Posts
March 28, 2010
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Hate speech and why we must condemn it, even retroactively, I think, maybe. Some comments on your column this date condemning Republicans, Tea Party members and, inferentially, everyone who does not revel in hope and change.
My dear Uncle Screwtape,
The “boys” in my coven do me honor by asking me to write to you on your idea of having all Republican office holders and candidates renounce violence, words leading to violence, thoughts leading to violence, and words and thoughts leading to words and thoughts leading to – You guessed it – violence. [What this will do to the Iliad and Hamlet is not to be addressed today.] That you do this so close to the anniversary of one of the big violent words/violent deeds is quite clever. I am referring to the New York Times and the Democratic Party acquiescing in calling Abraham Lincoln a “baboon”. I know that correlation is not causation but it seems pretty clear to me that both the New York Times and the Democratic Party favored slavery. You can see my reasoning there, can’t you?
I know that my copy of MacBird is somewhere. That was a nifty little play. Its premise, that Vice President Johnson killed President Kennedy because he wanted his job, still has believers. I loved it when the Egg of Head – AKA Adlai Stevenson – gets knocked off in London.
That this led to H. Rap Brown, the paradigmatic template for feral Black youths everywhere is commonly accepted. It was he who said that “violence is as American as apple pie”. As soon as he said that George Lincoln Rockwell, Martin Luther King., Robert Kennedy and George Wallace were shot. I couldn’t help but to compare it to the ship swallowing Bermuda Triangle.
I don’t know the reasons why Ruby Ridge gave government sharpshooters the chance to sharpen their skills but I think Theodore Kaczynski had a hand in it with his tree hugging eco-crazy ramblings. David Koresh and the Branch Davidian unpleasantness that marked the beginning of Janet Reno’s hugely successful stint as Attorney General, that’s that one where she barbecued some 7 dozen of her fellow citizens, was directly tied to the shocking dearth of Ricky Ray Rector. That was the execution where Hillary Clinton gave the killer, a Black man who was, shall we say in deference to the Word Police, differently able, a lap dance to keep him quiet in the electric chair.
We know that Columbine was caused by Halliburton and its devil master Cheney to discredit Gore. It may be blasphemous but “hanging chads” were the invention of the recount pros from Cook County and Hudson County.
Speaking of words begetting violence do you remember the half a dozen Black guys taking over the office of the President of Cornell University? There is a marvelous photo of some evil looking Black dudes with rifles, shotguns, Afros, and sinister glares. The purpose was to scare dumb ass red necked crackers into sharing some of that elusive equality provender that they had a monopoly on. Wasn’t their motto “by any means necessary”?
President Obama gave his followers “sharpen their elbows and get in their faces”, didn’t he? Anyone can see a straight line from there to the purple shirted thugs of SEIU finding a Black man in a wheelchair selling American flags. They called him “Nigger” which I guess is OK if there are some Black folk yelling it. Then they punched him and knocked him out of his chair. Is that what you mean by words inciting violence? Wouldn’t it be great fun if one of the alleged perpetrators called the President as a defense witness?
I don’t know who shot at Republican Congressman Cantor’s office this weekend.. You don’t suppose a Democrat had anything to do with it, do you?
There was film on this week with the intriguing title of “The Assassination of Richard Nixon”. Modern American Liberals sat in a cocoon of deafening silence when President Bush was called Hitler. Come to think of it, Vice President Curley Biden was half right. It probably was no “big fucking deal”, right?
What about those Shaft wanabees in Philadelphia on election day in 2008? Do you think the guy with the club was going to give his side of the Burke/Fox debates or was he concentrating on Lincoln/Douglas?
Speaking of speaking out against violence, when does the statute of limitations expire on bombing government buildings? I am sure a word from the President about how his best friend forever, Bill Ayers, was just a misguided youth. Still, the bombing of any building is never OK, right?
Tu qouque is unacceptable as empirical evidence but it is great in Rhetoric. I must confess that I am not your nephew Wormwood. I remain, as always
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Congressman Ron Klein
March 19, 2010
Congressman Ron Klein
1900 Glades Road
Boca Raton, FL 33431
RE: Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico – Cuba si, Yanqui no?
Congressman Klein,
Russia has signed a contract with Cuba to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is yet one more proof of the sheer incompetence of Jimmy Carter since he signed the agreement that allows this potential assault on our beaches.
You have opposed drilling in the Gulf by American companies.
Now what?
Should a spill occur on a Russian rig drilling in Cuban water, said spill despoiling Florida beaches, what recourse would we have? The Federal Courts? The United States Navy?
Why, if the need for Jobs, Jobs, Jobs is paramount why do we let Russians have them? What is wrong with American companies hiring American workers to drill in our waters? What’s wrong with the tax revenues that such activity would generate staying here? Since modern American Liberals think that taxes are like money from home what’s wrong with it really being from home?
This appears to be a week when Congress is determined to trash the Constitution, particularly the part about legislation. [Article 1, Section 7 – You may wish to familiarize yourself with it.] Ignorance of the law, the situationally ethical garment that shields modern American Liberals from the ravages of their conscience, is no excuse. I suggest that the official repeal of the Monroe Doctrine may be the only intellectually honest thing to come out of this Congress.
I pity Diogenes suddenly finding himself in Washington.
Kevin Smith
Congressman Ron Klein
1900 Glades Road
Boca Raton, FL 33431
RE: Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico – Cuba si, Yanqui no?
Congressman Klein,
Russia has signed a contract with Cuba to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is yet one more proof of the sheer incompetence of Jimmy Carter since he signed the agreement that allows this potential assault on our beaches.
You have opposed drilling in the Gulf by American companies.
Now what?
Should a spill occur on a Russian rig drilling in Cuban water, said spill despoiling Florida beaches, what recourse would we have? The Federal Courts? The United States Navy?
Why, if the need for Jobs, Jobs, Jobs is paramount why do we let Russians have them? What is wrong with American companies hiring American workers to drill in our waters? What’s wrong with the tax revenues that such activity would generate staying here? Since modern American Liberals think that taxes are like money from home what’s wrong with it really being from home?
This appears to be a week when Congress is determined to trash the Constitution, particularly the part about legislation. [Article 1, Section 7 – You may wish to familiarize yourself with it.] Ignorance of the law, the situationally ethical garment that shields modern American Liberals from the ravages of their conscience, is no excuse. I suggest that the official repeal of the Monroe Doctrine may be the only intellectually honest thing to come out of this Congress.
I pity Diogenes suddenly finding himself in Washington.
Kevin Smith
Rachel Patron The Sun-Sentinel
March 20, 2010
Rachel Patron
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Trying to decipher Biden’s strange trip” – The cognitive dissonance of American Jews as manifested by you in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Ms. Patron,
Forgive me for presuming that you are Jewish. I base it on statement about the Ultra Orthodox Jews in Israel. If a Christian were to say that they were draft dodgers, welfare cheats, and religious hucksters who lead a strange life style the word police from the Anti-Defamation League would set fire to my house. Thus, my presumption.
I’ll try to “decipher” Curley Biden’s “strange trip”. I call him Curley, not because of his Chia Pet hair plugs, but to honor Curley, the smartest Stooge.
I’ll write slowly.
#1 – If Harry Truman had listened to his State Department in 1947 the wandering Jews would have broken the record held by Moses for 30 centuries. You can look it up.
#2 – Golda Meir said that of the 4 American Presidents with whom she dealt the only one to keep his word totally and unequivocally was Richard Nixon. The Yom Kippur War was, to quote the Iron Duke, “a damn close run thing”. Pease Air Force Base was converted into the El-Al American FBO. As quickly as the planes were flown in they were filled with as many military supplies as could be loaded into them.
#3 – If a Republican candidate for President had a public supporter who said that Judaism was a “gutter religion” he would have been sent to Elba. If a Republican candidate for President had listened for 20 years to a pastor who denounced Jews for 20 years from his pulpit he would have been sent to St. Helen’s.
#4 – The most frequent foreign visitor to the Clinton White House was Yasser Arafat. This was the same White House where the excesses of Bernie Nussbaum, Esq. after the suicide of Vince Foster were labeled those typical of a “New York lawyer”. Modern American Liberals accuse those who don’t believe in Midnight Basketball that they use “code words” to imply their hidden meanings. Everyone in Manhattan knew what the Clinton White House meant by that. If you don’t send a SASE.
#5 – Try to imagine President Bush 41 or President Bush 43 ever comparing Israel to pre-Mandela South Africa. Try to imagine either of them ever saying that Israel practices “apartheid”. You can’t, can you?
#6 – Perhaps the only good thing to come out of this most recent contretemps is that it mocks the claim that Jews are “too smart”. We saw Congressman Toad Wexler, he of the Maryland address and the Palm Beach Congressional district, spend 2008 proclaiming at every seder in every shul in every shtetl in Florida that Obama was “transformational”. He said at each place and every occasion that Jews could trust Obama because he, as a Jew, did. That wasn’t smart. That was stupid. Apparently he was able to find a lot of stupid Jews who believed him.
Speaking of “stupid” do you remember who the President was when the ocean liner St. Louis was turned away from America ports?
#7 РIn a week where the Secretary of State is lectured for 15 minutes in public by the chief thug in Moscow, in a week where people in Cuba are dying trying to be free, in a week where Iran is closer to nuclear weapons that will not be aimed at Pakistan, in a week where Google was chased out of China, Israel becomes the pi̱ata for using their Stimulus program to try to build affordable housing.
Go figure.
I hope that explains matters.
If you have any questions use the same SASE.
Kevin Smith
Rachel Patron
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Trying to decipher Biden’s strange trip” – The cognitive dissonance of American Jews as manifested by you in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Ms. Patron,
Forgive me for presuming that you are Jewish. I base it on statement about the Ultra Orthodox Jews in Israel. If a Christian were to say that they were draft dodgers, welfare cheats, and religious hucksters who lead a strange life style the word police from the Anti-Defamation League would set fire to my house. Thus, my presumption.
I’ll try to “decipher” Curley Biden’s “strange trip”. I call him Curley, not because of his Chia Pet hair plugs, but to honor Curley, the smartest Stooge.
I’ll write slowly.
#1 – If Harry Truman had listened to his State Department in 1947 the wandering Jews would have broken the record held by Moses for 30 centuries. You can look it up.
#2 – Golda Meir said that of the 4 American Presidents with whom she dealt the only one to keep his word totally and unequivocally was Richard Nixon. The Yom Kippur War was, to quote the Iron Duke, “a damn close run thing”. Pease Air Force Base was converted into the El-Al American FBO. As quickly as the planes were flown in they were filled with as many military supplies as could be loaded into them.
#3 – If a Republican candidate for President had a public supporter who said that Judaism was a “gutter religion” he would have been sent to Elba. If a Republican candidate for President had listened for 20 years to a pastor who denounced Jews for 20 years from his pulpit he would have been sent to St. Helen’s.
#4 – The most frequent foreign visitor to the Clinton White House was Yasser Arafat. This was the same White House where the excesses of Bernie Nussbaum, Esq. after the suicide of Vince Foster were labeled those typical of a “New York lawyer”. Modern American Liberals accuse those who don’t believe in Midnight Basketball that they use “code words” to imply their hidden meanings. Everyone in Manhattan knew what the Clinton White House meant by that. If you don’t send a SASE.
#5 – Try to imagine President Bush 41 or President Bush 43 ever comparing Israel to pre-Mandela South Africa. Try to imagine either of them ever saying that Israel practices “apartheid”. You can’t, can you?
#6 – Perhaps the only good thing to come out of this most recent contretemps is that it mocks the claim that Jews are “too smart”. We saw Congressman Toad Wexler, he of the Maryland address and the Palm Beach Congressional district, spend 2008 proclaiming at every seder in every shul in every shtetl in Florida that Obama was “transformational”. He said at each place and every occasion that Jews could trust Obama because he, as a Jew, did. That wasn’t smart. That was stupid. Apparently he was able to find a lot of stupid Jews who believed him.
Speaking of “stupid” do you remember who the President was when the ocean liner St. Louis was turned away from America ports?
#7 РIn a week where the Secretary of State is lectured for 15 minutes in public by the chief thug in Moscow, in a week where people in Cuba are dying trying to be free, in a week where Iran is closer to nuclear weapons that will not be aimed at Pakistan, in a week where Google was chased out of China, Israel becomes the pi̱ata for using their Stimulus program to try to build affordable housing.
Go figure.
I hope that explains matters.
If you have any questions use the same SASE.
Kevin Smith
Margaret Carlson Bloomberg News Service
March 18, 2010
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News Service
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, DC 20005
RE: Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! – Something that Michigan excels in. Some comments on your column in Bloomberg.
Ms. Carlson,
I was taking a well deserved break from my never ending hunt for military personnel who are tax cheats. You told me that they were here 10 years ago. I fell like Ulysses minus the fun parts.
I enjoy your column not for the opinions you voice but rather for the fact that you never seem to be burdened by evidence to the contrary. Facts, those hard things, things that you don’t want in your shoe, still remain.
“Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.”
Ah but for a Bach to set a tune to the favorite mantra of the Church of Modern American Liberalism.
To put jobs and Michigan in the same sentence is to call out the seldom used words “guffaw” and harrumph”. I am told that if Detroit losses any more neighborhoods the wolverine may yet make a comeback. They have some tough winters there but I don’t think they could support the beleaguered polar bears.
Your snarky remarks about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan suggest that you would favor its secession. It could hook up with Canada. At least they would be getting some really good heath care.
If the Upper Peninsula is in a “slow, steady economic decline” what in the name of Hercules [labors, right?] is going on in the Southern half of the state?
Since mush brained modern American Liberals have deep-sixed the car business the only growth industries in Detroit are defense lawyers, prison guards, and undertakers. Maybe we can get DOW Chemical back in the napalm business. If they succeed with that they can resurrect Agent Orange. Surely something in Detroit is “shovel ready”.
I’ll run the risk that of you thinking ill of me but you know as much about “job creation” as the Detroit Lions know about football.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that you don’t know that from any measurable standards, from any statistics available, the American economy was in worse shape after 6 years of the sacred New Deal than it was at the beginning.
It was. You can look it up.
I say that because you think that all it takes is men of good will, some intelligent planning, an enlightened bureaucracy, a progressive tax code, some shared sacrifice, and working together for a common goal to have Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, environmentally sensitive Jobs, appear like they just jumped out of the formidable forehead of Zeus.
Alas, it didn’t work then; it won’t work now.
I have just learned that a new Veterans’ Cemetery opened in Palm Beach County. [Not on Worth Street] Getting there may not be as hard as kayaking between Scylla and Charybdis but I am always up for an adventure.
There is no statute of limitations on tax fraud.
Even if they’re dead.
We can repo the coffin.
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking of “creating jobs”, were you ever hired by a poor person or a company in bankruptcy?
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News Service
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, DC 20005
RE: Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! – Something that Michigan excels in. Some comments on your column in Bloomberg.
Ms. Carlson,
I was taking a well deserved break from my never ending hunt for military personnel who are tax cheats. You told me that they were here 10 years ago. I fell like Ulysses minus the fun parts.
I enjoy your column not for the opinions you voice but rather for the fact that you never seem to be burdened by evidence to the contrary. Facts, those hard things, things that you don’t want in your shoe, still remain.
“Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.”
Ah but for a Bach to set a tune to the favorite mantra of the Church of Modern American Liberalism.
To put jobs and Michigan in the same sentence is to call out the seldom used words “guffaw” and harrumph”. I am told that if Detroit losses any more neighborhoods the wolverine may yet make a comeback. They have some tough winters there but I don’t think they could support the beleaguered polar bears.
Your snarky remarks about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan suggest that you would favor its secession. It could hook up with Canada. At least they would be getting some really good heath care.
If the Upper Peninsula is in a “slow, steady economic decline” what in the name of Hercules [labors, right?] is going on in the Southern half of the state?
Since mush brained modern American Liberals have deep-sixed the car business the only growth industries in Detroit are defense lawyers, prison guards, and undertakers. Maybe we can get DOW Chemical back in the napalm business. If they succeed with that they can resurrect Agent Orange. Surely something in Detroit is “shovel ready”.
I’ll run the risk that of you thinking ill of me but you know as much about “job creation” as the Detroit Lions know about football.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that you don’t know that from any measurable standards, from any statistics available, the American economy was in worse shape after 6 years of the sacred New Deal than it was at the beginning.
It was. You can look it up.
I say that because you think that all it takes is men of good will, some intelligent planning, an enlightened bureaucracy, a progressive tax code, some shared sacrifice, and working together for a common goal to have Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, environmentally sensitive Jobs, appear like they just jumped out of the formidable forehead of Zeus.
Alas, it didn’t work then; it won’t work now.
I have just learned that a new Veterans’ Cemetery opened in Palm Beach County. [Not on Worth Street] Getting there may not be as hard as kayaking between Scylla and Charybdis but I am always up for an adventure.
There is no statute of limitations on tax fraud.
Even if they’re dead.
We can repo the coffin.
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking of “creating jobs”, were you ever hired by a poor person or a company in bankruptcy?
Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald
March 21, 2010
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Give ‘til it hurts – Yet one more attempt to beat a dead horse. A different take on your column telling us how bad “extremist conservatives” are.
Mr. Pitts,
I know the devil can quote scripture but what about the part about the accounting of the stewardship?
I was there when Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty 46 years ago. I say 46 years ago because you said that
“And the idea that such people are enemies of the state is as
visceral a reminder as you’re likely to get of the paranoia and
intellectual discontinuity that afflicts extremist conservatives.
Fifty years ago, they saw communists behind every
movie marquee and schoolhouse door.”
I think we have our first “teachable moment”.
It wasn’t “50 years ago” but closer to 75 years ago when the Federal government began to peek under the covers. HUAC – the Houses un-American Activities Committee – was a creature of a Democratic House and a Democratic White House. You can look it up.
Just for the record would you care to comment on Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs? I’ll make this simple. Do you think they were guilty? Yes or No.
You mention the “intellectual discontinuity that afflicts extremist conservatives”. If “50 years ago” is your starting time how do you account for Whittaker Chambers, William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, Alan Tate, Richard Weaver, Friedrich Hayek, Walker Percy, Milton Friedman, Jeffrey Hart, George Nash, Frederic Wilhemsen, Nathan Glazer, Thomas Sowell, James Schaal, Victor Davis Hanson, Jacques Barzun, Frederic Bastiat, Alexander Bickel, Henry Regenery, John Olin, John East, Walter Williams, George Will, Alan Bloom, Robert Bartley, George Gilder, Hilton Kramer, P.J. O’Rourke …and the beat goes on and on. I pray forgiveness from those believers in the “permanent things” that I left off the honor roll of “intellectual discontinuity” and the “extremist conservatives” who practice it.
As soon as you assemble the modern American Liberal lineup I would like to see it. A big mud room could handle them all. I am sure Noam Chomsky, Paul Ehrlich, and John Rawls will be on it. The first time I read “A Theory of Justice” I thought he was a young Swift on the rise. When I found out that he actually believed the stuff he wrote I was flabbergasted. I would have used the phrase “intellectual discontinuity” if I had but thought of it.
But back to the “accounting of the stewardship”.
The United States fought two wars in the 1960s. The one in Asia ended. The one against poverty goes on and on and on and on – Is that Old Man River I hear? – with no exit strategy mentioned. In fact, if someone questions not the results but rather the intentions they are reviled by racist billingsgate. The vitriol pouted on them is meant to deflect all eyes from the simple fact that it hasn’t worked. After 46 years of treatment the patient not only isn’t getting any better the patient is getting worse. The Hippocratic Oath says, “First, do no harm”. I guess it doesn’t apply to social engineering.
If taxpayer money were the answer all those people who were poor in 1964 would be farting proudly through silk today.
Perhaps it is time for a “surge”. The first one, the one OKd by Lincoln and led by Sherman in 1864 worked. The second one, the one OKd by Bush 43 and led Petraeus in 2007 worked. Maybe government health care is the answer. If it is run as well as the Post Office is we’ll all be going to Canada for our flu shots.
Here’s a suggestion.
Get the dude from the church that President Obama went to for 20 years to go on national TV. Have him shout “God Damn America” until “extremist conservatives” come to the baby Jesus. Maybe that will be the deal closer.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Give ‘til it hurts – Yet one more attempt to beat a dead horse. A different take on your column telling us how bad “extremist conservatives” are.
Mr. Pitts,
I know the devil can quote scripture but what about the part about the accounting of the stewardship?
I was there when Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty 46 years ago. I say 46 years ago because you said that
“And the idea that such people are enemies of the state is as
visceral a reminder as you’re likely to get of the paranoia and
intellectual discontinuity that afflicts extremist conservatives.
Fifty years ago, they saw communists behind every
movie marquee and schoolhouse door.”
I think we have our first “teachable moment”.
It wasn’t “50 years ago” but closer to 75 years ago when the Federal government began to peek under the covers. HUAC – the Houses un-American Activities Committee – was a creature of a Democratic House and a Democratic White House. You can look it up.
Just for the record would you care to comment on Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs? I’ll make this simple. Do you think they were guilty? Yes or No.
You mention the “intellectual discontinuity that afflicts extremist conservatives”. If “50 years ago” is your starting time how do you account for Whittaker Chambers, William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, Alan Tate, Richard Weaver, Friedrich Hayek, Walker Percy, Milton Friedman, Jeffrey Hart, George Nash, Frederic Wilhemsen, Nathan Glazer, Thomas Sowell, James Schaal, Victor Davis Hanson, Jacques Barzun, Frederic Bastiat, Alexander Bickel, Henry Regenery, John Olin, John East, Walter Williams, George Will, Alan Bloom, Robert Bartley, George Gilder, Hilton Kramer, P.J. O’Rourke …and the beat goes on and on. I pray forgiveness from those believers in the “permanent things” that I left off the honor roll of “intellectual discontinuity” and the “extremist conservatives” who practice it.
As soon as you assemble the modern American Liberal lineup I would like to see it. A big mud room could handle them all. I am sure Noam Chomsky, Paul Ehrlich, and John Rawls will be on it. The first time I read “A Theory of Justice” I thought he was a young Swift on the rise. When I found out that he actually believed the stuff he wrote I was flabbergasted. I would have used the phrase “intellectual discontinuity” if I had but thought of it.
But back to the “accounting of the stewardship”.
The United States fought two wars in the 1960s. The one in Asia ended. The one against poverty goes on and on and on and on – Is that Old Man River I hear? – with no exit strategy mentioned. In fact, if someone questions not the results but rather the intentions they are reviled by racist billingsgate. The vitriol pouted on them is meant to deflect all eyes from the simple fact that it hasn’t worked. After 46 years of treatment the patient not only isn’t getting any better the patient is getting worse. The Hippocratic Oath says, “First, do no harm”. I guess it doesn’t apply to social engineering.
If taxpayer money were the answer all those people who were poor in 1964 would be farting proudly through silk today.
Perhaps it is time for a “surge”. The first one, the one OKd by Lincoln and led by Sherman in 1864 worked. The second one, the one OKd by Bush 43 and led Petraeus in 2007 worked. Maybe government health care is the answer. If it is run as well as the Post Office is we’ll all be going to Canada for our flu shots.
Here’s a suggestion.
Get the dude from the church that President Obama went to for 20 years to go on national TV. Have him shout “God Damn America” until “extremist conservatives” come to the baby Jesus. Maybe that will be the deal closer.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Congressman Ron Klein
March 15, 2010
Congressman Ron Klein
800 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL. 33301
RE: “Transformational” – Some questions about Israel and the contradictions of a most virulent virus. Its name is modern American Liberalism. The cure is at the ballot box.
Congressman Klein,
No, it wasn’t you who said that Candidate Obama was “transformational”. It was Congressman Toad Wexler, he of the Maryland address and the Florida House district. [As an aside, he was one of few people who regularly exceeded the limits of “smarminess” so common to modern American Liberal Congressmen.] He traveled in Palm Beach and Broward Counties telling everyone at B’nai B’rith breakfasts, Hadassah luncheons, assorted Mah Jong tournaments, and temple building fund meetings in 2008 that Candidate Obama was a true friend of Israel.
At the same time Handsome Billy from Hot Springs, AKA President Big Bill Clinton, said that he would jump into a fox hole and grab a rifle and defend Israel should he feel that they were threatened. I wrote to him at his Harlem office to tell him to be sure to put the sharp end of the cartridge up the breech first. Alas, he never thanked me for his first weapons lesson.
For the record, let me tell you that I am not a Jew. However, the man who founded my Church was.
Further, I am a legatee of what is called Western Civilization. This means that the double helixes of my DNA are imbued warp, woof and existentially with the Judeo/Christian ethic and ethos. My “support” of Israel is not predicated on whether or not I like American Jews. I add, with tongue not so firmly in cheek, that “some of my best friends are Gentiles”. Israel is part of my being and if I were to turn against it I would be, as Cicero said, “turning my back on myself”.
I thought that one of the goals of any stimulus program was to “create” jobs. One of the long standing mantras of modern American Liberalism is “affordable housing”. It seems to me that our ally, the only representative Democracy in the Mid-East, was doing just that. 1600 affordable housing units just don’t spring out of Zeus’s forehead. Jobs, high paying jobs with good benefits, are being “created” in Israel. If we are going to “create”, that is to say to make something out of nothing, what better place to do it than Israel? Both sides of the Bible tell me that they are used to such miracles.
This has caused the “transformational” President to instruct his people, viz. Secretary of State Clinton and Vice President Curley Biden, to insult, in the most public of ways, both the Prime Minister of Israel and the Israeli people.
Would it be snarky of me to point out that when Hillary Clinton ran for Senate in 2000 she made Meir Kahane sound like George McGovern in 1972 or Howard Dean in 2004? There are towns in New York State dominated by Chasidim, AKA “Serious Jews” These towns gave her 99% of its vote. Neither venal Cook County nor mendacious Hudson County ever had the chutzpah to dare that.
Apparently it is acceptable for Democratic candidates to sound like Dracula defending a blood bank in support of Israel when running for national office. Once they are elected they sound like the wife that Abraham Lincoln used to describe “fairness”. It seems she came upon her husband and a bear in a life and death struggle. Not wishing to take sides she alternated her exhortations. “Go husband” was followed by “Go bear”.
Vice President Biden, a man nicknamed Curley for his intellect not the cosmetic treatment of his alopecia, a treatment that gave him his other nickname “Chia Pet”, said 3 years ago that Iraq should be divided into 3 parts, like Gaul. He pronounced that Bush’s “surge” was doomed to failure. A month ago he was on TV saying that a democratically inclined Iraq would be Obama’s “greatest achievement”. To think that this omadahn, to use the Irish word for an absolute neddy dunce, is but a heartbeat away from the Presidency is something that fills me without absolute dread.
It is well to note that Israel is in what people here would say is “not a nice neighborhood”. Not since the days of the Kamikazes have we faced a foe such as the people who think that blowing up other people will get them in good with Allah. Would it be racist of me to point out that we have yet to identify any murdering terrorist who has been Bah Mitzvahed?
Israel is not a “faraway place filled with people of whom we know little”. The Athens/Jerusalem connection was well known to the Founders. Mecca was not. In fact, from the 12th century on the place has been a net drag on civilization. Take away the oil and it would be a very hot Finland.
My connection to Israel is not “transformational”. It is part and parcel of my being. That is why I protest the actions of President Obama.
Why are the American Jews in Congress so silent? If I can raise my voice why can’t they? Why haven’t you?
I hear an uncertain trumpet from the ranks of modern American Liberals who sit in Congress. Do you think that the enemies of Israel, the ones sworn to its destruction, are not celebrating this?
I have asked any number of elected American politicians who are Jewish where they stand on this matter.
You could begin by saying that the President is wrong. You could stand up and proclaim “Let my people stay”.
Kevin Smith
PS – It is well to note that Golda Meir said in her autobiography that of the 4 Presidents that she dealt with the only one who kept his word absolutely and unequivocally was Richard Nixon. On a different note, California regulatory authorities approved rate hikes of 39% and 32%. The one for 39% for a health insurance premium earned the wrath of the President. His billingsgate would have been better used if it had been directed at the people who want to exterminate Israel. The 32% hike in the base tuition rate at the University of California at Berkeley didn’t rate a comment.
Congressman Ron Klein
800 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL. 33301
RE: “Transformational” – Some questions about Israel and the contradictions of a most virulent virus. Its name is modern American Liberalism. The cure is at the ballot box.
Congressman Klein,
No, it wasn’t you who said that Candidate Obama was “transformational”. It was Congressman Toad Wexler, he of the Maryland address and the Florida House district. [As an aside, he was one of few people who regularly exceeded the limits of “smarminess” so common to modern American Liberal Congressmen.] He traveled in Palm Beach and Broward Counties telling everyone at B’nai B’rith breakfasts, Hadassah luncheons, assorted Mah Jong tournaments, and temple building fund meetings in 2008 that Candidate Obama was a true friend of Israel.
At the same time Handsome Billy from Hot Springs, AKA President Big Bill Clinton, said that he would jump into a fox hole and grab a rifle and defend Israel should he feel that they were threatened. I wrote to him at his Harlem office to tell him to be sure to put the sharp end of the cartridge up the breech first. Alas, he never thanked me for his first weapons lesson.
For the record, let me tell you that I am not a Jew. However, the man who founded my Church was.
Further, I am a legatee of what is called Western Civilization. This means that the double helixes of my DNA are imbued warp, woof and existentially with the Judeo/Christian ethic and ethos. My “support” of Israel is not predicated on whether or not I like American Jews. I add, with tongue not so firmly in cheek, that “some of my best friends are Gentiles”. Israel is part of my being and if I were to turn against it I would be, as Cicero said, “turning my back on myself”.
I thought that one of the goals of any stimulus program was to “create” jobs. One of the long standing mantras of modern American Liberalism is “affordable housing”. It seems to me that our ally, the only representative Democracy in the Mid-East, was doing just that. 1600 affordable housing units just don’t spring out of Zeus’s forehead. Jobs, high paying jobs with good benefits, are being “created” in Israel. If we are going to “create”, that is to say to make something out of nothing, what better place to do it than Israel? Both sides of the Bible tell me that they are used to such miracles.
This has caused the “transformational” President to instruct his people, viz. Secretary of State Clinton and Vice President Curley Biden, to insult, in the most public of ways, both the Prime Minister of Israel and the Israeli people.
Would it be snarky of me to point out that when Hillary Clinton ran for Senate in 2000 she made Meir Kahane sound like George McGovern in 1972 or Howard Dean in 2004? There are towns in New York State dominated by Chasidim, AKA “Serious Jews” These towns gave her 99% of its vote. Neither venal Cook County nor mendacious Hudson County ever had the chutzpah to dare that.
Apparently it is acceptable for Democratic candidates to sound like Dracula defending a blood bank in support of Israel when running for national office. Once they are elected they sound like the wife that Abraham Lincoln used to describe “fairness”. It seems she came upon her husband and a bear in a life and death struggle. Not wishing to take sides she alternated her exhortations. “Go husband” was followed by “Go bear”.
Vice President Biden, a man nicknamed Curley for his intellect not the cosmetic treatment of his alopecia, a treatment that gave him his other nickname “Chia Pet”, said 3 years ago that Iraq should be divided into 3 parts, like Gaul. He pronounced that Bush’s “surge” was doomed to failure. A month ago he was on TV saying that a democratically inclined Iraq would be Obama’s “greatest achievement”. To think that this omadahn, to use the Irish word for an absolute neddy dunce, is but a heartbeat away from the Presidency is something that fills me without absolute dread.
It is well to note that Israel is in what people here would say is “not a nice neighborhood”. Not since the days of the Kamikazes have we faced a foe such as the people who think that blowing up other people will get them in good with Allah. Would it be racist of me to point out that we have yet to identify any murdering terrorist who has been Bah Mitzvahed?
Israel is not a “faraway place filled with people of whom we know little”. The Athens/Jerusalem connection was well known to the Founders. Mecca was not. In fact, from the 12th century on the place has been a net drag on civilization. Take away the oil and it would be a very hot Finland.
My connection to Israel is not “transformational”. It is part and parcel of my being. That is why I protest the actions of President Obama.
Why are the American Jews in Congress so silent? If I can raise my voice why can’t they? Why haven’t you?
I hear an uncertain trumpet from the ranks of modern American Liberals who sit in Congress. Do you think that the enemies of Israel, the ones sworn to its destruction, are not celebrating this?
I have asked any number of elected American politicians who are Jewish where they stand on this matter.
You could begin by saying that the President is wrong. You could stand up and proclaim “Let my people stay”.
Kevin Smith
PS – It is well to note that Golda Meir said in her autobiography that of the 4 Presidents that she dealt with the only one who kept his word absolutely and unequivocally was Richard Nixon. On a different note, California regulatory authorities approved rate hikes of 39% and 32%. The one for 39% for a health insurance premium earned the wrath of the President. His billingsgate would have been better used if it had been directed at the people who want to exterminate Israel. The 32% hike in the base tuition rate at the University of California at Berkeley didn’t rate a comment.
Daniel Shoer Roth The Miami Herald
March 11, 2010
Daniel Shoer Roth
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Jackson’s Mission Must Not Be Forgotten” – Some comments on your Miami Herald song of lamentation on why “we” must not let Jackson Memorial Hospital fail.
Mr. Roth,
Would it not be ironic if the recorded phone call from Florida Power and Light were to come at noon on April 15th?
“As a courtesy to any patients still on the operating table or getting PETed, MRIed, or CAT scanned or using the ATM machine or in the garage waiting for the gate to come up please inform them that as of 3:00 PM the FPL electrical feed to Jackson Memorial will be cut. Your generators should enable you to closes out the day’s more pressing medical procedures. Call us when you can pay the past due amount and make a 2 month security deposit with a bank check and we will be please to serve you.”
I hold no brief for FPL. I am not employed by them. I don’t own any of their securities.
How is the “unforgettable Jackson mission”, a mission predicated on robbing Peter to pay Paul, a mission whose main financial tool consists of cutting a foot off the top of a blanket to sew on to the bottom to keep a patient’s feet warm, of Jackson Memorial to be reconciled with FPL’s mission of meeting payroll and providing power to the rest of Miami/Dade County?
You use the Miami/Dade takeover of an unfinished airport building as an example of the county’s ability “to absorb millions in cost overruns”. Fairness demands that the baseball stadium, the basketball arena, the torn down basketball arena, and the various Arts Centers be tossed into the pot of public scrutiny. I like baseball and basketball. I like Mozart and Willie Nelson. Why should the citizens of Miami/Dade be forced support my extracurricular pursuits?
Then the second call came in.
“We will not release the paychecks because your check was returned NSF.” That was from a mid-level management weenie at the check processing entity. He reminded his counterpart in payroll that while you can only take 32 ounces out of a quart bottle you must first put 32 ounces into the bottle.
Let’s start with your employees who are members of any union. They tell me over and over and over how much they understand the “mission” of Jackson Memorial. I am sure they won’t mind working for free.
Listen carefully.
I’ll write slowly.
You say “some divisions of at Jackson could be privatized, as long as they remain not-for-profit”.
Private not-for-profit enterprises exist and perform their tasks because somebody at some point made a profit. If those profits were obscene the not-for-profit entities can do marvelous things seeing as to how they are not responsible for the quotidian tasks of a for profit entity.
How many libraries did Andrew Carnegie build after he sold U.S. Steel? How many hospitals did skin flint John D. Rockefeller’s billions build?
Your aversion to “for profit” entities is understandable seeing as how you worked for Knight-Ridder and now work for McClatchey.
I read this morning that a grand jury has been convened to look into Jackson Memorial. With the experience gained by poring over the books of a not-for-profit hospital they’ll be able to take on the Granddaddy of them all. The United States Post Office.
As we approach the drop dead date may I suggest that bankruptcy may be the only solution left to protect the “mission” of Jackson Memorial? General Motors and Chrysler are still fulfilling their “mission”, aren’t they?
Somebody with a black robe and a gavel will sort it all out.
Kevin Smith
Daniel Shoer Roth
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Jackson’s Mission Must Not Be Forgotten” – Some comments on your Miami Herald song of lamentation on why “we” must not let Jackson Memorial Hospital fail.
Mr. Roth,
Would it not be ironic if the recorded phone call from Florida Power and Light were to come at noon on April 15th?
“As a courtesy to any patients still on the operating table or getting PETed, MRIed, or CAT scanned or using the ATM machine or in the garage waiting for the gate to come up please inform them that as of 3:00 PM the FPL electrical feed to Jackson Memorial will be cut. Your generators should enable you to closes out the day’s more pressing medical procedures. Call us when you can pay the past due amount and make a 2 month security deposit with a bank check and we will be please to serve you.”
I hold no brief for FPL. I am not employed by them. I don’t own any of their securities.
How is the “unforgettable Jackson mission”, a mission predicated on robbing Peter to pay Paul, a mission whose main financial tool consists of cutting a foot off the top of a blanket to sew on to the bottom to keep a patient’s feet warm, of Jackson Memorial to be reconciled with FPL’s mission of meeting payroll and providing power to the rest of Miami/Dade County?
You use the Miami/Dade takeover of an unfinished airport building as an example of the county’s ability “to absorb millions in cost overruns”. Fairness demands that the baseball stadium, the basketball arena, the torn down basketball arena, and the various Arts Centers be tossed into the pot of public scrutiny. I like baseball and basketball. I like Mozart and Willie Nelson. Why should the citizens of Miami/Dade be forced support my extracurricular pursuits?
Then the second call came in.
“We will not release the paychecks because your check was returned NSF.” That was from a mid-level management weenie at the check processing entity. He reminded his counterpart in payroll that while you can only take 32 ounces out of a quart bottle you must first put 32 ounces into the bottle.
Let’s start with your employees who are members of any union. They tell me over and over and over how much they understand the “mission” of Jackson Memorial. I am sure they won’t mind working for free.
Listen carefully.
I’ll write slowly.
You say “some divisions of at Jackson could be privatized, as long as they remain not-for-profit”.
Private not-for-profit enterprises exist and perform their tasks because somebody at some point made a profit. If those profits were obscene the not-for-profit entities can do marvelous things seeing as to how they are not responsible for the quotidian tasks of a for profit entity.
How many libraries did Andrew Carnegie build after he sold U.S. Steel? How many hospitals did skin flint John D. Rockefeller’s billions build?
Your aversion to “for profit” entities is understandable seeing as how you worked for Knight-Ridder and now work for McClatchey.
I read this morning that a grand jury has been convened to look into Jackson Memorial. With the experience gained by poring over the books of a not-for-profit hospital they’ll be able to take on the Granddaddy of them all. The United States Post Office.
As we approach the drop dead date may I suggest that bankruptcy may be the only solution left to protect the “mission” of Jackson Memorial? General Motors and Chrysler are still fulfilling their “mission”, aren’t they?
Somebody with a black robe and a gavel will sort it all out.
Kevin Smith
Annie McCallum The Ledger-Enquirer
Annie McCallum
The Ledger-Enquirer
17 West 12th Street
Columbus, GA 31901
RE: What’s her name? Some questions on the story about the arrest of a “35 year old woman” for performing an infant cliteroidectomy deep in the heart of Dixie - as reported by you today.
Ms. McCallum,
Talk about getting the loony ladies outraged! Or so you would think.
Speaking of Georgia, there was universal outrage when the ladies found out in 2003 that they couldn’t play golf at the Masters. Nobody tried to take out their G-Spot with a butter knife as a condition for teeing up. The distaff silence on child chopping is both deafening and revealing.
Your story says that an infant, 2 months shy of her first birthday, had part of her genitals removed in less than sterile conditions. The child was treated as an outpatient. It is not known if the proposed health care bill would cover such elective surgery.
Those who favor abortion are called “pro-choice”. At some point in the procedure the woman in the stirrups should say “Let it rip”. I don’t know what that age is in Georgia but I can safely assume it is not 10 months.
#1 – “It’s kind of unusual. We don’t see it too often at all.” That is the quote you attribute to Sgt. Chad Munn of the Troup County Sheriff’s Office. How many times have they seen “it”? Once? 36 times? Never? 4 times a week for 12 years? What are the statistics for crimes of infant female genital mutilation in your city, your county, your state? What are the common characteristics of those involved in the crime?
It’s bad Logic to construct a universal from a particular or any number of particulars. On the other hand it would not be offensive to Logic to assume that if all those crimes were committed by members of the same religion the first place to look should the crime be committed again would in be their place of worship, no? Crudely put, someone who liked pulled pork sandwiches, beer, and sometimes yelling Allah Akbar my Ass would not be high on the list of suspects, right?
#2 – A 35 year old woman was arrested for this crime. I presume she was booked and possibly arraigned. Those documents are part of the public record. Anyone, and particularly a member of the press, can access those documents. Finding the name is simple. Your obligation to release that name trumps the alleged perpetrator’s claim to privacy. You have broken the rules of journalism, what ever they may be. Would I be far out of line if I were to suggest that the 35 year old woman did not have Lutheran grandparents for Finland?
#3 – You quote Professor Michele Luo of LaGrange College as saying “Don’t blame the mother”. The college website told me that Professor Luo teaches Sociology and Anthropology. That explains how someone with advanced degrees can spew such clap trap. Somewhere around the 9th Circle Margaret Mead is smiling.
The LaGrange website says that a production of “The Laramie Project” will be presented at the college. “The Laramie Project” is about the murder, universally proclaimed as a hate crime, of Matthew Shepherd, a 21 year old homosexual. Two men were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Their names were announced about 4 nanoseconds after they were arrested. Would you know if Professor Luo said, “Don’t blame them”?
In re Matthew Shepherd, Google the name Jesse Dirkhising and tell me if your paper covered the events surrounding him. I would be much in your debt if you could tell me if Professor Luo had any public comments on it.
For the record…if the woman who used the knife can’t be blamed who can?
Did we all do it?
Should we all be sent to Gitmo?
Madness.
Kevin Smith
CC – ML
CC - CM
The Ledger-Enquirer
17 West 12th Street
Columbus, GA 31901
RE: What’s her name? Some questions on the story about the arrest of a “35 year old woman” for performing an infant cliteroidectomy deep in the heart of Dixie - as reported by you today.
Ms. McCallum,
Talk about getting the loony ladies outraged! Or so you would think.
Speaking of Georgia, there was universal outrage when the ladies found out in 2003 that they couldn’t play golf at the Masters. Nobody tried to take out their G-Spot with a butter knife as a condition for teeing up. The distaff silence on child chopping is both deafening and revealing.
Your story says that an infant, 2 months shy of her first birthday, had part of her genitals removed in less than sterile conditions. The child was treated as an outpatient. It is not known if the proposed health care bill would cover such elective surgery.
Those who favor abortion are called “pro-choice”. At some point in the procedure the woman in the stirrups should say “Let it rip”. I don’t know what that age is in Georgia but I can safely assume it is not 10 months.
#1 – “It’s kind of unusual. We don’t see it too often at all.” That is the quote you attribute to Sgt. Chad Munn of the Troup County Sheriff’s Office. How many times have they seen “it”? Once? 36 times? Never? 4 times a week for 12 years? What are the statistics for crimes of infant female genital mutilation in your city, your county, your state? What are the common characteristics of those involved in the crime?
It’s bad Logic to construct a universal from a particular or any number of particulars. On the other hand it would not be offensive to Logic to assume that if all those crimes were committed by members of the same religion the first place to look should the crime be committed again would in be their place of worship, no? Crudely put, someone who liked pulled pork sandwiches, beer, and sometimes yelling Allah Akbar my Ass would not be high on the list of suspects, right?
#2 – A 35 year old woman was arrested for this crime. I presume she was booked and possibly arraigned. Those documents are part of the public record. Anyone, and particularly a member of the press, can access those documents. Finding the name is simple. Your obligation to release that name trumps the alleged perpetrator’s claim to privacy. You have broken the rules of journalism, what ever they may be. Would I be far out of line if I were to suggest that the 35 year old woman did not have Lutheran grandparents for Finland?
#3 – You quote Professor Michele Luo of LaGrange College as saying “Don’t blame the mother”. The college website told me that Professor Luo teaches Sociology and Anthropology. That explains how someone with advanced degrees can spew such clap trap. Somewhere around the 9th Circle Margaret Mead is smiling.
The LaGrange website says that a production of “The Laramie Project” will be presented at the college. “The Laramie Project” is about the murder, universally proclaimed as a hate crime, of Matthew Shepherd, a 21 year old homosexual. Two men were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Their names were announced about 4 nanoseconds after they were arrested. Would you know if Professor Luo said, “Don’t blame them”?
In re Matthew Shepherd, Google the name Jesse Dirkhising and tell me if your paper covered the events surrounding him. I would be much in your debt if you could tell me if Professor Luo had any public comments on it.
For the record…if the woman who used the knife can’t be blamed who can?
Did we all do it?
Should we all be sent to Gitmo?
Madness.
Kevin Smith
CC – ML
CC - CM
Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald
March 10, 2010
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 3132-1693
RE: Just the facts – Sometimes what you don’t say is as important as what you do say. Some comments on your article in today’s Miami Herald about civility in politics.
Mr. Pitts,
As the Founder and Chairman of the Perpetually Hurt and Offended Despite the Ascendancy of Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed Be His Name Chowder Society and Marching Band you probably have a difficult time keep facts straight. I imagine when writing a regular column that some facts, particularly those that don’t fit your template, are conveniently forgotten.
This morning’s sub-headline reads
“A GOP ad from the ‘80s suggested Willie Horton
would kill you if you voted for Michael Dukakis.”
A cursory check of the record would have shown that Willie Horton raped and killed in Massachusetts. Further, when Michael Dukakis was Governor of Massachusetts, Willie was furloughed for a long weekend. He went to Maryland where, not so surprisingly, he raped and killed again. When relatives of the victims went to Massachusetts to ask Wee Mikey how he could have let this monster out he wouldn’t even talk to them.
Asking what he would have done as President was a legitimate political question.
Willie’s rapes and murders, if they had been left out of a prospectus, would have made you guilty of civil fraud under the Securities Act of 1934
Before the nasty racist Republicans televised the story of Willie and his wonderful adventures he was a big part of the New York Presidential primary election in the spring of 1988. I almost forgot. to tell you. It was the Democratic Presidential Primary.
Guess who beat up Wee Mikey with the Willie Horton story?
If you said Senator Albert Arnold Gore, Jr, AKA Alpha Gump, a man who 4 years later would earn the call sign “Cementhead” from his Secret Service guards, you are correct.
If I were to ask if macacas running 711s in Delaware could sell a lot of watermelons would that be racist?
If it were should I be condemned to a “screaming rectal cancer death”?
Is Willie up for parole any time soon?
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 3132-1693
RE: Just the facts – Sometimes what you don’t say is as important as what you do say. Some comments on your article in today’s Miami Herald about civility in politics.
Mr. Pitts,
As the Founder and Chairman of the Perpetually Hurt and Offended Despite the Ascendancy of Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed Be His Name Chowder Society and Marching Band you probably have a difficult time keep facts straight. I imagine when writing a regular column that some facts, particularly those that don’t fit your template, are conveniently forgotten.
This morning’s sub-headline reads
“A GOP ad from the ‘80s suggested Willie Horton
would kill you if you voted for Michael Dukakis.”
A cursory check of the record would have shown that Willie Horton raped and killed in Massachusetts. Further, when Michael Dukakis was Governor of Massachusetts, Willie was furloughed for a long weekend. He went to Maryland where, not so surprisingly, he raped and killed again. When relatives of the victims went to Massachusetts to ask Wee Mikey how he could have let this monster out he wouldn’t even talk to them.
Asking what he would have done as President was a legitimate political question.
Willie’s rapes and murders, if they had been left out of a prospectus, would have made you guilty of civil fraud under the Securities Act of 1934
Before the nasty racist Republicans televised the story of Willie and his wonderful adventures he was a big part of the New York Presidential primary election in the spring of 1988. I almost forgot. to tell you. It was the Democratic Presidential Primary.
Guess who beat up Wee Mikey with the Willie Horton story?
If you said Senator Albert Arnold Gore, Jr, AKA Alpha Gump, a man who 4 years later would earn the call sign “Cementhead” from his Secret Service guards, you are correct.
If I were to ask if macacas running 711s in Delaware could sell a lot of watermelons would that be racist?
If it were should I be condemned to a “screaming rectal cancer death”?
Is Willie up for parole any time soon?
Kevin Smith
New Jersey State Senator Ray Lesniak
March 10, 2010
Senator Ray Lesniak
985 Stuyvesant Avenue
Union, NJ 07083
RE: Housing, “fairness”, and a lesson that everyone in Bayonne knows before they go to high school. But wait! There’s more. Some lessons for Lent plus some comments on the Paul Mulshine column about you in today’s Star Ledger
Senator Lesniak,
I had a manatee close to my snare when I saw your remarks to Paul Mulshine in today’s NJ.COM. Don’t get your knickers in a knot over the manatees. I use them to feed polar bears who have been rescued from melting icebergs in “tempest toss’d seas”, said seas being in meltdown condition because of Western man’s insatiable desire for air conditioning, plastic, and microwaves. Having been Heimliched back into being potentially productive members of society I provide the bears with a secure habitat to sharpen their predatory skills. No sense having a vegan polar bear, is there? The baby seals would like it but what then would happen to the American mink business?
It being the holy season of Lent please accept the enclosed gentle chastisement in the Christian sense that it is offered. In a bow to diversity and multi-culturalism, and why didn’t Vatican 2 think of it, Jesu Cristi Akbar.
#1 – My wife and I had a place in Bay Head for a few years. Bay Head Shores, Bay Head South, Bay Head Landings, any such plays on the word Bay Head were verboten. Either you were in Bay Head or you were in Point Pleasant or Lavalette or East Jabib or some other nautically named Palookaville. I had two friends, each of whom owned homes on the ocean of Mantoloking, who told me you were either in Mantoloking or you were in…yuck…Brick Township.
That was 30 years ago.
I am glad to see that some things never change in New Jersey.
If you need any other reason for living in Brick a few title searches will show you that Mantoloking had restrictive covenants. You had to be a Christian to buy there.
#2 – A quick look at your legislative record shows that you are a Jersey-style modern American Liberal.
Time precludes a full explanation of that endearing sobriquet so I must turn to Dr. Johnson for a quick definition. All public policy decisions on anything and everything, things ranging from taxes to why Johnny can’t read to beach badges to public pension plans to tenure to “fair housing” are predicated, like the great Doctor said, on “the triumph of hope over experience”. The rules governing gravity are always suspended when the legislature is in session. The political party of the Governor is irrelevant.
#3 – When the Council on Affordable Housing [COAH] assigns a quota to each of the 567 separate towns in New Jersey for, Guess What, “affordable housing”, what methodology is used?
If, as Mulshine says, the number of low income units required in Brick Township is 1908 and the number of low income units in Mantoloking is 61 how do we get to those numbers? Can Mantoloking count garages as low income housing if Manual Labor, the Mexican gardener, lives there? Can Brick Township count the VW van that Cousin Fred’s kids camp out in for the weekend as low income housing?
Only someone who was deeply disappointed that “Midnight Basketball” did not become national policy could believe in such clap-trap. Further, as soon as the word “fair” is attached to it all rational discussion is banned. The only other word to cause such anti-rational actions is “equal”. If the two of them appear in the same sentence the only antidote is to reach for a copy of “Utopia”. All serious politicians should copy Governor Palin. Tattoo the word “Utopia” on one palm. Tattoo the word “Nowhere” on the opposite palm. Etymologically they are the same. In fact, they are interchangeable. And, like the horizon, neither is attainable.
As I recall there were 2 wars in the 1960s.
The one in Asia ended.
The one in America, the War on Poverty, goes on and on and on. If someone mentions “exit strategy” they are called racist. We can’t do a “surge” a la Sherman or Bush because we have had one every year since 1964. A rational man would have long ago stopped trying to put a ten penny nail into a 2x10 by using his forehead as the hammer. Do 45 years of stuff not working have any effect on public policy? Will at least a truce be declared? There is a phrase from Bayonne that covers that contingency. Before the Word Police outlaw it “my brother the hunchback will straighten up before that happens” springs to mind.
How can you figure the number of something, anything, that isn’t there? Only a closet Fascist can arrive at such a number. When you factor in age, race, and handicap status you are entering a world where Oz resembles Switzerland. Would not a poor, elderly, handicapped female Muslim be entitled to the next available penthouse in exGovernor Corzine’s building in Hoboken?
When you are sitting on the veranda of your summer home on the beach – even if the beach is on the not so posh side of the bay – I suggest you do some homework. If it’s early PM I suggest you try some Polish favorites from Bayonne. A hunk of kielbasa, some hard boiled eggs, and a plumber’s helper to wash it down is a good way to start a teachable moment. Try to find out where “He has created a multitude of new offices, and sent hither a swarm of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance” is from. I’ll give you a hint. Think July 4, 1776.
#4 – “Fair” and “Equal” reminds me of a decision by a French Judge. He said that it was only fair that the rich and the poor have an equal right to sleep under the bridges over the Seine. The rich get the summer and the poor get the winter. What could be fairer?
Your assignment for Lent is to become familiar with the Works of Mercy, both Corporal and Spiritual. That you will open your summer home to the undeserving poor this summer is a given. Swimming lessons for the Abbot District children is a good start. It’s the least that I think you must do. Isn’t that the way modern American Liberals think?
I have assigned one of my most ardent acolytes, Donald Nowicki, AKA the Polish Prince of Bayonne, as Master of Novices to monitor your compliance. If he sees that you are making progress he will let you pick a Democratic Congressman of your choice to “tickle you” to wretched excess. I have expressly forbidden him from threatening you with a “screaming death from rectal cancer”. Sean Penn, that noted modern American Liberal humanitarian activist, has saved that for people who don’t like Hugo Chavez.
Do you like Hugo Chavez?
½ Stolat!
Kevin Smith
Senator Ray Lesniak
985 Stuyvesant Avenue
Union, NJ 07083
RE: Housing, “fairness”, and a lesson that everyone in Bayonne knows before they go to high school. But wait! There’s more. Some lessons for Lent plus some comments on the Paul Mulshine column about you in today’s Star Ledger
Senator Lesniak,
I had a manatee close to my snare when I saw your remarks to Paul Mulshine in today’s NJ.COM. Don’t get your knickers in a knot over the manatees. I use them to feed polar bears who have been rescued from melting icebergs in “tempest toss’d seas”, said seas being in meltdown condition because of Western man’s insatiable desire for air conditioning, plastic, and microwaves. Having been Heimliched back into being potentially productive members of society I provide the bears with a secure habitat to sharpen their predatory skills. No sense having a vegan polar bear, is there? The baby seals would like it but what then would happen to the American mink business?
It being the holy season of Lent please accept the enclosed gentle chastisement in the Christian sense that it is offered. In a bow to diversity and multi-culturalism, and why didn’t Vatican 2 think of it, Jesu Cristi Akbar.
#1 – My wife and I had a place in Bay Head for a few years. Bay Head Shores, Bay Head South, Bay Head Landings, any such plays on the word Bay Head were verboten. Either you were in Bay Head or you were in Point Pleasant or Lavalette or East Jabib or some other nautically named Palookaville. I had two friends, each of whom owned homes on the ocean of Mantoloking, who told me you were either in Mantoloking or you were in…yuck…Brick Township.
That was 30 years ago.
I am glad to see that some things never change in New Jersey.
If you need any other reason for living in Brick a few title searches will show you that Mantoloking had restrictive covenants. You had to be a Christian to buy there.
#2 – A quick look at your legislative record shows that you are a Jersey-style modern American Liberal.
Time precludes a full explanation of that endearing sobriquet so I must turn to Dr. Johnson for a quick definition. All public policy decisions on anything and everything, things ranging from taxes to why Johnny can’t read to beach badges to public pension plans to tenure to “fair housing” are predicated, like the great Doctor said, on “the triumph of hope over experience”. The rules governing gravity are always suspended when the legislature is in session. The political party of the Governor is irrelevant.
#3 – When the Council on Affordable Housing [COAH] assigns a quota to each of the 567 separate towns in New Jersey for, Guess What, “affordable housing”, what methodology is used?
If, as Mulshine says, the number of low income units required in Brick Township is 1908 and the number of low income units in Mantoloking is 61 how do we get to those numbers? Can Mantoloking count garages as low income housing if Manual Labor, the Mexican gardener, lives there? Can Brick Township count the VW van that Cousin Fred’s kids camp out in for the weekend as low income housing?
Only someone who was deeply disappointed that “Midnight Basketball” did not become national policy could believe in such clap-trap. Further, as soon as the word “fair” is attached to it all rational discussion is banned. The only other word to cause such anti-rational actions is “equal”. If the two of them appear in the same sentence the only antidote is to reach for a copy of “Utopia”. All serious politicians should copy Governor Palin. Tattoo the word “Utopia” on one palm. Tattoo the word “Nowhere” on the opposite palm. Etymologically they are the same. In fact, they are interchangeable. And, like the horizon, neither is attainable.
As I recall there were 2 wars in the 1960s.
The one in Asia ended.
The one in America, the War on Poverty, goes on and on and on. If someone mentions “exit strategy” they are called racist. We can’t do a “surge” a la Sherman or Bush because we have had one every year since 1964. A rational man would have long ago stopped trying to put a ten penny nail into a 2x10 by using his forehead as the hammer. Do 45 years of stuff not working have any effect on public policy? Will at least a truce be declared? There is a phrase from Bayonne that covers that contingency. Before the Word Police outlaw it “my brother the hunchback will straighten up before that happens” springs to mind.
How can you figure the number of something, anything, that isn’t there? Only a closet Fascist can arrive at such a number. When you factor in age, race, and handicap status you are entering a world where Oz resembles Switzerland. Would not a poor, elderly, handicapped female Muslim be entitled to the next available penthouse in exGovernor Corzine’s building in Hoboken?
When you are sitting on the veranda of your summer home on the beach – even if the beach is on the not so posh side of the bay – I suggest you do some homework. If it’s early PM I suggest you try some Polish favorites from Bayonne. A hunk of kielbasa, some hard boiled eggs, and a plumber’s helper to wash it down is a good way to start a teachable moment. Try to find out where “He has created a multitude of new offices, and sent hither a swarm of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance” is from. I’ll give you a hint. Think July 4, 1776.
#4 – “Fair” and “Equal” reminds me of a decision by a French Judge. He said that it was only fair that the rich and the poor have an equal right to sleep under the bridges over the Seine. The rich get the summer and the poor get the winter. What could be fairer?
Your assignment for Lent is to become familiar with the Works of Mercy, both Corporal and Spiritual. That you will open your summer home to the undeserving poor this summer is a given. Swimming lessons for the Abbot District children is a good start. It’s the least that I think you must do. Isn’t that the way modern American Liberals think?
I have assigned one of my most ardent acolytes, Donald Nowicki, AKA the Polish Prince of Bayonne, as Master of Novices to monitor your compliance. If he sees that you are making progress he will let you pick a Democratic Congressman of your choice to “tickle you” to wretched excess. I have expressly forbidden him from threatening you with a “screaming death from rectal cancer”. Sean Penn, that noted modern American Liberal humanitarian activist, has saved that for people who don’t like Hugo Chavez.
Do you like Hugo Chavez?
½ Stolat!
Kevin Smith
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Bob Butterworth, Esq. The Miami Herald Op-Ed Section
March 9, 2010
Bob Butterworth, Esq.
The Miami Herald Op-Ed Section
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Let’s Clear the Air” – Some comments on your Op-Ed about Dosal Tobacco and the open bribery of the Florida legislature on “loopholes” granted to the cigarette cartel.
Mr. Butterworth,
I know it’s a non sequitur but the day I quit smoking – October 1, 1989 – was the same day I Heimliched a lawyer in his office in East Rutherford, NJ.
I mention that because your Op-Ed about the felonies committed in plain sight in the Florida legislature – bribing legislators is still a crime, isn’t it? – suggests that, your legal credentials not withstanding, you never read the Constitution. I don’t mean the parts about the letters of marque and reprisal or bills of attainder. I mean the part about the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. You’ll find it surprisingly enough in the First Amendment. That’s the Amendment modern American Liberals use when they try to convince us that a public display of interspecies copulation should be supported by taxpayer dollars.
On the other hand, you, as an officer of the Court, are obliged to report a crime to the proper authorities, should you have knowledge of same.
You say that if Dosal Tobacco had not bribed sufficient members of the Florida legislature we would live in smoke free state.
You caterwaul that since Dosal Tobacco was not a member of the original class action suit they have a competitive advantage over those companies who were. Further, they use this advantage to sell more of their cigarettes because their price is less. [There is a presumption there that the opposite is also true. Higher prices discourage sales. Lower prices encourage sales. You sound like a closeted supply sider.] Do you think Dosal tobacco should raise their prices to do away with this competitive advantage?
“I helped beat Big Tobacco to win justice for Florida taxpayers.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
Justice?
You allowed a product known to be carcinogenically poisonous to continue to be sold in Florida. If you call that “justice” please give me an example of an “injustice”. You struck a Faustian bargain with tobacco companies. In return for them sending sacks of cash to the Legislature to devour like vixens in a chicken coop you have condemned thousands and thousands of Floridians to an agonizing death.
I suggest that the amount of blood money sent to the state Treasury is not coming from the tobacco companies. Corporations don’t pay taxes. Taxes are a cost of doing business much the same as wages, insurance, debt service, and charitable contributions. It is coming from the end users of the company’s products. No more; no less.
If you are really concerned about “justice” you would lead the drive to ban all tobacco in Florida. If that is too extreme you could lobby the Legislature, the same as Dosal does, to change the law.
The Founders did not limit the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances” to tree huggers, fans of manatee suffrage, the NRA, the various Teachers’ unions, Unfair Play for Cuba, and Save the Python advocacy groups. You have it too. It was yours at birth. It was “a gift from beyond the stars”.
In the meantime quit belly aching about someone else exercising their rights.
Kevin Smith
Bob Butterworth, Esq.
The Miami Herald Op-Ed Section
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Let’s Clear the Air” – Some comments on your Op-Ed about Dosal Tobacco and the open bribery of the Florida legislature on “loopholes” granted to the cigarette cartel.
Mr. Butterworth,
I know it’s a non sequitur but the day I quit smoking – October 1, 1989 – was the same day I Heimliched a lawyer in his office in East Rutherford, NJ.
I mention that because your Op-Ed about the felonies committed in plain sight in the Florida legislature – bribing legislators is still a crime, isn’t it? – suggests that, your legal credentials not withstanding, you never read the Constitution. I don’t mean the parts about the letters of marque and reprisal or bills of attainder. I mean the part about the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. You’ll find it surprisingly enough in the First Amendment. That’s the Amendment modern American Liberals use when they try to convince us that a public display of interspecies copulation should be supported by taxpayer dollars.
On the other hand, you, as an officer of the Court, are obliged to report a crime to the proper authorities, should you have knowledge of same.
You say that if Dosal Tobacco had not bribed sufficient members of the Florida legislature we would live in smoke free state.
You caterwaul that since Dosal Tobacco was not a member of the original class action suit they have a competitive advantage over those companies who were. Further, they use this advantage to sell more of their cigarettes because their price is less. [There is a presumption there that the opposite is also true. Higher prices discourage sales. Lower prices encourage sales. You sound like a closeted supply sider.] Do you think Dosal tobacco should raise their prices to do away with this competitive advantage?
“I helped beat Big Tobacco to win justice for Florida taxpayers.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
Justice?
You allowed a product known to be carcinogenically poisonous to continue to be sold in Florida. If you call that “justice” please give me an example of an “injustice”. You struck a Faustian bargain with tobacco companies. In return for them sending sacks of cash to the Legislature to devour like vixens in a chicken coop you have condemned thousands and thousands of Floridians to an agonizing death.
I suggest that the amount of blood money sent to the state Treasury is not coming from the tobacco companies. Corporations don’t pay taxes. Taxes are a cost of doing business much the same as wages, insurance, debt service, and charitable contributions. It is coming from the end users of the company’s products. No more; no less.
If you are really concerned about “justice” you would lead the drive to ban all tobacco in Florida. If that is too extreme you could lobby the Legislature, the same as Dosal does, to change the law.
The Founders did not limit the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances” to tree huggers, fans of manatee suffrage, the NRA, the various Teachers’ unions, Unfair Play for Cuba, and Save the Python advocacy groups. You have it too. It was yours at birth. It was “a gift from beyond the stars”.
In the meantime quit belly aching about someone else exercising their rights.
Kevin Smith
Jim DeFede Channel 4 News
March 5, 2010
Jim DeFede
Channel 4 News
8900 NW18th Terrace
Doral, FL 33172
RE: A solution to the hunger problem in Haiti plus a serendipitously exponential decrease in our carbon footprint should you take it.
Mr. DeFede,
I saw you on the Channel 4 News at 5 talking about the current financial crisis at the Jackson Memorial Hospital system.
Several things are empirically self evident.
#1 – You are a HORSE’S ASS of Brobdanaglian proportions
#2 – Use an electric razor when you shave. Should you nick your neck the gravy bursting out of it would rival Mount Saint Helen’s or Krakatoa. The “kill zone” would be up to 1000 yards.
#3 – Should I need to lose weight I will run around you twice a day.
#4 – The Miami Dolphins have put a premium price on seats in the shade. You could block out the sun on at least 10 seats. Times are tough. You could pick up a few extra bucks for your Big Mac IVs.
#5 – If the public has a “right” to health care shouldn’t the altruistic members of the SEIU work for free?
#6 – You are the only man in Christendom who makes Buddha look like Gandhi.
#7 – “Any public policy that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support.” That is what fuels modern American Liberalism.
#8 – On the brighter side you have my permission to recommend that the accounts receivable department be waterboarded prior to keelhauling. Perhaps the Bank of Nunzio should take over collections. The Soprano Method has worked in the past.
#9 – If you ever go to Haiti watch out for this year’s version of the Ton-Ton Macoutes. They would put you into a vat of trans-fat free cooking suet so fast you wouldn’t know you were going to feed Port-a-Prince for a week.
#10 – “Lipo DeFede” is the next big theme park after you fill in for the killer whale in Orlando.
#11 – I do not want you to die “screaming from rectal cancer”. A bad hip, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and patchwork alopecia will do for your penance.
Kevin Smith
Jim DeFede
Channel 4 News
8900 NW18th Terrace
Doral, FL 33172
RE: A solution to the hunger problem in Haiti plus a serendipitously exponential decrease in our carbon footprint should you take it.
Mr. DeFede,
I saw you on the Channel 4 News at 5 talking about the current financial crisis at the Jackson Memorial Hospital system.
Several things are empirically self evident.
#1 – You are a HORSE’S ASS of Brobdanaglian proportions
#2 – Use an electric razor when you shave. Should you nick your neck the gravy bursting out of it would rival Mount Saint Helen’s or Krakatoa. The “kill zone” would be up to 1000 yards.
#3 – Should I need to lose weight I will run around you twice a day.
#4 – The Miami Dolphins have put a premium price on seats in the shade. You could block out the sun on at least 10 seats. Times are tough. You could pick up a few extra bucks for your Big Mac IVs.
#5 – If the public has a “right” to health care shouldn’t the altruistic members of the SEIU work for free?
#6 – You are the only man in Christendom who makes Buddha look like Gandhi.
#7 – “Any public policy that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support.” That is what fuels modern American Liberalism.
#8 – On the brighter side you have my permission to recommend that the accounts receivable department be waterboarded prior to keelhauling. Perhaps the Bank of Nunzio should take over collections. The Soprano Method has worked in the past.
#9 – If you ever go to Haiti watch out for this year’s version of the Ton-Ton Macoutes. They would put you into a vat of trans-fat free cooking suet so fast you wouldn’t know you were going to feed Port-a-Prince for a week.
#10 – “Lipo DeFede” is the next big theme park after you fill in for the killer whale in Orlando.
#11 – I do not want you to die “screaming from rectal cancer”. A bad hip, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and patchwork alopecia will do for your penance.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Charles Lynn – Town Administrator
March 8, 2010
Charles Lynn – Town Administrator
6389 SW 160th Avenue
Southwest Ranches, FL 33331
RE: Debits equal credits except when they don’t
Mr. Lynn,
“It’s not missing,” Town Administrator Charles Lynn said of the money.
“It was apparently used for operations.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
“Apparently?”
10 years ago somebody used $2,500,000 that was meant to build the town hall to pay the FPL bill. If not that then the best guess is that it went to make some swamp safe for gators and skeeters.
In my other life I was the Chief Financial Officer of a public company. At the irreducible minimum that meant I signed the 10K. That meant I swore that the enclosed was true. That meant that if I had capitalized operating expenses I would have begged the SEC to put me in the Witness Protection Program before the shareholders found me.
“A lot of money went up in smoke.”
Ibid
Did the township employees take marijuana breaks? Were they running a takeaway bar-b-cue business?
There is a good part of this story.
“On Friday, no one could say when the town borrowed the money.”
Ibid
Forget when. The question should be “From whom?”
Someone wired Southwest Ranches $2,500,000 ten years ago. It was supposed to be used to build the town hall. I see some items in your financial statements about debt service. It is not clear who this was paid to or what the terms of the loan were.
Logic would dictate that borrowers should line up at this loan window with huge swag bags. Lending practices like this would make Barney Frank proud. One thing is certain. Tony Soprano was not the loan arranger.
Maybe the town won the lottery. Maybe the 50/50s and the bake sale celebrating the birth of the town were hugely successful. I noticed an expense item totaling $12,000 to celebrate the town’s birthday. Did any of this money wind up in the hands of the Seminoles or Miccosukees? If so, what was the net return?
Since none of this happened on your watch your job is simple.
There is a $2,500,000 turd in the Southwest Ranches punch bowl. All you have to do is explain to the citizens why they owe this amount particularly since no one knows how or if it was spent. Is it too late to grab some of the Stimulus moneys? Surely there are some “shovel ready” projects around. Somebody has to know where the bones are buried. Dig them up.
The alternative is to tell the world that for years the town has been run by boobies on work release from the nearest hatch. I may be wrong but aren’t local financials filed with the state made under oath? What does perjury smell like?
Broward County has the distinction of having the most temporary Federal agents leading the most active investigations per capita of any county in the United States. Southwest Ranches is a very small town. Get everybody who is working there or who has worked there – including consultants, lawyers, accountants, insurance salesmen, grant writers, lobbyists, and assorted grifters – under oath. The first one to flip gets a pass entitling him or her – Are you listening Mr. & Mrs. Wasserman Rubin? – to one “stay out of jail card”.
If this is the way a town without a city hall and a zip code they share with a few other burgs runs its money I can’t wait for the government to take over Health Care.
Kevin Smith
Charles Lynn – Town Administrator
6389 SW 160th Avenue
Southwest Ranches, FL 33331
RE: Debits equal credits except when they don’t
Mr. Lynn,
“It’s not missing,” Town Administrator Charles Lynn said of the money.
“It was apparently used for operations.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
“Apparently?”
10 years ago somebody used $2,500,000 that was meant to build the town hall to pay the FPL bill. If not that then the best guess is that it went to make some swamp safe for gators and skeeters.
In my other life I was the Chief Financial Officer of a public company. At the irreducible minimum that meant I signed the 10K. That meant I swore that the enclosed was true. That meant that if I had capitalized operating expenses I would have begged the SEC to put me in the Witness Protection Program before the shareholders found me.
“A lot of money went up in smoke.”
Ibid
Did the township employees take marijuana breaks? Were they running a takeaway bar-b-cue business?
There is a good part of this story.
“On Friday, no one could say when the town borrowed the money.”
Ibid
Forget when. The question should be “From whom?”
Someone wired Southwest Ranches $2,500,000 ten years ago. It was supposed to be used to build the town hall. I see some items in your financial statements about debt service. It is not clear who this was paid to or what the terms of the loan were.
Logic would dictate that borrowers should line up at this loan window with huge swag bags. Lending practices like this would make Barney Frank proud. One thing is certain. Tony Soprano was not the loan arranger.
Maybe the town won the lottery. Maybe the 50/50s and the bake sale celebrating the birth of the town were hugely successful. I noticed an expense item totaling $12,000 to celebrate the town’s birthday. Did any of this money wind up in the hands of the Seminoles or Miccosukees? If so, what was the net return?
Since none of this happened on your watch your job is simple.
There is a $2,500,000 turd in the Southwest Ranches punch bowl. All you have to do is explain to the citizens why they owe this amount particularly since no one knows how or if it was spent. Is it too late to grab some of the Stimulus moneys? Surely there are some “shovel ready” projects around. Somebody has to know where the bones are buried. Dig them up.
The alternative is to tell the world that for years the town has been run by boobies on work release from the nearest hatch. I may be wrong but aren’t local financials filed with the state made under oath? What does perjury smell like?
Broward County has the distinction of having the most temporary Federal agents leading the most active investigations per capita of any county in the United States. Southwest Ranches is a very small town. Get everybody who is working there or who has worked there – including consultants, lawyers, accountants, insurance salesmen, grant writers, lobbyists, and assorted grifters – under oath. The first one to flip gets a pass entitling him or her – Are you listening Mr. & Mrs. Wasserman Rubin? – to one “stay out of jail card”.
If this is the way a town without a city hall and a zip code they share with a few other burgs runs its money I can’t wait for the government to take over Health Care.
Kevin Smith
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Senator Harry Reid
March 7, 2010
Senator Harry Reid
600 East William Street
Carson City, NV 89701
RE: Keep up the great work!
Senator Reid,
First, let me congratulate you on saying 3 years ago “the war is lost”. Whodathunk that Obama was really a modern day Scipio Africanus. He ran Bush’s Gallipoli for about 10 days and he turned it around. Vice President Biden, AKA “Curley” in honor of the smartest Stooge, said that winning the war in Iraq was “Obama’s greatest achievement”. The combination of brass balls and shit for brains boobs is one of the problems any representative democracy faces. Sometimes they get elected.
But I digress.
You are proof positive that there is life after death. Everyone thought that Lee Atwater, the man who inspired James Carville, was dead. He ain’t.
He has turned you into the Manchurian Senator. Only demonic possession can explain your tsunami of never ending head so far up your ass that you could fondle your own uvula statements. Rhetorical incontinence, verbal diarrhea to those who still believe that “shovel ready” means “shovel ready”, such as yours should be celebrated as one more example of American exceptionalism.
“Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today.”
We can stipulate to one thing. It is certainly better than “37,000 people lost their jobs today”.
I think in your previous life you were the head of tourism for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Your slogan “Come glow with us” has become a classic.
Have you ever thought of working for North Korea?
“Visit a country with a negative carbon footprint”
Keep up the good work. The payoff comes in November.
Kevin Smith
Senator Harry Reid
600 East William Street
Carson City, NV 89701
RE: Keep up the great work!
Senator Reid,
First, let me congratulate you on saying 3 years ago “the war is lost”. Whodathunk that Obama was really a modern day Scipio Africanus. He ran Bush’s Gallipoli for about 10 days and he turned it around. Vice President Biden, AKA “Curley” in honor of the smartest Stooge, said that winning the war in Iraq was “Obama’s greatest achievement”. The combination of brass balls and shit for brains boobs is one of the problems any representative democracy faces. Sometimes they get elected.
But I digress.
You are proof positive that there is life after death. Everyone thought that Lee Atwater, the man who inspired James Carville, was dead. He ain’t.
He has turned you into the Manchurian Senator. Only demonic possession can explain your tsunami of never ending head so far up your ass that you could fondle your own uvula statements. Rhetorical incontinence, verbal diarrhea to those who still believe that “shovel ready” means “shovel ready”, such as yours should be celebrated as one more example of American exceptionalism.
“Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today.”
We can stipulate to one thing. It is certainly better than “37,000 people lost their jobs today”.
I think in your previous life you were the head of tourism for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Your slogan “Come glow with us” has become a classic.
Have you ever thought of working for North Korea?
“Visit a country with a negative carbon footprint”
Keep up the good work. The payoff comes in November.
Kevin Smith
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Senator Jim Bunning
March 3, 2010
Senator Jim Bunning
601 Main Street
Hazard, KY 41701
RE: Horatius at the bridge – Some comments on your stand in the Senate.
Senator Bunning:
There is no sense facing long odds unless they are “fearful”.
I am sending my letter to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post to you at your Hazard office because I was in the coal business there in the late 1970s. The rumblings from the regulatory agencies then and now are similar. You can do anything you want with coal except mine it and burn it.
Hazard was where I first “rode the belt”. I had my first taste of shine there also. In hindsight I wish the order of the adventures would have been reversed
Three things about your stand in the Senate:
#1 – “One man in the right is a majority.”
#2 – I am sorry and a bit ashamed that you were alone.
#3 - I am reminded of an incident in Senator Moynihan’s book - “A Dangerous Place” - about the UN. When he was the US Ambassador there the resolution that Zionism is Racism was introduced. Moynihan knew that the vote was stacked against him. Nevertheless, he pushed on against it. He used all the wiles that a former bartender and Harvard professor could conjure up to make sure that there were no easy wins. The day of the vote he demanded, and got, the yeas and the nays. As the count was taken and he knew he had lost he got up from his seat and walked over to the Israeli Ambassador. He put his arms around him and said, “Fuck’em”.
“Honor and shame from no condition rise.
Act well your part. There, all honor lies.”
I read this morning that you have 40 grandchildren. When they have grandchildren they will tell them about the man whose name is on the courthouse. The stories will be about a man who defined honor and, by the way, played baseball and knew some Presidents. You are a credit to the Republic.
Kevin Smith
Senator Jim Bunning
601 Main Street
Hazard, KY 41701
RE: Horatius at the bridge – Some comments on your stand in the Senate.
Senator Bunning:
There is no sense facing long odds unless they are “fearful”.
I am sending my letter to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post to you at your Hazard office because I was in the coal business there in the late 1970s. The rumblings from the regulatory agencies then and now are similar. You can do anything you want with coal except mine it and burn it.
Hazard was where I first “rode the belt”. I had my first taste of shine there also. In hindsight I wish the order of the adventures would have been reversed
Three things about your stand in the Senate:
#1 – “One man in the right is a majority.”
#2 – I am sorry and a bit ashamed that you were alone.
#3 - I am reminded of an incident in Senator Moynihan’s book - “A Dangerous Place” - about the UN. When he was the US Ambassador there the resolution that Zionism is Racism was introduced. Moynihan knew that the vote was stacked against him. Nevertheless, he pushed on against it. He used all the wiles that a former bartender and Harvard professor could conjure up to make sure that there were no easy wins. The day of the vote he demanded, and got, the yeas and the nays. As the count was taken and he knew he had lost he got up from his seat and walked over to the Israeli Ambassador. He put his arms around him and said, “Fuck’em”.
“Honor and shame from no condition rise.
Act well your part. There, all honor lies.”
I read this morning that you have 40 grandchildren. When they have grandchildren they will tell them about the man whose name is on the courthouse. The stories will be about a man who defined honor and, by the way, played baseball and knew some Presidents. You are a credit to the Republic.
Kevin Smith
Congressman Ron Klein
February 25, 2010
Congressman Ron Klein
800 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: It’s never too late – A Constituent comments on your 11th hour conversion to fiscal sanity as expressed in your Op-Ed in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
Congressman Klein,
Since this is the holy season of Lent it is well to remember that “while the light is left to burn the vilest sinner may yet return”.
The problem with your Op-Ed is that it could have been written by an aging hooker who knows that gravity and a rapidly turning calendar are her enemies. Her only salvation is to become chaste, like a born again virgin.
Three points:
#1 – You mention budget surpluses in the glorious Clinton years as if they really existed. You probably believe in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. The Federal budget makes no distinction between capitol items and expense items. That results in an aircraft carrier and “Midnight Basketball” being treated the same.
There is a word for that.
Madness.
Further, it is a matter of public record – that means you can look it up – that while those “budget surpluses” were being proclaimed throughout the land the Federal debt never went down by as much as penny. Never. What happened to those “surpluses”? The Federal debt continued to grow. The amount spent in the next year never went down. Maybe they are in the legendary “lock box’, the one that mere mortals can never see. Do you think that the election of a Republican House in 1994 had anything to do with those “surpluses”?
#2 – You say that you will make Scrooge look like Mother Teresa when you cut government programs. The problem with that is that you are a modern American Liberal. As such, you and your constituency have one fixed star in your ideological makeup. “Any public policy that robs Peter to pay Paul will have Paul’s support”. Further, you believe that, despite History, a country can tax itself to prosperity.
There is a word for that.
Lunacy.
#3 – You say that you will introduce legislation “that mandates we balance the budget”. There will be a fifth gospel before that happens. My Uncle Adam once said that “what is prudent in running the affairs of a household can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”.
I suggest you introduce legislation to get the Federal budget to recognize contingent liabilities. Those are the amounts of money that we know will be due at a date certain. It is not unusual for a parent to begin a college fund when the baby is born. We have not been doing that.
Then you can get Congress to stop the budgetary slight of hand that transfers all the money paid into Social Security and Medicare directly into the operating account of the Federal government. Once a year Uncle Sam issues a chit, a marker, an IOU to the Social Security administration for the amount filched. This has been done since 1964. I think they may be in the legendary “lock box”. The best example is the immortal Wimpy, Popeye’s friend. “I will gladly pay you on Thursday for a hamburger that I eat on Monday.” Congress is like Wimpy on nuclear steroids. If a private company were to do that the IRS would drag the owners out of their HQ in chains. May be we should turn them loose on Congress.
My suggestions for cutting the budget are direct and simple.
The Department of Agriculture has never grown a single ear of corn or a bushel of wheat. The Department of Energy has never cut a ton of coal. We have had the Department of Education for more than 30 years. Johnny still can’t read. What exactly doe the Department of Transportation do? It’s time for them to go.
The Constitution mandates that all revenue bills originate in the House. How many House budget resolutions have you voted against? How many final House/Senate budget acts have you voted against? It’s tough being chaste, isn’t it?
What do you think we should call the Fifth Gospel? We live in a diverse culture. How about the Book of Murray? How about the Book of Jose? How about the Book of Ebenezer?
In the end debits always equal credits. It is a lesson that the Gods of the Copybook Ledgers know by heart. It is a lesson that we may have to learn the hard way.
Kevin Smith
Congressman Ron Klein
800 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: It’s never too late – A Constituent comments on your 11th hour conversion to fiscal sanity as expressed in your Op-Ed in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
Congressman Klein,
Since this is the holy season of Lent it is well to remember that “while the light is left to burn the vilest sinner may yet return”.
The problem with your Op-Ed is that it could have been written by an aging hooker who knows that gravity and a rapidly turning calendar are her enemies. Her only salvation is to become chaste, like a born again virgin.
Three points:
#1 – You mention budget surpluses in the glorious Clinton years as if they really existed. You probably believe in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. The Federal budget makes no distinction between capitol items and expense items. That results in an aircraft carrier and “Midnight Basketball” being treated the same.
There is a word for that.
Madness.
Further, it is a matter of public record – that means you can look it up – that while those “budget surpluses” were being proclaimed throughout the land the Federal debt never went down by as much as penny. Never. What happened to those “surpluses”? The Federal debt continued to grow. The amount spent in the next year never went down. Maybe they are in the legendary “lock box’, the one that mere mortals can never see. Do you think that the election of a Republican House in 1994 had anything to do with those “surpluses”?
#2 – You say that you will make Scrooge look like Mother Teresa when you cut government programs. The problem with that is that you are a modern American Liberal. As such, you and your constituency have one fixed star in your ideological makeup. “Any public policy that robs Peter to pay Paul will have Paul’s support”. Further, you believe that, despite History, a country can tax itself to prosperity.
There is a word for that.
Lunacy.
#3 – You say that you will introduce legislation “that mandates we balance the budget”. There will be a fifth gospel before that happens. My Uncle Adam once said that “what is prudent in running the affairs of a household can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”.
I suggest you introduce legislation to get the Federal budget to recognize contingent liabilities. Those are the amounts of money that we know will be due at a date certain. It is not unusual for a parent to begin a college fund when the baby is born. We have not been doing that.
Then you can get Congress to stop the budgetary slight of hand that transfers all the money paid into Social Security and Medicare directly into the operating account of the Federal government. Once a year Uncle Sam issues a chit, a marker, an IOU to the Social Security administration for the amount filched. This has been done since 1964. I think they may be in the legendary “lock box”. The best example is the immortal Wimpy, Popeye’s friend. “I will gladly pay you on Thursday for a hamburger that I eat on Monday.” Congress is like Wimpy on nuclear steroids. If a private company were to do that the IRS would drag the owners out of their HQ in chains. May be we should turn them loose on Congress.
My suggestions for cutting the budget are direct and simple.
The Department of Agriculture has never grown a single ear of corn or a bushel of wheat. The Department of Energy has never cut a ton of coal. We have had the Department of Education for more than 30 years. Johnny still can’t read. What exactly doe the Department of Transportation do? It’s time for them to go.
The Constitution mandates that all revenue bills originate in the House. How many House budget resolutions have you voted against? How many final House/Senate budget acts have you voted against? It’s tough being chaste, isn’t it?
What do you think we should call the Fifth Gospel? We live in a diverse culture. How about the Book of Murray? How about the Book of Jose? How about the Book of Ebenezer?
In the end debits always equal credits. It is a lesson that the Gods of the Copybook Ledgers know by heart. It is a lesson that we may have to learn the hard way.
Kevin Smith
Dana Milbank The Washington Post
March 2, 2010
Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20071
RE: The infield fly rule, ½ game lead, and “a can of corn” – What the traditions of baseball have to do with the traditions of the Senate.
Mr. Milbank,
I couldn’t finish your article about Senator Bunning. The reason is simple. I couldn’t get past your first paragraph. The reason I couldn’t get past your first paragraph is that you chose to share your ignorance of baseball with us.
Jacques Barzun, a man with an astonishing CV but going from first to third on a Texas league dying quail probably wasn’t one of them, said, “If you don’t know baseball you don’t know America”.
If, as you say, Senator Bunning had a “graceful curveball” he wouldn’t have lasted 17 innings in the big leagues let alone 17 years. There is nothing particularly graceful when a ball falls off the edge of a table. Curveballs, sinkers. sliders, split finger, they have one thing in common. If they “hang”, if they fall into the “graceful” category, they are last seen gaining speed and altitude when they bang off the roof facade.
As to the rest of your article…Who knows? Who cares?
I have seen the video of the incident. Had I been his pitching coach the next sign I would have given him would have called for some “chin music” as Sal the Barber used to say. The first time you crowded the plate against Bob Gibson you would have had to change your pants. Against Drysdale you would have batted behind the umpire.
As for you, a Washington truism applies.
Once a smarmy bastard always a smarmy bastard.
Kevin Smith
PS – I am glad your picture was with the article. I always thought you were some sappy broad.
Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20071
RE: The infield fly rule, ½ game lead, and “a can of corn” – What the traditions of baseball have to do with the traditions of the Senate.
Mr. Milbank,
I couldn’t finish your article about Senator Bunning. The reason is simple. I couldn’t get past your first paragraph. The reason I couldn’t get past your first paragraph is that you chose to share your ignorance of baseball with us.
Jacques Barzun, a man with an astonishing CV but going from first to third on a Texas league dying quail probably wasn’t one of them, said, “If you don’t know baseball you don’t know America”.
If, as you say, Senator Bunning had a “graceful curveball” he wouldn’t have lasted 17 innings in the big leagues let alone 17 years. There is nothing particularly graceful when a ball falls off the edge of a table. Curveballs, sinkers. sliders, split finger, they have one thing in common. If they “hang”, if they fall into the “graceful” category, they are last seen gaining speed and altitude when they bang off the roof facade.
As to the rest of your article…Who knows? Who cares?
I have seen the video of the incident. Had I been his pitching coach the next sign I would have given him would have called for some “chin music” as Sal the Barber used to say. The first time you crowded the plate against Bob Gibson you would have had to change your pants. Against Drysdale you would have batted behind the umpire.
As for you, a Washington truism applies.
Once a smarmy bastard always a smarmy bastard.
Kevin Smith
PS – I am glad your picture was with the article. I always thought you were some sappy broad.
Senator Frank Lautenberg
March 2, 2010
Senator Frank Lautenberg
One Gateway Plaza
Newark, NJ 07102-5310
RE: A chance for immortality
Senator Lautenberg,
Amy, my wife, was diagnosed with cancer 8 months ago. Hers is stage 3C endometrial cancer. She has been operated on using the DaVinci robotic device. She has finished 6 weeks of chemotherapy, 5 weeks of radiation both external and internal, and is at the end of her last 6 weeks of additional chemotherapy.
I don’t envy you.
There may be some good that can be wrung from your diagnosis.
Last year, at one of those town hall meetings that he enjoys, President Obama took a question about end of life situations. He said that at a certain age and with certain diseases perhaps the best treatment is pain killers.
Maybe you should consider that option.
It is said that Achilles was offered the choice by Zeus of joining him in the Pantheon or becoming immortal as the greatest warrior in History.
He chose the latter.
You have served your country well for 7 decades. More importantly, you have served your country with honor.
You can make your journey “to the undiscovered country from which no traveler ever returns” a teachable moment. 34 centuries after slaying Hector people still sing of Achilles. The choice is yours.
Kevin Smith
Senator Frank Lautenberg
One Gateway Plaza
Newark, NJ 07102-5310
RE: A chance for immortality
Senator Lautenberg,
Amy, my wife, was diagnosed with cancer 8 months ago. Hers is stage 3C endometrial cancer. She has been operated on using the DaVinci robotic device. She has finished 6 weeks of chemotherapy, 5 weeks of radiation both external and internal, and is at the end of her last 6 weeks of additional chemotherapy.
I don’t envy you.
There may be some good that can be wrung from your diagnosis.
Last year, at one of those town hall meetings that he enjoys, President Obama took a question about end of life situations. He said that at a certain age and with certain diseases perhaps the best treatment is pain killers.
Maybe you should consider that option.
It is said that Achilles was offered the choice by Zeus of joining him in the Pantheon or becoming immortal as the greatest warrior in History.
He chose the latter.
You have served your country well for 7 decades. More importantly, you have served your country with honor.
You can make your journey “to the undiscovered country from which no traveler ever returns” a teachable moment. 34 centuries after slaying Hector people still sing of Achilles. The choice is yours.
Kevin Smith
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