian proverb is “Keep your ax handy”.
From “adjustments” in Iraq to realpolitik in Europe you have a chance to answer Webster’s question the way he always wanted it answered. “Iron bottomed and copper sheathed.” Perhaps today marks a return to the glory years of the Carter administration. The effect of its foreign policy was simple. It may have been dangerous to be an enemy of the United States but it was fatal to be a friend.
If I have said anything that makes you reach for the phone I must tell you that I live on the water. This time send some SEALS.
Happy Anniversary!
Kevin Smith
September 12, 2009
Steve Rothaus
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Matthew Shepherd & Jesse Dirkhising – Some comments on your article in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Rothaus,
Why brush up against the 3rd rail of American culture, that rail being the one that says remarks critical of any aspect of homosexuality will not be tolerated, when you can do a back flip right on to it?
Mathew Shepherd – and please, please correct me if any of my facts are wrong – was a 21 year old homosexual who was picked up by 2 heterosexuals in a bar that catered to homosexuals. They tortured him, “pistol whipped” him as you say, and left him to die tied to a fence.
Jesse Dirkhising – and please, please correct me if any of my facts were wrong – was an 11 year old boy, thus a pre-teen and legally incapable of consenting to any sexual activity be it heterosexual or homosexual, was kidnapped by 2 predatory homosexuals. For 2 days they raped and sodomized him. They suffocated him by stuffing rags soaked with drain cleaner into his mouth.
Which one is more dead?
Why was one a victim of a “hate crime” while the other was not? I’ll end the suspense. The 21 year old bar hopper is now in the hagiography of victims. The 11 year old is in free fall down the memory hole
You end your article by praising Matthew Shepherd’s mother who says “she’ll keep fighting until the Federal law is in place and gays have full protections”. I may be showing my naïveté but do you think any law could have prevented the murder of Matthew Shepherd? What law could have protected Jesse Dirkhising?
The Kellogg-Briand Treaty outlawed naval warfare. Why did the Japanese and the German navies try to sink the ship my wife’s father sailed on? There are a large number of laws that cover bank robberies. Banks still get robbed.
“How sad of all the things that men endure
how few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
There is no law against the moral and intellectual dry rot of “eclectic indignation”. It allows you to mourn the loss of Matthew Shepherd while forgetting the death of…of the kid what’s his name.
One will wind up on a stamp; the other will soon need Goggle and a GPS system to bring his tale of woe to light.
I’ll say a prayer for the repose of the souls of both.
Kevin Smith
Steve Rothaus
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Matthew Shepherd & Jesse Dirkhising – Some comments on your article in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Rothaus,
Why brush up against the 3rd rail of American culture, that rail being the one that says remarks critical of any aspect of homosexuality will not be tolerated, when you can do a back flip right on to it?
Mathew Shepherd – and please, please correct me if any of my facts are wrong – was a 21 year old homosexual who was picked up by 2 heterosexuals in a bar that catered to homosexuals. They tortured him, “pistol whipped” him as you say, and left him to die tied to a fence.
Jesse Dirkhising – and please, please correct me if any of my facts were wrong – was an 11 year old boy, thus a pre-teen and legally incapable of consenting to any sexual activity be it heterosexual or homosexual, was kidnapped by 2 predatory homosexuals. For 2 days they raped and sodomized him. They suffocated him by stuffing rags soaked with drain cleaner into his mouth.
Which one is more dead?
Why was one a victim of a “hate crime” while the other was not? I’ll end the suspense. The 21 year old bar hopper is now in the hagiography of victims. The 11 year old is in free fall down the memory hole
You end your article by praising Matthew Shepherd’s mother who says “she’ll keep fighting until the Federal law is in place and gays have full protections”. I may be showing my naïveté but do you think any law could have prevented the murder of Matthew Shepherd? What law could have protected Jesse Dirkhising?
The Kellogg-Briand Treaty outlawed naval warfare. Why did the Japanese and the German navies try to sink the ship my wife’s father sailed on? There are a large number of laws that cover bank robberies. Banks still get robbed.
“How sad of all the things that men endure
how few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
There is no law against the moral and intellectual dry rot of “eclectic indignation”. It allows you to mourn the loss of Matthew Shepherd while forgetting the death of…of the kid what’s his name.
One will wind up on a stamp; the other will soon need Goggle and a GPS system to bring his tale of woe to light.
I’ll say a prayer for the repose of the souls of both.
Kevin Smith
Sunday, September 13, 2009
September 12, 2009
Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and how they are tied in with the “birthers” but not the “truthers” as outlined by you in your delightful column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
You say that drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will “cement Florida’s legacy as the laboratory for just about every right-wing political initiative under the sun”.
You list school vouchers, the FCATs, tax cuts, bazookas for everyone, faith-based initiatives, rainy weekends, rude Quebecois, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and ever increasing red tides in your series of non-sequiturs about the evil lurking in the hearts of Republicans everywhere.
Jeepers!
Who knew how “vast” and powerful the conspiracy was that Hillary Clinton warned us about? It actually got Cuba to drill in the Gulf. And it got China as a drilling partner.
Do you think we should send the United States Navy to stop this threat to Florida’s beaches?
Your company is in bankruptcy. Any cost savings plan will be appreciated. May I suggest that the World HQ of the Sun-Sentinel stop using its air conditioning? Have you looked into wind mills to power your printing presses? Orvine borborygymy looks promising. If it doesn’t work you can feed all the Bo Peeps to the pythons.
Meanwhile you’ll have the satisfaction of decreasing your carbon footprint, saving the manatees, stopping polar bears drowning, and patching the hole in the ozone layer.
It’s just a small turd in the global punch bowl but if off-shore drilling is bad for the people of Florida why is it good for the people of Brazil? Further, why is the Obama administration, through the U.S. owned Ex-Im Bank, participating in a $10,000,000,000 loan to drill in Brazilian waters? That’s b as in billions and billions. If I told you that the main drilling company is owned by George Soros would you think that I was one of those wing nut people who believe that the United States government engineered 9/11 or that Obama is Osama bin Laden’s nephew?
White people are still a majority in Florida.
There are more Black people in Brazil than any other country in the Americas. The overwhelming majority of them are descendants of African slaves. Why is it OK to subject them to the environmental risks of oil pollution?
You say that “right-wing political initiative[s]…have eliminated Affirmative Action”. Would not fairness, justice, and equity demand a level playing field when it comes to potential pollution?
Could Florida Energy Associates, identified by you as “a special interest group of Florida business associations and Texas oil interests”, have gotten to Obama? Private school tuition for his daughters is more that a $1,000 a week. His wife likes expensive clothes. They take big vacations. He’s from Chicago. After Hudson County, New Jersey it is land of the cash stuffed “white envelope”.
Perhaps it is a stretch but it is plausible.
Just like TNT in the Twin Towers.
Now that he has a lot of free time maybe Van Jones can look into it.
Kevin Smith
PS – I can never keep my aluminum foil hat, the one with the gravitating transponders on the sides, aligned with the Mother ship. How do you do it?
Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and how they are tied in with the “birthers” but not the “truthers” as outlined by you in your delightful column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
You say that drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will “cement Florida’s legacy as the laboratory for just about every right-wing political initiative under the sun”.
You list school vouchers, the FCATs, tax cuts, bazookas for everyone, faith-based initiatives, rainy weekends, rude Quebecois, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and ever increasing red tides in your series of non-sequiturs about the evil lurking in the hearts of Republicans everywhere.
Jeepers!
Who knew how “vast” and powerful the conspiracy was that Hillary Clinton warned us about? It actually got Cuba to drill in the Gulf. And it got China as a drilling partner.
Do you think we should send the United States Navy to stop this threat to Florida’s beaches?
Your company is in bankruptcy. Any cost savings plan will be appreciated. May I suggest that the World HQ of the Sun-Sentinel stop using its air conditioning? Have you looked into wind mills to power your printing presses? Orvine borborygymy looks promising. If it doesn’t work you can feed all the Bo Peeps to the pythons.
Meanwhile you’ll have the satisfaction of decreasing your carbon footprint, saving the manatees, stopping polar bears drowning, and patching the hole in the ozone layer.
It’s just a small turd in the global punch bowl but if off-shore drilling is bad for the people of Florida why is it good for the people of Brazil? Further, why is the Obama administration, through the U.S. owned Ex-Im Bank, participating in a $10,000,000,000 loan to drill in Brazilian waters? That’s b as in billions and billions. If I told you that the main drilling company is owned by George Soros would you think that I was one of those wing nut people who believe that the United States government engineered 9/11 or that Obama is Osama bin Laden’s nephew?
White people are still a majority in Florida.
There are more Black people in Brazil than any other country in the Americas. The overwhelming majority of them are descendants of African slaves. Why is it OK to subject them to the environmental risks of oil pollution?
You say that “right-wing political initiative[s]…have eliminated Affirmative Action”. Would not fairness, justice, and equity demand a level playing field when it comes to potential pollution?
Could Florida Energy Associates, identified by you as “a special interest group of Florida business associations and Texas oil interests”, have gotten to Obama? Private school tuition for his daughters is more that a $1,000 a week. His wife likes expensive clothes. They take big vacations. He’s from Chicago. After Hudson County, New Jersey it is land of the cash stuffed “white envelope”.
Perhaps it is a stretch but it is plausible.
Just like TNT in the Twin Towers.
Now that he has a lot of free time maybe Van Jones can look into it.
Kevin Smith
PS – I can never keep my aluminum foil hat, the one with the gravitating transponders on the sides, aligned with the Mother ship. How do you do it?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Congressman Kendrick Meek
September 9, 2009
Congressman Kendrick Meek
10100 Pines Boulevard – 3B
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: Please, please keep talking. You are like a big fat Christmas stocking stuffed with good things that arrives unannounced every month. The story in today’s Miami Herald is the best example of res ipso loquitur this week.
Congressman Meek,
“If you have folks coming in from a foreign country
when there are people here who have to pay their
bills and have to pay their taxes and are overlooked,
that’s something that we need to work on,” Meek said.
Gulp.
Did you actually say that?
Double gulp.
It is my civic duty to inform you that using your statement as a revealed truth we should use some of the swag from the Stimulus program to train sharks to recognize, attack, kill, and eat anybody taking a boat from Haiti with the intent of illegally entering this country.
It gets better.
Your mama was a bright lady. Didn’t she ever tell you to keep your mouth shut? That way people can only think you are a horse’s ass. As soon as you open your mouth all doubt is erased. To wit:
“Just because the governor decides to appoint his good
friend and campaign manager to the U. S. Senate doesn’t
necessarily mean that we close our eyes on issues such as this.”
The Miami Herald
Today
Page 3B
You
George LeMieux was appointed to the United States Senate in full accordance with Federal law and Florida law. Since you brought the subject up perhaps a peek at how you got to Congress is in order.
Your mama gave it to you
She announced that she would not seek another term about an hour before her petitions were to be filed. She changed the cover page from Carrie Meek to Kendrick Meek. There being no other contenders the job was yours when the petitions were accepted. It must be noted that the district that elected your mother and you was rigged in such a manner that O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, or Michael Vick would have been elected there.
It was an updated version of primogeniture, the major difference being that nobody had to die for you to get your inheritance. The only resume thinner than yours belongs to the dude in the White House.
When the roundup and deportation of all Haitians in this country illegally begins I hope you will be there to wave goodbye and good riddance to these law breakers.
I hope that the change is for the better for all “those folks who pay their bills and pay their taxes and are overlooked”.
This is a great country, ain’t it?
Kevin Smith
CC – BR
CC - TF
Congressman Kendrick Meek
10100 Pines Boulevard – 3B
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: Please, please keep talking. You are like a big fat Christmas stocking stuffed with good things that arrives unannounced every month. The story in today’s Miami Herald is the best example of res ipso loquitur this week.
Congressman Meek,
“If you have folks coming in from a foreign country
when there are people here who have to pay their
bills and have to pay their taxes and are overlooked,
that’s something that we need to work on,” Meek said.
Gulp.
Did you actually say that?
Double gulp.
It is my civic duty to inform you that using your statement as a revealed truth we should use some of the swag from the Stimulus program to train sharks to recognize, attack, kill, and eat anybody taking a boat from Haiti with the intent of illegally entering this country.
It gets better.
Your mama was a bright lady. Didn’t she ever tell you to keep your mouth shut? That way people can only think you are a horse’s ass. As soon as you open your mouth all doubt is erased. To wit:
“Just because the governor decides to appoint his good
friend and campaign manager to the U. S. Senate doesn’t
necessarily mean that we close our eyes on issues such as this.”
The Miami Herald
Today
Page 3B
You
George LeMieux was appointed to the United States Senate in full accordance with Federal law and Florida law. Since you brought the subject up perhaps a peek at how you got to Congress is in order.
Your mama gave it to you
She announced that she would not seek another term about an hour before her petitions were to be filed. She changed the cover page from Carrie Meek to Kendrick Meek. There being no other contenders the job was yours when the petitions were accepted. It must be noted that the district that elected your mother and you was rigged in such a manner that O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, or Michael Vick would have been elected there.
It was an updated version of primogeniture, the major difference being that nobody had to die for you to get your inheritance. The only resume thinner than yours belongs to the dude in the White House.
When the roundup and deportation of all Haitians in this country illegally begins I hope you will be there to wave goodbye and good riddance to these law breakers.
I hope that the change is for the better for all “those folks who pay their bills and pay their taxes and are overlooked”.
This is a great country, ain’t it?
Kevin Smith
CC – BR
CC - TF
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Carl Hiaasen The Miami Herald
September 6, 2009
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Beet faced droolers” – If everybody and everything is sick how will we be able to tell if we’re getting better? A jaundiced look at your column in today’s Herald about “death panels” and those who oppose them.
Mr. Hiaasen.
My venerable “Right Wing Conspirator” cap – I was a charter member – that I wore to the White House in August, 1968 where, holding my granddaughter Caitlin in one arm, I stood by the Monica Gate and shouted “Come out with your hands up, you son of a bitch, we have the place surrounded”, sits right below my Paul Tibbets autographed picture of the Enola Gay, the plane that began the intense 3 day negotiations that led to the most successful nuclear arms treaty of the 20th century.
I believe that I am the model, the “paradigmatic template” to use jabberwocky so beloved of modern American Liberals, the very modern model of a major “beet faced drooler”. “Beet faced droolers” is the term you use to show your feelings for those with whom you disagree. I guess it’s better than “assholes”.
I am going to say “Hands off my Medicare”. I paid into it for 44 years. I pay for it every month even though I am on the back nine of life. I kept my end of the bargain. Why shouldn’t the government keep theirs?
I had a good friend die last month at the age of 64. What is he going to get out of Social Security and Medicare? As is said in New Jersey, where we both were from, he got bupkes. Other parts of the state would say ogatz. Either way it’s a big win for the green eye shade guys who work for the Feds.
One way to decrease the burden on Medicare would be to have a mandatory senior Olympics. Power lifting, python wrestling, chain saw juggling, William Tell archery, stuff like that. If you win you get to live another month. We could have a lottery with the winners getting the Terry Schiavo life time deluxe diet.
[As an aside, it’s been a very good fortnight for the aforementioned “beet faced droolers”. Who knew that an upper level low in the Bering Straits, a climatic condition caused by selfish White people who drive gas guzzlers and consume egregious amounts of plastic, would prevent Sarah Palin from eyeballing the Russkies from her front porch? I mean how many cohos, chars, and chinooks can you fillet in one afternoon? She read the health plan proffered by Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name. She found the “death panels”. Then a funny thing happened. Despite the guffaws from the chattering class the next sound heard was White House sphincters slamming shut like the water tight doors on the Titanic were supposed to.
Next up was Glenn Beck. I mean are we talking about the prototypical Yahoo Apeneck with a microphone or aren’t we? About a week after he put his bull’s eye on the multicultural ass of one Van Jones, he of the “asshole” remark, the White House threw him under the bus and sent his carcass to Camp Gitmo for further processing.
Pretty good batting average for those two hicks, don’t you think?]
Sunshine is the best disinfectant for bad things. There is a rumor being spread by bed wetting Commie pinkos disguised to look like “beet-faced droolers” that anyone who watches the Dear Leader’s speech to America’s school children on Tuesday will come down with Asian Mexican Swine Flu. I don’t believe it but you can never be too careful.
I marvel at the ability of those among us, an overwhelming majority of whom suffer from acute “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome, who think that the same people who give us the United States Postal Service, Amtrak, the IRS, and every motor vehicle department in the country will be able to give us better, more sensitive, more environmentally friendly health care.
The last time we tried to fiddlefart with the health care system we had two Yale lawyers running the rock up the hill like Sisyphus. Now we have two lawyers from Harvard. Say this about the Ivy League: It never lets you down.
Four different governments, the city of New Orleans, the parish of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, and the United States of America couldn’t get a truck filled with water over the God Damn Mississippi River for 5 days. And you think putting them in charge of pneumonectomies is a good idea? Only ohmadans who regularly get lost on a ladder believe that.
You say
“It would be cheaper to make sure that
everybody has a decent health plan.”
like it goes from your lips to God’s ears.
At the end of the day debits must equal credits.
The collected wisdom of our betters has given us 47,000,000 as the number of uninsured in this country. Adults, people both toilet trained and in possession of a modicum of table manners, tell us that by combining this number of uninsured with those who are insured will result in lower costs for everyone. No provision is made for the supply side of the equation. Will the number of physicians and nurses increase to meet this demand the day after this bill becomes law? Is it too late to use the $2,000,000,000 that will be spent to build a baseball stadium in Miami go to build hospitals? The only good thing to come out of that clusterflub is that fans can stay away from a newer stadium.
Need more proof that these guys couldn’t organize a two car funeral?
Last month we were treated to the Cash for Clunkers program. It was a program designed to give away free money. Something happens when horses’ asses of normal stature cross the Potomac. They become Homeric. They become Brobdanaglian. They couldn’t even do that. Can you imagine a more feral group of Americans than car salesmen who, after two years of fish heads and rice, are promised a couple of months of farting through silk if they can only sell cars using free money? They kept their end of the bargain. The dealers kept their end of the bargain. “Show me the money” was the popular cry a few years back. Where the Hell is the dough? And you want these guys to determine if the diversity program for performing bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomies is up to snuff? Surely bedlam awaits.
Perhaps we could start charging for “Midnight Basketball”. Perhaps we could borrow more money from the Chinese. Perhaps we could keelhaul – that’s when waterboarding really meant something – all the insurance company fat cats. Perhaps we could make the Congressional Health Care Plan, the one that flew Ted Kennedy to Lourdes two weeks ago, available to everyone.
OOPS!
I have to tune in to my new primary care physician, Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld of Fox News.
Continuing this morning’s theatre of the absurd the story right above yours is about how the word “negro” is going down the memory hole. I guess that means it’s curtains for the word “colored” as in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I hope they didn’t stock up on too much stationery.
Meanwhile I wait with growing impatience the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in the Herald.
Kevin Smith
PS – Would a plethora of “beet-faced droolers” be sufficient to bring back the greatly misunderstood and underappreciated Alien and Sedition Act? If I say los zapatos son negro is that a hate crime?
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Beet faced droolers” – If everybody and everything is sick how will we be able to tell if we’re getting better? A jaundiced look at your column in today’s Herald about “death panels” and those who oppose them.
Mr. Hiaasen.
My venerable “Right Wing Conspirator” cap – I was a charter member – that I wore to the White House in August, 1968 where, holding my granddaughter Caitlin in one arm, I stood by the Monica Gate and shouted “Come out with your hands up, you son of a bitch, we have the place surrounded”, sits right below my Paul Tibbets autographed picture of the Enola Gay, the plane that began the intense 3 day negotiations that led to the most successful nuclear arms treaty of the 20th century.
I believe that I am the model, the “paradigmatic template” to use jabberwocky so beloved of modern American Liberals, the very modern model of a major “beet faced drooler”. “Beet faced droolers” is the term you use to show your feelings for those with whom you disagree. I guess it’s better than “assholes”.
I am going to say “Hands off my Medicare”. I paid into it for 44 years. I pay for it every month even though I am on the back nine of life. I kept my end of the bargain. Why shouldn’t the government keep theirs?
I had a good friend die last month at the age of 64. What is he going to get out of Social Security and Medicare? As is said in New Jersey, where we both were from, he got bupkes. Other parts of the state would say ogatz. Either way it’s a big win for the green eye shade guys who work for the Feds.
One way to decrease the burden on Medicare would be to have a mandatory senior Olympics. Power lifting, python wrestling, chain saw juggling, William Tell archery, stuff like that. If you win you get to live another month. We could have a lottery with the winners getting the Terry Schiavo life time deluxe diet.
[As an aside, it’s been a very good fortnight for the aforementioned “beet faced droolers”. Who knew that an upper level low in the Bering Straits, a climatic condition caused by selfish White people who drive gas guzzlers and consume egregious amounts of plastic, would prevent Sarah Palin from eyeballing the Russkies from her front porch? I mean how many cohos, chars, and chinooks can you fillet in one afternoon? She read the health plan proffered by Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name. She found the “death panels”. Then a funny thing happened. Despite the guffaws from the chattering class the next sound heard was White House sphincters slamming shut like the water tight doors on the Titanic were supposed to.
Next up was Glenn Beck. I mean are we talking about the prototypical Yahoo Apeneck with a microphone or aren’t we? About a week after he put his bull’s eye on the multicultural ass of one Van Jones, he of the “asshole” remark, the White House threw him under the bus and sent his carcass to Camp Gitmo for further processing.
Pretty good batting average for those two hicks, don’t you think?]
Sunshine is the best disinfectant for bad things. There is a rumor being spread by bed wetting Commie pinkos disguised to look like “beet-faced droolers” that anyone who watches the Dear Leader’s speech to America’s school children on Tuesday will come down with Asian Mexican Swine Flu. I don’t believe it but you can never be too careful.
I marvel at the ability of those among us, an overwhelming majority of whom suffer from acute “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome, who think that the same people who give us the United States Postal Service, Amtrak, the IRS, and every motor vehicle department in the country will be able to give us better, more sensitive, more environmentally friendly health care.
The last time we tried to fiddlefart with the health care system we had two Yale lawyers running the rock up the hill like Sisyphus. Now we have two lawyers from Harvard. Say this about the Ivy League: It never lets you down.
Four different governments, the city of New Orleans, the parish of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, and the United States of America couldn’t get a truck filled with water over the God Damn Mississippi River for 5 days. And you think putting them in charge of pneumonectomies is a good idea? Only ohmadans who regularly get lost on a ladder believe that.
You say
“It would be cheaper to make sure that
everybody has a decent health plan.”
like it goes from your lips to God’s ears.
At the end of the day debits must equal credits.
The collected wisdom of our betters has given us 47,000,000 as the number of uninsured in this country. Adults, people both toilet trained and in possession of a modicum of table manners, tell us that by combining this number of uninsured with those who are insured will result in lower costs for everyone. No provision is made for the supply side of the equation. Will the number of physicians and nurses increase to meet this demand the day after this bill becomes law? Is it too late to use the $2,000,000,000 that will be spent to build a baseball stadium in Miami go to build hospitals? The only good thing to come out of that clusterflub is that fans can stay away from a newer stadium.
Need more proof that these guys couldn’t organize a two car funeral?
Last month we were treated to the Cash for Clunkers program. It was a program designed to give away free money. Something happens when horses’ asses of normal stature cross the Potomac. They become Homeric. They become Brobdanaglian. They couldn’t even do that. Can you imagine a more feral group of Americans than car salesmen who, after two years of fish heads and rice, are promised a couple of months of farting through silk if they can only sell cars using free money? They kept their end of the bargain. The dealers kept their end of the bargain. “Show me the money” was the popular cry a few years back. Where the Hell is the dough? And you want these guys to determine if the diversity program for performing bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomies is up to snuff? Surely bedlam awaits.
Perhaps we could start charging for “Midnight Basketball”. Perhaps we could borrow more money from the Chinese. Perhaps we could keelhaul – that’s when waterboarding really meant something – all the insurance company fat cats. Perhaps we could make the Congressional Health Care Plan, the one that flew Ted Kennedy to Lourdes two weeks ago, available to everyone.
OOPS!
I have to tune in to my new primary care physician, Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld of Fox News.
Continuing this morning’s theatre of the absurd the story right above yours is about how the word “negro” is going down the memory hole. I guess that means it’s curtains for the word “colored” as in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I hope they didn’t stock up on too much stationery.
Meanwhile I wait with growing impatience the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in the Herald.
Kevin Smith
PS – Would a plethora of “beet-faced droolers” be sufficient to bring back the greatly misunderstood and underappreciated Alien and Sedition Act? If I say los zapatos son negro is that a hate crime?
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Congressman Peter DeFazio
September 1, 2009
Congressman Peter DeFazio
405 East 8th Avenue #2030
Eugene, Oregon 97401
RE: Good deeds should be rewarded.
Congressman DeFazio,
Put a special tax on oil trades?
How about a special tax on all lumber trades?
How about a special tax on something that Oregon specializes in?
A framed picture of Mayor Bud Clark of Portland sits above my desk. He was the last intellectually honest politician in Oregon. [As an aside, who the Hell gave out those stupid pet nick names for your schools? Duck, here comes the Beaver! Somebody was on something that day.]
My grandfather was always amazed that there were more horses’ assess than there were horses’ heads. He figured that the number should always be in balance. One ass; one head. He would be saddened to know that in Oregon that is not the case.
Reading your tax policy caused my fingernails to curl backwards. I read them to my cat. He barked. My fish held their breath.
Accordingly, I name you this week’s winner of a most prestigious award. It is enhanced by the fact that it is only Tuesday.
You are proclaimed
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
No Affirmative Action for you. You got it the old fashioned way.
You earned it!
Kevin Smith
Congressman Peter DeFazio
405 East 8th Avenue #2030
Eugene, Oregon 97401
RE: Good deeds should be rewarded.
Congressman DeFazio,
Put a special tax on oil trades?
How about a special tax on all lumber trades?
How about a special tax on something that Oregon specializes in?
A framed picture of Mayor Bud Clark of Portland sits above my desk. He was the last intellectually honest politician in Oregon. [As an aside, who the Hell gave out those stupid pet nick names for your schools? Duck, here comes the Beaver! Somebody was on something that day.]
My grandfather was always amazed that there were more horses’ assess than there were horses’ heads. He figured that the number should always be in balance. One ass; one head. He would be saddened to know that in Oregon that is not the case.
Reading your tax policy caused my fingernails to curl backwards. I read them to my cat. He barked. My fish held their breath.
Accordingly, I name you this week’s winner of a most prestigious award. It is enhanced by the fact that it is only Tuesday.
You are proclaimed
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
No Affirmative Action for you. You got it the old fashioned way.
You earned it!
Kevin Smith
David Bositis Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies
September 1, 2009
David Bositis
Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies
1090 Vermont Avenue NW #1100
Washington, D.C. 20005-4928
RE: Say what?
Mr. Bositis,
“…it’s perfectly fine if a white mayor gets elected with black support.
On the other hand, it’s not a good sign if you have
a white candidate getting elected with white votes.
It’s an indication of polarization.”
That solves the mystery of how joint came to be in your title. It must have taken some really powerful loco weed to cobble that sentence together.
Do you think Lani Guinier is coming back to the White House? She would be an ideal fit for the currently vacant position of Czarina of Minority Rights and Wrongs.
If I read your ramblings correctly it is OK for whites to vote for blacks. It’s OK for blacks to vote for whites. It is a moral imperative for blacks to vote for blacks. But if whites vote for whites God in His Heaven will be offended to the point of divine retribution. Perhaps an answer to the mystery surrounding Global Warming is at hand.
For saying something so egregiously stupid that you have caused the tides to stumble I bestow a most prestigious title on you.
David Bositis is hereby anointed
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
Kevin Smith
David Bositis
Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies
1090 Vermont Avenue NW #1100
Washington, D.C. 20005-4928
RE: Say what?
Mr. Bositis,
“…it’s perfectly fine if a white mayor gets elected with black support.
On the other hand, it’s not a good sign if you have
a white candidate getting elected with white votes.
It’s an indication of polarization.”
That solves the mystery of how joint came to be in your title. It must have taken some really powerful loco weed to cobble that sentence together.
Do you think Lani Guinier is coming back to the White House? She would be an ideal fit for the currently vacant position of Czarina of Minority Rights and Wrongs.
If I read your ramblings correctly it is OK for whites to vote for blacks. It’s OK for blacks to vote for whites. It is a moral imperative for blacks to vote for blacks. But if whites vote for whites God in His Heaven will be offended to the point of divine retribution. Perhaps an answer to the mystery surrounding Global Warming is at hand.
For saying something so egregiously stupid that you have caused the tides to stumble I bestow a most prestigious title on you.
David Bositis is hereby anointed
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Teddy
August 30, 2009
De mortuis…?
I was going to leave this crap alone.
I changed my mind.
#1 – Senator Toad Dodd [D-CT], a man who daily proves that the acorn never falls far from the tree in that he makes his father’s peccadilloes with the petty cash box seem like the small potatoes that they were and the only politician who ever told me a lie while looking me straight in the eye, preached a eulogy that made good people weep. They wept not because of sadness but, rather, because of lies beyond those acceptable when the guest of honor is dead. The lead sentence of his obituary will read: “He was a friend of Teddy and a Friend of Angelo.”
#2 – Who says the Catholic Church is behind the times? Just as Jesus drove the money changers from the temple for cause the “teachable moment” came and went with nary a peep out of those Vatican 2 alumni. They spoke of Kennedy’s devotion to principle. What of the principle of human life? How many times do you get them all in the same room? How many times will they have the nation’s attention? How many times could the subject of abortion been brought up in a church filled with hypocritical politicians? The political argument that it is the law of the land so I have no choice but to follow it would have guaranteed that slavery, it being the law of the land – the Dred Scott decision, remember? – would still be with us.
#3 – “Punctuality is the courtesy of kings” was used once again to prove the plebian background of the entire band of thieves. They were late leaving Boston; they were late leaving the Capitol; they were late getting to the cemetery. They waved to the crowd like they were all auditioning for the part of Marie Antoinette. Having had the fix put in for everything all their lives by trusted “family aides” the one thing these sycophantic ass kissers could not fix was the sunset. I just hope they put him in the right hole. It was the only thing in D.C. that was “shovel ready”.
Since this seems to be a weekend for Irish wakes maybe you’ve heard of the story of Mrs. Malone and her dying husband. He went into the hospital sick and came out dead. Before he was buried the priest asked her how she wanted his eulogy to go seeing as how he died of gonorrhea and diarrhea. The Widow Malone paused and said “Father, tell them he died of gonorrhea. I’d rather people remembered him for the sport that he wasn’t rather than for the shit that he was.”
You would think Saint Frank of Assisi or Father Theresa was being buried.
In 2 millennia of Christendom we can be certain of only one soul being in Heaven. Jesus Christ himself invited Dismas to spend eternity with him. I cannot judge another man’s soul. “As long as the light is left to burn the vilest sinner may yet return” has been a Christian belief since Jesus. Deo volente that the Hound may have caught him at the end. If not he’s is going to inspire an updated version on La Commedia, hopefully for the sake of his soul, Purgatorio and not Inferno. In fact, he may have caused a brand new circle to have been built and, while I doubt the Stimulus program can claim credit for another “creation”, they will, they will.
But what is left is a bit of a foul taste that time will not make more palatable. What makes it worse is the lock step reactions of Kennedy “family aides”, both paid and unpaid. Camelot is proclaimed yet again. Like the horizon it was unreachable.
From being a serial cheater in college to leaving a woman to drown to being a bit of a rake and a sot he was never held responsible for his actions. His brothers took turns getting a leg over on Marilyn Monroe, wire tapping Martin Luther King, kvetching about the price of steel, and getting this country into Vietnam. Rather than Camelot it was Gomorrah Lite.
That the voters of Massachusetts saw fit to return him to office again and again suggests perhaps a return to literacy tests may be in order. It suggests that after a time the human psyche can accept anything.
If ever there were an argument against inherited wealth it was on display yesterday. No wonder he was a fan of Affirmative Action. If his name were Kanjorksi the only way he gets into Harvard would have been by being a swimming and diving instructor.
“de mortuis…?”
Let’s ask Judge Bork.
Mary Jo Kopechne can’t answer any questions. She is still dead.
Kevin Smith
De mortuis…?
I was going to leave this crap alone.
I changed my mind.
#1 – Senator Toad Dodd [D-CT], a man who daily proves that the acorn never falls far from the tree in that he makes his father’s peccadilloes with the petty cash box seem like the small potatoes that they were and the only politician who ever told me a lie while looking me straight in the eye, preached a eulogy that made good people weep. They wept not because of sadness but, rather, because of lies beyond those acceptable when the guest of honor is dead. The lead sentence of his obituary will read: “He was a friend of Teddy and a Friend of Angelo.”
#2 – Who says the Catholic Church is behind the times? Just as Jesus drove the money changers from the temple for cause the “teachable moment” came and went with nary a peep out of those Vatican 2 alumni. They spoke of Kennedy’s devotion to principle. What of the principle of human life? How many times do you get them all in the same room? How many times will they have the nation’s attention? How many times could the subject of abortion been brought up in a church filled with hypocritical politicians? The political argument that it is the law of the land so I have no choice but to follow it would have guaranteed that slavery, it being the law of the land – the Dred Scott decision, remember? – would still be with us.
#3 – “Punctuality is the courtesy of kings” was used once again to prove the plebian background of the entire band of thieves. They were late leaving Boston; they were late leaving the Capitol; they were late getting to the cemetery. They waved to the crowd like they were all auditioning for the part of Marie Antoinette. Having had the fix put in for everything all their lives by trusted “family aides” the one thing these sycophantic ass kissers could not fix was the sunset. I just hope they put him in the right hole. It was the only thing in D.C. that was “shovel ready”.
Since this seems to be a weekend for Irish wakes maybe you’ve heard of the story of Mrs. Malone and her dying husband. He went into the hospital sick and came out dead. Before he was buried the priest asked her how she wanted his eulogy to go seeing as how he died of gonorrhea and diarrhea. The Widow Malone paused and said “Father, tell them he died of gonorrhea. I’d rather people remembered him for the sport that he wasn’t rather than for the shit that he was.”
You would think Saint Frank of Assisi or Father Theresa was being buried.
In 2 millennia of Christendom we can be certain of only one soul being in Heaven. Jesus Christ himself invited Dismas to spend eternity with him. I cannot judge another man’s soul. “As long as the light is left to burn the vilest sinner may yet return” has been a Christian belief since Jesus. Deo volente that the Hound may have caught him at the end. If not he’s is going to inspire an updated version on La Commedia, hopefully for the sake of his soul, Purgatorio and not Inferno. In fact, he may have caused a brand new circle to have been built and, while I doubt the Stimulus program can claim credit for another “creation”, they will, they will.
But what is left is a bit of a foul taste that time will not make more palatable. What makes it worse is the lock step reactions of Kennedy “family aides”, both paid and unpaid. Camelot is proclaimed yet again. Like the horizon it was unreachable.
From being a serial cheater in college to leaving a woman to drown to being a bit of a rake and a sot he was never held responsible for his actions. His brothers took turns getting a leg over on Marilyn Monroe, wire tapping Martin Luther King, kvetching about the price of steel, and getting this country into Vietnam. Rather than Camelot it was Gomorrah Lite.
That the voters of Massachusetts saw fit to return him to office again and again suggests perhaps a return to literacy tests may be in order. It suggests that after a time the human psyche can accept anything.
If ever there were an argument against inherited wealth it was on display yesterday. No wonder he was a fan of Affirmative Action. If his name were Kanjorksi the only way he gets into Harvard would have been by being a swimming and diving instructor.
“de mortuis…?”
Let’s ask Judge Bork.
Mary Jo Kopechne can’t answer any questions. She is still dead.
Kevin Smith
Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
August 30, 2009
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
Professor Goldstein,
Thanks again for saving me the time searching for my ancient copy of “Under the Lion’s Paw” by Hamlin Garland. The ultimate victim, the consummate villain all wrapped up in under 10 pages.
Rather than tear through boxes unopened for years looking for it I stumbled upon your column. Your lachrymose tale of Evan, an undeserving victim of Reagan and Bush, a man who drew the short straw – Didn’t Teddy’s brother say, “Life is unfair”? – of DNA run wild is moving, deeply moving.
You personalize Evan like Saul Alinsky was peering over your shoulder with a menacing blue pencil.
The predictable villains are the creationists, those opposed to Federal embryonic stem cell research, the profit motive, the Republicans, and the unavailability of legal marijuana.
Your solution is to use the “collective wisdom of government” to save future Evans, it being too late to save the present one. Did you say “collective wisdom”? Did you say “government”?
A quick review is in order.
#1 – We had two wars in the 1960s. At least the one in Vietnam stopped. The one against poverty is ongoing with no end in sight. Is there going to be a surge like the one in Iraq that will finally win it? Sure. Just as soon as my brother the hunchback straightens up.
#2 – If the Federal government, the state government of Louisiana, the parish government, and the government of the city of New Orleans can’t get trucks filled with ice and water across a bridge for 5 days why do you think the “collective wisdom of government” will cure cancer?
#3 – The people who run the Post Office, the people who run AMTRAK, the people who run the IRS, the people who run any Motor Vehicles office will, in your perfect world, decide where tax payer dollars go to get new drug or a magic surgical tool or a new diagnostic tool. Gee but that’s dumb.
In the column below yours in today’s Suns-Sentinel Robert Watson, Ph.D. misreads a quote from Samuel Johnson.
Thank God I won’t.
In my lifetime, up until the arrival of the great Reagan, the United States Government did two things superbly well.
A – They fought World War 2.
B – They were the general contractor for the moon shot.
If you believe that government can decide medical things better than the medical profession operating in the arena of ideas, of trial and error, and the empirical evidence of the scientific method then you are the poster boy for one of my favorite Johnson quotes.
“Such stupidity, sir, is not found in Nature.”
It will be scarce consolation to your suffering friend Evan but the good Doctor’s advice may be of some solace.
“How sad of all the things that men endure
How few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
Kevin Smith
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
Professor Goldstein,
Thanks again for saving me the time searching for my ancient copy of “Under the Lion’s Paw” by Hamlin Garland. The ultimate victim, the consummate villain all wrapped up in under 10 pages.
Rather than tear through boxes unopened for years looking for it I stumbled upon your column. Your lachrymose tale of Evan, an undeserving victim of Reagan and Bush, a man who drew the short straw – Didn’t Teddy’s brother say, “Life is unfair”? – of DNA run wild is moving, deeply moving.
You personalize Evan like Saul Alinsky was peering over your shoulder with a menacing blue pencil.
The predictable villains are the creationists, those opposed to Federal embryonic stem cell research, the profit motive, the Republicans, and the unavailability of legal marijuana.
Your solution is to use the “collective wisdom of government” to save future Evans, it being too late to save the present one. Did you say “collective wisdom”? Did you say “government”?
A quick review is in order.
#1 – We had two wars in the 1960s. At least the one in Vietnam stopped. The one against poverty is ongoing with no end in sight. Is there going to be a surge like the one in Iraq that will finally win it? Sure. Just as soon as my brother the hunchback straightens up.
#2 – If the Federal government, the state government of Louisiana, the parish government, and the government of the city of New Orleans can’t get trucks filled with ice and water across a bridge for 5 days why do you think the “collective wisdom of government” will cure cancer?
#3 – The people who run the Post Office, the people who run AMTRAK, the people who run the IRS, the people who run any Motor Vehicles office will, in your perfect world, decide where tax payer dollars go to get new drug or a magic surgical tool or a new diagnostic tool. Gee but that’s dumb.
In the column below yours in today’s Suns-Sentinel Robert Watson, Ph.D. misreads a quote from Samuel Johnson.
Thank God I won’t.
In my lifetime, up until the arrival of the great Reagan, the United States Government did two things superbly well.
A – They fought World War 2.
B – They were the general contractor for the moon shot.
If you believe that government can decide medical things better than the medical profession operating in the arena of ideas, of trial and error, and the empirical evidence of the scientific method then you are the poster boy for one of my favorite Johnson quotes.
“Such stupidity, sir, is not found in Nature.”
It will be scarce consolation to your suffering friend Evan but the good Doctor’s advice may be of some solace.
“How sad of all the things that men endure
How few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
Kevin Smith
Robert Watson Ph.D. Lynn University
August 30, 2009
Robert Watson Ph.D.
Lynn University
American Studies Program
Freiburge Residence Hall
3601 N. Military Trail
Boca Raton, Florida 33431
RE: Some things are owed to the record, particularly when it concerns Dr. Johnson.
Doctor Watson,
I am glad you run the American Studies Program.
As the Florida guardian of Johnson minutiae I feel duty bound to leap to his defense when he is misquoted or quoted out of context. [Just saying that I can defend Dr. Johnson causes me, a la Chris Matthews, to have a thrill run up my leg to the point of tumescence] Since your field of expertise does not extend East of Nova Scotia the flogging will be as gentle as I can make it. Still it gives me pause that you did not know about him. I wonder if you think, as does the Board of New York State Regents, that the 5 Tribes influenced James Madison.
You begin your column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel thus:
“The 18th century English writer Samuel Johnson noted that,
“Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
Saying that Samuel Johnson was an “18th century English writer” is like saying Mozart was an “18th century Austrian musician”. Perhaps, since American Studies is your field, you would say that “Benjamin Franklin was an 18th century tinkerer” or that “Abraham Lincoln was a 19th century politician” or that “Mark Twain was a 19th century sailor” or that “Ronald Reagan was a 20th century actor”.
In any event Patriots and Patriotism have an entirely different meaning from what you wrote.
Patriots were a fringe political group. They would most resemble those Americans who think that the government engineered 9/11 or that the Bush family euchred 3/4ths of Congress to declare war on Iraq so as to secure a gas transmission line across Kafiristan. Birdbrains with loud mouths who had a national platform would be one way to describe them. Rosie O’Donnell would have been one of their better spokesmen regardless of the century.
The great Dr. J said that, at the end, the sound of their own voices was all they needed to hear to convince them of their argument.
Thus the argument over something like Global Warming is predicated on “It’s a hot summer because summers are hot”. Correlation is not to be confused with causation. I could get into Logic and Rhetoric and stuff like “Post hoc ergo…” but that would be assuming that you knew something of Greece, of Rome, of the Trivium, inter alia.
Stir not the wrath of Johnson followers.
Kevin Smith
Robert Watson Ph.D.
Lynn University
American Studies Program
Freiburge Residence Hall
3601 N. Military Trail
Boca Raton, Florida 33431
RE: Some things are owed to the record, particularly when it concerns Dr. Johnson.
Doctor Watson,
I am glad you run the American Studies Program.
As the Florida guardian of Johnson minutiae I feel duty bound to leap to his defense when he is misquoted or quoted out of context. [Just saying that I can defend Dr. Johnson causes me, a la Chris Matthews, to have a thrill run up my leg to the point of tumescence] Since your field of expertise does not extend East of Nova Scotia the flogging will be as gentle as I can make it. Still it gives me pause that you did not know about him. I wonder if you think, as does the Board of New York State Regents, that the 5 Tribes influenced James Madison.
You begin your column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel thus:
“The 18th century English writer Samuel Johnson noted that,
“Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
Saying that Samuel Johnson was an “18th century English writer” is like saying Mozart was an “18th century Austrian musician”. Perhaps, since American Studies is your field, you would say that “Benjamin Franklin was an 18th century tinkerer” or that “Abraham Lincoln was a 19th century politician” or that “Mark Twain was a 19th century sailor” or that “Ronald Reagan was a 20th century actor”.
In any event Patriots and Patriotism have an entirely different meaning from what you wrote.
Patriots were a fringe political group. They would most resemble those Americans who think that the government engineered 9/11 or that the Bush family euchred 3/4ths of Congress to declare war on Iraq so as to secure a gas transmission line across Kafiristan. Birdbrains with loud mouths who had a national platform would be one way to describe them. Rosie O’Donnell would have been one of their better spokesmen regardless of the century.
The great Dr. J said that, at the end, the sound of their own voices was all they needed to hear to convince them of their argument.
Thus the argument over something like Global Warming is predicated on “It’s a hot summer because summers are hot”. Correlation is not to be confused with causation. I could get into Logic and Rhetoric and stuff like “Post hoc ergo…” but that would be assuming that you knew something of Greece, of Rome, of the Trivium, inter alia.
Stir not the wrath of Johnson followers.
Kevin Smith
Anthony Man The Sun-Sentinel & The Miami Herald
August 31, 2009
Anthony Man
The Sun-Sentinel & The Miami Herald
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: I’m terrified – A comment on your story in today’s Sun-Sentinel about Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz shedding her Ms. Nice Guy persona.
Mr. Man,
The sun was not yet up when I read your scary story about Little Debbie “going on the offensive”. I guess that means “punch back twice as hard”.
Now that she’s member of Congress and, as such, has access to guys with guns and Federal badges there’s no telling who she will enlist to her storm trooper brigade to stifle speech. Scratch a modern American Liberal and you find a brown shirted thug who always thinks a boot to the face, to cite Orwell, is the way to respond to someone who voices anything contrary to her revealed truths.
I say this because when she was a Florida State Senator she sent the cops after me because she didn’t like what I wrote about her.
2 men, Agent Thomas and Agent Mineva, both members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, men with badges and guns, showed up at my house on September 18, 2001 to “discuss” my letters to her.
It was the classic good cop/bad cop routine. I asked them whether I should continue writing to her. Agent Mineva said “Stop writing to her”. Agent Thomas was nicer. He said I should be more conciliatory.
Forget the particular cast of characters. Armed police officers came to my house at the behest of an elected member of the Florida legislature to “counsel” me on what I wrote to a politician. “Slippery slope?” “Chilling effect?”
Modern American Liberals, of whom Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz is the poster girl and template, are always hectoring every one else about “slippery slopes” and “chilling effects”. There is a perpetual exception to this. It is when she is having the pie thrown at her. God knows what she can do now. Perhaps her friend in the White House can send a few SEALs to the homes of those who dare to question her. Perhaps, assuming that Camp Gitmo is emptied of Muslim terrorists, it will be filled with those who dare to question her.
Freedom of speech permitted a dozen naked homosexuals to masturbate in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. Who went “on the offensive” then?
Her C.V. says that she has both a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Political Science. It would be deuced difficult to get one and absolutely impossible to get both without some knowledge of Greece and the Agora. She managed to do both.
It all began there.
Speech, particularly political speech, is either free or it isn’t. It’s like being pregnant. You either are or you aren’t. It is or it isn’t.
Your lead paragraph
“U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Weston, went
on the offensive Sunday night against critics of health care reform”
should have included that she was on the telephone. She was so sure of her plan that she was afraid to be there in person to explain it. She owed her constituency the courtesy to talk to them face to face. In fact, it was her duty to do so. So what if she took a few metaphorical pies in the face.
“Politics ain’t beanbag.” It is filled with sharp elbows, sharper words, and still sharper passions. That we do it for no other reason than we can is sufficient to do it.
It is a gift of ours “from beyond the stars”. No benevolent monarch, no “good” government, gave it to us. We had it at birth.
Sophocles fleshed it out 26 centuries ago.
“FREE MEN SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES”
Good advice then; good advice now. Men have died so that others can exercise it.
Nat Hentoff wrote a book titled “Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee”. The title has become Little Debbie’s guide to current politics.
Gods forbid that there should be an American Tienamin Square. I don’t know who will step in front of the tank. I do know that Little Debbie, AKA Hauptman Wasserman-Schultz, will be driving it.
Kevin Smith
Anthony Man
The Sun-Sentinel & The Miami Herald
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: I’m terrified – A comment on your story in today’s Sun-Sentinel about Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz shedding her Ms. Nice Guy persona.
Mr. Man,
The sun was not yet up when I read your scary story about Little Debbie “going on the offensive”. I guess that means “punch back twice as hard”.
Now that she’s member of Congress and, as such, has access to guys with guns and Federal badges there’s no telling who she will enlist to her storm trooper brigade to stifle speech. Scratch a modern American Liberal and you find a brown shirted thug who always thinks a boot to the face, to cite Orwell, is the way to respond to someone who voices anything contrary to her revealed truths.
I say this because when she was a Florida State Senator she sent the cops after me because she didn’t like what I wrote about her.
2 men, Agent Thomas and Agent Mineva, both members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, men with badges and guns, showed up at my house on September 18, 2001 to “discuss” my letters to her.
It was the classic good cop/bad cop routine. I asked them whether I should continue writing to her. Agent Mineva said “Stop writing to her”. Agent Thomas was nicer. He said I should be more conciliatory.
Forget the particular cast of characters. Armed police officers came to my house at the behest of an elected member of the Florida legislature to “counsel” me on what I wrote to a politician. “Slippery slope?” “Chilling effect?”
Modern American Liberals, of whom Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz is the poster girl and template, are always hectoring every one else about “slippery slopes” and “chilling effects”. There is a perpetual exception to this. It is when she is having the pie thrown at her. God knows what she can do now. Perhaps her friend in the White House can send a few SEALs to the homes of those who dare to question her. Perhaps, assuming that Camp Gitmo is emptied of Muslim terrorists, it will be filled with those who dare to question her.
Freedom of speech permitted a dozen naked homosexuals to masturbate in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. Who went “on the offensive” then?
Her C.V. says that she has both a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Political Science. It would be deuced difficult to get one and absolutely impossible to get both without some knowledge of Greece and the Agora. She managed to do both.
It all began there.
Speech, particularly political speech, is either free or it isn’t. It’s like being pregnant. You either are or you aren’t. It is or it isn’t.
Your lead paragraph
“U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Weston, went
on the offensive Sunday night against critics of health care reform”
should have included that she was on the telephone. She was so sure of her plan that she was afraid to be there in person to explain it. She owed her constituency the courtesy to talk to them face to face. In fact, it was her duty to do so. So what if she took a few metaphorical pies in the face.
“Politics ain’t beanbag.” It is filled with sharp elbows, sharper words, and still sharper passions. That we do it for no other reason than we can is sufficient to do it.
It is a gift of ours “from beyond the stars”. No benevolent monarch, no “good” government, gave it to us. We had it at birth.
Sophocles fleshed it out 26 centuries ago.
“FREE MEN SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES”
Good advice then; good advice now. Men have died so that others can exercise it.
Nat Hentoff wrote a book titled “Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee”. The title has become Little Debbie’s guide to current politics.
Gods forbid that there should be an American Tienamin Square. I don’t know who will step in front of the tank. I do know that Little Debbie, AKA Hauptman Wasserman-Schultz, will be driving it.
Kevin Smith
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