Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Fred Grimm The Miami Herald

April 27, 2010

Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: Oil Spill in the Gulf – Another cross for Floridians to bear as you artfully explain in your column today.

Mr. Grimm,

When you’re right, you’re right. Like the Reverend Wright said, “Chickens coming home to roost”. In our selfish quest for comfort we may have doomed the planet. If it’s not Global Cooling it’s Global Warming. If it’s not those bogeymen it’s the even worse Climate Change. You may wish to become familiar with Tony Vivaldi, an obscure Italian climatologist. He explained all this, delightfully so, centuries ago.

After more than 60 years, with as many as 6500 producing wells, it was bound to happen. Add to this the 29 dead coal miners and perhaps we have reached a tipping point.

Florida’s time has come.

More than 25% of the gasoline used in Florida comes from oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico. Coal is the main fuel used by utilities to produce electricity in this country. 50% of the electricity used in Florida goes for air conditioning.

The first thing we can do is turn off the A/Cs. Sine 1997 I have been asking the Miami Herald to show us the way, to be the first to turn off the A/C in its HQ by the bay. Open the windows. Get some of the balmy and sultry breezes to circulate. It will be good for you. As a bonus think how many polar bears you will save.

We must have a Manhattan Project for transportation. If we can split the atom we can make organic skateboards zoom.

The internal combustion engine is, as former VP Alpha Gump tells us, “the worst invention of mankind”.

Just like China’s One Child policy has led them to being our biggest creditor, our One Car policy will lead us back to greatness. Not One Car per person but rather One Car per nuclear family. Unlike voting and immigration a photo id will be required for random stops. The hugely successful odd/even day program of the 1970s will serve as the paradigm. If you have a vanity plate, one without numbers, tough. You’re a fat cat and you must suffer. That will help. Besides, it’s only “fair”.

An immediate answer, but one that will take 12 to 15 years to implement, is nuclear power. Ever since those noted nuclear engineers, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, warned us of the dangers of a nuclear reactor turning into Hiroshima we have been reluctant, like Ned Ludd, to embrace technology. It was a good choice, wasn’t it?

As if things weren’t bad enough word comes from Havana that those ever popular ladrones grandes, los hermanos Castro, have signed a deal with the Chi-Coms to drill off their coast. In case you’ve forgotten your geography their coast is contiguous to our coast. We may have a problem there.

There are Florida students still suffering from FCATitis who will become lawyers. In time they will litigate the issues of this spill. Alas, the only party with standing in Havana over this issue would be the United States Navy. We once went to war to make the world safe for democracy. Think how much better the dead will rest knowing that they died so that fewer glaciers would melt.

That’s why you have to start jogging to work. That your work will be done in a no carbon footprint building, one that helps to heal the hole in the ozone layer, will doubtless be of great comfort. It ain’t easy being green.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

You first.




Kevin Smith



PS – The time has also come to say good-bye to plastic, don’t you think?

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel

April 25, 2010

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

RE: A promise kept plus a few comments on your column today on how the Bush family still attacks nesting turtles and manatees.

My dear Professor,

I promised that I would cease and desist from playing Whack-A-Mole with your perpetually outraged psyche for Lent. [I won’t bother you with the theological details but it’s possible that my sacrifi8ce may have saved some polar bears.]

I almost got to Pentecost.

Your quasi-philippic about the evil Bush family – Barbara Bush as Ma Barker is bit of stretch, no? – and the way that it and their cabal members, Halliburton, the Bilderburgs, the Illuminati, the Tri-Lateral Commission, and the Tea Party Thugs control every aspect of our lives up to and including haute couture.

Excessive rhetorical incontinence, proof positive that you can gild a lily, is a common trait to all card carrying modern American Liberals. I salute you as being primus inter pares.

You were inches away form a clean getaway in today’s column about Jeb Bush, AKA “Warlock Magnus”, until the following sentence.

“Jeb’s been publicly mum, but his sons,
with no credential but their name,
have blessed Rubio.”
[Italics mine]

That’s a dumb thing to say. Correction. That’s a very dumb thing to say.

How can I mock thee? Let me count the ways.

In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Congressman Kendrick Meek is running unopposed. How did he get to Congress?

His mother, Congresswoman Carrie Meek, cheated the death tax by giving her son her seat while still breathing. Who says you have to die for primogeniture to kick in? He seems like a nice young man but if Kendrick’s last name sounded like Shipitofsky or Gonzales he’d be dodging cars like a matador as he sold the Sun-Sentinel in our busy intersections.

Speaking of other members of the Lucky Sperm Club how about Congressman Patches Kennedy? Which specific qualifications other than being Tosspot Ted’s son did he have? On top of being a world class toper and a boob he is a world class shit. The only House he could have gotten into on his own has high walls, rubber rooms, close circuit TV, no sharp instruments, and doors without inside handles. Even the garbageman has memorized the 12 Steps.

Cur Kennedy has a cousin who was Lt. Governor of Maryland. She was so dumb she made my hair hurt. Who can forget her memorable TV appearance where she confused a football with a touchdown three times? Her single greatest achievement as an adult was being able to figure out what to do with her thumbs.

He has another cousin who decided that she wanted to be the United States Senator form New York. We’ll have a party as soon as she figures out that verbs and nouns sometimes make a sentence. As the reigning Queen of No-Sequiturs…ah but I repeat myself.

It is worth noting that every Kennedy wench in the public eye uses her maiden name as a crutch. Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. When you suffer from acute “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome” [SASE] and you are not sure how to spell TV or what color an orange is you need all the affirmative action help you can get.

Locally, another pleasant young man, Evan Jenne, a self proclaimed reader of romance novels if we are to believe his CV, a man whose singular achievement as an adult was to save a lot of money by shunning barber shops, sits in the state legislature because fortuna gave him the right father. He has the perpetual look of a man who gets lost on a ladder.

The voters will have a chance to rid themselves of the hated Bush pox this year at the polls. Should they not do so perhaps you will present yourself to the electorate for their consideration? I don’t know who your father was but I am sure he would have been proud to see you trying to get something the old fashioned way. By earning it.

Kevin Smith

Michael Mayo The Sun-Sentinel

April 25, 2010

Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: Oy! What’s to be done with the noveau riche Florida aborigines – Some comments on your article about contracts and the noble Redmen.

Mr. Mayo,

You may remember the Rabbi who befriended Nixon just before he took his last living ride on Air Force One. I first saw him on local TV in NYC citing the Torah about how you can’t sue the King.

He didn’t know from sovereign immunity; he knew what the good book said.

Despite the Rabbi’s protestations, Senator Irvin, a man who spent his entire adult life keeping White 3rd grade school girls safe from the lecherous stares of Black 3rd grade school boys, and Congressman Rodino, a man who came an embarrassing short and curly from doing the perp walk and going inside with his roommate Congressman Addonizio, prevailed.

The facts are rather straight forward in the matter about which you write.

Miss Panofsky thought she had a contract with the Seminoles. In the end they said she didn’t. Further, they evicted her in a manner that would get any Florida landlord sent to Abu Ghraib on a one way ticket with “Help Me Howard” taking the Madam DeFarge part.

I am surprised that Attorney General Holder hasn’t ordered her to be flogged.

The thing about sovereign immunity – Pop Quiz – Does the bum kissing chattering class that still thinks that Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his name should have the benefit of a new and updated Alien and Sedition Law? – is that it won’t go away.

Take the Post Office, the largest employer in the nation.




The numbers would suggest fertile ground for lawyers in the Workers’ Comp business. Not so. Try to find one who can build a practice representing injured Postal Workers. Not likely.

The reason is simple.

The Feds, the same bunch of swell guys soon to be in charge of health care, don’t respond to civil law suits.

If you trip and fall on the loading dock the sign on the door better be FED-EX or UPS or you’ll need that AFLAC duck to set up shop in your bedroom.

An unintended consequence of the Health Care bill is that it will solve the excesses of the medical malpractice law suits. Once the physicians become employees of the Federal government the same rules that the Post Office uses will apply to them. I am surprised that the Feds didn’t count the disappearing malpractice premiums as a savings toward bending the budget curve.

There’s the problem. Here’s one solution.

If the Down Low High Plains Gamboling Fugowis are a sovereign nation let’s treat them like one.

Sovereign nations control their borders as Arizona just reminded us. If they want to admit foreigners that’s their business. If they want to come back in to this country they damn well better have their papers handy.

If some one gets a bad clam at the buffet take him to their medicine man. Sovereign nations have their own hospitals, don’t they?

What if Cuba wanted to become a customer of Florid Power and Light? What would FPL do if they didn’t pay their bill? Send the American Navy? Tell the Injuns to generate their own electricity.

If a Gringo banker has a cow if someone tries to move $10,001 around how do we know what’s in those Brink’s trucks? Stop a few and find out.

Every car leaving a tax exempt cigarette teepee has to stop and listen to the state revenue agents tell the smokers that it is a sales and use tax.

If a crime is committed on their sovereign territory the Feds, the same guys who soon will be facing the “Too Much Salt is Never Enough” hardliners, should let the Constitution prevail.

Section 8, parts 10 and 11specifically enumerate the powers that the government can use to protect Miss Panofsky. The government can “punish piracies” and “grant letters of marquee and reprisal”.

We grant extraordinary powers to bail agents, powers that the good guys at Gitmo wish they had. Why not let Miss Panofsky benefit from them?

In any event my Aunt has found a new believer. Apparently the adage that made Hester Street famous, “Don’t pee on my back and tell me it’s rain”, doesn’t apply when it comes to noble Redmen.

Madness.



Kevin Smith



PS – Speaking of standing up for what’s right is there any chance the Sentinel will publish those Mohammed cartoons?

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Representative Jim Waldman

April 24, 2010

Representative Jim Waldman
313 House Office
412 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1300

RE: Democracy – Ain’t it grand?

Representative Waldman,

Laying aside the evils of tobacco, the coming pandemic of teenage obesity, the premise that teachers should be held to the same standards set for football coaches, the continuing heartbreak of psoriasis, the transformational change of American foreign policy towards Israel, the continuing pox visited on Florida by the merde-filled Quebecois and what any legislature can do about them I suggest yet another candidate for your political unicorn farm.

The Miami Herald shows you objecting to the never ending briar patch of redistricting. My faith in the tooth fairy and believing financial projections about any public program is strengthened whenever a supposedly rational adult says that the process should be “non-political”.

May I suggest that someone – how about you? – acknowledge the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the corner?

Baker v Carr be damned but there was a deal struck between urban Black and non-urban Whites that validated some of the premises set forth in The Federalist Papers.

I can’t speak for the needle toothed banjo strumming boy on the porch Deliverance districts. I can see that there are districts here that would elect O.J. Simpson or Michael Jackson. Taking a cue from the Gomers in North Korea or maybe giving them some ideas the Kennedys and the Meeks hand out legislative seats that would have made Trollope proud.

How the common weal is advanced by this is beyond me.

I must admit that there are some modern American Liberal Jewish districts in Broward County that would vote for Dr. Mengele because of his progressive views on abortion.

Here’s a plan.

Pick a geometric shape.

Circle, square, rhomboid, inter alia

Since only the Census is constitutionally mandated to conduct an exact head count maybe statistical sampling could be used. Whatever method is used on Sistrunk Boulevard must be used in areas where feral pigs are house pets. Use those shapes to redraw district lines.

Let free men decide!


Kevin Smith


PS – As a righteous gentile I wonder if you have had any contact with former Congressman “Toad” Wexler. How is his new job at the Lions and Lambs Institute working out?

Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald

April 22, 2010

Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: How refreshing! And on Earth Day to boot. Who says satire is dead? Some comments on the Op-Ed signed by EPA acting Head Cossack Stan Meiburg.

Sirs,

Sometimes the editorial pages of the Miami Herald read like they have been “weaned on a pickle”. The constant reminder of our “better angels”, the tsk-tsking at partisanship, the unwavering belief that governments can overcome gravity, and the never ending contortions that would make Dante envious. I have just described an editorial staff in thralldom to the constantly shifting standards of modern American Liberalism. Did I just say “shifting standards”? Yes, I did.

You gave me pause today. Somewhere in that cauldron of lock step thinking there is a free spirit desperately yearning to be outed.

Stan Meiburg, acting head of the Atlanta office of the EPA, is surely a composite character. His picture shows a smiling face but if he means what he has written he could become the poster boy for Gin for Breakfast clubs.

He begins his hectoring by telling us that “the average American needs 25 acres, 3 times the world average, to support his lifestyle”. Logic, that cruel master, would suggest he wants the “average American” to give up 16 acres of good and plenties as if this will somehow make life better in Zimbabwe or Myanamar.

He begins his list by telling us to “use less water”.

#1 – The designs for Roman public baths are still available. How about we all scrub each other’s backs?

He tells us to “commute without polluting”.

#2 – I have petitioned the Miami Herald since 1997 to use its vast editorial reach to mandate that all public employees must use public transit. No exceptions. None. Further, to show that your heart is in the right place, all Herald employees must agree, as a condition of employment, never to set foot in a privately owned vehicle unless it is a Paddy wagon or a hearse.

He tells us to “save electricity”.


#3 – I have petitioned the Miami Herald since 1997 to stop the environmentally rapacious practice of air conditioning in its World HQ by the Bay. Just say no. Just turn it off. Atlanta gets pretty hot in the summer so I am sure that when Mr. Meiburg explains to his employees the nature of the problem facing humanity they will be more than willing to give up their A/C also. A bonus, a serendipitous happy event from this, is that we know that fewer polar bears will drown. That means that these lovable ice dancers will eat more baby seals. There will be fewer baby seals being poleaxed for the sake of couture. A win-win-win all around except maybe for the seals. Of course, if you care more about them then the bears turn you’re A/C up to hanging meat temperature. That way you’ll drown the bears insuring that the seals will set the Guinness Book ablaze for reproducing. As you can see, everything is interconnected. Got it?

He tells us to “reduce, reuse, recycle”.

#4 – I am glad to see that Mr. Meiburg has learned from Chairman Mao, the 20th century’s greatest murderer. Mao looked on the collective Chinese bowel movement as the world’s largest fertilizer factory. The Chi-Coms had some rough patches with it in the beginning but something must have worked. How could they have become a silent partner with Wal*Mart? How could they afford to own all those Treasury Bills if it didn’t? Maybe we could have communal collection pits, next to the public baths, before you use the public baths, working on an odd/even bonus system. I’ll get back to you when I work out the details. It sounds like a natural for some Stimulus swag, don’t you think?

He tells us to “test our homes for Radon”.

#5 – I know a bit about Radon. It is a noble gas. That means it is inert. If you think you have it check the lowest part of your house first. If you have it and you want to get rid of it in an environmentally sensitive manner open the windows and turn on a fan. Radon is measured by some very sensitive devices. All Physics is measurement. Radon is measured in pico curies. The highest concentration of Radon in the world is to be found on the outside walls of the Lincoln Memorial. If you were to press your nose to the wall and hold the meter there it could not measure the emanation. If you were to step back 2 feet it would also be immeasurable. In those 2 feet it is disbursed harmlessly into the atmosphere. The lesson to be learned from this is stunningly simple. Should you find the need to have your nose nailed to any monument in Washington, DC fight like hell to make sure it’s the one for Jefferson.

He tells us to “check your local air quality”.

#6 – We all “know” that man made CO2 is the biggest pollutant in the world. Again the simple solution is at hand. By fiat or by ukase just issue a reg limiting the number of times people can exhale. The older you are the fewer gasps you get. Naturally, some exceptions will be carved out for women and minorities since they suffer disproportionately. The dreaded “Word Police” can double in brass by being “Lung Police”.

He tells us to “use chemicals wisely”.

#7 – Stop the presses! Who knew? Avoid swimming in the fertilizer swill. Eschew plastic. All plastic. Don’t use the overflow from the polyester factory for your tofu stew or rainbow soup. By the way, fire burns. Also, as Orwell said, “Stones are hard, water is wet”. Try to remember these lessons. Teach your son.

He tells us to “enjoy the outdoors safely”.

#8 – Avoid swimming with alligators. Wear warm clothes if it is cold. Don’t get between a mother bear and her cubs. Don’t wear white after Labor Day. Drink white wine only when they run out of red. Don’t keep score at children’s games. Use sun screen Avoid the social ramble. Train cows not to fart. Also sheep. Don’t pet the pythons. Capture some manatees to make sausage for the homeless.

He tells us to “spread the word”.

#9 – Here’s the word I am going to spread…

For spreading such Godawful anti-rational claptrap, I hereby name you

HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK

For thinking that there are no rational adults, people with built in bullshit detectors, I hereby name you

POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH

For having the regulatory soul so common to statist thugs, I hereby name you

SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR


Kevin Smith



CC - SMEPA

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. The New York Times

April 18, 2010

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.
The New York Times
860 8th Avenue
New York, NY 10018

RE: “Homer nods” – A mistake, acknowledged

Muy estimado Arturo,

Actually I wanted to say “Only Allah can weave a perfect rug”. I didn’t for fear that you would sic the dreaded “Word Police” on me.

In the last paragraph of my note to you dated 4/13/10 I used the word “flounders”. I meant to say “founders”. My penance for this venial verbal transgression will be an extra hour of IVing William Safire.

On the other hand maybe “flounders” isn’t that far off.

Fish stink from the head, don’t they?

Kevin Smith


PS – My Spanish salutation is to help prepare you for the day when your gate keeper says that the Frito Bandido is here with 6 finalists in the Pancho Villa lookalike contest. He says the mortgage is past due. He says he “spoke to the Lord who told him to foreclose”. Promise me that before Zapata’s nephew comes with the sheriff and the locksmith that you’ll run the Mohammed cartoons.

Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald

April 14, 2010

Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: Let my people go, please? – In which, in response to your column this day, I settle the issue of slavery and whether or not the South fought to preserve it.

Mr. Pitts,

I speak with a moral authority unmatched by most.

#1 – My forebears abolished slavery in the 7th century after the birth of Christ. Today there are at least 5 countries in Africa where it is still permitted. Those countries, Chad, Mali, Mauretania, Nigeria, and Sudan will not be a party to this conversation. The reason for this is simple: Caesar dixit!

#2 – About 8 feet from where I type is a photograph of a Celtic cross with an Irish wolfhound at its base. The inscription says: “Gentle when stroked, fierce when provoked.” It is the symbol of the New York 69th, the Irish Brigade. At noon, on the 2nd of July, 1863 the Brigade stepped off into the Wheat Field. Somewhere close by the pipes were skirling and the drums were ratatattatting “Garryowen”. My father’s father had two uncles who fought there. One of them is still there, “wrapped in his faded coat of blue”. I hope he died quick and I hope he died clean. Either way it was 147 years ago.

4 months later, an ungainly man, a man that the New York Times and the Democratic Party called a “baboon”, spoke of the losses and what we could do to remember them. 16 months later, a month before he died, he spoke of “binding up the nation’s wounds”. He spoke of “malice towards none and charity towards all”.

By the authority vested in me I declare the Civil War to be over. General MacArthur said on September 2, 1945 “These matters have been decided on the battle field. These proceedings are closed.”

If they aren’t over and reparations are approved could I get a transferable carry forward tax credit to compensate me for my loss?




Kevin Smith

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

April 16, 2010

Hillary Clinton
Secretary of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

RE: At last! Something that is rising faster in Washington than the Federal deficit.

Madame Secretary,

Of course I mean the liquor bill at Foggy Bottom. I hope you’re drinking American.

This morning I saw a marvelous picture of you on the internet, the one that your husband’s VP Alpha Gump invented. You were on an airplane carousing like the old days sat the Rose Law Firm Christmas party. At least you weren’t drinking egg nog. You know what they say, “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips”. The last time I saw you with whiskey in hand was during the Pennsylvania primary when you were doing shots and beers in a bowling alley. I wonder what chapter of Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals covered that.

Then I saw your picture in the Miami Herald. You co-authored an article on energy and how Costa Rica, Saint Kitts, the lost Caribbean Kingdom of Kafiristan, Suriname, Devils’ Island, the Chamizal, Trinidad but not Tobago, the Grand Duchy of Carmen Miranda, Sark West, Mexico’s wind center in Oaxaca, the Peoples’ Republic of the Spanish Steps, Dominica, Leeward Graustarkia, Culebra, Windward Ruratania, Calle Ocho, a biomass center in Brazil, a geothermal center in El Salvador and the United States, the world’s largest producer of “RESET” buttons, are going to join hands and remake the energy paradigm in the Americas – Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia excepted. Maybe we can get some of the drug cartels involved. They seem to know what they are doing.

Needless to say, you have a slightly loopy look. It would be like the first time you caught Handsome Billy trying to use your pantyhose to make a Bimbo strapado.

At some point you have to ask if John Foster Dulles or John Hay had to say things like this. I know that Henry Kissinger never said such claptrap. Madeline Albright would have said it. Here’s a woman who gave lap dances to Jesse Helms. She would have said anything.

This country can’t drill in ANWR because of concern for Arctic char and peripatetic ptarmigan. Perhaps we’ll convert it into a hospice for terminal polar bears.

At some point you had to sign off on the loan guarantee to let a company controlled by George Soros drill off the coast of Brazil. Who cares about oil spills there?

I can’t wait for the arrival of the Barbados solar water heater machine. Doubtless it will be environmentally sensitive, organically grown, and give new job opportunities to women and minorities and women minorities. It will be part of the expanded health care package. It will enable us to shut down all those nasty coal mines. Why not have an official set aside for patents of perpetual motion machines to be held by single moms who are women of color with children in need of a good Ritalin program?

Who says that government can’t run a successful Rainbow Stew franchise?

Can’t you do an earmark for Haiti and Union City, NJ? Maybe you could throw some business to the Puerto Rican assassins and bomb throwers that your husband pardoned.

If you have ever seen a working biomass you would know that the biggest raw material is ca-ca. Ca-ca de caballo is preferred but if Dobbin isn’t in the mood we can just use the effluence and the offal from the State Department.

Based on your article that biomass could keep us going for another decade.

That is why I think you should be drinking more.

That is why I think you are drinking more.


Kevin Smith

PS – You spent a good deal of your time in the Senate hectoring the country on why we shouldn’t allow the Chi-Coms to own so much of our Treasury obligations. I can’t wait for when you tell them to take their money and shove it.
PS – I just saw the video of the speech you gave in 2003 on why it is the duty of every American to protest against the government. With your permission I will include said speech in my soon to be completed visual dictionary under the headings of “shrew”, “shrill”, “ PMS Bitchy is a terminal disease”, and “banshee”.

Arthur M. Sulzberger, Jr. The New York Times

April 13, 2010

Arthur M. Sulzberger, Jr.
The New York Times
860 8th Avenue
New York, New York 10018

RE: Time to say Goodbye. The stars are aligned.

Mr. Sulzberger,

When the Masters Golf Tournament is played and the Pulitzer Prize announcement is almost simultaneous it means that the stars are aligned. I don’t need to examine the entrails of an owl to know that it is time to say Goodbye.

I come from a literate family.

My father read Owen Wister stories to me. Smokey, then the Virginian. He also read the New York Times to me. The two Arthurs, Krock and Daley, were regular fare. Brooks Atkinson got me to my first Broadway play. As I much as I enjoyed Bosley Crowther’s reviews when first read I must tell you that they have not stood up to the calendar.[Look at his typical modern American Liberal guilt-ridden review of “Guns at Batasi” from 1964.] I had lunch in your dining room at least 20 times. I remember the first time I finished the daily puzzle. I remember the first time I finished the Sunday puzzle. [As an interesting aside it must be noted that the last time I did one of your puzzles its completion was noted and commented on by a Pulitzer Prize winner. His comment was, “You do them in ink”?]

The death spin of your editorial page, what with Frank Rich and his perpetually knotted knickers coupled with his caterwauling and wailing when “Angels in America” is not recited before the Super Bowl and Paul Krugman, toes up on the edge of barking mad when ever someone says “Are you Rasputin’s evil twin” or “Where did you stash the ENRON loot”, continues when these two drown more polar bears with their screeds than all the SUVs ands coal fired plants ever manufactured

There is some good news I can tell you.

Your confirmation as a Perpetual Life Plus Tenured Emeritus Member of the Lucky, I Mean Really, Really Lucky Sperm Club has been confirmed and will be announced shortly. Who says Rupert Murdock isn’t a good reporter?



From losing $1,100,000,000 – that’s one billion one hundred million – of your unequal shareholders’ money – the Boston Globe, remember? – to making hitting from the Ladies’ Tees the moral equivalent of this country going to war allows me to recast the great Dr. Johnson. “It was a stupid thing done stupidly”.

The only place where such failures would be tolerated would be the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Energy. Intentions and efforts count for all. The real world, the world where “stones are hard and water is wet” is looked on as an aberration, a speed bump on the road to the earthly paradise of living large. “Your search for a system so perfect that no one will have to be good” has not and will not transit safely between the twin contingent disasters of Scylla or Charybdis

You actually devoted more Page 1 space in 2003 to the Masters Tournament lack of chicks than to the United States going to war.

Another chapter of the Masters has been written without Oprah or Billie Jean King yelling for a “Mulligan” because some red necked misogynist yelled “Iron my shirts” when they were eyeballing a short putt. In fact, that golf course by itself is probably the largest contributing factor to Global Warming, Climate Change, and drowning polar bears. Those greens look like every barber from Seville was working overtime lest an errant sprout misdirect a putt. How those rich White guys gets those flowers to bloom on time every year is proof positive of something evil, pernicious, and contra the common weal. The club probably has thousand of sheep and cows engaging in nocturnal borborygymous eructations since the middle of February to make sure those azaleas and magnolias do what they are supposed to do, Damnit. What they do with all those critters during the day is one of those enduring mysteries. Mysteries like The Bermuda Triangle. The dead voting in Cook County. The never living voting in Hudson County. Taxing our way to prosperity. “Midnight Basketball”. “Alternative Shopping”. Neville Chamberlain as a diplomatic role model. The Post Office running health care. The IRS running the DMV offices.. Focusing on the heartbreak of psoriasis and teenage obesity. Hope and change. “The triumph of hope over experience.” Things like that.

But then came the Pulitzer Prize announcements.

Two things of note:

#1 – The National Enquirer didn’t win any.

#2 – You let Walter Duranty, Times employee and Pulitzer Prize winner, slide for another year on your Hall of Fame.

Walter Duranty, for those with the great gift so common of modern American Liberals, that gift being “eclectic indignation”, won the Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Reporting when he was your correspondent, your employee, in Moscow in 1932.

You may remember that 15 years after John Reed, 15 years after Upton Sinclair, 15 years after Armand Hammer – ask Al Gore, 15 years after Scientific Socialism, 15 years after the NKVD, 15 years of failed crop after failed crop after failed crop, 15 years after the Lubyanka, Stalin, like Nero, needed a scapegoat. He blamed the Kulaks. I mention 15 years because after those happy times Uncle Joe, Koba the Dread to his fellow countrymen, didn’t have enough bullets to kill the 8,000,000 Kulaks. He took the path of least resistance; he starved them.

Your man in Moscow, Walter Duranty, filed report after report saying the opposite. “Sure there were problems but it was a case of two chickens rather than three in every pot. Besides, most of the Kulaks were Jews and you know how high their cholesterol is. A few months of half rations would do them a world of good.”

That’s what he wrote. That’s what you printed.

We know for certain of two readers.

The guy who gave him the Pulitzer Prize was one.

The other was Adolph Hitler.

But wait. There’s more.

I left out the best part.

Your man in Moscow, Walter Duranty, your employee, was a bought and paid for agent of the KGB.

Leaving aside the poser of how long did you know that – What did you know and when did you know it? – the achingly nasty question, a question that I have been asking since the late 1980s, a question that I asked so many times in so many ways that you assigned a Mr. William Borders to answer my requests for what you wanted to do about this terrible thing.

Every year when the Pulitzers are awarded you have a chance to man up, to cleanse your corporate soul, to shout out a mea culpa. Every year you turn down the chance.

Duranty was the 1932 Pulitzer winner for Foreign Reporting

The 1934 winner for Foreign Reporting, Frederick T. Birchall, was also a New York Times employee. He was your man in Berlin. I believe that if he had been shown to be a bought and paid for agent of the Gesztapo your grief and remorse would have known no bounds. You would have bought ethnic cleansing to a level that the Serbs and Tutsis would have greatly envied. Every year you would have prostrated yourself on the altar of public opinion and begged for forgiveness. Every year the monks of the Church of Modern American Liberalism would flog you like Henry the 2nd on Pulitzer Day.

Perhaps another employee, San Tannenhaus, he of the Whittaker Chambers biography, could explain why a 78 year old sin concerning the first genocide in Europe in the 20th century goes on and on in an unrepented state. God’s grace extends to corporations. Dante’s traveler finding himself “in the dark wood of error” gathers the grace to “look up and see the stars”. Somewhere there are Jews who are entitled to Kaddish. Somewhere there is disquiet in the universe that needs to be healed.

Your silence is sickeningly deafening.

I hereby declare the 60 year bond between me, the reader, and you, the paper to be broken.

Perhaps it is not uncoincidental that we are hard upon the anniversary of the Titanic. Senor Shylock, your Mexican note holder, cares not whether the ship flounders. He owns the salvage rights.

Kevin Smith


PS – Is your dislike of Lincoln and his handling of the Civil War still fair game? Did it mean you were in favor of slavery? You were opposed to Sherman’s “surge”. Is that why you were opposed to Bush’s?

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Steven Thomma McClatchey Newspapers

April 8, 2010

Steven Thomma
McClatchey Newspapers
700 12th Street NW
Washington, DC 20005

RE: History, the moving finger and the bird, and the Trousered Apes who confuse them.

Mr. Thomma,

Accustomed as I am to any story under the McClatchey brand being unhindered either by fact, perspective, or nuance I knew I was in for a treat, a very special treat, when I stumbled on your tale of eclectic Historical editing of text books published on April 1, 2010.

In 1974 I was called a Nazi for daring to ask what the teaching of batik in the lower grades of the St. Cloud Grammar School in West Orange, NJ had to do with whether or not my son could read. While I am a purist about the First Amendment I did not take kindly to that. I pointed out the error to the speaker in a way that greatly impressed him.

15 years later the New York State Board of Regents issued a ukase – and aren’t they all ex cathdera? – about the Constitution in general and James Madison in particular. The Board let it be known that henceforth the influence of the tribal councils of the 5 Nations, and I will award you the most prestigious Herotodus is my Hero laurel if you can name said 5 Tribes, must be highlighted when discussing the American Constitution. The Board wanted to decrease the influence that DWEMs [Dead White European Males] had on Madison and increase the influence that the idyllic Hudson Valley aborigines had on him. After all, weren’t those White guys all slave owners?

Your interesting article lists 5 topics that you say knuckle dragging Conservatives are seeking to rewrite. Let’s visit them one by one.

#1 – Jamestown - Laying aside the form of ownership of the original settlers the main reason why they almost starved to death was that they grew tobacco rather than corn or wheat. For a time tobacco, like amber before and aluminum after, was the most valuable commodity in the world. Bubbles were meant to burst or they woldn’t be called bubbles, would they? Joe Camel really worked Elizabethan England to a frenzy, it being back in the time when it was still legal to advertise the joys of smoking and chewing. It is said of the bayonet that you can do everything with it except sit on it. The end uses of tobacco are legion. Alas, there was/is/shall be no way to eat it.

#2 – Alexander Hamilton – “A national debt, properly managed, can be a national blessing.” When you finish reading the Federalist Papers get back to me. Did you know that he wanted to make Paterson, NJ the industrial capital of America? The New York Post and the Bank of New York are part of his legacy.

#3 – Theodore Roosevelt – One of my favorite TR quotes comes from his handling of the Agadir Incident. Since you are doubtless familiar with it I will leave out those little facts that make it so interesting. Suffice to say that TR’s pro British stand was taken to be anti German by many people in America. The German Mayor of Milwaukee, proud of his Hunnish background, wired the President expressing his outrage. In the telegram he mentioned that he was supported by 100,000 German-Americans. Teddy wired him back saying that there was at least 100,000 lamp posts in America.

Another of his great accomplishments was his forcing the acceptance of football helmets by American colleges.

Many half-wits say he stole the Panama Canal from the Panamanians. “Not so, not so”, as the great Rumsfeld would say. He stole the province of Panama from Colombia. Then he built the canal’

“All History is biography; all biography is anecdote.”

#4 – The other Roosevelt – You know, of course, that candidate Roosevelt campaigned in 1932 promising to balance the budget. One of his campaign promises was to stop deficit financing. Honest. You could look it up.

If we take March 4, 1933 as the starting point every measurable standard of the economy was worse after 6 years of the New Deal. GDP, GNP, employment, tax revenues, bankruptcies, inter alia, were worse after 6 years of Fireside Chats, Alphabet Agencies, attempted Court packing, and the achingly horrible plays of Clifford Odets

Modern American Liberals are quite comfortable reviling Birthers. I am curious as to why some of their billingsgate is not saved for Truthers. Your research assignment is to trace the design and production of the Boeing B-17 in Wichita, Kansas as the starting point for the industrial recovery in America.

I envy you your coming joy at the discovery of unknown things. It is obvious from your screed that all of the above is terra incognita to you.

Other little known facts about FDR include

A – He made it illegal for Americans to own gold coins. He forced Americans to sell him their coins for $20 an ounce. For the twin purposes of international settlements and Treasury financial statements he then raised the price to $35 on ounce. That was a great trade for the Feds but not for the citizens. His bullion shenanigans destabilized the silver market. Silver was the metal that was the glue in Chinese society. The main beneficiary of this was Mao-tse Tung and his merry revelers. You can look it up.

B – He didn’t smelt all the gold. In October, 1942 $20,000,000 dollars in $20 gold pieces was put on a cruiser at the Bayonne Navy Base. It was to be used as bribes for the North African WOGs prior to the American invasion. My father was the Federal official who helped to count them.

C – Did you ever wonder how the Feds were able to snatch up all the Americans of Japanese descent so quickly in 1942? FDR called his good friend Governor Warren of California and enlisted him in pre-Gitmo Gitmo incarcerations. This was done so quickly and efficiently thanks in part to the active participation of the Census Bureau. There is ample precedent for this. General Sherman, the originator of the still popular “surge”, was able to pick and choose the plantations he would “visit” based on what the 1860 Census said.

D – Why did FDR take the advice of the New York Times and recognize the USSR? The main dispenser of this was a Times employee named Walter Duranty. I tremble when I think that there may be some reporters who are unaware of his perfidy. Somewhere Thucydides or Gibbon, maybe both, said “I smell a rat”. As soon as I find where I will get back to you.

E – Did he know about Pearl Harbor before it happened? Speaker Foley conducted a House investigation on the “October Surprise” because, as he said, “There was no evidence”. You can look that one up too. It’s never too late.

F – Why did FDR dump Henry Wallace from the ticket in 1944? I am still scratching my head over that one. You don’t suppose

G – One thing that absolutely did not happen was FDR getting on TV in 1929 to tell the American people that there was a depression coming. Regardless of what Curley Biden, named Curley in honor of the smartest Stooge said, it never happened. I cite the following reasons: There was no TV in 1929 and he wasn’t the President. If you can get past those two turds in the punch bowl maybe Howard Zinn could write an interesting narrative about it. How about tunes by Woody Guthrie and dialogue by any member of the Hollywood Ten?

#5 – Joe McCarthy – McCarthy without the penumbras and nuances of History is the way of the dullard and the dunce. McCarthy’s arena contained the following events:
A – Alger Hiss was at Yalta as a Presidential assistant. Does anyone know if there were any winks, nods, or secret handshakes between him and his Soviet counterparts?
B – Julius Rosenberg and his Hecate mate Ethel led the successful conspiracy to steal the atomic bomb for the Russians.
C – 54,248 Americans were killed in Korea. 4,578 are still listed as missing in action.
D – If McCarthy were as bad as he is made out to be why did Bobby Kennedy volunteer to be his first attorney? You may be surprised to know that his father and brother were greatly in favor of him getting the job. He was succeeded by Roy Cohn.
E – If A&B are true and since we know that C happened couldn’t a case be made for him using the rack for interrogations?

The New York Times mourned the death of President Warren G. Harding as one of the great tragedies in American History. It was a while before they changed their minds. Despite the Kellogg-Briand Naval Treaty the Japanese Navy and the German Navy tried for 3 long years to sink the ship on which my wife’s father served. Everyone knows that Spain was the leader in the killing of heretics. The problem with that is that were far more deaths in 16th century Protestant England because you went to the wrong church then were in Catholic Spain.

I mention that because History is like an osmotic filter. Rumors, half truths, half lies, lies, innuendo, the fog of war, penumbras, questions…everything…gets poured into the open end. It then gets both shaken and stirred. Time wounds all heels.

For 50 years Mr. & Mrs. Beard set the tone for American History, particularly the parts about the Constitution. Their thesis, that the Founding Fathers were mostly money hungry shits, went unchallenged. In fact, it resonated with those of a scientific socialist mindset who dearly loved to find “facts” that buttressed their arguments. It took 5 years of research by one Historian, C. Forrest McDonald, to disprove their thesis and to prove the opposite. The Beards fell down into the memory hole that modern American Liberals keep handy for their fallen idols.

Think Dan Rather saying, “So what if the documents are false, look at the big picture”. The best place to present non-thoughts such as that would be on Broadway. There, all things are possible. A quick glance at the past winners of Pulitzer Prizes for drama proves that “kissing don’t last but cooking do”. People still ask why Oedipus went to Colonnus. Is anyone interested where the Angels in America have gone? Why was a musical about an Argentinean hooker wildly successful while a touching love story about the Titanic, forgive me, floundered by the head?

I have to go now. Damn them but The Gods of the Copy Books Headings have just cleared their collective throats. Jimmy Carter is still the worst President in the 20th Century. The vote was unanimous.






Kevin Smith

Michael Mayo The Sun-Sentinel

April 6, 2010

Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: Say what? – Why the laws governing gravity no longer apply to eddykation and why the smarmy bastards who run the schools should be made to run a gauntlet of outraged parents and taxpayers.

Mr. Mayo,

If we can have a health care bill enacted into law with no public reading of it why can’t we have an education bill enacted the same way?

You quote Jerry O’Donnell, chairman of the science department at Eagles Landing Middle School in Boca Raton thus. “This is going to kill education…”

Middle school? Is that the upper middle school or the lower middle school? Why do I know that this middle school is overrun like the swamp west of Sawgrass Mills mall is overrun by pythons with curriculum coordinators, diversity specialists, nutrition consultants, deputy vice assistant principals, media advisors, reading advisors, shop stewards, grievance counselors, and certified life coaches? It is a sad fact that those parasites couldn’t find a classroom without a good scent hound and a GPS. Should they stumble into one, like a blind hog finding a truffle, chaos would result. So much of education dollars is spent on things bordering on the absurd that adults turn their gaze away from it lest they be infected. The unions, the cabals, the conspiracy of the educational/poverty complex and their servy boys, the spineless pols who pander to them have flummoxed America into equating educational results with dollars spent. If the results are not good the solution is simple.

Spend more money.

Would it be too much of me to ask, would it be a sign of terminal naïveté if I were to ask that school teachers and educational administrators be held to the same standards demanded of the football coach. Coaches are not rated, retained, or compensated on intentions or efforts. They come back next year based on what they did this year.

Public employees always caterwaul about the lack of respect shown to them. They say they should be treated like employees of private companies. There are a lot of people who used to work for GM who would like to have the security of being a public employee. Wouldn’t the guy installing wheel bearings love to have had tenure?

For 5 years the number of students in the Broward County school system has gone down. If I were to suggest that there should have been a corresponding drop in some portion of the operating budget would it brand me as a bumpkin? Put simply, simple enough for even an education major to grasp, fewer students should mean fewer containers of milk, right?

Wrong.

For 12 years the Sun-Sentinel has reported on the farce known as the continuing construction crisis of Dillard High School. Approximately 4 times the original cost of construction has been spent on reconstruction.

Madness.

In the real world, the world in which the bankrupt Sun-Sentinel tries to survive, this does not happen. Floggings, bastinadoing, and defenestrations would follow. If we empty Gitmo of bomb tossing WOGs let’s fill it with education majors. The thieving hypocrites in charge would seek sanctuary from Somali pirates before they would face the righteous wrath of the taxpayers.

Why is there universal aversion to testing in the tight circle of education hucksters? The answer is as clear as a geometric design .We have gone in this country from there is no such thing as a bad boy to there is no such thing as a dumb boy. The results of standardized tests refute this. It is very difficult to ignore the evidence of your own eyes. The intellectual pygmy thugs who control American education have a simple answer: Do away with the tests. All tests.

I know that a simple change in geometry would lead us to the fabled Elysian Fields. Just change pi from 3.1416 to 3.0. Test scores would soar. Teachers would get performance bonuses. The self esteem quotient of obese teenagers would rise dramatically.

I know that the bridges would start to fall down in 20 years but this is America and all things are possible. If the Chi-Coms haven’t canceled our credit card we could borrow more money from them and fix them. It would the 24th Stimulus program.

One thing more.

All the children of school teachers, school administrators, school parasites, and of all the politicians who profit from them must attend public schools. No exceptions. None.

Maybe then the bridges won’t fall down.



Kevin Smith

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Ethan Skolnick The Sun-Sentinel

April 3, 2010

Ethan Skolnick
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: Bobby the “Blowhard” or so you say in today’s Sun-Sentinel and Billie Jean King, the Mother of us all. Some comments on your take on girls playing basketball.

Mr. Skolnick,

If I were to say that your conclusion – Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs led to the dominance of the Husky chicks in basketball – is profoundly offensive to Logic would that make me a misogynist?

Billie Jean King was 30 years old and at the top of her game when she beat 55 year old Bobby Riggs in a tennis match predicated on “there’s one born every minute”. If memory serves it was Riggs, AKA “Bobby the Blowhard”, who jumped the net to congratulate the winner. It was a good pay day for all!

When Billie Jean King was 55 years old I wrote suggesting that she lace them up and go 2 out 3 with Sampras or Courier or Agassi or an aging Connors or McEnroe. Because of the ax handle and a half wide ass that she was carrying around I thought spotting her two games per set would be fair. Alas, my idea could gain no traction. I never even got the courtesy of an answer.

Full disclosure requires me to tell you that I saw Riggs play at the Wall Street Tennis Club many times. Sometimes he played while wearing mittens; sometimes with galoshes. He never lost. There was no money to be made betting on him. Betting against him was akin to throwing your dough into the East River.

If the world is a better place because of Billie Jean and Title 9 may I suggest a matchup between the bitches of UCONN – N.B. that I use that word correctly – and who ever emerges the winner on Monday night?

I am following President Obama’s advice to the letter. He exhorted his followers to “sharpen your elbows and get in their faces”.

There is a winner here after all.


You are awarded the most prestigious

HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
[BROWARD COUNTY PRINT JOURNALIST SUB-SECTION]


You didn’t need any Affirmative Action head starts to win your laurels. You got them the old fashioned way. You earned them.


Kevin Smith


PS – For the record, one of the 3 greatest on court performances I have ever seen was Carole Blazejowski scoring 58 points for Montclair State in Madison Square Garden.