Posts
November 25, 2011
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
RE: The end of Reaganism as foretold by you in your column in today’s Sun -Sentinel
My dear Professor,
If, as you say, the Reagan Revolution is finally, final dead and should President B.O. be returned to office would not Logic dictate, in the spirit of international comity, that the first “shovel ready” project of the new administration must be the reconstruction of the Berlin Wall?
On a different note, if it’s OK to call Michele Bachman a “bitch” is it OK to call Michele Obama a “ho”?
Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET
PS – I never thought I would Jimmy Carter. So what if his brother Billy worked for Kaddafi. At least he didn’t let him live in a mud hut.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun-Sentinel
November 19, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
RE: “The world Turned Upside Down” - It’s a catchy tune, particularly at Yorktown, but not compared to your marvelous column in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
It’s been more than a few years since I wandered in the Groves of Academe but surely I should have remembered the class that said the way to make the poor rich was to make the rich poor.
Incidentally, it is reported by Granma, Cuba’s answer to both Tass and Pravda, that sugar production in now at the level reached in 1905. Keep it to yourself but the goons running the country have decided to fire ½ the people employed in that industry. Please keep this info from the Occupy Wall street crowd. Whatever else Cuba is it is no place to test the limits of free speech. The reaction of los jefes to a collective trou drop followed by projectile ca-caing in the calle would rival anything Mel Brooks could put on the screen.
I thought your oh so achingly familiar modern American Liberal polemic against wealth would at least have made passing reference to the estate of Senator Fatso Kennedy. One of the listed assets was a trust created in 1936 by his father, Corsair Joe. In addition to being a secret admirer of Hitler and a not so secret anti-Semite he knew he would have to provide for Teddy. Just imagine how many sessions of Midnight Basketball the emptying of that bag of pelf could have provided. The mind boggles!
Surely George Soros, a man who has so much money that if the Koch Brothers, the demonically infamous Right-Wing malefactors of middle mega wealth, should decide to commit suicide, they would jump off his wallet, can be counted on to drop an extra fiver in the collection plate for the undeserving poor. He does, doesn’t he?
Speaking of subsidies for the rich…
Why is the interest on municipal bonds exempt from Federal income tax? Why should renters, already burdened by the hellacious Bush deficits and a sluggish economy that is caused by the Reagan tax cuts, subsidize their rapacious landlords?
If you wish to “means test” the recipients of every government program – Don’t worry about the equal protection foo-fah in the Constitution. There is no sense in being a modern American Liberal unless you are a fire breathing, card carrying one – how about lowering the price for certain items that the poor must have? We can start with ½ price stamps. Not food stamps; postage stamps. Alas, a photo ID will be required to get the Federal tax on gasoline dropped. It makes no sense to charge the poor tolls on the Turnpike, does it? Isn’t it time for the Sun-Sentinel to give their paper to the poor for free?
Modern American Liberals are always discovering new rights. Isn’t it time to add Comcast or DIRECT-TV to the list? The self-esteem of the children of the poor would be greatly strengthened if the premium package became the new norm for them.
Why not make Senator Kohl give the poor a 50% discount card for when they shop in his stores? The poor are entitled to a bountiful Christmas, aren’t they?
How about making Senator Rockefeller go back to West Virginia this Christmas? Logan, where I mined coal, is as good a place as any. Have him light the yule log using his money as tinder. Think how warm and cuddly that will make the country feel.
It is an inconvenient truth but college costs rise in direct proportion to the amount of “free money” available to potential students. The people who run these monuments to mediocrity may be stupid but they are not dumb. No other segment of American life – not the military/industrial complex, not the idle trust fund layabouts, not the evil speculators, not the notorious “middlemen” – has enjoyed such an explosion in revenues.
Logic would dictate that as the pool of dough expands someone will build a department of Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets and what role Nixon had in ignoring them. Fairness would say that preference for admission to the graduate programs of this emerging discipline should be given to Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets. Don’t worry about the pool of potential students. As soon as the federal money trough is opened you’ll be shocked, shocked to know how many Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets we have.
You say that “2,362 millionaires collected roughly 20.8 million dollars in unemployment insurance”. As a nation we can’t let this stand. If we can require people to buy health insurance we can require them to buy unemployment insurance. Then, when a claim is put in, it is denied because of their successful capital accumulation. Whether it comes from being a member of the lucky sperm club or from being a big time grifter like Jon Corzine is irrelevant. Perhaps it is time to change the Scarlet Letter from A to M. It will make it easier when Madame DeFarge starts collecting overtime
Maybe we could use some of it to pay for tutorials for modern American Liberal ohmadahns – ink stained wretch division – on the futility of hoping for a change in the laws governing gravity. It ain’t going to happen
KS
PS – You may wish to examine the novel schemes to raise revenue in Zimbabwe. Some of them may work here. .
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
RE: “The world Turned Upside Down” - It’s a catchy tune, particularly at Yorktown, but not compared to your marvelous column in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
It’s been more than a few years since I wandered in the Groves of Academe but surely I should have remembered the class that said the way to make the poor rich was to make the rich poor.
Incidentally, it is reported by Granma, Cuba’s answer to both Tass and Pravda, that sugar production in now at the level reached in 1905. Keep it to yourself but the goons running the country have decided to fire ½ the people employed in that industry. Please keep this info from the Occupy Wall street crowd. Whatever else Cuba is it is no place to test the limits of free speech. The reaction of los jefes to a collective trou drop followed by projectile ca-caing in the calle would rival anything Mel Brooks could put on the screen.
I thought your oh so achingly familiar modern American Liberal polemic against wealth would at least have made passing reference to the estate of Senator Fatso Kennedy. One of the listed assets was a trust created in 1936 by his father, Corsair Joe. In addition to being a secret admirer of Hitler and a not so secret anti-Semite he knew he would have to provide for Teddy. Just imagine how many sessions of Midnight Basketball the emptying of that bag of pelf could have provided. The mind boggles!
Surely George Soros, a man who has so much money that if the Koch Brothers, the demonically infamous Right-Wing malefactors of middle mega wealth, should decide to commit suicide, they would jump off his wallet, can be counted on to drop an extra fiver in the collection plate for the undeserving poor. He does, doesn’t he?
Speaking of subsidies for the rich…
Why is the interest on municipal bonds exempt from Federal income tax? Why should renters, already burdened by the hellacious Bush deficits and a sluggish economy that is caused by the Reagan tax cuts, subsidize their rapacious landlords?
If you wish to “means test” the recipients of every government program – Don’t worry about the equal protection foo-fah in the Constitution. There is no sense in being a modern American Liberal unless you are a fire breathing, card carrying one – how about lowering the price for certain items that the poor must have? We can start with ½ price stamps. Not food stamps; postage stamps. Alas, a photo ID will be required to get the Federal tax on gasoline dropped. It makes no sense to charge the poor tolls on the Turnpike, does it? Isn’t it time for the Sun-Sentinel to give their paper to the poor for free?
Modern American Liberals are always discovering new rights. Isn’t it time to add Comcast or DIRECT-TV to the list? The self-esteem of the children of the poor would be greatly strengthened if the premium package became the new norm for them.
Why not make Senator Kohl give the poor a 50% discount card for when they shop in his stores? The poor are entitled to a bountiful Christmas, aren’t they?
How about making Senator Rockefeller go back to West Virginia this Christmas? Logan, where I mined coal, is as good a place as any. Have him light the yule log using his money as tinder. Think how warm and cuddly that will make the country feel.
It is an inconvenient truth but college costs rise in direct proportion to the amount of “free money” available to potential students. The people who run these monuments to mediocrity may be stupid but they are not dumb. No other segment of American life – not the military/industrial complex, not the idle trust fund layabouts, not the evil speculators, not the notorious “middlemen” – has enjoyed such an explosion in revenues.
Logic would dictate that as the pool of dough expands someone will build a department of Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets and what role Nixon had in ignoring them. Fairness would say that preference for admission to the graduate programs of this emerging discipline should be given to Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets. Don’t worry about the pool of potential students. As soon as the federal money trough is opened you’ll be shocked, shocked to know how many Lithuanian trans-gendered lesbian poets we have.
You say that “2,362 millionaires collected roughly 20.8 million dollars in unemployment insurance”. As a nation we can’t let this stand. If we can require people to buy health insurance we can require them to buy unemployment insurance. Then, when a claim is put in, it is denied because of their successful capital accumulation. Whether it comes from being a member of the lucky sperm club or from being a big time grifter like Jon Corzine is irrelevant. Perhaps it is time to change the Scarlet Letter from A to M. It will make it easier when Madame DeFarge starts collecting overtime
Maybe we could use some of it to pay for tutorials for modern American Liberal ohmadahns – ink stained wretch division – on the futility of hoping for a change in the laws governing gravity. It ain’t going to happen
KS
PS – You may wish to examine the novel schemes to raise revenue in Zimbabwe. Some of them may work here. .
Michael Putney The Miami Herald
November 16, 2011
Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
RE: “Thanks for a warm hand on a cold morning” – Some comments on your column about books – one of the great donors of guiltless tactile sensation – in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Putney,
I wait, sometimes years, to use that line. I know it’s not a cold morning but, what with Florida now being vouchsafed from Gaia’s revenge because hurricanes hardly ever happen after the official No More Hurricanes date, it is time to break out the virtual cashmere.
Let me add to the growing legend of Norman Mailer.
He was a champion head-butter. One of the great activities at the bar in the Players’ Club in Gramercy Park, NYC was the selection process for the evening’s main event. A 3 inch difference could inadvertently result in smashed noses and chipped teeth.
Only a very, very bright guy could give himself absolution for causing the death, by murder, of an absolutely innocent bystander. His citing Martin Luther King is proof positive of his status as a “Smarmy bastard of the Year”. In Mailer’s case we grant him eternal status. The Sacrament of Penance requires a duet. In the world of modern American Liberalism, a world without boundaries, a world with no knowledge of the “Permanent Things”, all that is required for perfect contrition is for the alleged perpetrator to say, “OOPS”.
In addition to scratching a throbbing itch the library I built in my house in West Orange was a jobs creator. 7 shelves, each one 12 inches high, 12 inches deep, and not quite a yard wide times 13 separate cases was a lasting reminder of my gilded age when conspicuous consumption was the norm. It was the class project of the 11th grade woodworking class at Glen Ridge High School. I don’t know what the teacher paid his students. I know that I paid him cash. It was a win, win, win situation for all concerned. And, very importantly, not one cent was borrowed from the Chinese.
I had an English teacher whose job when he was in graduate school at Columbia
University was to fetch Dylan Thomas from the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. Nothing compares to hearing a poet read his poems. Thomas’s voice made Richard Burton, his literary executor, sound like Pee Wee Herman. It will be a test of my failing powers of persuasion to keep my 3 Texas ladies attentive to all of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” this year.
I had another teacher who was taught by T.S. Eliot. He said his voice was like an egg shell.
I always keep my Plutarch handy. Harry Truman read him every day he was in the White House.
I suggest that you keep a copy of “The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy” close at hand. It was compiled by E. D. Hirsch. It beats Wikipedia.
I search vainly for a segue to why I am writing today.
Mitchell Kaplan
I moved to Florida in October, 1996. I found Books & Books by Halloween. I in possession of an early edition of “The Wasteland” that I intended to give to my son for Christmas. I went to Books & Books to get a selection of prose by Ezra Pound. Not finding any I asked a most attentive sales lady where I could find him. She told me that the store didn’t carry him. I was speechless. Almost. Imagine, said I to her, 20th century literature without him. Joyce, Eliot, Yeats, Hemingway. He edited them all. Why, said I.
She pointed to a thin man with a black beard. Ask him, she said. He’s the owner. He told that it was his store and he would never have Pound in it, the reason being that he hated Jews
.As a champion of private property – I suggest “Property and Freedom” by Richard Pipes – I agreed with him. I walked out of the store. I haven’t been back since.
Every time I would see him getting an award for championing some oppressed group, said group being well within the boundaries that “eclectic indignation” allows, I would write to him recalling the incident. Surprisingly, such surprises being proof positive that there’s no fool like and old fool, he never wrote back.
“Chilling effect” and “slippery slope” notwithstanding, it all depends on whose Gore is being oxed.
I have yet to come to the 140 character world of Twitter. It is well to note that 5 words can say a lot. “Mom’s dead”, “Fire One”, “It’s a boy”, “Todt Juden”, “Of course I love you”, “Next”, “You’re fired”, “Strike 3”, “Cuba Libre”…..
To which I can only add
A little says a lot
Have a nice day
KS
Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
RE: “Thanks for a warm hand on a cold morning” – Some comments on your column about books – one of the great donors of guiltless tactile sensation – in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Putney,
I wait, sometimes years, to use that line. I know it’s not a cold morning but, what with Florida now being vouchsafed from Gaia’s revenge because hurricanes hardly ever happen after the official No More Hurricanes date, it is time to break out the virtual cashmere.
Let me add to the growing legend of Norman Mailer.
He was a champion head-butter. One of the great activities at the bar in the Players’ Club in Gramercy Park, NYC was the selection process for the evening’s main event. A 3 inch difference could inadvertently result in smashed noses and chipped teeth.
Only a very, very bright guy could give himself absolution for causing the death, by murder, of an absolutely innocent bystander. His citing Martin Luther King is proof positive of his status as a “Smarmy bastard of the Year”. In Mailer’s case we grant him eternal status. The Sacrament of Penance requires a duet. In the world of modern American Liberalism, a world without boundaries, a world with no knowledge of the “Permanent Things”, all that is required for perfect contrition is for the alleged perpetrator to say, “OOPS”.
In addition to scratching a throbbing itch the library I built in my house in West Orange was a jobs creator. 7 shelves, each one 12 inches high, 12 inches deep, and not quite a yard wide times 13 separate cases was a lasting reminder of my gilded age when conspicuous consumption was the norm. It was the class project of the 11th grade woodworking class at Glen Ridge High School. I don’t know what the teacher paid his students. I know that I paid him cash. It was a win, win, win situation for all concerned. And, very importantly, not one cent was borrowed from the Chinese.
I had an English teacher whose job when he was in graduate school at Columbia
University was to fetch Dylan Thomas from the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. Nothing compares to hearing a poet read his poems. Thomas’s voice made Richard Burton, his literary executor, sound like Pee Wee Herman. It will be a test of my failing powers of persuasion to keep my 3 Texas ladies attentive to all of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” this year.
I had another teacher who was taught by T.S. Eliot. He said his voice was like an egg shell.
I always keep my Plutarch handy. Harry Truman read him every day he was in the White House.
I suggest that you keep a copy of “The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy” close at hand. It was compiled by E. D. Hirsch. It beats Wikipedia.
I search vainly for a segue to why I am writing today.
Mitchell Kaplan
I moved to Florida in October, 1996. I found Books & Books by Halloween. I in possession of an early edition of “The Wasteland” that I intended to give to my son for Christmas. I went to Books & Books to get a selection of prose by Ezra Pound. Not finding any I asked a most attentive sales lady where I could find him. She told me that the store didn’t carry him. I was speechless. Almost. Imagine, said I to her, 20th century literature without him. Joyce, Eliot, Yeats, Hemingway. He edited them all. Why, said I.
She pointed to a thin man with a black beard. Ask him, she said. He’s the owner. He told that it was his store and he would never have Pound in it, the reason being that he hated Jews
.As a champion of private property – I suggest “Property and Freedom” by Richard Pipes – I agreed with him. I walked out of the store. I haven’t been back since.
Every time I would see him getting an award for championing some oppressed group, said group being well within the boundaries that “eclectic indignation” allows, I would write to him recalling the incident. Surprisingly, such surprises being proof positive that there’s no fool like and old fool, he never wrote back.
“Chilling effect” and “slippery slope” notwithstanding, it all depends on whose Gore is being oxed.
I have yet to come to the 140 character world of Twitter. It is well to note that 5 words can say a lot. “Mom’s dead”, “Fire One”, “It’s a boy”, “Todt Juden”, “Of course I love you”, “Next”, “You’re fired”, “Strike 3”, “Cuba Libre”…..
To which I can only add
A little says a lot
Have a nice day
KS
Rene Rodriguez The Miami Herald
November 20, 2011
Rene Rodriguez
The Miami Herald
RE: Some comments on your article on Michael Moore in today’s Miami Herald
Mr. Rodriguez,
One of the many benefits of being calorically challenged is that when you say that someone else’s ass is so fat that it has its own zip code it is never ad hominem. As anyone from Northern New Jersey [I’m from Bayonne. That’s on the good end of Hudson County] will tell you the name Fat Mike is a term of respect.
When you report that Michael Moore said that he was shocked, shocked when Bill Hemmer told him in 2004 that “people wanted him dead” I was confused.
On September 12, 2001 the Pillsbury Dough Boy cum cineaste said he wished that the terrorists had killed a lot more Republicans.
The disconnect is that it is OK to wish for the death of generic Republicans but not for the death of a specific modern American Liberal. Further, it is OK in the universe occupied by modern American Liberals to want a group of people dead. It just isn’t kosher to ask someone about it. Wazupwidat?
If it is OK to wish for the fiery deaths of people who want lower taxes is it OK for me, a “bitter clinger”, doubtless “lazy”, gun toting fierce defender of capitalism to say that, should we meet, I would kick his ass so hard that he would have to take his socks down to crap?
Could you tell Fat Mikey that if he doesn’t want to get his ass kicked we could toss crème brulees at each other at 10 paces?
I shant tell him to go to Cuba. If a campesino family got hold of him they could have the entire village over for Christmas dinner.
Kevin Smith
Rene Rodriguez
The Miami Herald
RE: Some comments on your article on Michael Moore in today’s Miami Herald
Mr. Rodriguez,
One of the many benefits of being calorically challenged is that when you say that someone else’s ass is so fat that it has its own zip code it is never ad hominem. As anyone from Northern New Jersey [I’m from Bayonne. That’s on the good end of Hudson County] will tell you the name Fat Mike is a term of respect.
When you report that Michael Moore said that he was shocked, shocked when Bill Hemmer told him in 2004 that “people wanted him dead” I was confused.
On September 12, 2001 the Pillsbury Dough Boy cum cineaste said he wished that the terrorists had killed a lot more Republicans.
The disconnect is that it is OK to wish for the death of generic Republicans but not for the death of a specific modern American Liberal. Further, it is OK in the universe occupied by modern American Liberals to want a group of people dead. It just isn’t kosher to ask someone about it. Wazupwidat?
If it is OK to wish for the fiery deaths of people who want lower taxes is it OK for me, a “bitter clinger”, doubtless “lazy”, gun toting fierce defender of capitalism to say that, should we meet, I would kick his ass so hard that he would have to take his socks down to crap?
Could you tell Fat Mikey that if he doesn’t want to get his ass kicked we could toss crème brulees at each other at 10 paces?
I shant tell him to go to Cuba. If a campesino family got hold of him they could have the entire village over for Christmas dinner.
Kevin Smith
Friday, November 11, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun-Sentinel
November 5, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
RE: At last! A teachable moment. The line – Could it be a penumbra? – between the price of bacon and the war on terror is made more clear in your thoughtful article in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
As a practicing modern American Liberal, ink stained wretch division, and thus a permanent resident in the fuzzy world of cognitive dissonance, your thoughts on the possibility of pulled pork sandwiches going walkabout are helpful.
Some thoughts from a curmudgeonly observer, one who has signed both sides of a pay check:
#1 – Rising prices are bad when they hit your pocketbook. Since you work for a bankrupt company you most assuredly want some prices to rise. Your home, your 401K, your stash of pre-1964 American coins are but a few examples. Sorry. You don’t get to pick and choose which prices. No amount of really earnest true believers singing “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” will cause the law of rational self-interest to be repealed.
#2 – It is entirely irrelevant whether the money was borrowed from the Chinese or confiscated from the 1936 trust created when Senator Lard Kennedy was born or from the swag bag of George Soros. Since 2009 about $2,000,000,000,000 – that’s two trillion dollars – has been force fed into a system that couldn’t handle it.
Markets make no distinctions as to intentions. Markets are comprised of millions of people who observe data and make decisions. As such it is beyond the control of modern American Liberals. That is one of the causes of their group madness. If they can’t control it they want to kill it.
#3 – Independent data, readily accessible in the world of search engines, reveal some inconvenient truths. Commodities are the first canary in the coal mine. When governments debase their currency because they are too cowardly to cut back on the goodies commodity prices rise in inverse proportion to the cheapening of printed money. When you toss in a Homerically stupid head up your ass idea – Let’s make gasoline from corn - the law of unintended consequences takes over.
In this country the overwhelming majority of corn was raised to feed hogs. Farmers were subsidized to grow corn, not for feed, but as a gasoline substitute. When a raiser of hogs asked a grower of corn for the old price the farmer laughed. Thus, when the price ran, Dougie in Florida had to pay more for his BLT. There was to be one more disastrous unintended consequence that I will get to later.
For people who believe that making rich people poorer will make poor people richer, for people who believe that raising the minimum wage is a good thing for poor people, for people who believe that Wal-Mart’s low prices exploit their low income customers, for people who believe that correlation is causation will be hard pressed to make the connection.
#4 – “Nowadays the price of bacon is enough to make my blood sizzle.”
Here’s a plan.
Stop eating it.
Read carefully.
I’ll type slowly.
When the price of a commodity spikes upward two things happen. The marginal user stops using it and the upward price attracts new supplies to the marketplace. There are some exceptions to this.
Thoroughbred yearlings and 150 point perfect diamonds enjoyed decades of rising prices until the run ended in the ‘80s. The price of gasoline in this country is undisturbed by reality. Both parties have taxed it and regulated it as if it were toxic. The failure of both Parties to allow the exploitation of existing energy sources guarantees but one thing: higher prices. [I used the words toxic and exploitation intentionally]
In an age where new rights are daily discovered have we found a heretofore unknown one? Does Dougie have a right to cheap pork products? Several years ago the owners of Coral Ridge Country Club were told that they had to continue to subsidize a smaller course on their property. It was a public course on private property. The main users were senior citizens. Their ad hoc committee earned the nickname “Golf for Geezers”. I guess there is no fool like an old fool. Unless of course if a “senior editorial writer” feels that the rest of the world should subsidize his meat choices. Fools, old, young, or middle aged seem to be in the ascendancy.
#5 – There is a more sinister answer to your quandary.
3 years ago President B.O. said that “we would extend our hand if you will unclench your fist”. So there is no confusion about the identity of “you” 19 0f “them” attacked this country on 9/11/01 and killed 3,000 people.
The President’s wife, a woman whose backside was why Spandex was invented, wants us to eat more wholesome food. There is no truth to the rumor that she wants to replace cocaine with granola. What better way to reach out to the Muslim world than to “outlaw” pork by making it prohibitively expensive? Then she has some feral morons dress up as Guy Fawkes – Does anyone else remember what happened to him? - and run around Wall Street with signs that say “Jew Bastard Bankers are Killers”. Just like the Tea Party, right? If she is successful it will be easier for you to get Bald Eagle soup or Whooping Crane salad than a plate of ribs. By the way, I prefer the St. Louis style to the slightly foo-foo baby backs.
#6 – You mention the death by starvation of “someone every 3.6 seconds”. I mentioned the unexplained consequences of this country subsidizing ethanol. Despite corn dogs, corn bread, or Corn Flakes corn is not a grain staple in this country. It is in the rest of the world. If you can be as precise as to a death every 3.6 seconds perhaps you could get a number of those who died because they could no longer afford corn.
Perhaps you could tell me why we pay farmers not to raise crops .Perhaps you could tell me why, when Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia, it fed all of Southern Africa. Today its fertile lands are as sterile as Carthage when Scipio got through with it. A crow would starve flying over it. Perhaps you could tell me why Cuba, a country so fertile that sugar used to grow on unused runways, still has, despite the earnest efforts of Los Hermanos Castro for 50 years, the same 3 problems. They are called breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Russia did not export a single bushel of wheat from 1919 until 1993.
I think there may be a pattern here. Do you?
#7 – Have you ever been to Arthur Bryant’s?
KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
RE: At last! A teachable moment. The line – Could it be a penumbra? – between the price of bacon and the war on terror is made more clear in your thoughtful article in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
As a practicing modern American Liberal, ink stained wretch division, and thus a permanent resident in the fuzzy world of cognitive dissonance, your thoughts on the possibility of pulled pork sandwiches going walkabout are helpful.
Some thoughts from a curmudgeonly observer, one who has signed both sides of a pay check:
#1 – Rising prices are bad when they hit your pocketbook. Since you work for a bankrupt company you most assuredly want some prices to rise. Your home, your 401K, your stash of pre-1964 American coins are but a few examples. Sorry. You don’t get to pick and choose which prices. No amount of really earnest true believers singing “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” will cause the law of rational self-interest to be repealed.
#2 – It is entirely irrelevant whether the money was borrowed from the Chinese or confiscated from the 1936 trust created when Senator Lard Kennedy was born or from the swag bag of George Soros. Since 2009 about $2,000,000,000,000 – that’s two trillion dollars – has been force fed into a system that couldn’t handle it.
Markets make no distinctions as to intentions. Markets are comprised of millions of people who observe data and make decisions. As such it is beyond the control of modern American Liberals. That is one of the causes of their group madness. If they can’t control it they want to kill it.
#3 – Independent data, readily accessible in the world of search engines, reveal some inconvenient truths. Commodities are the first canary in the coal mine. When governments debase their currency because they are too cowardly to cut back on the goodies commodity prices rise in inverse proportion to the cheapening of printed money. When you toss in a Homerically stupid head up your ass idea – Let’s make gasoline from corn - the law of unintended consequences takes over.
In this country the overwhelming majority of corn was raised to feed hogs. Farmers were subsidized to grow corn, not for feed, but as a gasoline substitute. When a raiser of hogs asked a grower of corn for the old price the farmer laughed. Thus, when the price ran, Dougie in Florida had to pay more for his BLT. There was to be one more disastrous unintended consequence that I will get to later.
For people who believe that making rich people poorer will make poor people richer, for people who believe that raising the minimum wage is a good thing for poor people, for people who believe that Wal-Mart’s low prices exploit their low income customers, for people who believe that correlation is causation will be hard pressed to make the connection.
#4 – “Nowadays the price of bacon is enough to make my blood sizzle.”
Here’s a plan.
Stop eating it.
Read carefully.
I’ll type slowly.
When the price of a commodity spikes upward two things happen. The marginal user stops using it and the upward price attracts new supplies to the marketplace. There are some exceptions to this.
Thoroughbred yearlings and 150 point perfect diamonds enjoyed decades of rising prices until the run ended in the ‘80s. The price of gasoline in this country is undisturbed by reality. Both parties have taxed it and regulated it as if it were toxic. The failure of both Parties to allow the exploitation of existing energy sources guarantees but one thing: higher prices. [I used the words toxic and exploitation intentionally]
In an age where new rights are daily discovered have we found a heretofore unknown one? Does Dougie have a right to cheap pork products? Several years ago the owners of Coral Ridge Country Club were told that they had to continue to subsidize a smaller course on their property. It was a public course on private property. The main users were senior citizens. Their ad hoc committee earned the nickname “Golf for Geezers”. I guess there is no fool like an old fool. Unless of course if a “senior editorial writer” feels that the rest of the world should subsidize his meat choices. Fools, old, young, or middle aged seem to be in the ascendancy.
#5 – There is a more sinister answer to your quandary.
3 years ago President B.O. said that “we would extend our hand if you will unclench your fist”. So there is no confusion about the identity of “you” 19 0f “them” attacked this country on 9/11/01 and killed 3,000 people.
The President’s wife, a woman whose backside was why Spandex was invented, wants us to eat more wholesome food. There is no truth to the rumor that she wants to replace cocaine with granola. What better way to reach out to the Muslim world than to “outlaw” pork by making it prohibitively expensive? Then she has some feral morons dress up as Guy Fawkes – Does anyone else remember what happened to him? - and run around Wall Street with signs that say “Jew Bastard Bankers are Killers”. Just like the Tea Party, right? If she is successful it will be easier for you to get Bald Eagle soup or Whooping Crane salad than a plate of ribs. By the way, I prefer the St. Louis style to the slightly foo-foo baby backs.
#6 – You mention the death by starvation of “someone every 3.6 seconds”. I mentioned the unexplained consequences of this country subsidizing ethanol. Despite corn dogs, corn bread, or Corn Flakes corn is not a grain staple in this country. It is in the rest of the world. If you can be as precise as to a death every 3.6 seconds perhaps you could get a number of those who died because they could no longer afford corn.
Perhaps you could tell me why we pay farmers not to raise crops .Perhaps you could tell me why, when Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia, it fed all of Southern Africa. Today its fertile lands are as sterile as Carthage when Scipio got through with it. A crow would starve flying over it. Perhaps you could tell me why Cuba, a country so fertile that sugar used to grow on unused runways, still has, despite the earnest efforts of Los Hermanos Castro for 50 years, the same 3 problems. They are called breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Russia did not export a single bushel of wheat from 1919 until 1993.
I think there may be a pattern here. Do you?
#7 – Have you ever been to Arthur Bryant’s?
KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET
Friday, November 4, 2011
Steven L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
November 4, 2011
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
RE: Yet further proof that God is kind to animals and small children when He blesses them with short memories – Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel about how we will become the land of milk and honey once we get rid of all Republicans even if we do it in less than an environmentally unsound manner.
My dear Professor,
I am greatly heartened at the progress you have made in your medical comeback to the slippery world – Not “slippery slope”, mind you. That’s a term that causes modern American liberals to react as if they were Dracula being waterboarded with holy water – of current events.
Your column today about how perfidious Congressional Republicans, a “small group of willful men” as another Democratic President referred to them, have prevented Lord Barack the Beneficent from “cooling the planet and making the oceans recede” – he did say that, didn’t he? – is proof that you have far, far to go before you are able to overcome both “eclectic indignation” and its evil spawn, a selective memory.
A quick review is in order.
#1 – The Founders, in their divinely inspired wisdom, a wisdom that enabled them to see that man’s rights came from “beyond the stars”, created a lower case troika of government. Each can check the other. Each one can control the other. Each one guards its fiefdom like a she bear guards her cubs. It is a system that has made this country “a shining city on a hill” and the envy of the world.
#2 – Power corrupts. When one party controls both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue – That’s the White House and Congress if you are geographically challenged – bad things are more likely to happen. Vide 1964. The Democrats were in charge. They gave us the war in Vietnam and the War on Poverty. At least the first one ended.
#3 – Here comes a hard fact. Here comes a very inconvenient truth. For the first two years of the glorious reign of the Obama administration, a time not soon to be compared to the rule of the 5 Emperors, Democrats had an unbreakable death grip on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. His control was so complete that there was talk of bringing Craig Livingstone back.
#4 – His caterwauling that he can’t do all the marvelous things he wants to do now begs the question of why he didn’t do them then.
#5 – I am still a bit confused. You told us constantly, harping might be a better verb, that Bush borrowing billions from the Chinese was bad. I await your pronouncement from the mountaintop as to why Obama borrowing twice as much from the Chinese is good.
#6 – As a card carrying, fire breathing modern American Liberal you always confuse Rhetoric with Sophistry. You would do well to spend some familiarizing yourself with the noble Trivium. Do it before you slip back into the lotus land of “eclectic indignation” and the selective forgetting of inconvenient facts.
#7 – You say Americans “overwhelmingly support raising taxes”. “Not so, not so” as the great Rumsfeld was wont to say. The people of Colorado, a state that voted “overwhelmingly” for President B.O. in 2008, just 3 days ago voted “overwhelmingly” against raising taxes. Wazzupwidat?
#8 – Another relic of the past, one that is anathema to all modern American Liberals, is the Rule of Law. Thomas More said “This country is planted thick with laws. When you cut them down and the devil turns on you where will you hide, the laws all being flat”? While you applaud Obama’s governing by fiat, by a flick of his wrist causing something to become the law of the land, I suggest that your knickers would be in a Gordian knot if a Republican President were to do the same.
#9 – You end your discordant caterwauling – Did I just repeat myself? - by suggesting, as did the American GI in Vietnam did, that we have to destroy the village to save it. In your case you want the country to go into chaos so that a true believer in Midnight Basketball will be returned to the White House. A Black man, just as long as his first name isn’t Herman, on a White horse, with no nasty Republicans to deter him, will lead us to a cholesterol free Utopia. There will be sightings of Eleanor Roosevelt giving her blessing. Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs will be honored, Deo gratias, posthumously. God’s Holy trousers! If abortion were retroactive everyone would be in favor of it.
If the Congress cannot find a political solution perhaps we can borrow some money from Greece to finance Michelle’s drive to replace cheeseburgers and milk shakes with tofu and beet juice.
We should be grateful that we only have 12 months of obfuscatory persiflage left. I know that I can count on you to hold up, figuratively speaking, your end of the verbal incontinence soon to be loosed upon us.
Meanwhile, don’t forget your meds.
KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
RE: Yet further proof that God is kind to animals and small children when He blesses them with short memories – Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel about how we will become the land of milk and honey once we get rid of all Republicans even if we do it in less than an environmentally unsound manner.
My dear Professor,
I am greatly heartened at the progress you have made in your medical comeback to the slippery world – Not “slippery slope”, mind you. That’s a term that causes modern American liberals to react as if they were Dracula being waterboarded with holy water – of current events.
Your column today about how perfidious Congressional Republicans, a “small group of willful men” as another Democratic President referred to them, have prevented Lord Barack the Beneficent from “cooling the planet and making the oceans recede” – he did say that, didn’t he? – is proof that you have far, far to go before you are able to overcome both “eclectic indignation” and its evil spawn, a selective memory.
A quick review is in order.
#1 – The Founders, in their divinely inspired wisdom, a wisdom that enabled them to see that man’s rights came from “beyond the stars”, created a lower case troika of government. Each can check the other. Each one can control the other. Each one guards its fiefdom like a she bear guards her cubs. It is a system that has made this country “a shining city on a hill” and the envy of the world.
#2 – Power corrupts. When one party controls both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue – That’s the White House and Congress if you are geographically challenged – bad things are more likely to happen. Vide 1964. The Democrats were in charge. They gave us the war in Vietnam and the War on Poverty. At least the first one ended.
#3 – Here comes a hard fact. Here comes a very inconvenient truth. For the first two years of the glorious reign of the Obama administration, a time not soon to be compared to the rule of the 5 Emperors, Democrats had an unbreakable death grip on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. His control was so complete that there was talk of bringing Craig Livingstone back.
#4 – His caterwauling that he can’t do all the marvelous things he wants to do now begs the question of why he didn’t do them then.
#5 – I am still a bit confused. You told us constantly, harping might be a better verb, that Bush borrowing billions from the Chinese was bad. I await your pronouncement from the mountaintop as to why Obama borrowing twice as much from the Chinese is good.
#6 – As a card carrying, fire breathing modern American Liberal you always confuse Rhetoric with Sophistry. You would do well to spend some familiarizing yourself with the noble Trivium. Do it before you slip back into the lotus land of “eclectic indignation” and the selective forgetting of inconvenient facts.
#7 – You say Americans “overwhelmingly support raising taxes”. “Not so, not so” as the great Rumsfeld was wont to say. The people of Colorado, a state that voted “overwhelmingly” for President B.O. in 2008, just 3 days ago voted “overwhelmingly” against raising taxes. Wazzupwidat?
#8 – Another relic of the past, one that is anathema to all modern American Liberals, is the Rule of Law. Thomas More said “This country is planted thick with laws. When you cut them down and the devil turns on you where will you hide, the laws all being flat”? While you applaud Obama’s governing by fiat, by a flick of his wrist causing something to become the law of the land, I suggest that your knickers would be in a Gordian knot if a Republican President were to do the same.
#9 – You end your discordant caterwauling – Did I just repeat myself? - by suggesting, as did the American GI in Vietnam did, that we have to destroy the village to save it. In your case you want the country to go into chaos so that a true believer in Midnight Basketball will be returned to the White House. A Black man, just as long as his first name isn’t Herman, on a White horse, with no nasty Republicans to deter him, will lead us to a cholesterol free Utopia. There will be sightings of Eleanor Roosevelt giving her blessing. Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs will be honored, Deo gratias, posthumously. God’s Holy trousers! If abortion were retroactive everyone would be in favor of it.
If the Congress cannot find a political solution perhaps we can borrow some money from Greece to finance Michelle’s drive to replace cheeseburgers and milk shakes with tofu and beet juice.
We should be grateful that we only have 12 months of obfuscatory persiflage left. I know that I can count on you to hold up, figuratively speaking, your end of the verbal incontinence soon to be loosed upon us.
Meanwhile, don’t forget your meds.
KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET
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