Sunday, July 31, 2011

Michael Mayo The Sun-Sentinel

July 31, 2011

Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: Debbie and the Colonel – Some comments about your column about a saint and a knave in today’s Sun-Sentinel

Mr. Mayo,

There is one constant about modern American Liberals.
They never let you down.
I was reading your column about the brouhaha between perky, snippy Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and boorish, insensitive Congressman Alan West. When I got to the part about Little Debbie being “courageous” because she’s had cancer and had a friend shot I stopped to marvel at what passes for reasoned discourse these days.
Another constant of modern American Liberals is that the absence of knowledge of the “permanent things” allows, indeed encourages, the morphing of their innate narcissism into a warm, fuzzy solipsism. Think “We are the World…”
You say her speech is “benign”. Not so, not so. She is, to use one of her favorite words, “literally” incapable of being benign. She gives rabid shrews a bad name. Kipling would have recognized her as Nagaina, the queen of all vipers.
She has said the Republicans “literally” want to bring flogging, the strapado, and the vigorous dunking of shrill female ideologues. Giving the devil her due but she may be on to something.
One of Cossack wanabee Debbie’s favorite words is literally “literally”. It would suggest that her academic background in English Grammar and Composition was of the non-traditional type. Perhaps she was a correspondence student at the prestigious Rangoon School of Proctology and Origami. Wherever she studied she makes both Strunck & White cringe.
If Debbie’s ailments and travails “literally” make her courageous what honors can I expect?
I have had cancer 3 times. The last operation left a scar so memorable that my granddaughter used me and it in a show and tell session at Lovejoy Elementary School in Allen, Texas. Let me add atrial fibrilation lead to congestive heart failure for which I was treated less than a month ago. Two titanium hips plus a bone on bone knee prepared me for two torn rotator cuffs – one on each side, thankfully. Tomorrow, early in the AM, a urologist gets a shot at me.
I have a hangnail and dandruff compared to my wife.

As an aside, I can’t wait for full blown ObamaCare. [Do you remember when Debbie wanted that word struck from debate in the House? I forget. Was it “bile” or its evil twin “vitriol”?] Why do you think we have had an explosion in the number of TSA agents? Can you think of better training for Death Panel work? When the Post Office collapses the ex-employees will run it. Somebody will have to deliver the one way tickets for the nighttime cruises on the River Styx. A “shovel ready” job will be done by DMV agents. It’s tough to convince Granny and Gramps to get into senior power lifting so they can compete in the python wrestling contests. As masters of customer service who is better qualified? The real estate recovery will be led by the explosion of time share abattoirs and ossuaries in the “undiscovered country”
My last gun fight was in 1993. The first officer was dead before he hit the ground. The officer whose life I saved had a hole the size of a twenty five cent piece just off his sternum.
Even though I know that Jimmy Carter, Alpha Gump, and Lord Barack the Beneficent have debased and greatly cheapened the Nobel Prize I would gladly accept the soon to be created prize for Courage. Maybe my wife and I could be the Brad and Angelina of the newly Valiant and Courageous.
I saved the best for the last.
Little Debbie says she is shocked and disappointed at Congressman West’s reaction to her comments on the floor of the House. She says it is called “debate”. Further, she says “it’s our job”.
Shades of Cato! Burke/Fox and Webster/Hayne redux?
I’ve writing to you since the last century.
Do you recall any threats?
I ask you that because maybe you can get her to explain why she sent 2 Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents, men with badges and gun, to my house on September 18, 2001. Agent Thomas, the “good cop”, said he enjoyed my writings and shared them with other officers. Agent Mineva, the “bad cop”, strongly suggested not only that I stop writing to Czarina Debbie but that I stop writing to all public officials.
Slippery Slope? Don’t be silly
Chilling effect? Fuhgedaboutit.
Hell hath no fury like a modern American wench who objects being objected to.
I consider it my “job”.
She considered it a “threat”.
I would say “existential” threat but for a woman who claims to have 2 degrees in Political Science to have gotten this far in life with no knowledge – none, zip, nada – of Natural Law, Common Law, or Constitutional Law “existential” would have put entirely too much on her plate.
It didn’t take much for the world to find out where Congressman West lived. Her friends, doubtless purple shirted SEIU thugs, posted his address, phone number, Social Security number, blood type, rifle number, shoe size, boxer or briefs, one lump or two, inter alia, on the Internet. [Let me take this opportunity to thank Alpha Gump, that old sexed crazed poodle, for inventing it] Say this for him. Unlike her pal Congressman Toad Wexler he lives in Florida.
You end by saying that if the good Colonel were to apologize to Florida’s favorite Hecate the debt ceiling will be raised, Wong, our increasingly nasty Mandarin moneylender, will forgive us our debts, and “the voice of the turtle will be heard in the land”.
Eliot, yet another Nobel Prize winner, said “In our end is our beginning”.
I began today’s tutorial by saying that ”modern American Liberals never let you down”.
Thank you for the perfect ending.


Kevin Smith

Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel

July 24, 2011

Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: Some comments on the miraculous appearance of altruistic “nonprofits” and their quest for truth, justice, and the Goldstein way as reported by you in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.

My dear Professor,
Although a strong case, a very strong case, can be for you being a horse’s ass of Homeric, Brobdanaglian proportions, it is one that I do not normally subscribe to. It’s just that there is so, so much that you don’t know.
Your opening sentence – “Nonprofits are the heart and soul of America” – is worthy of inclusion in the soon to be built “Jeezus Haitch Keerist but that’s really, really dumb” wing at the Guinness Hall of Fame. I am told that while there will be no charge to get in there will be a huge charge to get out. It takes an educated man, you, to believe and spread such incoherent, anti-rational ca-ca as the inclusion of Rainbow Stew in the basic daily food groups.
Lest you think me a heartless curmudgeon who would rival the unredeemed Scrooge I funded and ran a merit based scholarship fund beginning in 1979. As further proof that acorns never far from the tree, Caroline Hanson, my 10 year old granddaughter and the middle one of my 3 Texas ladies, recently raised almost $3,000 for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
What is absent from your opening paragraph is any mention of how “nonprofits became the heart and soul of America”.
It is an inconvenient truth that without “profits” there would be no “nonprofits”.
The first library I wandered around in was in Bayonne, NJ. It was built by the non-profit Carnegie Foundation. By the time I moved to Orange, NJ Carnegie had already been there.
This magazine insert in today’s Sun-Sentinel has Bill and Melinda Gates on its cover. Their foundation gives away 3 billion dollars – that’s $3,000,000,000.00 – a year. Every year.
Carnegie and Gates have many things in common. First and foremost is that they made mind boggling, Olympian amounts of money. They made so much money that modern American Liberals would have a reverse quiver running down their legs. One of the revealed truths of modern American Liberalism is that for someone to win someone has to lose. It is belief premised on the non-fact that life is a zero sum game.
It isn’t.
Candidate Obama said that he “wanted to spread the wealth around”. It is a mindset that fails to realize, is incapable of realizing, that wealth must be “created” before it can be ”spread around”.
“Creation” of wealth, like the “creation” of a symphony or a family or a novel can be a messy business. Maybe that’s why modern American Liberals shy away from it like Dracula from Holy Water. “Fairness”, whatever the Hell that means, trumps the turmoil of the marketplace. Wouldn’t “fairness” dictate that every sporting event ends in a tie?
I don’t know who the next Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates will be. I do know that he is out there tinkering with an idea, failing with it, trying another one until man, moment, and magic meet.
I believe it is a testament to American exceptionalism that there is another Sam Walton out there. When he succeeds in squaring his circle he will be as rich as Croesus. If History is a guide he will consume conspicuously while simultaneously giving it away. Both tasks will “create” more jobs than all the “shovel ready not quite shovel ready projects” could ever dream of. Think of all the lawyers and claims adjustors who have found gainful employment because of the Kennedy family. That’s why, as the legendary Big Mike from Bayonne says, “You never see anybody swimming to Cuba”.
The only thing better than giving away other peoples’ money is giving away your own. Ask the Koch Brothers. Ask George Soros.

Kevin Smith


PS – Would you think ill of me if I were to suggest that the United States Post Office is a nonprofit?

Michael Putney The Miami Herald

July 13, 2011

Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: No questions for Rick Scott? Some answers for Mikey Putney

Mr. Putney,
Ouch!
The governor stood you up?
I volunteer to fill in for him. I have more hair than he does plus I would make a better guest.
I spent time as a missionary in rural Mexico. I was hit in the head by a policeman during a Civil Rights march. Neither the Marines nor the Army wanted me. I am an alumnus of Outward Bound. I know why Oedipus went to Colonnus. I “created” infinitely more jobs in the 1980s than all of the companies on the DJIA. I am a world class hackle raiser plus a much envied buckler of swashes. I am an alumnus of Jeopardy. I saved a policeman’s life. I testified at the murder trial of the man who shot the one I couldn’t save. Tom Fiedler has tolerated me since 1997. I have actually read Keynes. I never confuse Chiaroscuro and Caravaggio. I once was paid $5,000 for lunch. I have been 1000 feet underground mining for coal. I owned North American rights to 47 English movies. The only significant sale we made was to WCIX-TV, a Spanish language station in Miami. I can’t understand why my manatee sausage program for the homeless never caught on. I spent 7 years on trial in Federal Tax Court. I “focus on the absurd lest reality drive me mad”.
Those are some of the reasons why I look at your column today like a big bad wolf looks at Bo Peep’s sheep.
#1 – High Speed Rail –Please show me somewhere where this has worked. Cost overruns and astronomical operating expenses are never mentioned. I mention them because in the real world, “the solid world where stones are hard and water is wet”, these things matter. Government conducts its business in a place where the rules governing gravity are suspended. Sometimes “shovel ready” isn’t quite as “shovel ready” as people who dine daily on “rainbow stew” would have us believe. I confess that I am not the first person to say that this month.
You say “a lot of us want it [it being tax dollars sent to DC where they are recycled back to us minus the ATM fee] back for useful, productive projects”. Would you care to mention a few?
Johnny couldn’t read before the Department of Education was begun. How is that working out? How much electricity has the Department of Energy produced since it’s been here? Crop prices are at all-time highs. Is that because of or in spite of the Department of Agriculture? Deep six those dinosaurs.
Pass the word. I just solved the Federal debt ceiling crisis. Speaking of which, I tell you that as a former CFO of a public company it should be a flogging offense for a CEO to announce that if he can’t roll over some paper on a Tuesday he can’t meet current obligations on a Wednesday. If anything his cash flow position is improved because he’s not making any note payments.
#2 – I ran 2 nursing homes in the 1980s. Inter alia, I could get a Federally guaranteed mortgage on a golf course if the property was contiguous to mine. Nursing home honchos never drive small cars. The more expensive the car the bigger the Federal reimbursement, it becoming part of your cost basis. This was 25 years ago. Why do I know it hasn’t changed?
#3 – Private sector vs. Public sector – When it “absolutely, positively has to get there” where do you go? FedEx or UPS, right?
The Post Office is analogous to public education. Let us stipulate that many bright, hardworking people work in both places. A system that can neither reward excellence nor punish failure is destined, in fact it is preordained, for failure.
#4 – As a big time media mogul, even if it is the “lamestream” media, maybe you can tell me what happened to the War on Poverty. Thucydides tells us that the Athenians and the Spartans settled their differences in less time than we have been fighting this troll. We have had 47 years to pick the “useful, productive programs”. Can you name two? Have you heard anything about an “exit strategy”? Maybe it’s time for a “surge”. How will we know when we win? Will we all be farting through silk? Here’s a thought. Let’s raise taxes. That’s always “created” jobs, hasn’t it?
In my life time, until the arrival of the great Reagan, the United States government did 2 things superbly well: A – Fighting World war 2 and - B – Being the General Contractor on the moon shot.
#5 – Where would you have Governor Scott sign his bills? Why not have Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz host a reception? I mention her because I get to tell of the time when she sent policemen, men with guns and badges, agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, to my house because of something I wrote. Don’t you just love it when modern American Liberals proclaim their belief in free speech? I’ll risk the “chilling effect” of being out on that “slippery slope” but that Hecate is, at heart, a friggin’ Nazi.
#6 – Spending cuts, particularly painful ones – You don’t say who should get the last bucks in the state budget. Should Farm Share, a presumably not-for-profit entity that feeds poor people, or the Dan Marino Foundation, a presumably not-for-profit entity that tends afflicted children, get the money? Who gets to pick? You? Me? The guy behind the tree? Who gets to pick who gets to pick?
Last summer candidate Scott went all over the state, on his own dime, telling people what he would do if they elected him. He was elected. As Governor he is doing what he promised he would do. The Constitution guarantees Florida a republican form of government. The people have spoken just like they spoke in 2008. They will have a chance to correct any mistakes that they have made. These self-correcting mechanisms are called elections
I can’t wait for ObmaCare to be run by DMV and TSA rejects
Elections as well as ideas have consequences.
Single malt whiskys enhance conversation. What is your policy in re on air potables?



Kevin Smith


PS – I just saw a news story where HHS, the people in charge of the Death Panels, is sending survey letters to predominantly Black and Latino zip codes requesting some minority feedback on Medicare tontines. Each of the letters contains 2 one dollar bills. I hope nobody tells Uncle Wong, our increasingly unfriendly Chinese lender. That’s why I can’t write fiction.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

July 18, 2011

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Democratic National Committee
430 Capitol Street, NE
Washington, DC 20003

RE: Reporting for duty, frau oberst!

Dearest Debbie,
Who says you can’t learn from a card carrying modern American Liberal? Not I, at least not anymore.
In February, 2009 Congressman Ron Klein spoke to a group of blue collar factory workers in Pompano Beach. These are the kind of people who drive 11 year old cars, send their kids to public schools, know all the words to the Pledge of Allegiance, and know how to use coupons. Limousine Liberals, people like you, like to adopt them for political purposes.
Congressman Klein, your former colleague, told these workers to be “the eyes and ears of the Obama Stimulus Program”. Honest.
Using that as precedent I hereby volunteer to be your “eyes and ears” in your never ending search for the “bile and vitriol that is tearing us apart”.
Here is my first report.
Several days ago, Bill Maher, a man on the short list to be the keynote speaker at next year’s Democratic Convention, had a man named Marc Moron on his show. He said that he would “like to fuck Michelle Bachman angrily”. While modern American Liberals believe profiling is wrong an exception may be made here.
At the very least Mr. Moron should be asked to explain – How about in front of a Federal Grand Jury? – the “bilious vitriol” that threatens a sitting member of Congress. Unlike Jared Loughner, the man who shot your other colleague, Congresswoman Giffords, the man who until it was shown that he had snakes for brains, was inspired, as you said, by Rush Limbaugh, the Koch Brothers, the Tea Party, and the survivors of the original “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” to shoot a sitting member of Congress. Mr. Moron seems to be in full control of his faculties.

I don’t know if rape falls under the bile category or if it is more properly described by vitriol, its evil twin. I do know that a sitting member of Congress has been publically threatened with it. Would not common sense and a respect for the collegiality that is supposed to be double-helixed into the warp and the woof of Congress command you to “drop a dime” on this Trousered Ape? After all, you sent the cops, men with badges and guns, after me for suggesting that your politics and policies were a bit stupid.
Men with badges and guns, men with the full force and majesty of the law behind them, came to my house to inquire about something I wrote about you. “Slippery slope” and “chilling effect” notwithstanding, I do believe that I would have been hauled out of my home in cuffs if either of the policemen, Agent Mineva in particular, thought I was hatching a plot to rape you. [I absolutely waive my 5th Amendment rights and declare that at no time – before, during, and since – was rape ever on my mind. What’s the opposite of Viagra?]
On the same show gay rights activist Dan Savage said “I sometimes think about fucking the shit out of Rick Santorum”. Far be it for me to say that homosexual rape is different from heterosexual rape but listening to these two modern American Liberal favorites I don’t think I would want or would want any member of my family to be a catcher on any javelin team featuring Mr. Moron or Mr. Savage. I imagine that “don’t ask, don’t tell” may have reached its natural limits here but that’s a tale – tail? – for a different time. Do you suppose the irenic Savage cut his teeth, so to speak, at the Barney Frank Happy Bottom French Knocking Shoppe? Just kidding…maybe.
Anyway, you can count on me to be your “eyes and ears”. I add that is passing strange that modern American Liberals, a loosely defined cabal of which you are the chief doyenne, want citizens to snitch on fellow citizens. I don’t think Lillian Hellman, and if there is a better definition of modern American Liberal than she I don’t want to see it, would approve. Thank God that she is still dead!
I think Lord Barack the Beneficent, your main airborne squeeze, should walk back his “don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”. On the other hand maybe he can use it the next time he talks to House Republicans. Michelle Bachman comes to mind.


Kevin Smith

Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun-Sentinel

July 30, 2011

Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: A teachable moment? – Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel about the beauty of the income tax and the heretofore hidden modern American Liberal tendencies of A. Lincoln and R. Reagan.

Mr. Lyons,
First, I sentence you to a major timeout in the ethnic no-no sensitivity woodshed.
120 years ago my father’s father left Ballyglass, Ireland to come to this country. His 3 bothers chose 3 other countries, one of which was Wales. That makes me an honorary Welshman. [I get chills when I hear a Welsh Choir sing “Men of Harlech”] Thus, when I read your sentence “The United States is close to welshing on its debts…” I was shocked. I was hurt and diminished. Not since August, 2008 has the Sun-Sentinel published such an insensitive term. You remember when pre-Tea Party thugs took over the front page of your paper and, acting on direct orders from the Koch Brothers and Rush Limbaugh, published the headline Michele Obama – Her Time To Shine? I do. I understand that reproductions of that headline are the walls of every NRA Confederate flag waving club in South Florida.
If you can use the word “welsh” with impunity would it not put you on the slippery slope to “sneaky Japs” of “drunken Irish”? How about “cowardly French” or “Eye-Tie Gangsters”? Would “greasy Mexicans” or “smelly Pakis” be allowed? Would “cheap Jew” or its buzz word cousin, “hook nosed diamond merchant” be acceptable? Would “African-Americans not overwhelmed by ambition” be inside the Pale?
But I digress.
You say that Lincoln imposed an income tax on America 150 years ago. You imply that we have had one since. Not so, not so. On February 3, 1913 the 16th Amendment, the one permitting an income tax, was ratified. It ended a 58 year income tax holiday.
Since you introduced Lincoln to the conversation it is only fair to mention a few other things he did.
#1 – His goal was to preserve the Union. He was perfectly willing, at the beginning of his first term, to allow slavery to continue if it kept the Union together.
#2 – He suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
#3 – He arrested a Congressman for sedition and exiled him to Canada.
#4 – The Emancipation Proclamation was a masterstroke. He freed the slaves where he couldn’t. He kept then in bondage where he could have freed them. He set the nation on a noble cause while keeping an anchor to windward. He followed one of Napoleon’s maxims to a tee. “If you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna”
#5 – I may be having a senior moment here. I can’t remember whether it was June or July, 1864 that the Union Army had 50,000 casualties. Maybe it was both. And we thought the phrase “pay any price and bear any burden” was original when we heard it one hundred years later.
#6 - Your snarky suggestion that Republicans are stuck in a time warp fails to disclose the inconvenient fact that during the Civil War the Democratic Party and its official mouthpiece, the New York Times, favored a negotiated settlement with the South. No matter how you spin that it meant that both of them were OK with slavery. “Baboon” was one of the more interesting terms used by the Democrats in the 1864 election to call Lincoln. Do you think Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz would place that term in her eclectically chosen “bile and vitriol” list?
#7 – He approved Grant’s decision to turn Sherman loose in the late fall of 1864. That means he allowed the implementation of America’s first “surge”. It was so successful that Pershing, Patton, and Petraeus copied it. Did you support the 2007 “surge”?
About the debt ceiling…
The last time Bush 43 proposed a raise in the debt ceiling every Democratic Senator – each and every one of them with no exceptions – voted against it. I am not sure what the difference 5 years makes but you either you cover your marker or you don’t. Is it possible to “welsh” retroactively?
The President has said that if the debt ceiling is not raised by Tuesday he won’t be able to pay any bills by Wednesday. I am shocked, shocked that 2 and ½ years into his administration no one has yet mastered the budgeting process. Do you think we could get some money back from those not quite shovel ready “shovel ready projects”? In 2009 his administration was filled either with grifters, crooks, and masters of the famous five finger discount, or it was filled with incompetents and incompetency not seen since the glory days of Jimmy Carter. Do you remember when you couldn’t find two West Wingers in a row who could find their ass using both hands? I do. The worst possible nightmare would have been if both possibilities are true. The evidence would support that interpretation.
In hindsight, 2009 will prove to be the highlight of his administration. All things considered, he has done exactly what a man who had done nothing in his adult life would do. Maybe he spent too much time with his non-Black grandmother whom he described as “an average White woman”. Maybe the combination of Saul Alinsky and Reverend Wright proved to be a Sophist too far. Maybe he thought being a community organizer was something useful, something of which to be proud. It is indeed passing strange that the community he was organizing against sent him to the Illinois legislature and then the United States Senate. I guess we’re lucky the job in the Vatican was filled.
Weren’t we told that the Social Security system was chockablock filled with assets? Why are we dependent on Wong, an increasingly hostile Mandarin Shylock, to pay current operating expenses? Where did almost 80 years of American workingmen’s dollars go? This makes Bernie Madoff look like a penny chiseler.
The President, and may I say that he is the best President we have, wants to raise the debt ceiling so it does not interfere with the November, 2012 election. You cite the great Reagan and how he is close to political canonization. As a Roman Catholic I would be opposed to that. Mt. Rushmore is a suitable alternative. You say he raised the debt ceiling 18 times. That means he had to go to Congress every 6 months. Using that formula we would revisit the question in January, 2012 and June, 2012.
Put the question to the electorate. Put it right into the election cycle. I know that this is anathema to modern American Liberals but what’s wrong with that?
If nothing else the debt debate proves that Shakespeare was right. “…borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry”.
Did you hear the one about the old Black man and the old Jew?
The police see an old Black man and an old Jew wrestling in the street….



Kevin Smith

PS – I cannot lay my finger upon the word summon anywhere in the Constitution Do you think James Madison, wherever he might be, is smiling?

Michael Putney The Miami Herald

July 28, 2011

Michael Putney
The Miami Herald

RE: Burke/Fox? Webster/Hayne? McCarthy/Symington? – And now some comments on Debbie the Put Upon and the good Colonel

Mr. Putney,

“…and for any speech or debate in either House,
they shall not be questioned in any other place.”
The Constitution [of the United States
Article 1, Section 6, Sub Section 1

The obvious exception is that the same Constitution recognizes the right of anybody, even journalists, to say whatever they want about members of Congress. What normally would rate a 911 call and a police investigation about a violent felony is given a pass under the guise of political speech. Thus, when a guest on Bill Maher’s TV show says that he would “like to f**k Michelle Bachman angrily”, there is little recourse save for a sense of outrage that the “Trousered Apes” are in the ascendancy.
Would it be unfair of me to suggest that if someone had said the same thing about Debbie Debbie the dudgeon of modern American Liberals would have been unmatched? I can say with absolute metaphysical certitude – a phrase to which I shall return – that Hell hath no fury like that of a modern American Liberal ink stained wretch provided the victim fits the paradigmatic template. Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin need not apply.
January last Little Debbie told us that “bile and vitriol were tearing us apart”. You may recall that she blamed the Koch Brothers, the tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, the NRA, the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy, all the usual suspects, for the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords. The gun man, a wing nut with snakes for brains, was like putty in their hands. Maybe you, a big time media mogul, could me a copy of her speech defending her colleague. I seem to have lost mine. My last 2 letters to her office have been returned marked as “not known – unable to forward”. I am sure she, as a big time public defender of rights, will be very mad when she finds out that I have been ostracized.
Are we to assume that a threat of rape is to be taken seriously only if the potential victim believes that the road to prosperity begins with a tax increase? If the potential victim does not swear allegiance to glory of 4th and 5th trimester abortions she’s on her own. She probably deserved it anyway, right?
Would I risk the wrath of the true believers, harridans all, if I were to suggest that Darling Debbie’s diatribe about the good Colonel “cracking under pressure” is, being charitable, ass backwards?
He is a man who knows you can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it.
He is a man who has felt time compress and expand in a heartbeat.
He is a man who “has seen the elephant”.
The thought that a Medusa wanabee could cause him to “crack under pressure” is believable only if you believe that “shovel ready” meant “shovel ready”.
Debbie’s CV lists two degrees in Political Science. That would presuppose knowledge of the agora, the forum, Runnymede, the Glorious Revolution, Philadelphia in 1787, the tennis court in Paris, inter alia. Of these things her public statements suggest that she has none. It would be akin to her saying that she loves the cello but has never heard of Bach. Czarina Debbie, proclaimed for the splendor of her wardrobe, is dressed in tatters.
Among the Muses Clio is my favorite. History suggests that Colonel West should expect a visit from men with badges and guns.
On September 18, 2001 Debbie sent two men, “men with badges and guns”, to my house because of something I wrote.. Agent Thomas [good cop] and Agent Mineva [bad cop] wore badges and carried guns issued by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The scary “chilling effect” and the dreaded “slippery slope” meant nothing to Agent Mineva when he suggested that I stop writing to or about her. In fact, he “suggested” that I stop writing to all public officials. And this is from a vixen who supports manatee suffrage and would endorse Dr. Mengele because of his progressive views on abortion should he present himself to the voters of Broward County!
I mentioned metaphysics because this virago mentioned Rhetoric Since she knows neither I suggest yet again that she may not be as degreed as she says she is. When she says Rhetoric she means Sophistry.
She’s some broad. A cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Leona Helmsley. Alas, she lacks the charm of either.


Kevin Smith

Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald

July 20, 2011

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

RE: OOOPS! Some comments on your “Drat the rotter” analysis in today’s Miami Herald of the damage done by K. Rupert Murdoch to your sacred profession.

Mr. Pitts,
Since I am not a journalist I rather think I am not bound by the code – ill defined, flexible, and gossamer like – that ties, binds, and defines the ink stained wretches who try to make us, if not better people, certainly more informed. I suppose if I were I would be required to disclose that in a different world in the last century K. Rupert Murdoch was a partner of mine. He owned 2.857% of Bowling Green Associates, a limited partnership of which I was General Partner. Therefore I won’t.
Why limit your dudgeon to those “fabricators and plagiarizers”, AKA journalists, who have besmirched your profession in recent years? Any listing of terrible rotten liars who have doubled as American journalists must include Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent of the New York Times.
I suppose the statute has run on the New York Times supporting slavery by calling for a negotiated settlement with the South and opposing Lincoln’s reelection. Also, calling him a “baboon” falls well within the accepted limits of political speech.
What Duranty did falls into a quite different category.
Duranty was a bought and paid for agent of the Soviet Union.
His laudatory reportage was used by the Roosevelt administration to buttress their drive to recognize the USSR. He ignored the murder by starvation of between 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 Kulaks by Stalin. He reported rather the opposite. It was almost as if teenage obesity had become a problem in Odessa. Hitler noticed that the West did nothing. He became a better record keeper.
The journalists you mention – Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Chris Cecil – committed egregious acts that fell into the category “malum prohibitum”. Duranty, much beloved by the early 1930s version of modern American Liberals, is the poster boy, the paradigmatic template, of “malum per se”.
Your examples either stole from the petty cash box or cribbed some answers. Duranty’s “fabrications” led to the bloodiest 15 years in all of History.
His monstrous crime is exponentially expanded by the refusal, the 8 decade long refusal, of the New York Times either to abjure him or his award.
You say that you are “unbearably credulous”.
I don’t know whether to say “You’re young. You’ll get over it” or “Aren’t you too old to be so surprised?”
In your “How could this have happened” homily you seem to have bent some of the rules yourself.
You write “News Corp has seen its value crumble”. Au contraire. The stock price is above what it was when the scandal came public. If you want to see an example of “crumbling value” I suggest you look at the stock price record of McClatchy. It has lost 90% of its value. It still may be overpriced. All it would have taken was a quick trip to a stock quote engine. Punch in the symbols NWSA and MNI. Read them. Isn’t that what reporters are supposed to do?
The other rule is the one that infuses journalists with an overabundance of a chronic illness known as “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome”. That, with narcissism morphing into solipsism, allows you to proclaim that the crimes have been committed against you.
They haven’t.
You speak of your profession as a “noble craft”. If it is it is because of the people in it, not because of what they do.
“Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part. There, all honor lies.”



Kevin Smith

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

July 14, 2011

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Democratic National Committee
430 Capitol Street, NE
Washington, DC 20003
RE: Tu quoque
Dearest Daring Darling Debbie,
If it’s OK for Jon Stewart or whatever his name is, was, or will be to say that Michelle Bachman’s husband is homosexual is it OK for me to ask if you and Lord Barack are doing the horizontal Mandingo Mambo?
Every time I see you skipping down the stairs of Air Force One with a big “Yes, I will, Yes” gleam in your eye being followed by the Big Boy pole vaulting down same stairs after you I and a lot more Americans think maybe you weren’t up in the wild blue yonder talking about ObamaCare Death Panels or Debt Ceiling deadlines.
When he says he wants to ”get” you in a foxhole do you think he wants a “short arm” inspection?
James Carville, another really great modern American Liberal sophist, once said of Paula Jones, “If you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park no telling what you’ll catch”.
I guess that all the stimuli don’t have to be “shovel ready”.
Since nothing I have said falls under the “bile” or “vitriol” that you warned us about in January I presume I am safe from your hob-nailed Federal storm troopers. As we approach the 10th anniversary of you dispatching the Florida Gezstapo after me for something I wrote – 10 years? Isn’t it amazing how time flies when you’re enjoying yourself? – who knows what surprises are in store?
May I suggest that if the debt ceiling deadline is missed that to lessen the disproportionate burden on women and minorities all members of Congress give up their paychecks?
Who needs a salary when your F-16 escort fires off some rockets to bring the Mile High Club to the new business section of the meeting?




Kevin Smith


PS – I hear that the Marine Band is working up some new arrangements of some golden oldies. “Come on Baby, Light my Fire” and “All We Are Saying is Give Piece a Chance” will be launched, so to speak, shortly.