Posts
February 28, 2010
Assemblyman Anthony Portantino
215 N. Marengo Avenue #115
Pasadena, CA 91109
RE: God damn those foul mouth bastards wherever they are and good on you for trying to outlaw those vile execrators who are among us.
Assemblyman Portantino,
I read about your crusade against cursing and I thought that I should sign up. I went to your website and I was so proud to learn that you are a Jersey guy. I am from Bayonne with summer stops in Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach. Maybe we met at Gardella’s or Max’s. Is the Lavender Bull still on Route 34? How about Lynch’s or the Osprey? But I digress.
As soon as I read your website I wrote to the President. I told him that the next time he goes to California he can’t bring Rahm Emanuel. Whatever else Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name he ain’t no fucking retard. If Air Force One heads to LA potty mouth Rahm will have his foot nailed to the floor in the White House mess.
For your next step I would like you to bring back the lost are of Bowlderization.
There are a few things in the Bible that have got to be…to be…shaped differently.
It’s bad enough that David had the hots for Batsheba but did he have to send her husband on a Kamikaze mission so he could get a leg over on her?
You’re a goombah so this might hurt a bit. There are parts of La Commedia that shouldn’t be read at the dinner table. Get to work on them.
Shakespeare has quite a few randy knickers episodes. It’s bad enough that Hamlet has more couplings than a busy night at a good French Knocking Shop. He has a final scene that is a prequel to Texas Chain Saw Massacre as if it were directed by Freddy from Elm Street. Is that really needed?
After the moody Prince has his way with the under aged Ophelia he discards her like the bruised and battered strumpet she has become. He then tells her to get to a “nunnery”. We all know what “nunnery” means, don’t we? That gets the blue pencil.
Since your plate is quite full I won’t detain you.
Didn’t the Red Queen – I can still say Queen, can’t I? – say, “Those words mean exactly what I want them to mean”?
Kevin Smith
PS – I saw a picture of you walking with Governor BlackBlack. I know he’s a short timer but Jeezus Haitch Keerist can’t you get him to do something about his name? Also, you look like you are about to sponsor legislation making spaghetti carbonara and tiramisu a required food group. YOU PROBABLY SHOULD STOP IVING ZABAGLIONE.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Douglas C. Lyons The Sun-Sentinel
February 28, 2010
Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Haiti, Chile, and the ties that bind us.
Mr. Lyons,
First, it is important to note that looting, once thought to be a wholly owned trait of urban Blacks – vide Haiti – is now officially non-racial. I watched a gang of Los Blancos clean out a super market in Concepcion, Chile that would make Congresswoman Maxine Waters proud. You remember that she described urban looting in Los Angeles as “alternative shopping”, don’t you? She would have given those ladrones a 9.
I play the “race card”, I think, maybe, because on January 16th you instructed us to dig deeply into our pockets, pockets jammed with filthy lucre gotten from the Herculean labors of the wretched of the earth, and fling money at Haiti because. As you said, “we owe them big time”.
“We owe them big time” because a platoon of them fought bravely in the American Revolution and because we weren’t nice to them in the 20th century was hardly the way to begin a begathon.
A case could be made for them not being nice to themselves. A picture of a motley dressed street dude biting the head off a chicken as a street sport does not lend itself to conditions favoring the Rule of Law. It suggests that the place is a few rungs down the ladder leading to a civilized society. The Duvaliers, pere et fils, have one trait that endears them to modern American Liberals: they make Jimmy Carter look not as bad as he was.
But I digress…
What do we “owe” Chile?
I write this early Sunday morning. The extent of the damage and the casualties is not known.
What is known is that an earthquake has visited its particular terror on another group of our brothers.
Since we don’t “owe” them should we do nothing?
“What is to be done”, was the question always asked by Lenin, one of the 20th century’s leading humanitarians.
Perhaps the answer has been provided to us by a leading Dead White European Male.
“The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the
gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.”
Is it not a sign of American exceptionalism that our first reaction to disasters wherever and to whomever they ravage is to help? I daresay if Cuba were to suffer some devastating calamity this country would extend its hand. It would be a hand filled with the things that heal a broken body. It would not be because we “owe” them but rather because “mercy is twice blest; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes”.
America is living proof that mercy “…is enthroned in the hearts of Kings, it is an attribute to God himself…”
I like Chilean fish, fruit, and wine. Maybe we “owe” them for that.
Kevin Smith
Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Haiti, Chile, and the ties that bind us.
Mr. Lyons,
First, it is important to note that looting, once thought to be a wholly owned trait of urban Blacks – vide Haiti – is now officially non-racial. I watched a gang of Los Blancos clean out a super market in Concepcion, Chile that would make Congresswoman Maxine Waters proud. You remember that she described urban looting in Los Angeles as “alternative shopping”, don’t you? She would have given those ladrones a 9.
I play the “race card”, I think, maybe, because on January 16th you instructed us to dig deeply into our pockets, pockets jammed with filthy lucre gotten from the Herculean labors of the wretched of the earth, and fling money at Haiti because. As you said, “we owe them big time”.
“We owe them big time” because a platoon of them fought bravely in the American Revolution and because we weren’t nice to them in the 20th century was hardly the way to begin a begathon.
A case could be made for them not being nice to themselves. A picture of a motley dressed street dude biting the head off a chicken as a street sport does not lend itself to conditions favoring the Rule of Law. It suggests that the place is a few rungs down the ladder leading to a civilized society. The Duvaliers, pere et fils, have one trait that endears them to modern American Liberals: they make Jimmy Carter look not as bad as he was.
But I digress…
What do we “owe” Chile?
I write this early Sunday morning. The extent of the damage and the casualties is not known.
What is known is that an earthquake has visited its particular terror on another group of our brothers.
Since we don’t “owe” them should we do nothing?
“What is to be done”, was the question always asked by Lenin, one of the 20th century’s leading humanitarians.
Perhaps the answer has been provided to us by a leading Dead White European Male.
“The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the
gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.”
Is it not a sign of American exceptionalism that our first reaction to disasters wherever and to whomever they ravage is to help? I daresay if Cuba were to suffer some devastating calamity this country would extend its hand. It would be a hand filled with the things that heal a broken body. It would not be because we “owe” them but rather because “mercy is twice blest; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes”.
America is living proof that mercy “…is enthroned in the hearts of Kings, it is an attribute to God himself…”
I like Chilean fish, fruit, and wine. Maybe we “owe” them for that.
Kevin Smith
Judge Dale Cohen Broward County Courthouse
February 27, 2010
Judge Dale Cohen
Broward County Courthouse
201 SE 6th Street
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: “Morons. I’m surrounded by morons!”
Judge Cohen,
Can we stipulate to the following?
#1 – You are a Judge
#2 – Your wife, Mardi Anne Levey Cohen, wants to be a Judge.
#3 – You want your wife to be a Judge.
#4 – To further her campaign you called her as a witness at a hearing in re your recusal from a matter before you.
#5 – The above doesn’t pass the bag test.
Of the many common traits of the Broward County Judiciary the one which always rises to the top, a la the turd in the punch bowl, is that they are all descended from MoaHA. MoaHA is short for Mother of all Horses’ Asses. MoaHA is the spawn of Gorgons.
The other common genetic marker here is that when someone puts on a black robe and gets a gavel he is enveloped not in a idyllic quest to capture the emanations and penumbras of justice but rather in a purple haze known as “non-malodorous fecal matter”. If you need a translation send a SASE.
The hi-jinks of the Broward County Judiciary are too many to do justice to in this forum. Their profligacy is legendary: A Judge owing a bail bondsman more than $100,000; a Judge soliciting sports tickets from attorneys appearing before him was bad enough but then he scalped them; a Judge asking lawyers before him to buy Girl Scout cookies from his granddaughter; a Judge trying to play hide the salami with the female clerk; a Judge so dumb he thought that Manual Labor was an abogado; a Judge recusing himself on the first day of a trial about $30,000,000 because of a letter that I wrote him…God’s Holy Trousers but it is the stuff of afternoon TV!
In case you are not familiar with the “bag test” it is a testing device for which we can safely say that “the science is settled”.
Get a paper bag. [Go Green!]
Put my letter and the various news stories about your attempts at a somewhat late Valentine’s Day present – A black robe, a gavel, and a life time job beats the Hell out of roses, doesn’t it? – in the bag
Tape the bag shut.
Put the bag under your desk.
Wait 24 hours.
Open the bag and stick your head in. [My advice would be to keep another bag handy for your retching.]
Consign the bag to Gehenna via an environmentally sensitive Haz-Mat team.
There are several important lessons to be garnered from this moral and ethical train wreck.
A – Having one’s ass wrapped in black doesn’t make you a Judge.
B – I am sure your wife is happy you didn’t run a whore house.
I am particularly exorcized about this for personal reasons.
My son is a member of the Bar in 3 states. Florida is not one of them, Deo Gracias. His first court appearance was when he was 6 years old. I brought him to the courtroom where a Judge, his grandfather, my father, was sending people to jail. It was a solemn moment. His wife, my mother, was not in the courtroom. Hens would lay cube shaped Deviled eggs before my father would do what you did.
I take back my introduction. What you did wasn’t moronic. It was worse. You assumed either that no one was watching or nobody cared. For this you are proclaimed
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK.
You are in contention for the highest honor I can bestow.
SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR.
I don’t know what this makes your wife but she probably she is probably out of the running for the Mother Teresa award.
Your punishment, your metaphorical punishment so don’t send your bailiffs after me, is to be strapped to a horse facing his – you guessd it! – ass. The horse will be tethered in front of the courthouse for one week. Citizens will pay $1 to throw pies at you. For $5 they will be allowed to throw flaming bags of cat scat at you.
All moneys will go into a special fund. The money will be used to retrofit any court room that you are in with a special device. Said device will grab you whenever you do or say something so egregiously dumb or so offensive to the common weal that passersby find that their hair hurts. You will be defenestrated from the nearest available window on the highest floor.
[There may be many judges in line. Don’t worry. I have influence. Since this is a Stimulus “shovel ready” project we will open as many windows as is necessary. If we assign one tosser to each Broward Judge the economy will be turned around in about 6 weeks.]
You will be flung high enough for the public address system to proclaim loudly
SIC SEMPER HORSES’ ASSES
before you hit the ground.
Alas, but your wife will have to continue her quest for black robes without you.
“Such stupidity, sir, is not found in nature.”
Kevin Smith
Judge Dale Cohen
Broward County Courthouse
201 SE 6th Street
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: “Morons. I’m surrounded by morons!”
Judge Cohen,
Can we stipulate to the following?
#1 – You are a Judge
#2 – Your wife, Mardi Anne Levey Cohen, wants to be a Judge.
#3 – You want your wife to be a Judge.
#4 – To further her campaign you called her as a witness at a hearing in re your recusal from a matter before you.
#5 – The above doesn’t pass the bag test.
Of the many common traits of the Broward County Judiciary the one which always rises to the top, a la the turd in the punch bowl, is that they are all descended from MoaHA. MoaHA is short for Mother of all Horses’ Asses. MoaHA is the spawn of Gorgons.
The other common genetic marker here is that when someone puts on a black robe and gets a gavel he is enveloped not in a idyllic quest to capture the emanations and penumbras of justice but rather in a purple haze known as “non-malodorous fecal matter”. If you need a translation send a SASE.
The hi-jinks of the Broward County Judiciary are too many to do justice to in this forum. Their profligacy is legendary: A Judge owing a bail bondsman more than $100,000; a Judge soliciting sports tickets from attorneys appearing before him was bad enough but then he scalped them; a Judge asking lawyers before him to buy Girl Scout cookies from his granddaughter; a Judge trying to play hide the salami with the female clerk; a Judge so dumb he thought that Manual Labor was an abogado; a Judge recusing himself on the first day of a trial about $30,000,000 because of a letter that I wrote him…God’s Holy Trousers but it is the stuff of afternoon TV!
In case you are not familiar with the “bag test” it is a testing device for which we can safely say that “the science is settled”.
Get a paper bag. [Go Green!]
Put my letter and the various news stories about your attempts at a somewhat late Valentine’s Day present – A black robe, a gavel, and a life time job beats the Hell out of roses, doesn’t it? – in the bag
Tape the bag shut.
Put the bag under your desk.
Wait 24 hours.
Open the bag and stick your head in. [My advice would be to keep another bag handy for your retching.]
Consign the bag to Gehenna via an environmentally sensitive Haz-Mat team.
There are several important lessons to be garnered from this moral and ethical train wreck.
A – Having one’s ass wrapped in black doesn’t make you a Judge.
B – I am sure your wife is happy you didn’t run a whore house.
I am particularly exorcized about this for personal reasons.
My son is a member of the Bar in 3 states. Florida is not one of them, Deo Gracias. His first court appearance was when he was 6 years old. I brought him to the courtroom where a Judge, his grandfather, my father, was sending people to jail. It was a solemn moment. His wife, my mother, was not in the courtroom. Hens would lay cube shaped Deviled eggs before my father would do what you did.
I take back my introduction. What you did wasn’t moronic. It was worse. You assumed either that no one was watching or nobody cared. For this you are proclaimed
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK.
You are in contention for the highest honor I can bestow.
SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR.
I don’t know what this makes your wife but she probably she is probably out of the running for the Mother Teresa award.
Your punishment, your metaphorical punishment so don’t send your bailiffs after me, is to be strapped to a horse facing his – you guessd it! – ass. The horse will be tethered in front of the courthouse for one week. Citizens will pay $1 to throw pies at you. For $5 they will be allowed to throw flaming bags of cat scat at you.
All moneys will go into a special fund. The money will be used to retrofit any court room that you are in with a special device. Said device will grab you whenever you do or say something so egregiously dumb or so offensive to the common weal that passersby find that their hair hurts. You will be defenestrated from the nearest available window on the highest floor.
[There may be many judges in line. Don’t worry. I have influence. Since this is a Stimulus “shovel ready” project we will open as many windows as is necessary. If we assign one tosser to each Broward Judge the economy will be turned around in about 6 weeks.]
You will be flung high enough for the public address system to proclaim loudly
SIC SEMPER HORSES’ ASSES
before you hit the ground.
Alas, but your wife will have to continue her quest for black robes without you.
“Such stupidity, sir, is not found in nature.”
Kevin Smith
Friday, February 26, 2010
Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald
February 24, 2010
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: De profundis – Imperfect contrition and a comment on your anti-Constitutional column in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
My Lenten vow, entered into on Ash Wednesday with all the resolve a serial sinner could muster, was to abstain from pole axing mush brained modern American Liberal pundits until noon on Easter Sunday. Thank God the New Testament God is a forgiving God what with my vow having been broken so soon after taking it.
I read your column today and it became obvious that there is no sense being a gong unless someone is willing to strike it. That task has fallen to me.
You speak of the recent Supreme Court decision expanding freedom of speech as it were a weapon of mass destruction. It is, by your reckoning, a “dirty bomb” that will allow the hated “special interests” to shower money on candidates and elected officials. You say that corporations will taint the process.
You wonder “how a legislator beholden to a corporation for his office can be truly expected to put the public first”. The corporation in the crosshairs is Toyota.
Your solution is to let them become Anathema.
Does your proscription apply to all corporations or just the bad ones? Would an on purpose non-profit corporation get a pass?
Should the various teachers’ unions be forbidden to make contributions t to office holders or candidates for office? Would not Logic dictate that they would want to help those who help them? If a legislator takes money from an advocate for teachers should he be banned form voting on educational matters?
How about the NRA? How about either side of the abortion issue? How about both sides of the abortion issue? How about drowning polar bears? Autism advocates. Free Tibet. The beer lobby. Fair Play for Cuba. Truthers. Birthers. Truthers who are birthers, NAMBLA fans, inter alia. Who passes the Pitts test? Exactly what is the Pitts test?
If we were to add up all the money that Fanny, Freddy, Sallie, Milly, Jose, and Gamal Mae gave to Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd we would have enough to give 3 hots and a cot for a weekend to a decent sized town in Haiti.
How about we just repeal the First Amendment? Can we do it retroactively?
As an aside, I believe the controversy over abortion would be greatly lessened if it could be made retroactive. Speaking of abortion, would you say that an excess of Affirmative Action is at work here? Since Roe v Wade this country has had 50,000,000 abortions. [Justice Marshall’s concurring opinion should be required reading in any course about it.] Black women, no more than 6% of the total population have had about 16,000,000 of them. Is that an example of “leveling the playing field”? Who knows how many Andre Wattses or Clarence Thomases got scraped out of Mommy. Just a thought.
About the Supreme Court decision…
The 1907 law that was reversed was the handiwork of Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman. Until T. Woodrow Wilson became President he was, hands down, the most bigoted, racist man in Washington. Perhaps the founding of the NAACP shortly after its passage in 1907 was not coincidental. It was the most anti-Black piece of legislation passed until the enactment of the Davis-Bacon Act.
“While were at it, end the gerrymandering that allows
candidates and parties to choose their own voters
and ensure reelection in perpetuity.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
The net effect of the above would be to reduce the number of Black legislators by as much as 90%. The deal was struck between urban Blacks and suburban and rural Whites. It benefited both. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to work? The simple unimpeachable fact is that there are districts in Miami/Dade and Broward counties that would elect O.J. Simpson – in jail or out – or Michael Jackson – alive or dead should either name appear on the ballot. Could there be any other explanation for Patrick Kennedy being elected to anything. The method used by Congresswoman Carrie Meek to will her seat to her son without dying was priceless.
The perpetual modern American Liberal mantra of public funding of elections, of everything, is predicated on a willing suspension of disbelief that is Homeric. The “obvious and true world” that Orwell spoke of, the world where “stones are hard and water is wet”, goes walkabout when the thought of Federal involvement is mentioned.
The Federal government has been running the Post Office since 1792.
The Federal government has been directly involved in housing since 1936.
The Federal government declared war on poverty in 1965.
The Federal government has had an energy department since 1977.
The Federal government has had an education department since 1978.
I cite 5 Federal attempts to solve problems. Res ipso loquitur?
I can’t wait for them to take over health care.
The Federal government spent $2,500,000 to advertise and promote the 2010 Census. I hope the Chinese, from whom we borrowed the money to pay for it, liked the ad.
You have caused me to reconsider self-flagellation. If you write any more columns like today’s I may have to trade up to crucifixion. That’s what I call a “shovel ready” job. At least my leave taking will result in either a job created or a job saved.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: De profundis – Imperfect contrition and a comment on your anti-Constitutional column in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
My Lenten vow, entered into on Ash Wednesday with all the resolve a serial sinner could muster, was to abstain from pole axing mush brained modern American Liberal pundits until noon on Easter Sunday. Thank God the New Testament God is a forgiving God what with my vow having been broken so soon after taking it.
I read your column today and it became obvious that there is no sense being a gong unless someone is willing to strike it. That task has fallen to me.
You speak of the recent Supreme Court decision expanding freedom of speech as it were a weapon of mass destruction. It is, by your reckoning, a “dirty bomb” that will allow the hated “special interests” to shower money on candidates and elected officials. You say that corporations will taint the process.
You wonder “how a legislator beholden to a corporation for his office can be truly expected to put the public first”. The corporation in the crosshairs is Toyota.
Your solution is to let them become Anathema.
Does your proscription apply to all corporations or just the bad ones? Would an on purpose non-profit corporation get a pass?
Should the various teachers’ unions be forbidden to make contributions t to office holders or candidates for office? Would not Logic dictate that they would want to help those who help them? If a legislator takes money from an advocate for teachers should he be banned form voting on educational matters?
How about the NRA? How about either side of the abortion issue? How about both sides of the abortion issue? How about drowning polar bears? Autism advocates. Free Tibet. The beer lobby. Fair Play for Cuba. Truthers. Birthers. Truthers who are birthers, NAMBLA fans, inter alia. Who passes the Pitts test? Exactly what is the Pitts test?
If we were to add up all the money that Fanny, Freddy, Sallie, Milly, Jose, and Gamal Mae gave to Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd we would have enough to give 3 hots and a cot for a weekend to a decent sized town in Haiti.
How about we just repeal the First Amendment? Can we do it retroactively?
As an aside, I believe the controversy over abortion would be greatly lessened if it could be made retroactive. Speaking of abortion, would you say that an excess of Affirmative Action is at work here? Since Roe v Wade this country has had 50,000,000 abortions. [Justice Marshall’s concurring opinion should be required reading in any course about it.] Black women, no more than 6% of the total population have had about 16,000,000 of them. Is that an example of “leveling the playing field”? Who knows how many Andre Wattses or Clarence Thomases got scraped out of Mommy. Just a thought.
About the Supreme Court decision…
The 1907 law that was reversed was the handiwork of Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman. Until T. Woodrow Wilson became President he was, hands down, the most bigoted, racist man in Washington. Perhaps the founding of the NAACP shortly after its passage in 1907 was not coincidental. It was the most anti-Black piece of legislation passed until the enactment of the Davis-Bacon Act.
“While were at it, end the gerrymandering that allows
candidates and parties to choose their own voters
and ensure reelection in perpetuity.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
The net effect of the above would be to reduce the number of Black legislators by as much as 90%. The deal was struck between urban Blacks and suburban and rural Whites. It benefited both. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to work? The simple unimpeachable fact is that there are districts in Miami/Dade and Broward counties that would elect O.J. Simpson – in jail or out – or Michael Jackson – alive or dead should either name appear on the ballot. Could there be any other explanation for Patrick Kennedy being elected to anything. The method used by Congresswoman Carrie Meek to will her seat to her son without dying was priceless.
The perpetual modern American Liberal mantra of public funding of elections, of everything, is predicated on a willing suspension of disbelief that is Homeric. The “obvious and true world” that Orwell spoke of, the world where “stones are hard and water is wet”, goes walkabout when the thought of Federal involvement is mentioned.
The Federal government has been running the Post Office since 1792.
The Federal government has been directly involved in housing since 1936.
The Federal government declared war on poverty in 1965.
The Federal government has had an energy department since 1977.
The Federal government has had an education department since 1978.
I cite 5 Federal attempts to solve problems. Res ipso loquitur?
I can’t wait for them to take over health care.
The Federal government spent $2,500,000 to advertise and promote the 2010 Census. I hope the Chinese, from whom we borrowed the money to pay for it, liked the ad.
You have caused me to reconsider self-flagellation. If you write any more columns like today’s I may have to trade up to crucifixion. That’s what I call a “shovel ready” job. At least my leave taking will result in either a job created or a job saved.
Kevin Smith
Michael Putney The Miami Herald
Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: All those mean politicians! Why don’t they play nice? Some comments on your column in today’s Miami Herald
Mr. Putney,
“That’s why, over the last three years, there was total
gridlock in Tallahassee, even if nothing got done.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
And that‘s without snow? Imagine how much better off we would be if the capitol would be declared a drowning polar bear safe haven. They would be like the turtles we protect on the beach. No one could go there. Peripatetic politicians, intent on “doing” something, would be at risk of being eaten. Oh happy day!
At the risk of dating myself isn’t your statement like a letter high, off speed batting practice pitch to Henry Aaron. A snap of the wrists, a crack in the night, and the ball is in the parking lot.
Why the urge to get something done?
Government, any government, has a tendency - how to say this delicately – to mess things up. Think of the Post Office, two car funerals, education, wet dreams, the motor vehicle department, public housing, teenage obesity, the war on poverty, inter alia. “The triumph of hope over experience” is writ large above every legislature.
Continuing the baseball analogy Earl Weaver, the Oriole manager [does the word “feisty’ come to mind?] said, “The best play in baseball is a 3 run homer”. If legislatures go deep it is always a foul ball.
You say that the Republican Senatorial primary is “petty and banal”.
Why?
Candidates present themselves to the public for their consideration. They try to catch cheers with a well turned phrase. Candidate Kennedy said in 1960 that there was a “missile gap”. He also said that the wanted to “get the country moving again”. Not exactly Demosthenes but for the electors, with a bit of help from King Richard the First of Chicago, it was enough. Franklin Roosevelt promised time and again in 1932 to balance the budget.
Would it be “mean spirited” or, worse, “petty” of me to point out that 3 Presidential candidates ran in the 20th century promising to “keep American boys from fighting in foreign wars”?
Like Dr. Johnson said about lapidary inscriptions campaign promises are not “upon oath”.
When asked what was the most important qualification to look for in a candidate for public office James Madison always replied “Character”. I hope the lunacy of our campaigns reveals the character of our candidates.
I don’t know if, as you say, “Florida deserves better”.
Would our state be better served if the candidates were to debate on the Jerry Springer Show?
I am upset that you are upset that the Republican primary does not meet the standards of Putney’s Principled Primer on Partisan Primary Politics.
I ain’t so young anymore. I, the Republic, and the state will get over it.
Kevin Smith
PS – If you are familiar with investment nomenclature some Crist leaps, having been ferociously bid down, would be suitable for the aggressive investor.
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: All those mean politicians! Why don’t they play nice? Some comments on your column in today’s Miami Herald
Mr. Putney,
“That’s why, over the last three years, there was total
gridlock in Tallahassee, even if nothing got done.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
And that‘s without snow? Imagine how much better off we would be if the capitol would be declared a drowning polar bear safe haven. They would be like the turtles we protect on the beach. No one could go there. Peripatetic politicians, intent on “doing” something, would be at risk of being eaten. Oh happy day!
At the risk of dating myself isn’t your statement like a letter high, off speed batting practice pitch to Henry Aaron. A snap of the wrists, a crack in the night, and the ball is in the parking lot.
Why the urge to get something done?
Government, any government, has a tendency - how to say this delicately – to mess things up. Think of the Post Office, two car funerals, education, wet dreams, the motor vehicle department, public housing, teenage obesity, the war on poverty, inter alia. “The triumph of hope over experience” is writ large above every legislature.
Continuing the baseball analogy Earl Weaver, the Oriole manager [does the word “feisty’ come to mind?] said, “The best play in baseball is a 3 run homer”. If legislatures go deep it is always a foul ball.
You say that the Republican Senatorial primary is “petty and banal”.
Why?
Candidates present themselves to the public for their consideration. They try to catch cheers with a well turned phrase. Candidate Kennedy said in 1960 that there was a “missile gap”. He also said that the wanted to “get the country moving again”. Not exactly Demosthenes but for the electors, with a bit of help from King Richard the First of Chicago, it was enough. Franklin Roosevelt promised time and again in 1932 to balance the budget.
Would it be “mean spirited” or, worse, “petty” of me to point out that 3 Presidential candidates ran in the 20th century promising to “keep American boys from fighting in foreign wars”?
Like Dr. Johnson said about lapidary inscriptions campaign promises are not “upon oath”.
When asked what was the most important qualification to look for in a candidate for public office James Madison always replied “Character”. I hope the lunacy of our campaigns reveals the character of our candidates.
I don’t know if, as you say, “Florida deserves better”.
Would our state be better served if the candidates were to debate on the Jerry Springer Show?
I am upset that you are upset that the Republican primary does not meet the standards of Putney’s Principled Primer on Partisan Primary Politics.
I ain’t so young anymore. I, the Republic, and the state will get over it.
Kevin Smith
PS – If you are familiar with investment nomenclature some Crist leaps, having been ferociously bid down, would be suitable for the aggressive investor.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Ross Douthat The New York Times
February 23, 2010
Ross Douthat
The New York Times
620 8th Avenue
New York, New York 10018
RE: Pulitzer Prizes
Mr. Douthat,
It is still called chutzpah in Manhattan. South Florida prefers the words cojones or huevos. Big brass balls is a universal term that is universally accepted.
I read your Op-Ed about the National Enquirer making it to the Round of Eight in the march Madness that is the Pulitzer Prize raree. Two points must be made.
#1 – Did the Miami Herald’s “photograph of Donna Rice sitting side-saddle on Gray Hart’s lap” mean that she gave him half a lap dance. If she did was it the first half or the second half?
#2 – I waited in great anticipation – as I always do whenever the NYT discusses Pulitzer Prizes – for you to mention the name that is akin to a turd in the punch bowl at World HQ of the NYT. World HQ until it reappears after a 3 day weekend in Huejutla, Mexico.
That name is Walter Duranty.
Do you remember the irenic bumper sticker in the days of Bush 43? It was back before politics became “mean spirited”. It said “Bush lied – Thousands died”.
Walter Duranty was the Moscow correspondent for the NYT. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Reporting in 1932.
Today is the anniversary of the start of the siege at the Alamo. “Remember the Alamo” is now in its 3rd century of resonance in this country. No one ever forgets.
How does “Duranty lied – Millions died” sound?
Hitler’s role model for holocausts was Stalin. Stalin decided to liquidate an entire class of people in Ukraine. He didn’t shoot them because of a bullet shortage. The gas chambers had not yet been perfected. The Kulaks, having been marked for death for ideological reasons, were systematically starved. At least 5,000,000 and perhaps as many as 8,000,000 people were killed. Hitler noted that the West did nothing.
[As an aside the Kulaks were successful farmers and traders. Around the same time as they were being killed a fraud named Lysenko became Stalin’s favorite agronomist. As the Kulaks were killed millions of acres of arable land went fallow. It is well to note that Russia was net exporter of wheat and barley for 50 years before their “successful” revolution. Lysenko’s thesis, that potatoes and wheat could be made to grow correctly, was based on sound scientific Socialist principles. The result was/is/shall be predictable. Crops don’t grow on command. Am I the only one to note the similarity between politically correct vegetables and Global Cooling? OK, OK. Global Warming. I know, I know. The Elders have spoken. It is now Climate Change. Is the science ever “settled? Einstein always wanted to be proved wrong. That way, he is supposed to have said, he could get on to “something useful”.]
Stick around, Mr. Douthat. It gets worse.
Duranty was a bought and paid for agent of the KGB. Their headquarters was the Lubyanka prison. It was the original Hotel California. You checked in. You never checked out. True to their calling, the KGB was the gang that put a hit out on the Pope, remember?
Remember the Kulaks
As bad as it is the NYT has made worse for 8 decades.
The Times, by refusing to recognize the consequences of Duranty’s lies, is a constant reminder of the Latin adage “Qui tacet consentit”. Silence gives consent.
The Times is in a state of denial about their Communist correspondent that makes the 10th step of cocaine addiction seem like a day at the beach. The reportage of Herbert Matthews and Harrison Salisbury is proof that acorns never fall far from the tree.
Your Google assignment is learn about the Pulitzer Prize winner, a NYT employee, for Foreign Reporting in 1934.
Can you imagine the reaction if it had been discovered that he was a bought and paid for agent of the intelligence service of the country where he served?
The NYT, by their silence, a silence that borders on criminal indifference and is profoundly offensive to the collective soul of man, has prevented a proper Kaddish from being said for the Kulaks.
Should the National Enquirer win a Pulitzer Prize it would have more honor than all the Pulitzer Prizes the NYT has won and proudly displays.
This is a subject that has moved me for 3 decades.
In the mid-90s, Sulzberger the Lesser, a man who is living testament to why inheritances such as his should be taxed at a minimum rate of 105%, assigned a Mr. William Borders to serve as the buffer between us. Did he have anything to do with the Boston Globe acquisition?
I am told that when Frito Bandido, the grand nephew of Emiliano Zapata, forecloses on his mortgage he will begin employee negotiations with the time tested method of random defenestration.
Let him start at the top, both of the building and of the food chain. Make sure the moose is tied to his neck.
Maybe then the Kulaks can rest in peace.
Some things are owed to the ledger.
Kevin Smith
Ross Douthat
The New York Times
620 8th Avenue
New York, New York 10018
RE: Pulitzer Prizes
Mr. Douthat,
It is still called chutzpah in Manhattan. South Florida prefers the words cojones or huevos. Big brass balls is a universal term that is universally accepted.
I read your Op-Ed about the National Enquirer making it to the Round of Eight in the march Madness that is the Pulitzer Prize raree. Two points must be made.
#1 – Did the Miami Herald’s “photograph of Donna Rice sitting side-saddle on Gray Hart’s lap” mean that she gave him half a lap dance. If she did was it the first half or the second half?
#2 – I waited in great anticipation – as I always do whenever the NYT discusses Pulitzer Prizes – for you to mention the name that is akin to a turd in the punch bowl at World HQ of the NYT. World HQ until it reappears after a 3 day weekend in Huejutla, Mexico.
That name is Walter Duranty.
Do you remember the irenic bumper sticker in the days of Bush 43? It was back before politics became “mean spirited”. It said “Bush lied – Thousands died”.
Walter Duranty was the Moscow correspondent for the NYT. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Reporting in 1932.
Today is the anniversary of the start of the siege at the Alamo. “Remember the Alamo” is now in its 3rd century of resonance in this country. No one ever forgets.
How does “Duranty lied – Millions died” sound?
Hitler’s role model for holocausts was Stalin. Stalin decided to liquidate an entire class of people in Ukraine. He didn’t shoot them because of a bullet shortage. The gas chambers had not yet been perfected. The Kulaks, having been marked for death for ideological reasons, were systematically starved. At least 5,000,000 and perhaps as many as 8,000,000 people were killed. Hitler noted that the West did nothing.
[As an aside the Kulaks were successful farmers and traders. Around the same time as they were being killed a fraud named Lysenko became Stalin’s favorite agronomist. As the Kulaks were killed millions of acres of arable land went fallow. It is well to note that Russia was net exporter of wheat and barley for 50 years before their “successful” revolution. Lysenko’s thesis, that potatoes and wheat could be made to grow correctly, was based on sound scientific Socialist principles. The result was/is/shall be predictable. Crops don’t grow on command. Am I the only one to note the similarity between politically correct vegetables and Global Cooling? OK, OK. Global Warming. I know, I know. The Elders have spoken. It is now Climate Change. Is the science ever “settled? Einstein always wanted to be proved wrong. That way, he is supposed to have said, he could get on to “something useful”.]
Stick around, Mr. Douthat. It gets worse.
Duranty was a bought and paid for agent of the KGB. Their headquarters was the Lubyanka prison. It was the original Hotel California. You checked in. You never checked out. True to their calling, the KGB was the gang that put a hit out on the Pope, remember?
Remember the Kulaks
As bad as it is the NYT has made worse for 8 decades.
The Times, by refusing to recognize the consequences of Duranty’s lies, is a constant reminder of the Latin adage “Qui tacet consentit”. Silence gives consent.
The Times is in a state of denial about their Communist correspondent that makes the 10th step of cocaine addiction seem like a day at the beach. The reportage of Herbert Matthews and Harrison Salisbury is proof that acorns never fall far from the tree.
Your Google assignment is learn about the Pulitzer Prize winner, a NYT employee, for Foreign Reporting in 1934.
Can you imagine the reaction if it had been discovered that he was a bought and paid for agent of the intelligence service of the country where he served?
The NYT, by their silence, a silence that borders on criminal indifference and is profoundly offensive to the collective soul of man, has prevented a proper Kaddish from being said for the Kulaks.
Should the National Enquirer win a Pulitzer Prize it would have more honor than all the Pulitzer Prizes the NYT has won and proudly displays.
This is a subject that has moved me for 3 decades.
In the mid-90s, Sulzberger the Lesser, a man who is living testament to why inheritances such as his should be taxed at a minimum rate of 105%, assigned a Mr. William Borders to serve as the buffer between us. Did he have anything to do with the Boston Globe acquisition?
I am told that when Frito Bandido, the grand nephew of Emiliano Zapata, forecloses on his mortgage he will begin employee negotiations with the time tested method of random defenestration.
Let him start at the top, both of the building and of the food chain. Make sure the moose is tied to his neck.
Maybe then the Kulaks can rest in peace.
Some things are owed to the ledger.
Kevin Smith
Senator Lee Constantine
February 17, 2010
Senator Lee Constantine
378 Centerpointe Circle
Altamonte Springs, Florida 32701-3442
RE: “Such stupidity, sir, is not found in nature.” A comment on today’s Miami Herald article about your brave fight to undo the Industrial Revolution.
Senator Constantine,
Thank you for renewing my faith in the two party system.
For the longest time I thought that public horses’ asses were all Democrats. You, with your statements on the raging controversy known as paper v plastic, have changed that. You should be very proud that you have earned the distinction of being the first statewide Republican to win a most coveted award.
I hereby name you
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK.
Alas, there is no longer a purse attached to this award. All of the Foundation’s available funds go to increase the size of the hole in the ozone. If it doesn’t help the drowning polar bears it may be of some use to the albino unicorns in their Sisyphean quest for melanin.
Once you ban plastic bags in Florida may I be the first to suggest that you ban plastic in hospitals. The next time you’re in one take a peek at how many long strand polymers go into health care. Why not have the legislature ban reimbursements to any health facility that still uses it? That will get their attention. I enclose a plastic bag for you to dispose of in an environmentally sensitive manner.
Kevin Smith
Senator Lee Constantine
378 Centerpointe Circle
Altamonte Springs, Florida 32701-3442
RE: “Such stupidity, sir, is not found in nature.” A comment on today’s Miami Herald article about your brave fight to undo the Industrial Revolution.
Senator Constantine,
Thank you for renewing my faith in the two party system.
For the longest time I thought that public horses’ asses were all Democrats. You, with your statements on the raging controversy known as paper v plastic, have changed that. You should be very proud that you have earned the distinction of being the first statewide Republican to win a most coveted award.
I hereby name you
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK.
Alas, there is no longer a purse attached to this award. All of the Foundation’s available funds go to increase the size of the hole in the ozone. If it doesn’t help the drowning polar bears it may be of some use to the albino unicorns in their Sisyphean quest for melanin.
Once you ban plastic bags in Florida may I be the first to suggest that you ban plastic in hospitals. The next time you’re in one take a peek at how many long strand polymers go into health care. Why not have the legislature ban reimbursements to any health facility that still uses it? That will get their attention. I enclose a plastic bag for you to dispose of in an environmentally sensitive manner.
Kevin Smith
Monday, February 22, 2010
Jerry Adler Newsweek
February 21, 2010
Jerry Adler
Newsweek
251 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019-1894
RE: Forget about the sound of one hand clapping – How about the sound of sphincters slamming shut?
Mr. Adler:
It’s me again.
I enclose your letter of 1/28/08 in re the matters of Global Cooling, Global Warming, and now, Climate Change.
I remember the day after man landed on the moon. The head of the Flat Earth Society said, and I quote, “Gulp”.
It’s been about 90 days since the world began to catch on that not only was the Emperor prancing around naked but that he was simultaneously thumbing his nose with one hand while flipping the bird with the other. On top of that he was doing his best Busby Berkeley/Bob Fosse routine of mooning his captive audience. The band, led by Professor Irwin Corey, Groucho Marx, and Mel Brooks played “The Science is Settled”, the theme song of the movement.
How quickly the Sirens of tautology and nit-wittedness caused the supposed legatees of the Western Canon, the scientific method, and that old reliable chestnut of street smarts that says, “Of course I love you Mom. Cut the cards anyway”, to pledge allegiance to a movement that would end the Industrial Revolution.
You say “most climatologists see no reason to take that risk”, said risk being the demise of polar bears.
Further, you speak of the risk of “expos[ing] ourselves to the potential danger of a rapid rise in sea levels that is also a consequence of global warming”.
I write this not 15 yards from the Intracoastal Waterway. For 14 years I have been waiting for the dreaded “rapid rise of sea levels”. What with all those glaciers melting, the hole in the ozone layer growing like Topsy, and people wanting air conditioning produced by coal, the water should be to the second floor by now.
It isn’t.
Since I live close to the dreaded Bermuda Triangle I am more in fear of alien abduction than I am of a polar bear carcass fouling my propellers. It’s tough enough dodging the wily manatees.
There are two things that me be of value to you.
#1 – The sea level does rise. When it rises it falls. Then it rises again. Then it falls again. It does it every day. It’s like clockwork. Thank God for Google. It’s called tidal action. The Greeks used the tides to defeat the Persians at Salamis. That was 25 centuries ago. Sir Francis Drake, knowing that the tide had not yet begun to turn, continued in game of lawn bowling despite the approaching Spanish fleet. That was 5 centuries ago. Nelson used them successfully at Trafalgar. Shakespeare used them to describe action that took place 21 centuries ago. I guess we have forgotten. Also, the good guys beat the bad guys at Lepanto using the tides
#2 – Notwithstanding the intentionally obfuscatory persiflage concerning the Medieval Warming Period, perversely inverted hockey sticks, renewed interest in getting a posthumous Noble Prize for Lysenko, and taking another close look at the Piltdown Man my favorite climatologist is an almost forgotten Italian named Tony Vivaldi.
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. AKA as Alpha Gump, was last seen standing on a 12 foot high snow drift shouting “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Will tomatoes, once thought to be poisonous, make my Laetrile and Krebiozen work better?
Too bad the title “The Sting” has been used.
The climate grifters had it easy.
Everybody in the Media believed them because they wanted to believe them. As soon as I can find a copy of the rare Austrian/English dictionary – maybe it’s in one of those recently discovered 7 or was it 8 states? – I can find a proper word to describe the modern American Liberals who believe such folderol.
Until then boob will have to do.
Kevin Smith
Jerry Adler
Newsweek
251 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019-1894
RE: Forget about the sound of one hand clapping – How about the sound of sphincters slamming shut?
Mr. Adler:
It’s me again.
I enclose your letter of 1/28/08 in re the matters of Global Cooling, Global Warming, and now, Climate Change.
I remember the day after man landed on the moon. The head of the Flat Earth Society said, and I quote, “Gulp”.
It’s been about 90 days since the world began to catch on that not only was the Emperor prancing around naked but that he was simultaneously thumbing his nose with one hand while flipping the bird with the other. On top of that he was doing his best Busby Berkeley/Bob Fosse routine of mooning his captive audience. The band, led by Professor Irwin Corey, Groucho Marx, and Mel Brooks played “The Science is Settled”, the theme song of the movement.
How quickly the Sirens of tautology and nit-wittedness caused the supposed legatees of the Western Canon, the scientific method, and that old reliable chestnut of street smarts that says, “Of course I love you Mom. Cut the cards anyway”, to pledge allegiance to a movement that would end the Industrial Revolution.
You say “most climatologists see no reason to take that risk”, said risk being the demise of polar bears.
Further, you speak of the risk of “expos[ing] ourselves to the potential danger of a rapid rise in sea levels that is also a consequence of global warming”.
I write this not 15 yards from the Intracoastal Waterway. For 14 years I have been waiting for the dreaded “rapid rise of sea levels”. What with all those glaciers melting, the hole in the ozone layer growing like Topsy, and people wanting air conditioning produced by coal, the water should be to the second floor by now.
It isn’t.
Since I live close to the dreaded Bermuda Triangle I am more in fear of alien abduction than I am of a polar bear carcass fouling my propellers. It’s tough enough dodging the wily manatees.
There are two things that me be of value to you.
#1 – The sea level does rise. When it rises it falls. Then it rises again. Then it falls again. It does it every day. It’s like clockwork. Thank God for Google. It’s called tidal action. The Greeks used the tides to defeat the Persians at Salamis. That was 25 centuries ago. Sir Francis Drake, knowing that the tide had not yet begun to turn, continued in game of lawn bowling despite the approaching Spanish fleet. That was 5 centuries ago. Nelson used them successfully at Trafalgar. Shakespeare used them to describe action that took place 21 centuries ago. I guess we have forgotten. Also, the good guys beat the bad guys at Lepanto using the tides
#2 – Notwithstanding the intentionally obfuscatory persiflage concerning the Medieval Warming Period, perversely inverted hockey sticks, renewed interest in getting a posthumous Noble Prize for Lysenko, and taking another close look at the Piltdown Man my favorite climatologist is an almost forgotten Italian named Tony Vivaldi.
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. AKA as Alpha Gump, was last seen standing on a 12 foot high snow drift shouting “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Will tomatoes, once thought to be poisonous, make my Laetrile and Krebiozen work better?
Too bad the title “The Sting” has been used.
The climate grifters had it easy.
Everybody in the Media believed them because they wanted to believe them. As soon as I can find a copy of the rare Austrian/English dictionary – maybe it’s in one of those recently discovered 7 or was it 8 states? – I can find a proper word to describe the modern American Liberals who believe such folderol.
Until then boob will have to do.
Kevin Smith
Robert Watson, Ph.D. Lynn University
February 21, 2010
Robert Watson, Ph.D.
Lynn University
3601 North Military Trail
Boca Raton, Florida 33431
RE: Another broken Lent resolution – Some relfections on your musings today in the Sun-Sentinel
My dear Professor,
Not even one week past Ash Wednesday and I am yet again a victim of concupiscence. I suppose I could say that life’s circumstances have zeroed in on me again but I believe that most wounds are self inflicted.
I promised myself to stay away from my favorite vertical pleasure - the poleaxing of modern American Liberals – until noon on Easter Sunday. The nuns who taught me to avoid the near occasions of sin would be disappointed if they had seen me reading your column today. Now I’ll have to go back to my hairshirt.
Meanwhile…
#1 – “And parents of children in failing schools are railing against Federal efforts to improve science education.”
“Federal efforts” always means more money. Either through taxes or borrowing from the Chinese “Federal efforts” always, always, always means more money.
With 1957, the year the Russkies launched Sputnik, the year when everyone decided that it was time to learn Calculus and Inorganic Chemistry, as the base line budgeting year, can you indentify any year where money spent on “improving science education” has gone down? Please be specific.
Perhaps the relationship between money spent on education and measurable education results should be examined. Nowhere in this country is there a higher expenditure per student than in Washington, D.C. The modern American Liberal mantra of more money per student equals better educated students does not explain the absence of the Obama daughters from some of the really fine schools in the district. Maybe you can. Get back to me on that also.
#2 – You say that the states benefitting most from Federal tax dollars are “leading the revolt against reason”. Why do those “states in the North and West [who] always contribute the most to the tax base without getting nearly as much in the way of government services and programs” permit this? If they are so God Damn smart why do they let those red neck, gun toting, snake handling Yahoo goobers beat them like a rented mule when the dinner bell sounds?
#3 – You speak of “many unemployed Americans [who] are furious with the efforts of by the president to spend money on employment-generating [and sorely needed] public infrastructure projects”. We have just celebrated the first anniversary of the Stimulus program. What happened to all those “shovel ready’ projects that were going to be funded by Ash Wednesday of 2009? Weren’t they the ones that were going to be finished by Easter of 2009? Didn’t the calorically challenged administration spokeschick tell us last year that unemployment would level off 8%? What happened there?
I suggest your sentence should have said “People are furious with government”. That’s as good an explanation of what happened in the Senate election in Massachusetts as any as I have heard. Plus, the changing of the state law concerning special elections is but one more example of modern American Liberals getting hoisted on their own petards.
Do you have a cat o’nine tail I can borrow?
Robert Watson, Ph.D.
Lynn University
3601 North Military Trail
Boca Raton, Florida 33431
RE: Another broken Lent resolution – Some relfections on your musings today in the Sun-Sentinel
My dear Professor,
Not even one week past Ash Wednesday and I am yet again a victim of concupiscence. I suppose I could say that life’s circumstances have zeroed in on me again but I believe that most wounds are self inflicted.
I promised myself to stay away from my favorite vertical pleasure - the poleaxing of modern American Liberals – until noon on Easter Sunday. The nuns who taught me to avoid the near occasions of sin would be disappointed if they had seen me reading your column today. Now I’ll have to go back to my hairshirt.
Meanwhile…
#1 – “And parents of children in failing schools are railing against Federal efforts to improve science education.”
“Federal efforts” always means more money. Either through taxes or borrowing from the Chinese “Federal efforts” always, always, always means more money.
With 1957, the year the Russkies launched Sputnik, the year when everyone decided that it was time to learn Calculus and Inorganic Chemistry, as the base line budgeting year, can you indentify any year where money spent on “improving science education” has gone down? Please be specific.
Perhaps the relationship between money spent on education and measurable education results should be examined. Nowhere in this country is there a higher expenditure per student than in Washington, D.C. The modern American Liberal mantra of more money per student equals better educated students does not explain the absence of the Obama daughters from some of the really fine schools in the district. Maybe you can. Get back to me on that also.
#2 – You say that the states benefitting most from Federal tax dollars are “leading the revolt against reason”. Why do those “states in the North and West [who] always contribute the most to the tax base without getting nearly as much in the way of government services and programs” permit this? If they are so God Damn smart why do they let those red neck, gun toting, snake handling Yahoo goobers beat them like a rented mule when the dinner bell sounds?
#3 – You speak of “many unemployed Americans [who] are furious with the efforts of by the president to spend money on employment-generating [and sorely needed] public infrastructure projects”. We have just celebrated the first anniversary of the Stimulus program. What happened to all those “shovel ready’ projects that were going to be funded by Ash Wednesday of 2009? Weren’t they the ones that were going to be finished by Easter of 2009? Didn’t the calorically challenged administration spokeschick tell us last year that unemployment would level off 8%? What happened there?
I suggest your sentence should have said “People are furious with government”. That’s as good an explanation of what happened in the Senate election in Massachusetts as any as I have heard. Plus, the changing of the state law concerning special elections is but one more example of modern American Liberals getting hoisted on their own petards.
Do you have a cat o’nine tail I can borrow?
Carl Hiaasen The Miami Herald
February 21, 2010
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Modern American Liberals versus Free Speech – Thank you for making it so clear in this morning’s Miami Herald
Mr. Hiaasen,
Two more victims of Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever it will be called when the cabal of snake oil salesman gathers for their monthly IV of hope, change, and willing suspension of disbelief are the much dreaded “slippery slope” and the greatly feared “chilling effect”. Those are two of the more useful epithets reserved for someone’s prissy maiden lady aunt who says that interspecies copulation shouldn’t be part of a middle school curriculum. The silent guardians of our rights, the elusive “penumbras” and the wily, hard to pin down “emanations” will be made to stand down.
Your Jeremiad about the recent Supreme Court decision strengthening the First Amendment – that’s the one just before the Second Amendment which I know is on your hit list. It’s also the one that affirms in readable English the right of hated “special interests” to lobby their elected officials. You should read it sometime – contains a hidden gem.
You say that the “unelected” members of the Court, who voted to undo the work of Pitchfork Ben Tillman, and let me tell you that he wasn’t exactly a walk on the beach, don’t have to curry favor with the voters. You say that a majority of the American public is in favor of the ban on institutional dollars being invested in political campaigns.
Since you brought it up would it be fair to say that if the Warren Court had to stand for election after the Brown v Board of Education vote 7 of them would have back in private practice right quick? You brought it up; I didn’t. [I am certain that Justice Black and would it be mean spirited of me to say former Klan Kleagle Justice Black and Justice Brennan would have won overwhelmingly. Black from Alabama and Brennan from New Jersey would have had well oiled machines combing the cemeteries to insure a landslide for both]
As we enter the holy season of Lent I must thank you for discovering the elusive Fifth Gospel. Snark-like in its ability to confuse pursuers you stuck your hand down the rabbit hole and pulled it up for mortal man to see. The new Gospel is the one according to Carl. Czar Carl will review all the relevant documents and, more importantly, the intentions of the petitioners, and then give us a thumbs up or thumbs down.
He tells us that while it is OK to drill off the coast of Texas, off the coast of Louisiana, off the coast of Mississippi, off the coast of Alabama, and off the coast of Cuba [qui tacet consentit, no?] there shall be no drilling close to Apalachicola. Since the sovereign nation of the Bahamas has not yet decided to drill off their territory there is no need for him to render judgment. That he will there can be no doubt. What is the sense of being an Evangelist unless you evangelize?
Further, Czar Carl has ruled that anyone daring to speak otherwise shall have his lips Gorilla Glued shut and then wrapped in Duck Tape. If that doesn’t work there is always Gitmo where he will be fitted with his own IED. Guess whose finger is on the RESET button?
20% of the electricity generated in this country comes from oil or gas pumped out of the Gulf. As a man of principle you hit the off switch on your generator for about 6 days a month, don’t you?
If receiving money from a corporation makes a candidate a “stooge” may we say that a candidate receiving money from a union is a thug?
Alas but we are at the nexus of Logic and Rhetoric where rights collide. That conflict is now in its 26th century of debate. It’s what free men do.
You write as if political debate, something that “ain’t beanbag”, something with sharp elbows and low blows, something that we still don’t send people to Lubyanka for, began in 2008.
It didn’t.
No campaign in American History has been equal to the vitriol and billingsgate of the campaign of 1800. The only one even close is 1876. It is well to note it was Jefferson versus the incumbent Adams in 1800. It was the worst, most vicious campaign ever. They did it without a 24 hour news cycle. They did it without Fox News pissing off every mAL in America. They did it without electricity. Two giants of American History went at it with hatchets. That they would have used nuclear weapons if they were available is a given.
The cure for nasty political speech is found in the ballot box. Maybe Massachusetts can teach us something new again.
When was the last time you heard a serious adult use the term “shovel ready”? Didn’t 3 Presidents in the last century promise to keep Americans out of foreign wars?
The Republic survived. It prospered, and like Faulkner said, “It prevailed”.
Quis custodes custodiet?
You?
Daniel Webster is said to come back from across the river to see how things are.
“Neighbor, how stands the Republic?” is his constant question. The answer he seeks is “Iron bottomed and copper sheathed.”
Your ship is neither.
Kevin Smith
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Modern American Liberals versus Free Speech – Thank you for making it so clear in this morning’s Miami Herald
Mr. Hiaasen,
Two more victims of Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever it will be called when the cabal of snake oil salesman gathers for their monthly IV of hope, change, and willing suspension of disbelief are the much dreaded “slippery slope” and the greatly feared “chilling effect”. Those are two of the more useful epithets reserved for someone’s prissy maiden lady aunt who says that interspecies copulation shouldn’t be part of a middle school curriculum. The silent guardians of our rights, the elusive “penumbras” and the wily, hard to pin down “emanations” will be made to stand down.
Your Jeremiad about the recent Supreme Court decision strengthening the First Amendment – that’s the one just before the Second Amendment which I know is on your hit list. It’s also the one that affirms in readable English the right of hated “special interests” to lobby their elected officials. You should read it sometime – contains a hidden gem.
You say that the “unelected” members of the Court, who voted to undo the work of Pitchfork Ben Tillman, and let me tell you that he wasn’t exactly a walk on the beach, don’t have to curry favor with the voters. You say that a majority of the American public is in favor of the ban on institutional dollars being invested in political campaigns.
Since you brought it up would it be fair to say that if the Warren Court had to stand for election after the Brown v Board of Education vote 7 of them would have back in private practice right quick? You brought it up; I didn’t. [I am certain that Justice Black and would it be mean spirited of me to say former Klan Kleagle Justice Black and Justice Brennan would have won overwhelmingly. Black from Alabama and Brennan from New Jersey would have had well oiled machines combing the cemeteries to insure a landslide for both]
As we enter the holy season of Lent I must thank you for discovering the elusive Fifth Gospel. Snark-like in its ability to confuse pursuers you stuck your hand down the rabbit hole and pulled it up for mortal man to see. The new Gospel is the one according to Carl. Czar Carl will review all the relevant documents and, more importantly, the intentions of the petitioners, and then give us a thumbs up or thumbs down.
He tells us that while it is OK to drill off the coast of Texas, off the coast of Louisiana, off the coast of Mississippi, off the coast of Alabama, and off the coast of Cuba [qui tacet consentit, no?] there shall be no drilling close to Apalachicola. Since the sovereign nation of the Bahamas has not yet decided to drill off their territory there is no need for him to render judgment. That he will there can be no doubt. What is the sense of being an Evangelist unless you evangelize?
Further, Czar Carl has ruled that anyone daring to speak otherwise shall have his lips Gorilla Glued shut and then wrapped in Duck Tape. If that doesn’t work there is always Gitmo where he will be fitted with his own IED. Guess whose finger is on the RESET button?
20% of the electricity generated in this country comes from oil or gas pumped out of the Gulf. As a man of principle you hit the off switch on your generator for about 6 days a month, don’t you?
If receiving money from a corporation makes a candidate a “stooge” may we say that a candidate receiving money from a union is a thug?
Alas but we are at the nexus of Logic and Rhetoric where rights collide. That conflict is now in its 26th century of debate. It’s what free men do.
You write as if political debate, something that “ain’t beanbag”, something with sharp elbows and low blows, something that we still don’t send people to Lubyanka for, began in 2008.
It didn’t.
No campaign in American History has been equal to the vitriol and billingsgate of the campaign of 1800. The only one even close is 1876. It is well to note it was Jefferson versus the incumbent Adams in 1800. It was the worst, most vicious campaign ever. They did it without a 24 hour news cycle. They did it without Fox News pissing off every mAL in America. They did it without electricity. Two giants of American History went at it with hatchets. That they would have used nuclear weapons if they were available is a given.
The cure for nasty political speech is found in the ballot box. Maybe Massachusetts can teach us something new again.
When was the last time you heard a serious adult use the term “shovel ready”? Didn’t 3 Presidents in the last century promise to keep Americans out of foreign wars?
The Republic survived. It prospered, and like Faulkner said, “It prevailed”.
Quis custodes custodiet?
You?
Daniel Webster is said to come back from across the river to see how things are.
“Neighbor, how stands the Republic?” is his constant question. The answer he seeks is “Iron bottomed and copper sheathed.”
Your ship is neither.
Kevin Smith
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Margaret Carlson Bloomberg News
February 19, 2010
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20005
RE: Vaya con Dios
Ms. Carlson,
I was reading your not so fond farewell to Senator Evan Bayh when I tripped on two disguised gems.
You say that “young Bayh was schooled at St. Alban’s”.
That sits out there like a 3 day old latke. OK. OK. It’s Lent. A 3 day old zeppole.
What was wrong with the public school system in Washington when Bayh was a lad? Bad teachers? Bad principals? Bad administrators? “Young Bayh” was 12 years old – the mid ‘60s, no? – when his parents sent him to private school. Without first hand knowledge I think the problems that were there 45 years ago are still there. Could that be the reason that the Obama children are not in the public school system in the nation’s capitol?
Here’s an idea to shape them up.
If you are elected to any job in Washington, if your employment is subject to Congressional approval, if you are a Federal employee being paid 6 figures and you have children of school age they must attend public schools in the Washington. No exceptions. None. Further, if you are employed by the Washington public school system in any capacity they must attend a public school there. Any employee of the Department of Education whose children attend any private school at any below college level shall be flogged on the steps of the capitol.
Johnny just won’t be reading well he’ll be winning Nobel Prizes by his junior year.
Nothing else has worked. Why not try this?
Let us stipulate that former Vice President Quayle couldn’t spell potato. Do you think he knew that FDR wasn’t President in 1929? I call Vice President Biden “Curley” in honor of the smartest stooge. He is the consummate public horse’s ass.
Speaking of “bright light” Vice Presidents how about Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.? His Secret Service call sign was “Cementhead”. His wife, the charming and gracious Thumper Gump, in those connubial magic moments, calls him Alpha. If he were standing in a mirror lined phone booth with one his handlers shouting instructions he couldn’t find his ass using both hands. STOP THE PRESSES! Wasn’t he “schooled at St. Alban’s”?
That he was able to con rational adults into depleting ozone layer mode and drowning polar bear syndrome would suggest that a majority of Americans were also “schooled at St. Alban’s”. Soon his name will appear under the heading of updated Tulip scams, “Is Ponzi really dead?”, and I hope that I get some change back.
I am going to spend part of the last spring we will have before perpetual Global Warming – It will be here just after Easter, right? – driving my gas guzzling SUV in search of my literary Holy Grail. Drowning polar bears be damned but I hope I don’t have to go to all 57 or 58 states to find the rarest of the rare. I want to read from a first edition of the Austrian-English dictionary. Before I am sent to the gallows for not buying health insurance I want to see what the Austrian term for Boob Vice President is.
Tell Tucker, a son whom you must be very proud of, to go back to his four-in-hands.
My hunt for tax dodging GIs living in Florida goes on as per your instructions. Tell me again if I should search the VA hospitals. I don’t think too may of them could be hiding there but you never know. If any of them are tea drinkers should I tell Janet Napolitano?
Kevin Smith
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20005
RE: Vaya con Dios
Ms. Carlson,
I was reading your not so fond farewell to Senator Evan Bayh when I tripped on two disguised gems.
You say that “young Bayh was schooled at St. Alban’s”.
That sits out there like a 3 day old latke. OK. OK. It’s Lent. A 3 day old zeppole.
What was wrong with the public school system in Washington when Bayh was a lad? Bad teachers? Bad principals? Bad administrators? “Young Bayh” was 12 years old – the mid ‘60s, no? – when his parents sent him to private school. Without first hand knowledge I think the problems that were there 45 years ago are still there. Could that be the reason that the Obama children are not in the public school system in the nation’s capitol?
Here’s an idea to shape them up.
If you are elected to any job in Washington, if your employment is subject to Congressional approval, if you are a Federal employee being paid 6 figures and you have children of school age they must attend public schools in the Washington. No exceptions. None. Further, if you are employed by the Washington public school system in any capacity they must attend a public school there. Any employee of the Department of Education whose children attend any private school at any below college level shall be flogged on the steps of the capitol.
Johnny just won’t be reading well he’ll be winning Nobel Prizes by his junior year.
Nothing else has worked. Why not try this?
Let us stipulate that former Vice President Quayle couldn’t spell potato. Do you think he knew that FDR wasn’t President in 1929? I call Vice President Biden “Curley” in honor of the smartest stooge. He is the consummate public horse’s ass.
Speaking of “bright light” Vice Presidents how about Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.? His Secret Service call sign was “Cementhead”. His wife, the charming and gracious Thumper Gump, in those connubial magic moments, calls him Alpha. If he were standing in a mirror lined phone booth with one his handlers shouting instructions he couldn’t find his ass using both hands. STOP THE PRESSES! Wasn’t he “schooled at St. Alban’s”?
That he was able to con rational adults into depleting ozone layer mode and drowning polar bear syndrome would suggest that a majority of Americans were also “schooled at St. Alban’s”. Soon his name will appear under the heading of updated Tulip scams, “Is Ponzi really dead?”, and I hope that I get some change back.
I am going to spend part of the last spring we will have before perpetual Global Warming – It will be here just after Easter, right? – driving my gas guzzling SUV in search of my literary Holy Grail. Drowning polar bears be damned but I hope I don’t have to go to all 57 or 58 states to find the rarest of the rare. I want to read from a first edition of the Austrian-English dictionary. Before I am sent to the gallows for not buying health insurance I want to see what the Austrian term for Boob Vice President is.
Tell Tucker, a son whom you must be very proud of, to go back to his four-in-hands.
My hunt for tax dodging GIs living in Florida goes on as per your instructions. Tell me again if I should search the VA hospitals. I don’t think too may of them could be hiding there but you never know. If any of them are tea drinkers should I tell Janet Napolitano?
Kevin Smith
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
E. J. Dionne, Jr. The Washington Post Writers Group
February 15, 2010
E. J. Dionne, Jr.
The Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20017
RE: Who date sayin’ Bubba Ho-Tep? Some comments on your column in the New Republic of 2/15/10 about Big Bill and Osama.
Mr. Dionne,
What the Hell does “Bubba Ho-Tep” mean?
First I thought because “Ho” was in the title it was a back handed reference to Big Bill’s trouser snake. There hasn’t been an unblinking eye like that in Washington since the dollar bill was designed.
It appears now that the Democrats have managed, Lord willing, to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I am not good in Math but if every Democrat in the House and every Democrat in the Senate voted for the Health plan it would have passed. Why is it the fault of the Republicans? Their votes weren’t needed.
Honorable men can argue whether specific policies are good or bad. What has been validated again is the process that was set in place in 1787. A society that has no place for the “permanent things” is in the speed lane for Avernus.
I’ll spare you the tutorial on Madison. It wouldn’t make a difference.
What I will comment on is the following:
“Yes, Clinton put his presidency at risk over a sex scandal and
his infuriating moments around the 2008 South Carolina
primary disheartened even his most vocal supporters.”
That Billy would hump a snake if someone held its head was never in doubt. That’s not why he “put his presidency at risk”. It was “at risk” because he perjured himself.
Presidents lie all the time. It is a requirement of office. Nowhere in the tablets of office that are handed off from outgoing Presidents to incoming ones does it say that he has to perjure himself.
“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands as if
it were water. He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
You say he “disappointed his most loyal followers in the South Carolina primary”. Not so, not so, as the great Rumsfeld used to say. After decades of humiliating his wife – What is the feminine version of cuckold? – he felt he owed it to her. His comparison of Senator Obama to Jesse Jackson was minor league. If he had called him a “macaca” like the Senator from Virginia did – What was his name? – he may have had to become an out patient at Offensive Word Re-Hab.
If he had twice said that Senator Yama Bahama Osama, to paraphrase what Lard Kennedy called him, was a “dreaded ‘N’ word” like former Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd [D-WVA] who knows what would have happened. Maybe Hillary would have made it to the Oval Office. Who knows? Maybe she could have tried to impersonate Catherine the Great. Bill had a cow. She could have had a bull.
In 1954 Joseph Welch asked Senator McCarthy [Joe, not Gene] if he had “no sense of shame”.
In 1996 Robert Dole asked, “Where is the outrage?”
Here it is, 2010. Still no shame; still no outrage.
Kevin Smith
PS – Maybe you, as a big time media mogul, can give me the answer to a vexing question on health care. In 1993 we were told that there were 43,000,000 uninsured. In 2008 we were told that there were 47,000,000 uninsured. A few months ago the President, and Blessed be his Name, told us there were 30,000,000 uninsured. That’s a swing of more than one third. “Close enough for government work” does not apply here. Can you peek behind the curtain and tell me what the number is? Also, the Prime Minister of Nova Scotia came to America for his heart treatment. Why didn’t Bubba go to Quebec for his treatment? I thought that NAFTA required that.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.
The Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20017
RE: Who date sayin’ Bubba Ho-Tep? Some comments on your column in the New Republic of 2/15/10 about Big Bill and Osama.
Mr. Dionne,
What the Hell does “Bubba Ho-Tep” mean?
First I thought because “Ho” was in the title it was a back handed reference to Big Bill’s trouser snake. There hasn’t been an unblinking eye like that in Washington since the dollar bill was designed.
It appears now that the Democrats have managed, Lord willing, to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I am not good in Math but if every Democrat in the House and every Democrat in the Senate voted for the Health plan it would have passed. Why is it the fault of the Republicans? Their votes weren’t needed.
Honorable men can argue whether specific policies are good or bad. What has been validated again is the process that was set in place in 1787. A society that has no place for the “permanent things” is in the speed lane for Avernus.
I’ll spare you the tutorial on Madison. It wouldn’t make a difference.
What I will comment on is the following:
“Yes, Clinton put his presidency at risk over a sex scandal and
his infuriating moments around the 2008 South Carolina
primary disheartened even his most vocal supporters.”
That Billy would hump a snake if someone held its head was never in doubt. That’s not why he “put his presidency at risk”. It was “at risk” because he perjured himself.
Presidents lie all the time. It is a requirement of office. Nowhere in the tablets of office that are handed off from outgoing Presidents to incoming ones does it say that he has to perjure himself.
“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands as if
it were water. He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
You say he “disappointed his most loyal followers in the South Carolina primary”. Not so, not so, as the great Rumsfeld used to say. After decades of humiliating his wife – What is the feminine version of cuckold? – he felt he owed it to her. His comparison of Senator Obama to Jesse Jackson was minor league. If he had called him a “macaca” like the Senator from Virginia did – What was his name? – he may have had to become an out patient at Offensive Word Re-Hab.
If he had twice said that Senator Yama Bahama Osama, to paraphrase what Lard Kennedy called him, was a “dreaded ‘N’ word” like former Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd [D-WVA] who knows what would have happened. Maybe Hillary would have made it to the Oval Office. Who knows? Maybe she could have tried to impersonate Catherine the Great. Bill had a cow. She could have had a bull.
In 1954 Joseph Welch asked Senator McCarthy [Joe, not Gene] if he had “no sense of shame”.
In 1996 Robert Dole asked, “Where is the outrage?”
Here it is, 2010. Still no shame; still no outrage.
Kevin Smith
PS – Maybe you, as a big time media mogul, can give me the answer to a vexing question on health care. In 1993 we were told that there were 43,000,000 uninsured. In 2008 we were told that there were 47,000,000 uninsured. A few months ago the President, and Blessed be his Name, told us there were 30,000,000 uninsured. That’s a swing of more than one third. “Close enough for government work” does not apply here. Can you peek behind the curtain and tell me what the number is? Also, the Prime Minister of Nova Scotia came to America for his heart treatment. Why didn’t Bubba go to Quebec for his treatment? I thought that NAFTA required that.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
February 14, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Some comments on your wished for surge – if only this one could be as successful as the one orchestrated by President Bush in Iraq – in the never ending War on Poverty in which the lack of an exit strategy is conveniently overlooked. It is the column in which you speak ex cathedra after direct communication from the God of Good Intentions.
My dear Professor,
You say,
“Some people will brand my suggestions
naïve, socialistic – and laughable.”
Further, you say,
“Poverty is the reason for most, if not all
of our pressing issues.”
As to your first quote…
Of course it is “naïve”.
What’s the sense of being a card carrying modern American Liberal unless you can wallow in naïveté buoyed only by the hope that you can make it into public policy? The sooner you doubt Orwell’s adage that “stones are hard, water is wet”, the quicker you will believe that the laws governing gravity are optional. From there it is easy to believe that government has the answers to questions that haven’t even be asked.
Of course it is “socialistic”.
We know that “any public policy that involves robbing Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support”. We know that modern American Liberals hope that that will never change. We know that Robert Owen and Norman Thomas are still held in high esteem by people who believe that “Midnight Basketball” is good public policy. Supposedly rational adults who believe that a country can tax its way to prosperity should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery or handle sharp objects. That they today constitute a majority of both Houses of Congress and occupy the White House is proof that God does have a sense of whimsy.
Of course it is “laughable”.
Swift is laugh out laugh out loud funny. The part about boiling babies is a real knee slapper. Bastiat’s “Broken Window” theory of Economics as outlined in his “Petition of the Candle Makers to Block out the Sun” can cause terminal enuresis. Your screeds don’t fall into that category. The “laughable” part is that you believe them. How many people have died in the futile attempt to remake society by remaking human nature?
The 3 leading Socialists of the 20th century – Stalin, Hitler, and Mao – killed 100,000,000 people. Despite Walter Duranty’s lies as many as 6,000,000 Kulaks died for Stalin’s blueprint for the new man. Hitler put 12,000,000 people into the ovens. Mao did his killing before the rise of the hand held calculator. The AFL-CIO estimated that he killed 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 people. I know that they aren’t laughing.
If, as you say, “Poverty is the reason for most, if not all, of our pressing issues” could you explain why the crime rate went down in the 1930s? You may recall that unemployment rates reached 30%. At one point 20% of the mortgages in this country were in foreclosure. Al Capone, James Cagney, and John Dillinger were crooks. America never resembled Beirut or East Los Angeles. Despite fireside chats, alphabet agencies, and noble intentions economic indices were lower in 1939 then they were in 1933. The crime rate decreased every year. Why?
Lyndon Johnson fought 2 wars.
At least the one in Asia ended.
The war against poverty goes on and on and on and on.
How many people were “poor” when Johnson declared war on poverty? How many people are “poor” 45 years after the “shock and awe” phase of the war? Would not the History of the past 45 years suggest that the treatments, rather than helping the patients, are hurting them?
Only in the dream world occupied by mush brained modern American Liberals does “hope triumph over experience” over and over and over and over again.
You say that “the state needs to set the pace and priorities for private philanthropy to fund”. Only large amounts of gin for breakfast will produce sentences like that.
It took 5 days for 4 levels of government tot get a truck filled with water into New Orleans. If they were in charge of D-Day the official language of France would be German.
Does the Department of Agriculture “grow” anything? How many barrels of oil has the Department of Energy produced in 35 years? The Department of Energy is more than 30 years old. Can Johnny read better today? HUD is the largest slum lord in the country. If History is a guide these things are not the exception; they are the rule.
The best news for lovers of liberty and defenders of freedom was the blizzard in Washington. The place was shut down for a week. Jefferson’s indictment of the King included the statement that “he has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance”. 5 days without those “little dogs” nipping at your ankles could be near orgasmic. A week without those lamprey-like parasites is like a week in Elysium
[A serendipitous bonus is that the tautologies of Global Warming are harder to swallow when you are up to your tuchis in snow.]
You say that the same people who gave, give, will give us the Post Office, the IRS, the Department of Motor Vehicles, “shovel ready” for the asinine term of the year, and then label it as Hope and Change are better suited to tell people how and to whom to give their money.
Madness.
No wonder you always express your support for absolutely unlimited abortion.
If you were a woman you’d always be pregnant.
Kevin Smith
PS – I grant you a respite from my enfilade of History and Logic. I am giving you up for Lent. You may stick your head out of the foxhole until noon on Easter Sunday
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Some comments on your wished for surge – if only this one could be as successful as the one orchestrated by President Bush in Iraq – in the never ending War on Poverty in which the lack of an exit strategy is conveniently overlooked. It is the column in which you speak ex cathedra after direct communication from the God of Good Intentions.
My dear Professor,
You say,
“Some people will brand my suggestions
naïve, socialistic – and laughable.”
Further, you say,
“Poverty is the reason for most, if not all
of our pressing issues.”
As to your first quote…
Of course it is “naïve”.
What’s the sense of being a card carrying modern American Liberal unless you can wallow in naïveté buoyed only by the hope that you can make it into public policy? The sooner you doubt Orwell’s adage that “stones are hard, water is wet”, the quicker you will believe that the laws governing gravity are optional. From there it is easy to believe that government has the answers to questions that haven’t even be asked.
Of course it is “socialistic”.
We know that “any public policy that involves robbing Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support”. We know that modern American Liberals hope that that will never change. We know that Robert Owen and Norman Thomas are still held in high esteem by people who believe that “Midnight Basketball” is good public policy. Supposedly rational adults who believe that a country can tax its way to prosperity should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery or handle sharp objects. That they today constitute a majority of both Houses of Congress and occupy the White House is proof that God does have a sense of whimsy.
Of course it is “laughable”.
Swift is laugh out laugh out loud funny. The part about boiling babies is a real knee slapper. Bastiat’s “Broken Window” theory of Economics as outlined in his “Petition of the Candle Makers to Block out the Sun” can cause terminal enuresis. Your screeds don’t fall into that category. The “laughable” part is that you believe them. How many people have died in the futile attempt to remake society by remaking human nature?
The 3 leading Socialists of the 20th century – Stalin, Hitler, and Mao – killed 100,000,000 people. Despite Walter Duranty’s lies as many as 6,000,000 Kulaks died for Stalin’s blueprint for the new man. Hitler put 12,000,000 people into the ovens. Mao did his killing before the rise of the hand held calculator. The AFL-CIO estimated that he killed 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 people. I know that they aren’t laughing.
If, as you say, “Poverty is the reason for most, if not all, of our pressing issues” could you explain why the crime rate went down in the 1930s? You may recall that unemployment rates reached 30%. At one point 20% of the mortgages in this country were in foreclosure. Al Capone, James Cagney, and John Dillinger were crooks. America never resembled Beirut or East Los Angeles. Despite fireside chats, alphabet agencies, and noble intentions economic indices were lower in 1939 then they were in 1933. The crime rate decreased every year. Why?
Lyndon Johnson fought 2 wars.
At least the one in Asia ended.
The war against poverty goes on and on and on and on.
How many people were “poor” when Johnson declared war on poverty? How many people are “poor” 45 years after the “shock and awe” phase of the war? Would not the History of the past 45 years suggest that the treatments, rather than helping the patients, are hurting them?
Only in the dream world occupied by mush brained modern American Liberals does “hope triumph over experience” over and over and over and over again.
You say that “the state needs to set the pace and priorities for private philanthropy to fund”. Only large amounts of gin for breakfast will produce sentences like that.
It took 5 days for 4 levels of government tot get a truck filled with water into New Orleans. If they were in charge of D-Day the official language of France would be German.
Does the Department of Agriculture “grow” anything? How many barrels of oil has the Department of Energy produced in 35 years? The Department of Energy is more than 30 years old. Can Johnny read better today? HUD is the largest slum lord in the country. If History is a guide these things are not the exception; they are the rule.
The best news for lovers of liberty and defenders of freedom was the blizzard in Washington. The place was shut down for a week. Jefferson’s indictment of the King included the statement that “he has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance”. 5 days without those “little dogs” nipping at your ankles could be near orgasmic. A week without those lamprey-like parasites is like a week in Elysium
[A serendipitous bonus is that the tautologies of Global Warming are harder to swallow when you are up to your tuchis in snow.]
You say that the same people who gave, give, will give us the Post Office, the IRS, the Department of Motor Vehicles, “shovel ready” for the asinine term of the year, and then label it as Hope and Change are better suited to tell people how and to whom to give their money.
Madness.
No wonder you always express your support for absolutely unlimited abortion.
If you were a woman you’d always be pregnant.
Kevin Smith
PS – I grant you a respite from my enfilade of History and Logic. I am giving you up for Lent. You may stick your head out of the foxhole until noon on Easter Sunday
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Augustin Torres The Jersey Journal
February 8, 2010
Augustin Torres
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, New Jersey 07306-4101
RE: Follow up on “Nothing lost save honor” letter
Mr. Torres,
A classmate from Marist High School e-mailed me about my letter being published in today’s Jersey Journal.
#1 – As to your note about wagers and saloon etiquette I must tell you that I had my first charge account and my first lesson on the above mentioned items in the Speedway Tavern, Avenue B in Bayonne, between 48th and 49th Streets. Moose, Big Red, Geno, Foul Mouth, Dirty Willie, Froggie, Cas, Shadow, Shadow’s brother Spook…where have the snows of yesteryear gone?
I was standing at the bar in the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco some years later when the stick man asked me if I were from New York. “Across the river,” I said. “Bayonne.” He said he could always tell a guy from Jersey. “They know how to stand at a bar.”
If you bet and you lost you paid. End of story.
#2 – The mutual acquaintance was Jerry Murphy, a man for whom the word picaresque was invented.
#3 – The subject was the R.M.S. Titanic. Since he was drinking whisky not his own, that is to say he was drinking like he was going to the gallows at dawn, I kept the bet at a minimum. I asked him if he knew the name of the Captain of the Titanic. He said he didn’t. I told him. He said that I was “full of shit”. I asked him if he could stand a wager of $100 on it. He accepted. My father’s law school yearbook picture said he would “hark to a wager”. He also said that “the acorn never falls far from the tree”. I looked at him across the table the way a wolf looks at a lamb chop.
I sent him a copy of a picture of the Captain of the Titanic the next day. His name was Smith. Along with Granny’s apples and the Mrs.’ Pies it would be something of which I would be aware. I have long since charged capital and marked the receivable to zero. Loans are always paid. Most of the time the borrower pays them; sometimes the lender pays them
#4 – The other people at the table were Dave Plotkin, CPA, a partner of Wiss&Company, Al Nechemie, CPA, also a partner of Wiss and now of late and happy memory. Also present were Tom Olivieri, Esq. and Pat Costello, Esq.
#5 – Speaking of open wagers, that is to say unsettled ones, I have another one that was entered into at Gerrino’s. This one was with Judge Geoffrey Gaulkin. I met him when he married the two lawyers at the table.
But that’s a different story.
I enclose the link to my blog. Sometimes amusing, sometimes not. Always entertaining. Always educational. Since “modesty is an overrated virtue” I can tell you that it is required reading in English immersion classes at 2 Russian universities. It is correctly labeled terra incognita.
Kevin Smith
PS – Dr. Johnson’s caveat about second marriages being “the triumph of hope over experience” would apply should I ever find myself in any Italian restaurant in Hudson County with a group of lawyers who know nothing about acceptable behavior in saloons.
Augustin Torres
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, New Jersey 07306-4101
RE: Follow up on “Nothing lost save honor” letter
Mr. Torres,
A classmate from Marist High School e-mailed me about my letter being published in today’s Jersey Journal.
#1 – As to your note about wagers and saloon etiquette I must tell you that I had my first charge account and my first lesson on the above mentioned items in the Speedway Tavern, Avenue B in Bayonne, between 48th and 49th Streets. Moose, Big Red, Geno, Foul Mouth, Dirty Willie, Froggie, Cas, Shadow, Shadow’s brother Spook…where have the snows of yesteryear gone?
I was standing at the bar in the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco some years later when the stick man asked me if I were from New York. “Across the river,” I said. “Bayonne.” He said he could always tell a guy from Jersey. “They know how to stand at a bar.”
If you bet and you lost you paid. End of story.
#2 – The mutual acquaintance was Jerry Murphy, a man for whom the word picaresque was invented.
#3 – The subject was the R.M.S. Titanic. Since he was drinking whisky not his own, that is to say he was drinking like he was going to the gallows at dawn, I kept the bet at a minimum. I asked him if he knew the name of the Captain of the Titanic. He said he didn’t. I told him. He said that I was “full of shit”. I asked him if he could stand a wager of $100 on it. He accepted. My father’s law school yearbook picture said he would “hark to a wager”. He also said that “the acorn never falls far from the tree”. I looked at him across the table the way a wolf looks at a lamb chop.
I sent him a copy of a picture of the Captain of the Titanic the next day. His name was Smith. Along with Granny’s apples and the Mrs.’ Pies it would be something of which I would be aware. I have long since charged capital and marked the receivable to zero. Loans are always paid. Most of the time the borrower pays them; sometimes the lender pays them
#4 – The other people at the table were Dave Plotkin, CPA, a partner of Wiss&Company, Al Nechemie, CPA, also a partner of Wiss and now of late and happy memory. Also present were Tom Olivieri, Esq. and Pat Costello, Esq.
#5 – Speaking of open wagers, that is to say unsettled ones, I have another one that was entered into at Gerrino’s. This one was with Judge Geoffrey Gaulkin. I met him when he married the two lawyers at the table.
But that’s a different story.
I enclose the link to my blog. Sometimes amusing, sometimes not. Always entertaining. Always educational. Since “modesty is an overrated virtue” I can tell you that it is required reading in English immersion classes at 2 Russian universities. It is correctly labeled terra incognita.
Kevin Smith
PS – Dr. Johnson’s caveat about second marriages being “the triumph of hope over experience” would apply should I ever find myself in any Italian restaurant in Hudson County with a group of lawyers who know nothing about acceptable behavior in saloons.
Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
February 12, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Train & Planes & Buses & solar powered scooters – Some comments on the genetically predestined modern American Liberal reaction to the Goddess known as “Mass Transit” as propounded by you in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Professor,
Two points independent of your main theme,
#1 – I know it is a small thing but God is in the details, right? How can Governor Crist’s sophomoric attempts at either out-bowing President Obama or attempting an end run on the Tenth Amendment by trying to swap spit with him be called “erstwhile”? Either he did or he didn’t. If he did it can’t be undone. How does it become “erstwhile”?
#2 – You mention that Governor Bush “refused to follow the will of the people” when he – forgive me – derailed the High Speed rail amendment. If the “will of the people” is paramount why are you not on the barricades defending the votes of every state – with no exceptions – outlawing same sex marriage? No state has approved it. Judges have. There is a point lurking in there about sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander. I’ll let you make it. Back to high speed rail movement.
Interstate highways and high speed rail systems cause slums. I-95 caused Liberty City and Overton to become Soweto West. I-95 caused the South Bronx to become Soweto North. The human cost, in Economics it is called an unintended consequence, has never been fully examined. Since you are Chairperson of the Permanently Outraged and Corresponding Secretary of the Perpetual Victims Forever Marching Band and Chowder Society I nominate you to look into this. You should have some free time coming up just as soon as the President’s Stimulus program kicks in. I figure it will be no later than April 15th and we’ll all be farting through silk, right?
General MacArthur ordered Captain Eisenhower to find out how long it would take to move a fully equipped division from one ocean to another. Eisenhower told him 6 weeks if the weather cooperated.
Eisenhower remembered.
You define “naysayers” as people “as people afraid they’ll lose a buck” should the high speed rail plan proceed.
Notwithstanding the First Amendment Right that spells out “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”, a thing that knots the knickers or the tighty whities of eclectically indignant modern American Liberals when something alien to their beliefs is being protested, why is there no condescending sneering when tenured teachers fight like the Spartan Hoplites at Platea to keep their privileged status? They are people acting in what they perceive to be their rational self interest. Alas, Rights are not divisible.
It is an inconvenient truth but facts are hard things. That’s why modern American Liberals are so uncomfortable with them. Deo gratias for tautologies. Liberals would be lost without them. Global Warming is caused by hot summers which are caused by Global Warming leading to hotter summers. It sure as Hell beats thinking.
You say that $1,250,000,000 will “create 24,000 desperately needed jobs”. How much is that per job? If “not so desperately needed jobs” are to be created would half the amount be sufficient? Would I be a cad if I were to ask how much of that $1,250,000,000 will be borrowed from China?
You exhort us to sign up for the Obama Express. You tell us we will be in “for the ride of our lives”.
Please tell him that the flashing red light means that the bridge is open.
Kevin Smith
PS – There is a rumor going around that April 15 is the magic date for everybody to be farting through silk. By then all the goodies promised by the President will arrive. Have you heard it or is it just a falsehood being spread by “naysayers”?
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Train & Planes & Buses & solar powered scooters – Some comments on the genetically predestined modern American Liberal reaction to the Goddess known as “Mass Transit” as propounded by you in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Professor,
Two points independent of your main theme,
#1 – I know it is a small thing but God is in the details, right? How can Governor Crist’s sophomoric attempts at either out-bowing President Obama or attempting an end run on the Tenth Amendment by trying to swap spit with him be called “erstwhile”? Either he did or he didn’t. If he did it can’t be undone. How does it become “erstwhile”?
#2 – You mention that Governor Bush “refused to follow the will of the people” when he – forgive me – derailed the High Speed rail amendment. If the “will of the people” is paramount why are you not on the barricades defending the votes of every state – with no exceptions – outlawing same sex marriage? No state has approved it. Judges have. There is a point lurking in there about sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander. I’ll let you make it. Back to high speed rail movement.
Interstate highways and high speed rail systems cause slums. I-95 caused Liberty City and Overton to become Soweto West. I-95 caused the South Bronx to become Soweto North. The human cost, in Economics it is called an unintended consequence, has never been fully examined. Since you are Chairperson of the Permanently Outraged and Corresponding Secretary of the Perpetual Victims Forever Marching Band and Chowder Society I nominate you to look into this. You should have some free time coming up just as soon as the President’s Stimulus program kicks in. I figure it will be no later than April 15th and we’ll all be farting through silk, right?
General MacArthur ordered Captain Eisenhower to find out how long it would take to move a fully equipped division from one ocean to another. Eisenhower told him 6 weeks if the weather cooperated.
Eisenhower remembered.
You define “naysayers” as people “as people afraid they’ll lose a buck” should the high speed rail plan proceed.
Notwithstanding the First Amendment Right that spells out “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”, a thing that knots the knickers or the tighty whities of eclectically indignant modern American Liberals when something alien to their beliefs is being protested, why is there no condescending sneering when tenured teachers fight like the Spartan Hoplites at Platea to keep their privileged status? They are people acting in what they perceive to be their rational self interest. Alas, Rights are not divisible.
It is an inconvenient truth but facts are hard things. That’s why modern American Liberals are so uncomfortable with them. Deo gratias for tautologies. Liberals would be lost without them. Global Warming is caused by hot summers which are caused by Global Warming leading to hotter summers. It sure as Hell beats thinking.
You say that $1,250,000,000 will “create 24,000 desperately needed jobs”. How much is that per job? If “not so desperately needed jobs” are to be created would half the amount be sufficient? Would I be a cad if I were to ask how much of that $1,250,000,000 will be borrowed from China?
You exhort us to sign up for the Obama Express. You tell us we will be in “for the ride of our lives”.
Please tell him that the flashing red light means that the bridge is open.
Kevin Smith
PS – There is a rumor going around that April 15 is the magic date for everybody to be farting through silk. By then all the goodies promised by the President will arrive. Have you heard it or is it just a falsehood being spread by “naysayers”?
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald
February 10, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: What did the Founders want? – Some comments on your editorial about the strange ways of the United States Senate as expressed in your lead editorial in today’s Miami Herald.
Sirs,
It’s time for another lesson in government, particularly American government.
What the Founders wanted was a United States Senate divorced from the vagaries of public opinion. They wanted them not to have to worry about the next election. In fact, they wanted them not to worry about elections at all. The Founders had all Senators appointed by the legislatures of the states where they lived.
In the beginning it took but one Senator to stop legislature by filibuster. The Constitution, by virtue of the provision that said each house could regulate itself, was not done grievous harm when the Senate changed its rules.
[As an aside, the Constitution is a blue print for what the government can do and how they can do it, The Bill of Rights spells out what government cannot do.]
“That’s not the way [placing holds on nominations] it’s
supposed to work in a democracy, and that’s the reason that
Congress is held in increasingly lower esteem by the public.”
Today
You
Benjamin Franklin would be pleased. He was asked at the end of the Constitutional Convention what kind of a government the country had gotten, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Beginning in the agoras of Greece 25 centuries ago, through the Roman Senate, through the Magna Carta, through the Glorious Revolution, through the formation of the Constitution assembled men have tried to make their systems work for them. The first thing they did was to say what could not be done.
Madison, the principal architect of an experiment that has lasted 223 years, said that “If men were angels no government would be necessary”. The Founders, steeped in Natural Law, buttressed by Plutarch and the Bible, knew that men were not angels. That’s why they developed a system that would not respond a la American Idol to the whims of the day.
That’s why the weather in Washington is a blessing in disguise. Notwithstanding the banshee howls accompanying the perpetual Jeremiads about the oceans rising and polar bears drowning the blizzard is a good thing. It limits the damage Congress can do. The people may yet pray for more snow.
The procedural delays are essential to the Senate. They are essential to our freedom.
We discard them at our own peril.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: What did the Founders want? – Some comments on your editorial about the strange ways of the United States Senate as expressed in your lead editorial in today’s Miami Herald.
Sirs,
It’s time for another lesson in government, particularly American government.
What the Founders wanted was a United States Senate divorced from the vagaries of public opinion. They wanted them not to have to worry about the next election. In fact, they wanted them not to worry about elections at all. The Founders had all Senators appointed by the legislatures of the states where they lived.
In the beginning it took but one Senator to stop legislature by filibuster. The Constitution, by virtue of the provision that said each house could regulate itself, was not done grievous harm when the Senate changed its rules.
[As an aside, the Constitution is a blue print for what the government can do and how they can do it, The Bill of Rights spells out what government cannot do.]
“That’s not the way [placing holds on nominations] it’s
supposed to work in a democracy, and that’s the reason that
Congress is held in increasingly lower esteem by the public.”
Today
You
Benjamin Franklin would be pleased. He was asked at the end of the Constitutional Convention what kind of a government the country had gotten, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Beginning in the agoras of Greece 25 centuries ago, through the Roman Senate, through the Magna Carta, through the Glorious Revolution, through the formation of the Constitution assembled men have tried to make their systems work for them. The first thing they did was to say what could not be done.
Madison, the principal architect of an experiment that has lasted 223 years, said that “If men were angels no government would be necessary”. The Founders, steeped in Natural Law, buttressed by Plutarch and the Bible, knew that men were not angels. That’s why they developed a system that would not respond a la American Idol to the whims of the day.
That’s why the weather in Washington is a blessing in disguise. Notwithstanding the banshee howls accompanying the perpetual Jeremiads about the oceans rising and polar bears drowning the blizzard is a good thing. It limits the damage Congress can do. The people may yet pray for more snow.
The procedural delays are essential to the Senate. They are essential to our freedom.
We discard them at our own peril.
Kevin Smith
David Broder The Washington Post
February 10, 2010
David Broder
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20017
RE: It’s never too late. Some comments on lingering myths and what you can do to rid yourself of the harmful effects of still believing them.
Mr. Broder,
Your column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel includes the following statement:
“…it may be a decade until the nation’s finances looks as
healthy as they did the day Bill Clinton left office…”
There are two facts always missing when discussing the “balanced budget” of the glorious Clinton years.
#1 – The Federal budget makes no distinction between capital items and expense items. Simply put, the construction of an aircraft carrier and the costs of implementing “Midnight Basketball” were – are – treated the same. That is offensive to Logic. It is also inherently inimical to the rules of good husbandry.
#2 – Why, if the budgets were balanced during the Clinton years, was there no reduction in the total Federal debt? Not once, ever, did it go down. Continuing a practice begun in 1964 all payroll taxes deducted for Social Security go into the Federal budget as income. The Federal government then issues an IOU, a chit if you will, to the Social Security administration. Presumably it is placed in a “lock box” with our names on it. Madness.
That the best hope for good government lies with Washington being covered in snow for the next 3 months is mute testimony to our folly.
My uncle Adam said, “What is prudence in running the affairs of a family can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire.”
For a well functioning family the serendipitous arrival of a windfall will always involve the prepayment of some debts.
We did not.
You qualify as an old dog in Washington press circles. Before you croodle with other old dogs by the fire – Why does the name Helen Thomas leap to mind? – you may wish to learn at least one new trick.
Kevin Smith
David Broder
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20017
RE: It’s never too late. Some comments on lingering myths and what you can do to rid yourself of the harmful effects of still believing them.
Mr. Broder,
Your column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel includes the following statement:
“…it may be a decade until the nation’s finances looks as
healthy as they did the day Bill Clinton left office…”
There are two facts always missing when discussing the “balanced budget” of the glorious Clinton years.
#1 – The Federal budget makes no distinction between capital items and expense items. Simply put, the construction of an aircraft carrier and the costs of implementing “Midnight Basketball” were – are – treated the same. That is offensive to Logic. It is also inherently inimical to the rules of good husbandry.
#2 – Why, if the budgets were balanced during the Clinton years, was there no reduction in the total Federal debt? Not once, ever, did it go down. Continuing a practice begun in 1964 all payroll taxes deducted for Social Security go into the Federal budget as income. The Federal government then issues an IOU, a chit if you will, to the Social Security administration. Presumably it is placed in a “lock box” with our names on it. Madness.
That the best hope for good government lies with Washington being covered in snow for the next 3 months is mute testimony to our folly.
My uncle Adam said, “What is prudence in running the affairs of a family can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire.”
For a well functioning family the serendipitous arrival of a windfall will always involve the prepayment of some debts.
We did not.
You qualify as an old dog in Washington press circles. Before you croodle with other old dogs by the fire – Why does the name Helen Thomas leap to mind? – you may wish to learn at least one new trick.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
E. J. Dionne The Washington Post Writers Group
February 8, 2010
E. J. Dionne
The Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20017
RE: “All them corn fields and ballet at night” – One more attempt to show that hope can overcome experience. Some comments on your laudatory column on Joey Biden in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Dionne,
It being less than 12 hours since the Super Bowl, and what were those two ancient English farts shrieking about anyway – Weren’t they with Churchill at Omdurman? – we’ll have to wait ‘til Wednesday before the obligatory paeans to Lord Barack the Beneficent for inspiring the Saints to infuse New Orleans with the power to make the levees stronger, the oysters sweeter, and the 9th Ward positively Elysian.
By the by, why should an obviously religious name, the Saints, and a patently religious symbol, the Cross, get a pass from the keepers of the tablets at the modern American Liberal Church of Secular Humanism? NFL stadiums are built with public funds. The United States Air Force, an institution completely funded by American taxpayers, sent 4 F-16s screaming over the stadium. Who knows what size that carbon footprint was? Who knows how many poor, pitiful polar bears will sleep with the fishes tonight because of this? This is a “slippery slope” I don’t wish to encounter. The “chilling effect” may be fatal.
Ergo, I am thankful for small blessings such as you telling me in today’s Miami Herald that Curley Biden [I call him Curley in honor of the smartest stooge] is “tired of seeing the Obama administration’s stimulus plan demeaned, derided, and dismissed…”
With a nod to the almost forgotten art of alliteration I posit a theory beautifully simple in its construct.
I suggest the reason why it and he are “demeaned, derided, and dismissed” is simple. They earned it.
Curley Biden, despite his blue collar, working class, Joe Hill claims went to an exclusive Catholic prep school. His classmates still recall him by his year book nick name “Cheese Dick”. Although I have several authoritative sources that must remain anonymous I can’t find out how he got his endearingly enduring sobriquet. The man has been a neddy nit-wit since Eisenhower was President.
As to the “plan” its “demeaned, derided, and dismissed” status is empirically self evident. This dog won’t hunt.
We were told in January, 2009, when the unemployment rate was 7.2%, that said rate would not go beyond 8%. We were told that gazillions of dollars would go into “shovel ready” projects by last year’s Ash Wednesday. Maybe the money went to buttress “hope” and encourage “change”. Wherever it went it did not go into jobs. If it had and if it worked we not have had a 25% percent increase in unemployment.
The one good thing he did was to borrow the money from the Chinese. If we borrow enough we will make AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddy, General Motors, and Chrysler look like modern day versions of Scrooge and Marley. Perhaps our salvation will come when the Chinese bail us out. Chairman Mao, always thought to be divine, will rise from the dead and tell us he warned Nixon about this. The Chinese, being a circumspect people, will air brush the Great Wall bulge in his pants out of the official photos.
In your interview with Boob Biden could you say with as little as 50% metaphysical certitude that he could find his ass using two hands [his] without someone holding multiple mirrors and giving him instructions?
Kevin Smith
PS – You say that Biden, the poster boy for uncloseted ohmandahns, “ably defended how the stimulus money had been spent and what it had accomplished”. Can you share some of the “Inside the Beltway” info with me? No one – repeat – no one South or West of the Potomac knows what the Hell you are talking about. Deo volente it will snow in D.C. for 6 more weeks.
E. J. Dionne
The Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20017
RE: “All them corn fields and ballet at night” – One more attempt to show that hope can overcome experience. Some comments on your laudatory column on Joey Biden in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Dionne,
It being less than 12 hours since the Super Bowl, and what were those two ancient English farts shrieking about anyway – Weren’t they with Churchill at Omdurman? – we’ll have to wait ‘til Wednesday before the obligatory paeans to Lord Barack the Beneficent for inspiring the Saints to infuse New Orleans with the power to make the levees stronger, the oysters sweeter, and the 9th Ward positively Elysian.
By the by, why should an obviously religious name, the Saints, and a patently religious symbol, the Cross, get a pass from the keepers of the tablets at the modern American Liberal Church of Secular Humanism? NFL stadiums are built with public funds. The United States Air Force, an institution completely funded by American taxpayers, sent 4 F-16s screaming over the stadium. Who knows what size that carbon footprint was? Who knows how many poor, pitiful polar bears will sleep with the fishes tonight because of this? This is a “slippery slope” I don’t wish to encounter. The “chilling effect” may be fatal.
Ergo, I am thankful for small blessings such as you telling me in today’s Miami Herald that Curley Biden [I call him Curley in honor of the smartest stooge] is “tired of seeing the Obama administration’s stimulus plan demeaned, derided, and dismissed…”
With a nod to the almost forgotten art of alliteration I posit a theory beautifully simple in its construct.
I suggest the reason why it and he are “demeaned, derided, and dismissed” is simple. They earned it.
Curley Biden, despite his blue collar, working class, Joe Hill claims went to an exclusive Catholic prep school. His classmates still recall him by his year book nick name “Cheese Dick”. Although I have several authoritative sources that must remain anonymous I can’t find out how he got his endearingly enduring sobriquet. The man has been a neddy nit-wit since Eisenhower was President.
As to the “plan” its “demeaned, derided, and dismissed” status is empirically self evident. This dog won’t hunt.
We were told in January, 2009, when the unemployment rate was 7.2%, that said rate would not go beyond 8%. We were told that gazillions of dollars would go into “shovel ready” projects by last year’s Ash Wednesday. Maybe the money went to buttress “hope” and encourage “change”. Wherever it went it did not go into jobs. If it had and if it worked we not have had a 25% percent increase in unemployment.
The one good thing he did was to borrow the money from the Chinese. If we borrow enough we will make AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddy, General Motors, and Chrysler look like modern day versions of Scrooge and Marley. Perhaps our salvation will come when the Chinese bail us out. Chairman Mao, always thought to be divine, will rise from the dead and tell us he warned Nixon about this. The Chinese, being a circumspect people, will air brush the Great Wall bulge in his pants out of the official photos.
In your interview with Boob Biden could you say with as little as 50% metaphysical certitude that he could find his ass using two hands [his] without someone holding multiple mirrors and giving him instructions?
Kevin Smith
PS – You say that Biden, the poster boy for uncloseted ohmandahns, “ably defended how the stimulus money had been spent and what it had accomplished”. Can you share some of the “Inside the Beltway” info with me? No one – repeat – no one South or West of the Potomac knows what the Hell you are talking about. Deo volente it will snow in D.C. for 6 more weeks.
Beth Reinhard The Miami Herald
February 6, 2010
Beth Reinhard
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Unlike Rubio, Most Politicians Want All to Count” – The census and why you do [or don’t] want statistical sampling in lieu of a green card – Some comments on your column on the census, politicians, and the inherent hypocrisy of same.
Ms. Reinhard,
I was a bit confused with your headline. Do you want everybody to be counted or do you want everybody to count? I had an uncle who lived in Jersey City, New Jersey. He voted until 1971. He was stopped when a Federal Judge, a judge appointed by a Republican President, discovered he died in 1956.Ah, but I miss the moral clarity of the pre-ACORN days!
“A decade ago, Rubio’s conservative muse, Jeb Bush…”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
My favorite Muse is Clio. Who’s yours?
Would you say that former Congresswoman Carrie Meek is her son’s favorite Muse? If my memory serves me correctly she avoided probate by bequeathing her seat [Congressional] to her son Kendrick Meek-lite without dying. Since the Muses were daughters of Zeus surely some divine intervention was present for that transfer.
You mention how those mean spirited Republicans “drew themselves friendly Congressional districts…”
I suggest it is not right to mention the quid without mentioning the quo.
For every Congressional district “created” [“Created”? If government can “create” jobs it can create “friendly Congressional districts”, can’t it?] for red necked, snake handling, gun totin’ Republican there was one created for a privileged minority. – Read colored, Negro, African-American, and Black.
How else could a convicted felon be elected to Congress?
Vide Alcee Hastings.
I think it would be safe to say that O.J. Simpson or Michael Jackson would win by 40 points should they be presented to the voters in those districts.
Would I be branded with the Scarlet letter, the dreaded “R” brand – Racist, not Retarded – if I were to suggest that even Affirmative Action will not get some of these elected officials into Mensa?
Would I be guilty of “slash and burn” tactics if I were to suggest that some of these elected officials are as dumb and as mendacious as the White members?
I mentioned that Clio was my favorite Muse
“Census purposes” is part of a quote from Senate candidate Rubio. To be precise, Conservative Senate candidate Rubio. How Kendrick Meek-lite, the Democratic nominee presumptive, will be classified is still unknown.
Your assignment is to find out how a Democratic President and a Republican Governor were able to round up 200,000 Japanese in one weekend. Here’s a hint. The 1940 Census with its racial check off box was nice to have around. It took considerably longer to snatch up the 40,000 Eyeties and Krauts.
It is a bit ironic that those “detainees” – due process? Habeas corpus? Right to counsel? Don’t be silly! – not one of whom was ever charged with trying to blow up an airplane bound for this country, would have loved to have been sent to Gitmo. But that’s a different story.
“He’ll say anything to get elected” is a quote from a Republican legislator who is a Crist supporter in the upcoming primary election. Marco Rubio is the target.
Do you think it rises to the level of “I will have C-SPAN televise the health care negotiations”? How about “There will be no lobbyists in my administration”?
Perhaps the President, Osama Bahama as the late Senator Lard Kennedy used to call him, could send out a flying squad of Marines, jarheaded Corpsemen through and through, to see if they can find the last copy of the Austrian-English dictionary that he knows he saw. [Think of Captain Queeg and the missing strawberries] That they may have to go to all 57 or 58 states should be no problem.
Thank God for Thalia!
Kevin Smith
Beth Reinhard
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Unlike Rubio, Most Politicians Want All to Count” – The census and why you do [or don’t] want statistical sampling in lieu of a green card – Some comments on your column on the census, politicians, and the inherent hypocrisy of same.
Ms. Reinhard,
I was a bit confused with your headline. Do you want everybody to be counted or do you want everybody to count? I had an uncle who lived in Jersey City, New Jersey. He voted until 1971. He was stopped when a Federal Judge, a judge appointed by a Republican President, discovered he died in 1956.Ah, but I miss the moral clarity of the pre-ACORN days!
“A decade ago, Rubio’s conservative muse, Jeb Bush…”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
My favorite Muse is Clio. Who’s yours?
Would you say that former Congresswoman Carrie Meek is her son’s favorite Muse? If my memory serves me correctly she avoided probate by bequeathing her seat [Congressional] to her son Kendrick Meek-lite without dying. Since the Muses were daughters of Zeus surely some divine intervention was present for that transfer.
You mention how those mean spirited Republicans “drew themselves friendly Congressional districts…”
I suggest it is not right to mention the quid without mentioning the quo.
For every Congressional district “created” [“Created”? If government can “create” jobs it can create “friendly Congressional districts”, can’t it?] for red necked, snake handling, gun totin’ Republican there was one created for a privileged minority. – Read colored, Negro, African-American, and Black.
How else could a convicted felon be elected to Congress?
Vide Alcee Hastings.
I think it would be safe to say that O.J. Simpson or Michael Jackson would win by 40 points should they be presented to the voters in those districts.
Would I be branded with the Scarlet letter, the dreaded “R” brand – Racist, not Retarded – if I were to suggest that even Affirmative Action will not get some of these elected officials into Mensa?
Would I be guilty of “slash and burn” tactics if I were to suggest that some of these elected officials are as dumb and as mendacious as the White members?
I mentioned that Clio was my favorite Muse
“Census purposes” is part of a quote from Senate candidate Rubio. To be precise, Conservative Senate candidate Rubio. How Kendrick Meek-lite, the Democratic nominee presumptive, will be classified is still unknown.
Your assignment is to find out how a Democratic President and a Republican Governor were able to round up 200,000 Japanese in one weekend. Here’s a hint. The 1940 Census with its racial check off box was nice to have around. It took considerably longer to snatch up the 40,000 Eyeties and Krauts.
It is a bit ironic that those “detainees” – due process? Habeas corpus? Right to counsel? Don’t be silly! – not one of whom was ever charged with trying to blow up an airplane bound for this country, would have loved to have been sent to Gitmo. But that’s a different story.
“He’ll say anything to get elected” is a quote from a Republican legislator who is a Crist supporter in the upcoming primary election. Marco Rubio is the target.
Do you think it rises to the level of “I will have C-SPAN televise the health care negotiations”? How about “There will be no lobbyists in my administration”?
Perhaps the President, Osama Bahama as the late Senator Lard Kennedy used to call him, could send out a flying squad of Marines, jarheaded Corpsemen through and through, to see if they can find the last copy of the Austrian-English dictionary that he knows he saw. [Think of Captain Queeg and the missing strawberries] That they may have to go to all 57 or 58 states should be no problem.
Thank God for Thalia!
Kevin Smith
Friday, February 5, 2010
Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald
February 3, 2010
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Man bites Dog” – Garbo speaks has been replaced with Obama speaks. Some comments on Obama as savior of us all except for most of those nasty Republicans.
Mr. Pitts,
“But time and again, he returned to his central theme:
The need to draw back from the shrill, slash-and-burn
tactics and rhetoric that reached a high mark – or,
if you prefer, a low mark – last year.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
“Last year”? Rahm Emanuel, and isn’t he like a gentle spring rain, referred to members of his own party as “fucking retards”. My calendar tells me that last week is this year. Then you tell me that if we hold hands and sing all the verses of Kumbaya “the voice of the turtle will be heard in the land” and we’ll probably all be farting through silk Alas, it’s probably too late for Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber.
Here’s a light bulb popping moment.
The United States is not a parliamentary democracy.
The President does not have to go before Congress every Wednesday and explain his policies du jour. He is not subject to hostile, gotcha questions, frequently from his own party. I think we can we stipulate that Obama is no threat to Churchill or Thatcher?
Last week I finally figured out why Nancy Pelosi jumps up and down like she has bailando guzanos in her knickers. She is a part time shill for Pilates, Nutri-System, and Botox.
Would it be “shrill and slash-and-burn” for me to say if the gentle lady has but one more face lift she’ll be wearing a beard? What with President Bush being compared to Hitler, what with Senator Richard “Little Dick” Durbin comparing American GIs to friggin’ Nazi SS storm troopers I think not.
For every “birther” there is a “truther”. Does one cancel the other?
Tu quoque is still an effective tool when the game is Rhetoric.
Here’s light bulb popping moment #2 plus a teaching moment.
The Democrats have the White House. They have unassailable majorities in both houses. If it were a straight party line vote the Democrats would win. Why do they need Republicans?
Speaking of “shrill and slash-and –burn tactics”, did last year’s political arguments reach the heights, or depths, of 1800? They did not.
In 1864 the Democratic Party and the New York Times agreed that Abraham Lincoln was a “gorilla”. Did anyone say that Obama had many simian qualities? No.
Rahm Emanuel, he of “fucking retard” fame, apologized to someone named Shriver. In typical modern American Liberal fashion it was an apology to those who took offense. Toad Shriver who, along with his cousin Congressman Cementhead Kennedy, are Winners Emeritus of the Lucky Sperm Club, would have said it was OK if Potty Mouth Rahm had been photographed conducting a tutorial called “Pedophilia and Necrophilia” – Be The First On Your Block.
“Shrill and slash-and-burn” are what keeps this place free.
Why is “Sit down and be quiet” the perpetual mantra of modern American Liberals?
“Free men speak with free tongues.”
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Man bites Dog” – Garbo speaks has been replaced with Obama speaks. Some comments on Obama as savior of us all except for most of those nasty Republicans.
Mr. Pitts,
“But time and again, he returned to his central theme:
The need to draw back from the shrill, slash-and-burn
tactics and rhetoric that reached a high mark – or,
if you prefer, a low mark – last year.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
“Last year”? Rahm Emanuel, and isn’t he like a gentle spring rain, referred to members of his own party as “fucking retards”. My calendar tells me that last week is this year. Then you tell me that if we hold hands and sing all the verses of Kumbaya “the voice of the turtle will be heard in the land” and we’ll probably all be farting through silk Alas, it’s probably too late for Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber.
Here’s a light bulb popping moment.
The United States is not a parliamentary democracy.
The President does not have to go before Congress every Wednesday and explain his policies du jour. He is not subject to hostile, gotcha questions, frequently from his own party. I think we can we stipulate that Obama is no threat to Churchill or Thatcher?
Last week I finally figured out why Nancy Pelosi jumps up and down like she has bailando guzanos in her knickers. She is a part time shill for Pilates, Nutri-System, and Botox.
Would it be “shrill and slash-and-burn” for me to say if the gentle lady has but one more face lift she’ll be wearing a beard? What with President Bush being compared to Hitler, what with Senator Richard “Little Dick” Durbin comparing American GIs to friggin’ Nazi SS storm troopers I think not.
For every “birther” there is a “truther”. Does one cancel the other?
Tu quoque is still an effective tool when the game is Rhetoric.
Here’s light bulb popping moment #2 plus a teaching moment.
The Democrats have the White House. They have unassailable majorities in both houses. If it were a straight party line vote the Democrats would win. Why do they need Republicans?
Speaking of “shrill and slash-and –burn tactics”, did last year’s political arguments reach the heights, or depths, of 1800? They did not.
In 1864 the Democratic Party and the New York Times agreed that Abraham Lincoln was a “gorilla”. Did anyone say that Obama had many simian qualities? No.
Rahm Emanuel, he of “fucking retard” fame, apologized to someone named Shriver. In typical modern American Liberal fashion it was an apology to those who took offense. Toad Shriver who, along with his cousin Congressman Cementhead Kennedy, are Winners Emeritus of the Lucky Sperm Club, would have said it was OK if Potty Mouth Rahm had been photographed conducting a tutorial called “Pedophilia and Necrophilia” – Be The First On Your Block.
“Shrill and slash-and-burn” are what keeps this place free.
Why is “Sit down and be quiet” the perpetual mantra of modern American Liberals?
“Free men speak with free tongues.”
Kevin Smith
John McMurtrie – Book Editor The San Francisco Chronicle
February 2, 2010
John McMurtrie – Book Editor
The San Francisco Chronicle
901 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-2905
RE: Howard Zinn – No threat to Thucydides. A comment on your mushy modern American Liberal panegyric in this morning’s Miami Herald
Mr. McMurtrie,
The rule of de morituis should apply except when it shouldn’t.
Howard Zinn is the exception.
Anyone who thought that Stalin and Chairman Mao were good guys, anyone who thought that Castro was the paradigmatic template – “paradigmatic template”? A term that Noam Chomsky, his good buddy and fellow traveler, will love – for running a country, anyone who hates, I mean really, really hates Israel can’t be all good.
I don’t know what the final disposition of his remains will be but I suggest that he be laid next to Lillian Hellman. That way we would only have to add 2 or 3 armed guards to make sure neither of them gets out to infect the citizens and do further damage to the common weal. When the command to fix bayonets is given they are all pointed at the grave marker.
You may remember when the New York State Board of Regents supported the revision to American History X1 to support the imbecilic theory that the 5 Nations – Look it up – influenced James Madison when he was writing the Constitution. I wrote to the good professor and asked him where the Abenaki learned the technique of slicing the top of a prisoner’s skull off and eating his brains before he died. I think we can stipulate that they didn’t learn it from the English. 20 years and still no answer. Now that he’s going to be dead for a very long time I imagine I’ll never get one.
Clio, my favorite Muse, writes exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine.
It took 50 years for the faulty premises and atrocious historiography of the Beards to be exposed.
We live in an age of exploding information.
The clock is ticking.
10 years from now he will be a footnote to a footnote.
You say he was a charming man. You say he had a “radiant, inviting smile”.
To quote the Russian proverb: “Because the wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling.”
Hitler was a charming man also. Small children loved him. He doted on his dogs. No one could smoke in his presence. He was a Vegan before there were vegans. Was he any less of a monster?
Seneca, another of the scribes sitting on the hillside who was offended by Zinn’s vapid scribbles, told us that “Time discovers truth”.
Zinn will soon join Lysenko.
Kevin Smith
John McMurtrie – Book Editor
The San Francisco Chronicle
901 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-2905
RE: Howard Zinn – No threat to Thucydides. A comment on your mushy modern American Liberal panegyric in this morning’s Miami Herald
Mr. McMurtrie,
The rule of de morituis should apply except when it shouldn’t.
Howard Zinn is the exception.
Anyone who thought that Stalin and Chairman Mao were good guys, anyone who thought that Castro was the paradigmatic template – “paradigmatic template”? A term that Noam Chomsky, his good buddy and fellow traveler, will love – for running a country, anyone who hates, I mean really, really hates Israel can’t be all good.
I don’t know what the final disposition of his remains will be but I suggest that he be laid next to Lillian Hellman. That way we would only have to add 2 or 3 armed guards to make sure neither of them gets out to infect the citizens and do further damage to the common weal. When the command to fix bayonets is given they are all pointed at the grave marker.
You may remember when the New York State Board of Regents supported the revision to American History X1 to support the imbecilic theory that the 5 Nations – Look it up – influenced James Madison when he was writing the Constitution. I wrote to the good professor and asked him where the Abenaki learned the technique of slicing the top of a prisoner’s skull off and eating his brains before he died. I think we can stipulate that they didn’t learn it from the English. 20 years and still no answer. Now that he’s going to be dead for a very long time I imagine I’ll never get one.
Clio, my favorite Muse, writes exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine.
It took 50 years for the faulty premises and atrocious historiography of the Beards to be exposed.
We live in an age of exploding information.
The clock is ticking.
10 years from now he will be a footnote to a footnote.
You say he was a charming man. You say he had a “radiant, inviting smile”.
To quote the Russian proverb: “Because the wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling.”
Hitler was a charming man also. Small children loved him. He doted on his dogs. No one could smoke in his presence. He was a Vegan before there were vegans. Was he any less of a monster?
Seneca, another of the scribes sitting on the hillside who was offended by Zinn’s vapid scribbles, told us that “Time discovers truth”.
Zinn will soon join Lysenko.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Steven L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
February 1, 2010
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Move over Jimmuh Carter. More mush from the wimp. Some thoughts on your continuing descent into territory marked by warnings not to handle heavy machinery or work with sharp objects. Sunday’s offering in the Sun-Sentinel is called “Time for the Party to send the GOP reeling”.
My dear Professor,
Can we stipulate that the last good Republican was Abraham Lincoln?
The names Javits and Weicker have been struck from the register. Danforth may have made the cut except for his sponsorship of Clarence Thomas. That leaves Jeffords and Specter. I don’t expect that either will be in the new edition of “Profiles in Courage”. You can have them.
Perhaps you can explain to my why, if deficits under Bush were bad, deficits under Obama are good?
You say that the stimulus money “created or saved an estimated 87,000 jobs”. Could you tell me the methodology you used to get to that number?
You say that “employment will improve when 524 stimulus-funded highway projects begin” in Florida.
Has the term “shovel ready” been sent down the memory hole so beloved of modern American Liberals? It is now more than a year since the stimulus package became law. We were told that unemployment would level off at 8%. It is now above 10%. What happened? Where did the money go?
Why should the Chinese continue to lend us money to build roads in Florida?
You say that “it’s time to end [what should be illegal] fixing of district lines”. Maybe you were taking Kumbaya bel canto lessons. Maybe you were trying to pass the ERA. Perhaps you were ministering to non-gendered illegal aliens. Maybe you were working on manatee suffrage and 5th trimester abortions. Whatever you were doing you missed the bargain struck by an electoral Mephistopheles. With prominent Democrat Elbridge Gerry as the guide a number of exclusively Colored, Negro, African-American, Black seats were created.
Districts were drawn in such a manner that a candidacy by O.J. Simpson or Michael Jackson would be successful.
Congresswoman Carrie Meek willed her seat to her son Kendrick Meek-lite. That she did so while breaking the first rule of Probate Court – Somebody has to die – is a testament to a new chapter in estate planning.
Florida bypassed the time required for new members of Congress to get felonious intentions. The election of Alcee Hastings, an already convicted felon, is a testament to good husbandry.
You say that “Florida’s $1,500,000,000 investment in places like Scripps and Max Planck will never work”. They might not. Why then do you think “524 stimulus-funded highway projects” will work?
Speaking of Republicans do you think there is any hope for Scott Brown?
Thank you for translating “mitzvah” for the goyim among us.
After Obama finishes his much anticipated English-Austrian dictionary he can work on English-Yiddish. He’ll have no trouble defining “putz”.
Your picture is worth 1,000 words.
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Move over Jimmuh Carter. More mush from the wimp. Some thoughts on your continuing descent into territory marked by warnings not to handle heavy machinery or work with sharp objects. Sunday’s offering in the Sun-Sentinel is called “Time for the Party to send the GOP reeling”.
My dear Professor,
Can we stipulate that the last good Republican was Abraham Lincoln?
The names Javits and Weicker have been struck from the register. Danforth may have made the cut except for his sponsorship of Clarence Thomas. That leaves Jeffords and Specter. I don’t expect that either will be in the new edition of “Profiles in Courage”. You can have them.
Perhaps you can explain to my why, if deficits under Bush were bad, deficits under Obama are good?
You say that the stimulus money “created or saved an estimated 87,000 jobs”. Could you tell me the methodology you used to get to that number?
You say that “employment will improve when 524 stimulus-funded highway projects begin” in Florida.
Has the term “shovel ready” been sent down the memory hole so beloved of modern American Liberals? It is now more than a year since the stimulus package became law. We were told that unemployment would level off at 8%. It is now above 10%. What happened? Where did the money go?
Why should the Chinese continue to lend us money to build roads in Florida?
You say that “it’s time to end [what should be illegal] fixing of district lines”. Maybe you were taking Kumbaya bel canto lessons. Maybe you were trying to pass the ERA. Perhaps you were ministering to non-gendered illegal aliens. Maybe you were working on manatee suffrage and 5th trimester abortions. Whatever you were doing you missed the bargain struck by an electoral Mephistopheles. With prominent Democrat Elbridge Gerry as the guide a number of exclusively Colored, Negro, African-American, Black seats were created.
Districts were drawn in such a manner that a candidacy by O.J. Simpson or Michael Jackson would be successful.
Congresswoman Carrie Meek willed her seat to her son Kendrick Meek-lite. That she did so while breaking the first rule of Probate Court – Somebody has to die – is a testament to a new chapter in estate planning.
Florida bypassed the time required for new members of Congress to get felonious intentions. The election of Alcee Hastings, an already convicted felon, is a testament to good husbandry.
You say that “Florida’s $1,500,000,000 investment in places like Scripps and Max Planck will never work”. They might not. Why then do you think “524 stimulus-funded highway projects” will work?
Speaking of Republicans do you think there is any hope for Scott Brown?
Thank you for translating “mitzvah” for the goyim among us.
After Obama finishes his much anticipated English-Austrian dictionary he can work on English-Yiddish. He’ll have no trouble defining “putz”.
Your picture is worth 1,000 words.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald
January 31, 2010
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Words have consequences – An attempt to find out what you meant in your op-ed in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
“And the Bauers of this world need to know:
Sometimes stray animals bite.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
The “stray animals” are the poor people that South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer referred to by citing a lesson his grandmother taught him. “Don’t feed stray animals. It allows them to reproduce.”
I don’t know how old his grandmother was when she told him that. It is possible that she was influenced by Margaret Sanger, the patron saint of modern American Liberalism, who championed birth control and abortion as a means of culling the herd of undesirables. Hitler was so taken by her works that he used them as the basis for his 1934 Nuremberg Race Laws. Just one more example of the unintended consequences of words carelessly strewn about.
You tell us that they may “bite”.
I paraphrased Richard Weaver. “Ideas Have Consequences”
Do you mean that they will “bite” like the Helots did when they turned on their Spartan masters?
Do you mean that they will “bite” like Spartacus?
Do you mean that the Bastille already having been stormed that the next logical target will be the White House?
Do you mean that there will be a replay of “Ten Days That Shook the World”?
Do you mean that Howard Fast novels and Howard Zinn menaderings will give us lessons on how, when, and who to “bite”?
You say that “they” didn’t get out of New Orleans because “they” had neither cars nor credit cards. [Why New Orleans let 250 buses sit in a compound until they became waterlogged and useless is for a different discussion. The question of why the Mayor went to Houston is still open.] So there is no misunderstanding “they” are the poor urban Blacks that Kanye West told us were not Bush’s best buds.
You make mention of two men fighting each other while they are in a sinking boat. The analogy was first used by Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman to describe the mutual assured destruction of xenophobic trade policies. When ever elephants fight the one sure victim is the grass. Every time any “Buy American” policy gains traction there is one group of people destined to suffer the most. You guessed it. “They” will get still more lashes on their already bashed, bruised, and bloody backsides. Last ones hired; first ones fired.
The best cure, the only cure for, forgive me, “poorness” is a job.
Yet again, as an aside, when was the last time you heard the term “shovel ready” being said without snickering guffaws accompanying it?
Alas, to the consternation of modern American Liberals, the “poor” better their condition when the “rich” hire them. There is no evidence, not even 3rd hand anecdotal hearsay, of anyone being hired by a “poor” person. The only exception would be being recruited for a felony. If you know of any other exceptions please share them with me.
In your penultimate paragraph, the one preceding your reminder that perhaps the feeding hand will be bitten by the fed hand, you exhort the poor “to organize their votes [and] push their issues into the public discourses”.
That sounds like a job for an experienced community organizer. Do you have any candidates in mind?
“How sad of all the things that men endure,
How few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
4 centuries of being true but its lesson must be learned anew every generation.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Words have consequences – An attempt to find out what you meant in your op-ed in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
“And the Bauers of this world need to know:
Sometimes stray animals bite.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
The “stray animals” are the poor people that South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer referred to by citing a lesson his grandmother taught him. “Don’t feed stray animals. It allows them to reproduce.”
I don’t know how old his grandmother was when she told him that. It is possible that she was influenced by Margaret Sanger, the patron saint of modern American Liberalism, who championed birth control and abortion as a means of culling the herd of undesirables. Hitler was so taken by her works that he used them as the basis for his 1934 Nuremberg Race Laws. Just one more example of the unintended consequences of words carelessly strewn about.
You tell us that they may “bite”.
I paraphrased Richard Weaver. “Ideas Have Consequences”
Do you mean that they will “bite” like the Helots did when they turned on their Spartan masters?
Do you mean that they will “bite” like Spartacus?
Do you mean that the Bastille already having been stormed that the next logical target will be the White House?
Do you mean that there will be a replay of “Ten Days That Shook the World”?
Do you mean that Howard Fast novels and Howard Zinn menaderings will give us lessons on how, when, and who to “bite”?
You say that “they” didn’t get out of New Orleans because “they” had neither cars nor credit cards. [Why New Orleans let 250 buses sit in a compound until they became waterlogged and useless is for a different discussion. The question of why the Mayor went to Houston is still open.] So there is no misunderstanding “they” are the poor urban Blacks that Kanye West told us were not Bush’s best buds.
You make mention of two men fighting each other while they are in a sinking boat. The analogy was first used by Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman to describe the mutual assured destruction of xenophobic trade policies. When ever elephants fight the one sure victim is the grass. Every time any “Buy American” policy gains traction there is one group of people destined to suffer the most. You guessed it. “They” will get still more lashes on their already bashed, bruised, and bloody backsides. Last ones hired; first ones fired.
The best cure, the only cure for, forgive me, “poorness” is a job.
Yet again, as an aside, when was the last time you heard the term “shovel ready” being said without snickering guffaws accompanying it?
Alas, to the consternation of modern American Liberals, the “poor” better their condition when the “rich” hire them. There is no evidence, not even 3rd hand anecdotal hearsay, of anyone being hired by a “poor” person. The only exception would be being recruited for a felony. If you know of any other exceptions please share them with me.
In your penultimate paragraph, the one preceding your reminder that perhaps the feeding hand will be bitten by the fed hand, you exhort the poor “to organize their votes [and] push their issues into the public discourses”.
That sounds like a job for an experienced community organizer. Do you have any candidates in mind?
“How sad of all the things that men endure,
How few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
4 centuries of being true but its lesson must be learned anew every generation.
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
January 29, 2010
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316
RE: In which I point out the missing link in your ca-ca column about why the Courts need more Liberals lest we perish form the burden of governing ourselves.
My dear Professor,
You are recognized as the world leader in the practice of conducting self examinations in proctology. I know it’s dark, dangerous, and lonely work but if you don’t do it the terrorists, in some strange way, win.
I mention terrorists because it is back in vogue having been sent to Coventry by, as Fatso Kennedy used to call him, Yokahama Bahama Yomama, at his inauguration last January.
Can it be a year? Time flies when you are enjoying yourself, doesn’t it?
[As an aside, with no connection to the reason for my note, I must tell you as we enter the holy season of Lent that I have already had an Epiphany moment. I know I have speeded up the liturgical calendar but the cause is great and the hour is late. Despite the scientific consensus that man was causing the polar bears to drown, despite former Vice President Alpha Gump’s appeal to reason in the form of inverted hockey sticks, despite the evidence provided centuries ago by the noted Italian weatherperson, Tony Vivaldi, despite the involvement of Halliburton and the Bush family in causing the earthquake in Haiti I refused to believe. It took the arguments put forward by that noted agrarian reformer and Alinsky acolyte, Osama bin Laden to make me a believer. Indeed Allah is really Akbar if he can convince a wretch like me to turn off my air conditioner to save the planet. He is now my favorite WOG.]
When you go to your proctologic quiet place to formulate your argument there is one constant. Facts are never allowed to intrude on your major premise.
Thus your contention about the 2000 election being preordained by the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991 is a classic example of “right church, wrong pew”. The decision not to confirm Judge Bork in 1987 spared us from Alpha Gump becoming the President in 2000.
You focus on the 5-4 vote rather than the 7-2 vote in the Supreme Court because 5-4 suits your argument better. We will never know whether Judge Bork would have been part of the 7-2 vote to uphold that part of the Constitution that concerns itself with
equal protection under the law. We can be positive that he never would have voted to accept the case. Thus the 5-4 vote would have been beloved by you.
In the fog of the battle about the election of 2000 it is well to note a conveniently forgotten fact.
If the Vice President had carried Tennessee, his home state, or the President had carried Arkansas, his home state, Florida’s electoral votes would have been irrelevant. The Republicans could have done a Cook County/Hudson County recount and pitched a shut out. It still wouldn’t have put George Bush in the White House.
To me the highlight of the 2000 election kerfluffle was when Daley, son of King Richard the First of Chicago, headed the Democratic effort to undo the Constitution. He said, with a straight face, with no hint of whimsy that he was in charge of the recount. If Frank Perdue had put a fox in charge of hen house security it would not have been worse than that.
You may use the above as a real world example of “hoist on one’s own petard”.
Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
Since I have changed my mind about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, and who knows what the next name will be, it is time for you to change your mind about George W. Bush.
You mention, sneeringly, “the trillion dollar Iraq invasion”.
That he was able to pull this off in broad daylight without anyone catching on was a stroke of genius. That he was able to get Congress to authorize the funds for it without knowing what they were for makes Bush a political Houdini. That he was able to get the New York Times to devote more Page 1 coverage to whether or not chicks could play golf at the Masters rather than focusing on men going into battle makes him a master political puppeteer.
Not bad for a dummy, right?
You criticize the recent affirmation of free speech by the Supreme Court by saying it “overturned more than 100 years of settled law”. [Actually it was only 20 years but why pick at nits?] Are you a closet racist? Are you in favor of segregation? Plessy v Ferguson was “settled law” for 59 years until the Supreme Court “unsettled” it. Your Logic would dictate that we would not have women voting, the direct election of Senators, and slavery. I never knew this about you. I am shocked, shocked to find this out. Are there any other skeletons in your closet?
“Ultimately, forces beyond you will improve our
economy – or it will take care of itself.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
When was Lord Keynes expelled from your Liberal pantheon? Just before he died he wrote to Friedrich Hayek and said he had been wrong and that Hayek was right. Do you have a picture of Milton Friedman in your closet?
Logic would dictate that not only was the Stimulus law – When was the last time you heard a rational adult use the term “shovel ready” without snickering? – was not needed but that it was harmful If deficits under Bush were bad why are they good under Obama? Do you think we should stop spending all those gazillions of dollars that we borrowed from the Chinese?
There is one benefit from you performing your own proctoscopy.
One more upward thrust and you can examine your back teeth.
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316
RE: In which I point out the missing link in your ca-ca column about why the Courts need more Liberals lest we perish form the burden of governing ourselves.
My dear Professor,
You are recognized as the world leader in the practice of conducting self examinations in proctology. I know it’s dark, dangerous, and lonely work but if you don’t do it the terrorists, in some strange way, win.
I mention terrorists because it is back in vogue having been sent to Coventry by, as Fatso Kennedy used to call him, Yokahama Bahama Yomama, at his inauguration last January.
Can it be a year? Time flies when you are enjoying yourself, doesn’t it?
[As an aside, with no connection to the reason for my note, I must tell you as we enter the holy season of Lent that I have already had an Epiphany moment. I know I have speeded up the liturgical calendar but the cause is great and the hour is late. Despite the scientific consensus that man was causing the polar bears to drown, despite former Vice President Alpha Gump’s appeal to reason in the form of inverted hockey sticks, despite the evidence provided centuries ago by the noted Italian weatherperson, Tony Vivaldi, despite the involvement of Halliburton and the Bush family in causing the earthquake in Haiti I refused to believe. It took the arguments put forward by that noted agrarian reformer and Alinsky acolyte, Osama bin Laden to make me a believer. Indeed Allah is really Akbar if he can convince a wretch like me to turn off my air conditioner to save the planet. He is now my favorite WOG.]
When you go to your proctologic quiet place to formulate your argument there is one constant. Facts are never allowed to intrude on your major premise.
Thus your contention about the 2000 election being preordained by the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991 is a classic example of “right church, wrong pew”. The decision not to confirm Judge Bork in 1987 spared us from Alpha Gump becoming the President in 2000.
You focus on the 5-4 vote rather than the 7-2 vote in the Supreme Court because 5-4 suits your argument better. We will never know whether Judge Bork would have been part of the 7-2 vote to uphold that part of the Constitution that concerns itself with
equal protection under the law. We can be positive that he never would have voted to accept the case. Thus the 5-4 vote would have been beloved by you.
In the fog of the battle about the election of 2000 it is well to note a conveniently forgotten fact.
If the Vice President had carried Tennessee, his home state, or the President had carried Arkansas, his home state, Florida’s electoral votes would have been irrelevant. The Republicans could have done a Cook County/Hudson County recount and pitched a shut out. It still wouldn’t have put George Bush in the White House.
To me the highlight of the 2000 election kerfluffle was when Daley, son of King Richard the First of Chicago, headed the Democratic effort to undo the Constitution. He said, with a straight face, with no hint of whimsy that he was in charge of the recount. If Frank Perdue had put a fox in charge of hen house security it would not have been worse than that.
You may use the above as a real world example of “hoist on one’s own petard”.
Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
Since I have changed my mind about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, and who knows what the next name will be, it is time for you to change your mind about George W. Bush.
You mention, sneeringly, “the trillion dollar Iraq invasion”.
That he was able to pull this off in broad daylight without anyone catching on was a stroke of genius. That he was able to get Congress to authorize the funds for it without knowing what they were for makes Bush a political Houdini. That he was able to get the New York Times to devote more Page 1 coverage to whether or not chicks could play golf at the Masters rather than focusing on men going into battle makes him a master political puppeteer.
Not bad for a dummy, right?
You criticize the recent affirmation of free speech by the Supreme Court by saying it “overturned more than 100 years of settled law”. [Actually it was only 20 years but why pick at nits?] Are you a closet racist? Are you in favor of segregation? Plessy v Ferguson was “settled law” for 59 years until the Supreme Court “unsettled” it. Your Logic would dictate that we would not have women voting, the direct election of Senators, and slavery. I never knew this about you. I am shocked, shocked to find this out. Are there any other skeletons in your closet?
“Ultimately, forces beyond you will improve our
economy – or it will take care of itself.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
When was Lord Keynes expelled from your Liberal pantheon? Just before he died he wrote to Friedrich Hayek and said he had been wrong and that Hayek was right. Do you have a picture of Milton Friedman in your closet?
Logic would dictate that not only was the Stimulus law – When was the last time you heard a rational adult use the term “shovel ready” without snickering? – was not needed but that it was harmful If deficits under Bush were bad why are they good under Obama? Do you think we should stop spending all those gazillions of dollars that we borrowed from the Chinese?
There is one benefit from you performing your own proctoscopy.
One more upward thrust and you can examine your back teeth.
Kevin Smith
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