Posts
June 10, 2011
Grammy, Caroline, and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital
Uterine papillary serous carcinoma has a sterile, almost arid sound to it. Stage 3C neither limits nor expands it. It just classifies it.
Grammy [many of you know her as Amy, the long suffering wife of Kevin Smith] was diagnosed with it and operated on in August, 2009. She lost her hair during the subsequent chemo-radiation-chemo cycle.
Caroline, our middle granddaughter, had her hair cut that Christmas just so she could say “I love you Grammy”. Not quite 10 inches of her light brown hair went to “Locks for Love”.
A tiny spot was discovered on Grammy’s lung this March past.
By May it had gone to her liver, her lungs, her lymph nodes, and her stomach. This time it was classified as Stage 4. There is no Stage 5.
She began anew her trips to the Chemo Café. There, the drip, drip of the man made poison was begun to stanch the flow of the other poison.
Caroline’s birthday is in April. She has a pool party in June hoping for better weather.
She told her mom that rather than presents for herself she wanted to raise some money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
Grammy had told her that whenever she was feeling bad during her chemo she thought about the children getting their drip, drip at St. Jude’s. St. Jude’s makes it as easy as possible for these kids. St. Jude’s relies on people like Caroline to pay for the stuff that goes into the IV, into these kids.
Caroline got $775 at her party.
Now that I have your attention I ask you to continue her “It’s A Wonderful Life” moment.
Please send her a check payable to
St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital
Her address is
Caroline Hanson
2110 Country Brook Lane
Allen, TX 75002
Most of you know me as an acid-tongued curmudgeon who takes no prisoners. I have told many of you that I don’t seek to convert but, rather, I seek to confront. It is true that if I catch myself saying something nice about someone I bite down very hard on my lower lip. If that doesn’t work I picture myself in a 4 man shell with Michael Dukakis and Alpha Gump and the ghosts of Bella Abzug and Teddy Kennedy fighting for the 4th seat. Hillary Clinton is in the coxun’s chair, rope’s end in hand, trying to steer us clear of the never ending “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” shoals. That always gets me back to basics.
I promise to go back to being what I am known and loved for after this note.
Thank you,
Kevin Smith
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Editors The Sun-Sentinel
June 6, 2011
The Editors
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Homer nods?
Sirs,
I hope I am not the only one to lament the absence of D-Day from your list of things of note on this date. In case you’ve forgotten, Europe was invaded on June 6, 1944. 11 months and 2 days later the war was over.
Kevin Smith
The Editors
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Homer nods?
Sirs,
I hope I am not the only one to lament the absence of D-Day from your list of things of note on this date. In case you’ve forgotten, Europe was invaded on June 6, 1944. 11 months and 2 days later the war was over.
Kevin Smith
Scott Powers The Sun-Sentinel
May 24, 2011
Scott Powers
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE” “After 2 Years $4.6 Billion Is Still Not Spent” – Some questions on your Page4 1 story on the Stimulus Program and its supposed legatee, Shovel Ready Projects.
Mr. Powers,
2 ½ years ago, despite 8 years of admonitions from then Senator Clinton about the dangers of borrowing money from the Chinese, we lay prostrate before Wong, our inscrutable Mandarin – What’s the Chinese word for loanshark? – lender, to finance the still unrealized Summer of Recovery.
Now you tell me that $4,600,000,000 of the monies earmarked for Florida still haven’t been spent.
#1 – Exactly where is the money? Don’t say it’s in the pipeline. It isn’t. It is an account somewhere. Whose name is on the account?
#2 – Federal Highway, south of the tunnel, Route 1 to vacationers, has had 4 blocks of what appeared to be well maintained medians torn up. Is their repair part of the Shovel Ready Projects part of the Stimulus Program? In a bit more than 2 ½ years this country designed, built, and tested an atomic weapon. If it is part of the SPSRP – that’s short for Stimulus Program Shovel Ready Projects – why did it take 2 ½ years to get some back hoes to crack the concrete? Weren’t we told that it would take about 10 days for the infrastructure, the aging infrastructure, to spring back to life? Does it take 2 ½ years for a shovel ready project to become, y’know what I’m saying, shovel ready?
#3 Why is a job in the public sector worth more than a job in the private sector? If you cut a private sector employee won’t he bleed as much as a public sector employee? Doesn’t he have to feed his children at least as much as a public sector employee? Whatever happened to “equal protection under the law”? I would be shocked, shocked if I were to find out that politics and the public employee unions had something to do with it.
#4 – One of my favorite political pundits, Samuel Johnson, said that “any public policy that involvers robbing Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support”. Sound advice in the 18th century; still good today.
#5 – Do you know if China has a Powerball lottery? Do you think we can buy some tickets before they realize that they are lending us the money to gamble? If we win do we have a choice of currency?
The President said in February, 2009 that “there was an election. We won.”
There is still one coming up, isn’t there?
Kevin Smith
Scott Powers
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE” “After 2 Years $4.6 Billion Is Still Not Spent” – Some questions on your Page4 1 story on the Stimulus Program and its supposed legatee, Shovel Ready Projects.
Mr. Powers,
2 ½ years ago, despite 8 years of admonitions from then Senator Clinton about the dangers of borrowing money from the Chinese, we lay prostrate before Wong, our inscrutable Mandarin – What’s the Chinese word for loanshark? – lender, to finance the still unrealized Summer of Recovery.
Now you tell me that $4,600,000,000 of the monies earmarked for Florida still haven’t been spent.
#1 – Exactly where is the money? Don’t say it’s in the pipeline. It isn’t. It is an account somewhere. Whose name is on the account?
#2 – Federal Highway, south of the tunnel, Route 1 to vacationers, has had 4 blocks of what appeared to be well maintained medians torn up. Is their repair part of the Shovel Ready Projects part of the Stimulus Program? In a bit more than 2 ½ years this country designed, built, and tested an atomic weapon. If it is part of the SPSRP – that’s short for Stimulus Program Shovel Ready Projects – why did it take 2 ½ years to get some back hoes to crack the concrete? Weren’t we told that it would take about 10 days for the infrastructure, the aging infrastructure, to spring back to life? Does it take 2 ½ years for a shovel ready project to become, y’know what I’m saying, shovel ready?
#3 Why is a job in the public sector worth more than a job in the private sector? If you cut a private sector employee won’t he bleed as much as a public sector employee? Doesn’t he have to feed his children at least as much as a public sector employee? Whatever happened to “equal protection under the law”? I would be shocked, shocked if I were to find out that politics and the public employee unions had something to do with it.
#4 – One of my favorite political pundits, Samuel Johnson, said that “any public policy that involvers robbing Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support”. Sound advice in the 18th century; still good today.
#5 – Do you know if China has a Powerball lottery? Do you think we can buy some tickets before they realize that they are lending us the money to gamble? If we win do we have a choice of currency?
The President said in February, 2009 that “there was an election. We won.”
There is still one coming up, isn’t there?
Kevin Smith
Gary Stein The Sun-Sentinel
June 1, 2011
Gary Stein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: That’s the trouble with elections. Anyone can vote. Anyone can win. Yikes!
Big Stein,
With the same scientific method that was used to prove GlobalCoolingGlobal WarmingClimateChange beyond any reasonable doubt I can say, Caesar dixit if you will, that FOX-IT IS is both caused and cured by TU QUOQUEOSIS.
Begin with a simple premise:
If Sarah Palin is as fill in the blank as you and your coven members think she is wouldn’t it be in the best interests of modern American Liberalism to see that she gets the Republican nomination for President?
Despite shutting down Camp Gitmo on the way back from his inauguration, despite having convinced Europe that Rambo and Maverick were banished, despite having campaigned against deficit financing before increasing it 4 times, despite enduring a winter of discontent that so far has not led us to the summer[s] of recovery, despite causing the oceans to recede – Jeepers! He’s done a lot, hasn’t he? Do you think we really need an election?
As an American I am very proud that the legendary RESET button has given us one great triumph in foreign policy. Giving head WOG Bin Laden a 3rd eye will rank with the Berlin Wall coming down.
Whatever her academic and intellectual failings, and God knows that only Allah can weave a perfect rug [Pretty neat, don’t you think? Getting God and Allah into the same sentence] I will accept all wagers that she has known for a long time that there are only 50 states in the Union.
Ditto that Austrian is not spoken in Austria.
I too have trouble when someone is called a Nazi.
Of course, the exception that proves the rule is when Senator Richard “Little Dick” Durbin [D-IL] uses the term on the floor of the Unites States Senate. Also Bush is Hitler gets a pass because his father blew up the World Trade Center to get the gas pipeline across Kafiristan, remember? Who can forget Darth Cheney bringing back the lost art of Bayoneting Babies? Not me.
Of course, if Lord Barack the Beneficent and Hitler are mentioned in the same zip code modern American Liberal knickers get knotted. [Would unknotting them be an example of “kinetic” tailoring?]
If Big Ed Schultz, and how about using his picture in the new dictionary category of “putz”? can call Laura Ingraham, a breast cancer survivor and a single mom of two, a slut, if radio talk dude Mike Malloy can ask for Seal Team 6 to “double tap” George W. Bush before strangling Rush Limbaugh, and they go uncondemned in the Sun-Sentinel then perhaps it’s time for a refresher course in “eclectic indignation”.
As a wanabee righteous Gentile I say that if Obama is good for Israel Colonel Sanders is great for chickens.
In 1993 Bernie Nussbaum was described by the Clinton White House as a “New York lawyer”. Imagine if any Bush White House had said that. Imagine if Pat Buchanan had said that. By the way Nussbaum worked for Clinton. I know several “New York lawyers”. Several of my best friends are “New York lawyers”. Some of them are “stiff necked”. Is that a “blood libel”?
Alan Dershowitz, a “New York lawyer” from Brooklyn, is cool with the term “blood libel” being used by “non-New York lawyers”. I’ll stop there because I don’t want to cause a family feud.
If “Sarah Who’s neighborhood” is one step short of the “undiscovered country” from which no politician ever returns why are the shock troops of modern American Liberalism training their big guns on her?
You would almost think she was Nixon incarnate.
Forget about one hand clapping; methinks I hear the sounds of sphincters snapping shut.
Kevin Smith
Gary Stein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: That’s the trouble with elections. Anyone can vote. Anyone can win. Yikes!
Big Stein,
With the same scientific method that was used to prove GlobalCoolingGlobal WarmingClimateChange beyond any reasonable doubt I can say, Caesar dixit if you will, that FOX-IT IS is both caused and cured by TU QUOQUEOSIS.
Begin with a simple premise:
If Sarah Palin is as fill in the blank as you and your coven members think she is wouldn’t it be in the best interests of modern American Liberalism to see that she gets the Republican nomination for President?
Despite shutting down Camp Gitmo on the way back from his inauguration, despite having convinced Europe that Rambo and Maverick were banished, despite having campaigned against deficit financing before increasing it 4 times, despite enduring a winter of discontent that so far has not led us to the summer[s] of recovery, despite causing the oceans to recede – Jeepers! He’s done a lot, hasn’t he? Do you think we really need an election?
As an American I am very proud that the legendary RESET button has given us one great triumph in foreign policy. Giving head WOG Bin Laden a 3rd eye will rank with the Berlin Wall coming down.
Whatever her academic and intellectual failings, and God knows that only Allah can weave a perfect rug [Pretty neat, don’t you think? Getting God and Allah into the same sentence] I will accept all wagers that she has known for a long time that there are only 50 states in the Union.
Ditto that Austrian is not spoken in Austria.
I too have trouble when someone is called a Nazi.
Of course, the exception that proves the rule is when Senator Richard “Little Dick” Durbin [D-IL] uses the term on the floor of the Unites States Senate. Also Bush is Hitler gets a pass because his father blew up the World Trade Center to get the gas pipeline across Kafiristan, remember? Who can forget Darth Cheney bringing back the lost art of Bayoneting Babies? Not me.
Of course, if Lord Barack the Beneficent and Hitler are mentioned in the same zip code modern American Liberal knickers get knotted. [Would unknotting them be an example of “kinetic” tailoring?]
If Big Ed Schultz, and how about using his picture in the new dictionary category of “putz”? can call Laura Ingraham, a breast cancer survivor and a single mom of two, a slut, if radio talk dude Mike Malloy can ask for Seal Team 6 to “double tap” George W. Bush before strangling Rush Limbaugh, and they go uncondemned in the Sun-Sentinel then perhaps it’s time for a refresher course in “eclectic indignation”.
As a wanabee righteous Gentile I say that if Obama is good for Israel Colonel Sanders is great for chickens.
In 1993 Bernie Nussbaum was described by the Clinton White House as a “New York lawyer”. Imagine if any Bush White House had said that. Imagine if Pat Buchanan had said that. By the way Nussbaum worked for Clinton. I know several “New York lawyers”. Several of my best friends are “New York lawyers”. Some of them are “stiff necked”. Is that a “blood libel”?
Alan Dershowitz, a “New York lawyer” from Brooklyn, is cool with the term “blood libel” being used by “non-New York lawyers”. I’ll stop there because I don’t want to cause a family feud.
If “Sarah Who’s neighborhood” is one step short of the “undiscovered country” from which no politician ever returns why are the shock troops of modern American Liberalism training their big guns on her?
You would almost think she was Nixon incarnate.
Forget about one hand clapping; methinks I hear the sounds of sphincters snapping shut.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
June 3, 2011
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St. NE
Washington, DC 20003
RE: Bile and vitriol in the ascendancy – Will Bush & Cheney ever leave us alone?
Debbie, Debbie,
I know. I know. It’s been a kidney stone of a week what with you trying to convert your 2010 Lexus into a 1942 Jeep. If that’s not bad enough you had a tough go at trying to demonize the Republicans by making the very sound modern American Liberal argument that “they” want to make illegal immigration…what’s the word…”illegal”.
I must confess that I feel like a fool.
I used to think you were smart.
You may not be as dumb as your Florida legislative gal pal Stacey “Cementhead” Ritter but you’re gaining on her. Miriam Oliphant, the deposed Broward County Elections Supervisor, was so dumb she made my fingernails curl backwards. In fact, you and Ms. Oliphant have two things in common: #1 - You both have Masters degrees in fuzzy subjects and #2 - You both sent the cops after me for something I wrote.
That appears to be a trait common to modern American Liberals.
The iron fist in an iron glove is the typical response. Since you can neither tolerate criticism nor can you comprehend the thought that you may be wrong the responses is immediate. Send men with badges and guns to “explain” it. “Slippery slope”? Don’t be silly. “Chilling effect”? Nonsense.
Since you’ve had such a tough week you probably haven’t heard about the brouhaha in the Illinois legislature. That’s the place where Abraham Lincoln, he of the “better angels of our nature” speech, served.
Senator Kyle McCarter [R-Lebanon] was punched by Senator Mike Jacobs [D- East Moline] on the floor of the Senate. Senator Jacobs [D-East Moline] was pushing a bill in which his father had a direct financial interest. Senator McCarter [R-Lebanon] noted and questioned this. Senator Jacobs [D-East Moline] walked over to Senator McCarter[R-Lebanon], called him a “motherfucker”, and then smacked him.
The puncher is a Democrat. The punchee is a Republican.
Is this an example of the legendary Chicago School of Politics? Didn’t the country’s most successful street hustling, scam spreading, community organizer tell his acolytes “Never bring a knife to gun fight”?
In the normal course of events someone with a Master’s degree in Political Science would not have to be reminded of the Burke-Fox debates. The names Webster, Hayne, Calhoun, Clay, Douglas, and Lincoln should peal gloriously in the temples of civil debate and reasoned discourse. Since your academic background is based on having purple shirted SEIU union thugs transported from polling place to polling place to intimidate voters those names are foreign, probably alien, to you.
That’s probably a good thing.
It enables you to do your hatchet job with suffering any pangs of conscience.
There is one pang worth poking at.
Why didn’t the Ya-Ya Sisterhood of Congressional Chickies rise up in defense of Laura Ingraham? Despite her politics she is still a single mom of 2 who is also a breast cancer survivor. Why didn’t the Word Police section of the Amazon Brigade of Perpetually Outraged Broads track down Foul Mouthed Ed Shultz – he’s the one who called her a “slut”, remember? - and give him a beating? It couldn’t be politics, could it?
Speaking of being “torn apart at the seams” what’s up with Congressman Weiner? I suppose it is OK for a one-eyed trouser snake to get out in front of an issue, particularly if its handler is a modern American Liberal. As a devoted follower of King Priapris it would seem that the Stimulus program was really working for him, if you get my drift. I am told that Haines Underwear will make a substantial donation to the PAC of your choice if they can have an ad campaign featuring him and “friend” dancing to the lovely tune of “Leave it to Beaver”.
James Madison, another American with whom you are not familiar, when asked what was the most important qualification of any candidate for public office said, “Character. Character is all.” You said the matter of Congressman Weiner was “personal”. What if John Edwards had been elected President?
I know where I can get my hands on a Studebaker should you need proof of your love of American cars.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St. NE
Washington, DC 20003
RE: Bile and vitriol in the ascendancy – Will Bush & Cheney ever leave us alone?
Debbie, Debbie,
I know. I know. It’s been a kidney stone of a week what with you trying to convert your 2010 Lexus into a 1942 Jeep. If that’s not bad enough you had a tough go at trying to demonize the Republicans by making the very sound modern American Liberal argument that “they” want to make illegal immigration…what’s the word…”illegal”.
I must confess that I feel like a fool.
I used to think you were smart.
You may not be as dumb as your Florida legislative gal pal Stacey “Cementhead” Ritter but you’re gaining on her. Miriam Oliphant, the deposed Broward County Elections Supervisor, was so dumb she made my fingernails curl backwards. In fact, you and Ms. Oliphant have two things in common: #1 - You both have Masters degrees in fuzzy subjects and #2 - You both sent the cops after me for something I wrote.
That appears to be a trait common to modern American Liberals.
The iron fist in an iron glove is the typical response. Since you can neither tolerate criticism nor can you comprehend the thought that you may be wrong the responses is immediate. Send men with badges and guns to “explain” it. “Slippery slope”? Don’t be silly. “Chilling effect”? Nonsense.
Since you’ve had such a tough week you probably haven’t heard about the brouhaha in the Illinois legislature. That’s the place where Abraham Lincoln, he of the “better angels of our nature” speech, served.
Senator Kyle McCarter [R-Lebanon] was punched by Senator Mike Jacobs [D- East Moline] on the floor of the Senate. Senator Jacobs [D-East Moline] was pushing a bill in which his father had a direct financial interest. Senator McCarter [R-Lebanon] noted and questioned this. Senator Jacobs [D-East Moline] walked over to Senator McCarter[R-Lebanon], called him a “motherfucker”, and then smacked him.
The puncher is a Democrat. The punchee is a Republican.
Is this an example of the legendary Chicago School of Politics? Didn’t the country’s most successful street hustling, scam spreading, community organizer tell his acolytes “Never bring a knife to gun fight”?
In the normal course of events someone with a Master’s degree in Political Science would not have to be reminded of the Burke-Fox debates. The names Webster, Hayne, Calhoun, Clay, Douglas, and Lincoln should peal gloriously in the temples of civil debate and reasoned discourse. Since your academic background is based on having purple shirted SEIU union thugs transported from polling place to polling place to intimidate voters those names are foreign, probably alien, to you.
That’s probably a good thing.
It enables you to do your hatchet job with suffering any pangs of conscience.
There is one pang worth poking at.
Why didn’t the Ya-Ya Sisterhood of Congressional Chickies rise up in defense of Laura Ingraham? Despite her politics she is still a single mom of 2 who is also a breast cancer survivor. Why didn’t the Word Police section of the Amazon Brigade of Perpetually Outraged Broads track down Foul Mouthed Ed Shultz – he’s the one who called her a “slut”, remember? - and give him a beating? It couldn’t be politics, could it?
Speaking of being “torn apart at the seams” what’s up with Congressman Weiner? I suppose it is OK for a one-eyed trouser snake to get out in front of an issue, particularly if its handler is a modern American Liberal. As a devoted follower of King Priapris it would seem that the Stimulus program was really working for him, if you get my drift. I am told that Haines Underwear will make a substantial donation to the PAC of your choice if they can have an ad campaign featuring him and “friend” dancing to the lovely tune of “Leave it to Beaver”.
James Madison, another American with whom you are not familiar, when asked what was the most important qualification of any candidate for public office said, “Character. Character is all.” You said the matter of Congressman Weiner was “personal”. What if John Edwards had been elected President?
I know where I can get my hands on a Studebaker should you need proof of your love of American cars.
Kevin Smith
Gary Stein The Sun-Sentinel
June 8, 2011
Gary Stein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: Sometimes it’s OK to construct a universal from a particular – Some comments on your column about government waste on a Brobdanaglian scale in Broward County.
Big Stein,
Having heard about the $4,500 windows I biked from Bayonne to Jersey City to see them. The new school building there also had $900 student desks and $100 wastebaskets. Not bad for 1958.
15 years ago I went to the Broward County Board of Education to get some financial information. No one seemed to know the difference between capitol items and expense items. My explanation to the pleasant enough young lady is still valid. The big steel boxes, AKA refrigerators, in kitchens are capitol items. The milk, eggs, and cheese in them are expense items. I may as well have been speaking Kurdish.
[Incidentally, the Federal budget, making no distinction between an aircraft carrier and “Midnight Basketball”, can never be “balanced” in the sense that people in the real world understand the term. Adam, my uncle from my father’s side, said “What is prudent in running the affairs of a family can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”. Valid when he said it; even more so today. At no time in the ‘90s, the time when the budget was supposedly balanced, did the Federal debt go down by one penny. Ever. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up”.
What is one common denominator, a trait shared by Hudson County and Broward County that might explain how these things happen?
How about one party rule?
The Democrats, people who know ab ovum the difference between the buttered side and the dry, always take Mr. Hinnisy’s advice to heart. “They seen their opportunities and they took’em.”
Rather than listing all the bills of indictment floating around it should be sufficient to say that the Broward County Board of Education and the Broward County Commission are extremely ethically challenged. Rumor has it that the largest renters of commercial property in Broward County are the various Federal investigative agencies.
Although they lack the panache of the Democrats I am sure that the Republicans would quickly master the art of stealing a hot stove. The problem is simple. By the time they get to the stove it’s cold
Until last year the only way a Republican got on the Broward County Commission was when a Republican Governor got to name the replacement for the Democratic Commissioner who went to jail for stealing from himself.
So long as Democratic primary voters will vote for Dr. Mengele because of his progressive stance on abortion, so long as district boundaries insure the near unanimous election of an OJ Simpson or a Michael Jackson, so long as the odds on manatee suffrage get closer to chalk each election cycle you will find pools that Seal Team 6 could use to prepare for their next target.
[Allow me to segue to the national scene. The outstanding foreign policy achievement of an alumnus of the Cook County School of Politics, the man who, “Ask not what you can do for your country” or “Tear down this wall” being taken, enjoined us to “Never take a knife to a gun fight” is the shooting in the head of the head WOG terrorist, is just another example of palm cards and bullet voting]
Perhaps Napoleon has the solution.
Before a battle he would select 3 soldiers at random. He would then court-martial them and shoot them for cowardice. He said it “encouraged the others”. It worked right up to Waterloo. And that you may recall, as the Iron Duke said, was a “damn close run thing”.
It may be worth trying for a few years.
Kevin Smith
PS – Lest you think I am prejudiced just against Democrats I offer as Exhibit A the United States Postal Service. It matters not one whit which Party is in the White House or which Party controls Congress. Beyond SNAFU, beyond FUBAR it should be obvious that that dog won’t hunt. Worse than there being no method for punishing failure there is also no method for rewarding success. Let FedEx and UPS have a shot at it. How much worse could it be? Conversely, the main argument against teacher tenure is not that a bad teacher gets paid as much as a good teacher but why does a bad teacher get paid at all.
.
Gary Stein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: Sometimes it’s OK to construct a universal from a particular – Some comments on your column about government waste on a Brobdanaglian scale in Broward County.
Big Stein,
Having heard about the $4,500 windows I biked from Bayonne to Jersey City to see them. The new school building there also had $900 student desks and $100 wastebaskets. Not bad for 1958.
15 years ago I went to the Broward County Board of Education to get some financial information. No one seemed to know the difference between capitol items and expense items. My explanation to the pleasant enough young lady is still valid. The big steel boxes, AKA refrigerators, in kitchens are capitol items. The milk, eggs, and cheese in them are expense items. I may as well have been speaking Kurdish.
[Incidentally, the Federal budget, making no distinction between an aircraft carrier and “Midnight Basketball”, can never be “balanced” in the sense that people in the real world understand the term. Adam, my uncle from my father’s side, said “What is prudent in running the affairs of a family can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”. Valid when he said it; even more so today. At no time in the ‘90s, the time when the budget was supposedly balanced, did the Federal debt go down by one penny. Ever. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up”.
What is one common denominator, a trait shared by Hudson County and Broward County that might explain how these things happen?
How about one party rule?
The Democrats, people who know ab ovum the difference between the buttered side and the dry, always take Mr. Hinnisy’s advice to heart. “They seen their opportunities and they took’em.”
Rather than listing all the bills of indictment floating around it should be sufficient to say that the Broward County Board of Education and the Broward County Commission are extremely ethically challenged. Rumor has it that the largest renters of commercial property in Broward County are the various Federal investigative agencies.
Although they lack the panache of the Democrats I am sure that the Republicans would quickly master the art of stealing a hot stove. The problem is simple. By the time they get to the stove it’s cold
Until last year the only way a Republican got on the Broward County Commission was when a Republican Governor got to name the replacement for the Democratic Commissioner who went to jail for stealing from himself.
So long as Democratic primary voters will vote for Dr. Mengele because of his progressive stance on abortion, so long as district boundaries insure the near unanimous election of an OJ Simpson or a Michael Jackson, so long as the odds on manatee suffrage get closer to chalk each election cycle you will find pools that Seal Team 6 could use to prepare for their next target.
[Allow me to segue to the national scene. The outstanding foreign policy achievement of an alumnus of the Cook County School of Politics, the man who, “Ask not what you can do for your country” or “Tear down this wall” being taken, enjoined us to “Never take a knife to a gun fight” is the shooting in the head of the head WOG terrorist, is just another example of palm cards and bullet voting]
Perhaps Napoleon has the solution.
Before a battle he would select 3 soldiers at random. He would then court-martial them and shoot them for cowardice. He said it “encouraged the others”. It worked right up to Waterloo. And that you may recall, as the Iron Duke said, was a “damn close run thing”.
It may be worth trying for a few years.
Kevin Smith
PS – Lest you think I am prejudiced just against Democrats I offer as Exhibit A the United States Postal Service. It matters not one whit which Party is in the White House or which Party controls Congress. Beyond SNAFU, beyond FUBAR it should be obvious that that dog won’t hunt. Worse than there being no method for punishing failure there is also no method for rewarding success. Let FedEx and UPS have a shot at it. How much worse could it be? Conversely, the main argument against teacher tenure is not that a bad teacher gets paid as much as a good teacher but why does a bad teacher get paid at all.
.
Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald
June 8. 2011
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Tu quoque? – Some comments on the missing name in your column on the academic deficiencies of public officials in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
If Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere reference – one which turned out to be correct – is proof of “intellectual mediocrity” what would you call the gaffes, phumferings, and laugh out loud statements of a public official whose singular achievement after 2 ½ years in office is not messing up the execution of Osama Ben Laden?
#1 - I have been searching for those missing “7 or 8” states that the President told us about in 2008.
#2 – Maybe in one of those missing states I will the elusive Austrian/English dictionary. Since President Obama told us that Austrian is spoken in Austria would it not stand to reason that a country listing Bach and Mozart as alumni would have produced a dictionary? As soon as I find it I will begin my hunt for Icelandic/English dictionary, the Belgian/English dictionary, and the Mother of All Dictionaries, the Swiss/English dictionary.
#3 – It may well be that “Teutonic shifts” occur in Western North Dakota or South Central New Mexico or in one of those states that we have yet to find. In Alaska they are called “Tectonic shifts”. Teutonic, Tectonic…you say potato and I say potatoe. No big deal, right? If all else fails blame it on the teleprompter.
You say that “Palin’s gaffe speaks to her considerable limitations”. What would Obama’s gaffes speak to?
The tuition at Punahou Prep, the school with a $500,000,000 endowment, the high school that Obama attended, is $17,800 [not counting fees] per year. He attended Occidental College. He was graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. The tuitions there would be astronomical.
Sarah Palin went to Wasilla High School. She attended the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University, and North Idaho College. I daresay that the tuition at all of them would not equal one year at Punahou Prep.
Do you recall one of the arguments used when Judge Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court?
He was admitted to and was graduated from the College of the Holy Cross and from Yale Law School because of Affirmative Action.
Could it be that President Obama, a man with as thin a resume as any candidate for President in my lifetime, is the ultimate end product of Affirmative Action?
You may recall when he first campaigned in South Florida. He was at the convention center cum hockey rink in Sunrise. He jumped towards the platform and shouted “Hello Sunshine”. Getting no response he said it again. “HELLO SUNSHINE!” It was rumored that Darth Cheney, the Vice President’s evil twin, had installed the teleprompter. Nothing was ever proved.
Is there a non-racial way to hint, to suggest, that the President suffers from “intellectual mediocrity”? Would the Word Police pay me a visit if I were to suggest that he has “considerable limitations”
Other than “I want to spread the wealth around” and “Never bring a knife to a gun fight” are there any quotes from him that would suggest he was not afflicted with “intellectual mediocrity” made worse by his “considerable limitations”?
Maybe he has them secreted away in the undiscovered state of Utopia. By the way, Utopia means “nowhere”.
Call me a cockeyed optimist but I hope, audaciously perhaps, that he never changes.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Tu quoque? – Some comments on the missing name in your column on the academic deficiencies of public officials in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
If Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere reference – one which turned out to be correct – is proof of “intellectual mediocrity” what would you call the gaffes, phumferings, and laugh out loud statements of a public official whose singular achievement after 2 ½ years in office is not messing up the execution of Osama Ben Laden?
#1 - I have been searching for those missing “7 or 8” states that the President told us about in 2008.
#2 – Maybe in one of those missing states I will the elusive Austrian/English dictionary. Since President Obama told us that Austrian is spoken in Austria would it not stand to reason that a country listing Bach and Mozart as alumni would have produced a dictionary? As soon as I find it I will begin my hunt for Icelandic/English dictionary, the Belgian/English dictionary, and the Mother of All Dictionaries, the Swiss/English dictionary.
#3 – It may well be that “Teutonic shifts” occur in Western North Dakota or South Central New Mexico or in one of those states that we have yet to find. In Alaska they are called “Tectonic shifts”. Teutonic, Tectonic…you say potato and I say potatoe. No big deal, right? If all else fails blame it on the teleprompter.
You say that “Palin’s gaffe speaks to her considerable limitations”. What would Obama’s gaffes speak to?
The tuition at Punahou Prep, the school with a $500,000,000 endowment, the high school that Obama attended, is $17,800 [not counting fees] per year. He attended Occidental College. He was graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. The tuitions there would be astronomical.
Sarah Palin went to Wasilla High School. She attended the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University, and North Idaho College. I daresay that the tuition at all of them would not equal one year at Punahou Prep.
Do you recall one of the arguments used when Judge Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court?
He was admitted to and was graduated from the College of the Holy Cross and from Yale Law School because of Affirmative Action.
Could it be that President Obama, a man with as thin a resume as any candidate for President in my lifetime, is the ultimate end product of Affirmative Action?
You may recall when he first campaigned in South Florida. He was at the convention center cum hockey rink in Sunrise. He jumped towards the platform and shouted “Hello Sunshine”. Getting no response he said it again. “HELLO SUNSHINE!” It was rumored that Darth Cheney, the Vice President’s evil twin, had installed the teleprompter. Nothing was ever proved.
Is there a non-racial way to hint, to suggest, that the President suffers from “intellectual mediocrity”? Would the Word Police pay me a visit if I were to suggest that he has “considerable limitations”
Other than “I want to spread the wealth around” and “Never bring a knife to a gun fight” are there any quotes from him that would suggest he was not afflicted with “intellectual mediocrity” made worse by his “considerable limitations”?
Maybe he has them secreted away in the undiscovered state of Utopia. By the way, Utopia means “nowhere”.
Call me a cockeyed optimist but I hope, audaciously perhaps, that he never changes.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
June 7, 2011
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St NE
Washington, DC 20003
RE: Words, like Ideas, have consequences
My dear Debbie,
Your speech in January about “bile and vitriol tearing us apart” seems to be gaining ground as a blueprint for modern American Liberal action.
“You’re fucking dead” was what one Democratic Wisconsin legislator said to a Republican legislator.
That morphed into a Democratic legislator in Illinois walking across the floor while the Assembly was in session and calling a Republican member a “motherfucker” before punching him.
It was but one small step for comedian Chris Titus to say “I am going to literally – if she gets elected president, I’m going to hang out on the grassy knoll all the time, just loaded and ready…”
Let the record show that “she” is Sarah Palin. The “grassy knoll’ is where the second shooter was supposed to have fired from on 11/22/63. “Loaded and ready” means that the sharp end of the cartridge has gone up the barrel first, the safety is off, and Mr. Titus wants to “literally” do to Sarah Palin what Seal Team 6 did to an early proponent of new Israeli borders. That the recently deceased head WOG terrorist wanted those borders to start 50 miles into the Mediterranean is not relevant in a “literal” sense. There may be an existential relevance but I don’t want to put too much on your plate. As your website says your Masters degree is in political campaigning, not in Philosophy. For that matter, you seem to have avoided all History classes also.
You sent the cops after me because I disagreed with some – scratch that - all of your policies. Although the policemen who came to my door had guns I did not. I never said, I never wrote, I never hinted, I never inferred, I never suggested, and, in a “literal” sense, never wanted or wished that someone should give you a 3rd eye. Left Wing Hate Radio Host Mike Molloy wanted Seal Team 6 to “double tap” George W. Bush. The “literal” meaning of “double tap” is to shoot someone in the head twice. The Mossad method is twice behind the ear but that’s a story for a different time and place.
The thought of having to find a replacement piñata for you would be more than I could bear. It would interfere with main pursuits: manatee trapping, swash buckling, and hackle raising.
As head of the Democratic Party you have the “absolute moral imperative” and obligation to disown violence done in your name.
Assaults have been committed. Murder, assassination in the “literal” sense, has been threatened on national TV.
I say that these people are your agents because, as the public face of the Democratic Party, your silence speaks thunderously. In fact, the Law, another subject with which you are not familiar, says “Silence gives consent”. I was going to give you the adage in Latin but you might think me an elitist.
Until you condemn both violence and the threat of violence [Shooting Sarah Palin would be violence in, I daresay, the “literal” sense, wouldn’t it?] your votaries will grow bolder and more violent.
Let there be peace in our land and let it begin with you.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St NE
Washington, DC 20003
RE: Words, like Ideas, have consequences
My dear Debbie,
Your speech in January about “bile and vitriol tearing us apart” seems to be gaining ground as a blueprint for modern American Liberal action.
“You’re fucking dead” was what one Democratic Wisconsin legislator said to a Republican legislator.
That morphed into a Democratic legislator in Illinois walking across the floor while the Assembly was in session and calling a Republican member a “motherfucker” before punching him.
It was but one small step for comedian Chris Titus to say “I am going to literally – if she gets elected president, I’m going to hang out on the grassy knoll all the time, just loaded and ready…”
Let the record show that “she” is Sarah Palin. The “grassy knoll’ is where the second shooter was supposed to have fired from on 11/22/63. “Loaded and ready” means that the sharp end of the cartridge has gone up the barrel first, the safety is off, and Mr. Titus wants to “literally” do to Sarah Palin what Seal Team 6 did to an early proponent of new Israeli borders. That the recently deceased head WOG terrorist wanted those borders to start 50 miles into the Mediterranean is not relevant in a “literal” sense. There may be an existential relevance but I don’t want to put too much on your plate. As your website says your Masters degree is in political campaigning, not in Philosophy. For that matter, you seem to have avoided all History classes also.
You sent the cops after me because I disagreed with some – scratch that - all of your policies. Although the policemen who came to my door had guns I did not. I never said, I never wrote, I never hinted, I never inferred, I never suggested, and, in a “literal” sense, never wanted or wished that someone should give you a 3rd eye. Left Wing Hate Radio Host Mike Molloy wanted Seal Team 6 to “double tap” George W. Bush. The “literal” meaning of “double tap” is to shoot someone in the head twice. The Mossad method is twice behind the ear but that’s a story for a different time and place.
The thought of having to find a replacement piñata for you would be more than I could bear. It would interfere with main pursuits: manatee trapping, swash buckling, and hackle raising.
As head of the Democratic Party you have the “absolute moral imperative” and obligation to disown violence done in your name.
Assaults have been committed. Murder, assassination in the “literal” sense, has been threatened on national TV.
I say that these people are your agents because, as the public face of the Democratic Party, your silence speaks thunderously. In fact, the Law, another subject with which you are not familiar, says “Silence gives consent”. I was going to give you the adage in Latin but you might think me an elitist.
Until you condemn both violence and the threat of violence [Shooting Sarah Palin would be violence in, I daresay, the “literal” sense, wouldn’t it?] your votaries will grow bolder and more violent.
Let there be peace in our land and let it begin with you.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
June 6, 2011
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10110 Pembroke Pines Blvd.
Pembroke Pines, FL
RE: Maybe you didn’t know it but things get very, very dark before they go completely black. Worse, maybe you did.
My dear Debbie,
Who but the Republicans have caused all the evil in the world?
The American people have come to expect you to blame Republicans for everything. The scourge of collapsing soufflés, your Cousin Ed Shultz [of Laura Ingraham is a slut fame] farting at the bris, the coming repeal of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the despicable action of trying to make illegal immigration “illegal”, inter alia, is but a partial list of their perfidy.
There is a rumor that Nixon’s ghost is trying to disinter the Rosenbergs so they can be electrocuted again. That may not be a bad idea. You can never be too sure.
I tell you these things because your spirited defense of President Obama’s call for Israel to return to pre1967 borders by blaming – Guess who? – the Republicans may have caused you to lose sight of some of the more rabid of the boobies in your caucus.
One of the ways to make something indefensible seem reasonable is to propose something more indefensible. Thus, when 7 members of Congress, each of whom is a card carrying, fire breathing member of the Democratic Party, all of whom are shining exemplars of modern American Liberalism, announce that they want Israel to go back to pre1947 borders it makes Obama seem like a life member of B’nai B’rith. It almost makes him seem, and I hate to use the word, conservative.
Democratic Congressman John Conyers
Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards
Democratic Congressman Raul Grijlava
Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee
Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern
Democratic Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey
Democratic Congressman Denis Kucinich
What do they have in common?
Other than replacing “Happy Days Are Here Again” with an oompah band
filled with guys in lederhosen playing the Horst Wessel song, nothing.
Are the inmates running the asylum?
What in the name of G-d is going on in your Party?
The city that Nancy Pelosi represents wants to ban circumcision. Will unemployed mohels be eligible for retraining under the Chinese funded ObamaCare program as charter members of the dreaded Death Panels?
Mark Twain was right. Wagner’s music isn’t as bad as it sounds.
I guess you want Israel to get used to it.
The Flight of the Valkyries played by Palestinian Youth Orchestra by the Wailing Wall will probably not challenge Mozart in the Piazza San Marco in Venice right away. Give it a few years and everybody will forget Klezmer music.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10110 Pembroke Pines Blvd.
Pembroke Pines, FL
RE: Maybe you didn’t know it but things get very, very dark before they go completely black. Worse, maybe you did.
My dear Debbie,
Who but the Republicans have caused all the evil in the world?
The American people have come to expect you to blame Republicans for everything. The scourge of collapsing soufflés, your Cousin Ed Shultz [of Laura Ingraham is a slut fame] farting at the bris, the coming repeal of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the despicable action of trying to make illegal immigration “illegal”, inter alia, is but a partial list of their perfidy.
There is a rumor that Nixon’s ghost is trying to disinter the Rosenbergs so they can be electrocuted again. That may not be a bad idea. You can never be too sure.
I tell you these things because your spirited defense of President Obama’s call for Israel to return to pre1967 borders by blaming – Guess who? – the Republicans may have caused you to lose sight of some of the more rabid of the boobies in your caucus.
One of the ways to make something indefensible seem reasonable is to propose something more indefensible. Thus, when 7 members of Congress, each of whom is a card carrying, fire breathing member of the Democratic Party, all of whom are shining exemplars of modern American Liberalism, announce that they want Israel to go back to pre1947 borders it makes Obama seem like a life member of B’nai B’rith. It almost makes him seem, and I hate to use the word, conservative.
Democratic Congressman John Conyers
Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards
Democratic Congressman Raul Grijlava
Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee
Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern
Democratic Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey
Democratic Congressman Denis Kucinich
What do they have in common?
Other than replacing “Happy Days Are Here Again” with an oompah band
filled with guys in lederhosen playing the Horst Wessel song, nothing.
Are the inmates running the asylum?
What in the name of G-d is going on in your Party?
The city that Nancy Pelosi represents wants to ban circumcision. Will unemployed mohels be eligible for retraining under the Chinese funded ObamaCare program as charter members of the dreaded Death Panels?
Mark Twain was right. Wagner’s music isn’t as bad as it sounds.
I guess you want Israel to get used to it.
The Flight of the Valkyries played by Palestinian Youth Orchestra by the Wailing Wall will probably not challenge Mozart in the Piazza San Marco in Venice right away. Give it a few years and everybody will forget Klezmer music.
Kevin Smith
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