Gary Stein The Sun Sentinel

December 23, 2012
Gary Stein
The Sun Sentinel

RE: In for a pence, in for a pound

Big Stein,

“Philippines Bans Political Abductions”

I read the above headline in the Dallas Morning News today. And yes, while it is not Wynona, MN Dallas is waging a valiant fight against the dreaded Global Warming. 39 degrees Fahrenheit at dawn suggests that this monster can be beaten back if enough men of good will are just willing to work at it, right?

I’ll get back to the above mentioned, decidedly non-Western, headline later.

I confess to owning a pick-up truck. It was red with a five speed transmission. It had some bumper stickers but the ones I used in the ‘70s, ones like “Nuke the Whales”, “God Bless John Wayne”, and “Support the Right to Arm Bears” are no longer available.
“Al Gore is Still Dumb but Joey Biden is a World Class Horse’s Ass” got a lot of knowing grins and honks at red lights. Alas, the truck is gone.

It never had any Confederate flags on it.

The reason was simple.

I was 9 years old when, on route to Yellowstone Park from Bayonne, NJ, my father stopped at Gettysburg. We went to the Wheatfield. My father’s father had 2 uncles, both members of the Irish Brigade, who fought there. One of them, Uncle Luke, is still there, “wrapped in his favorite coat of Blue”. I like to think he died quick and clean and that someone said good words as they lowered his body down. The pipes always played “The Garryowen” before the battle. I am not sure what was played when the butcher’s bill was settled.

As an avid reader of Civil War History I would have enhanced Sherman’s [and may I add that his “surge” certainly worked so well that Bush used it, remember?] performance by having him flatten Savannah and then absolutely level Charleston. I mean nothing left save for cooling embers and mournful wails. Just like the Romans did to Carthage. It worked for Curtis Lemay, didn’t it?

Besides, my status a full-fledged, red necked, snake handling, dumb enough to get lost on a ladder, Good Old Boy would have been blackballed by the fact that my truck was made in Japan.

We know that Columbine was caused by McCarthyNixonReagan and the impending arrival of Young Bush. At least that’s what Michael Moore told us. Do you know when he will tell us from his Director’s ex-cathedra chair [forgive the intentional redundancy] why a mad man killed all those children in Connecticut? I suspect that the Tea Party is the prime suspect.

Soon, I hope.

My last gunfight happened on June 3, 1993. It was in Room 1104 of the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, NJ. Judge Leonard Ronco was presiding over a carjacking trial, carjacking being the crime du jour. One Newark police officer was shot in the back of his head and was dead before he hit the ground. The other victim, Deputy Sheriff Ralph Rizzolo, was shot in the sternum by a bad guy using a.357 Magnum. The bullet, with an entry wound the size of a quarter, went up to his right shoulder and then down to his right elbow where it became lodged. I saved his life. 2 and ½ years later he danced at my daughter’s wedding. His department, the Essex County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Armando Fortuona, did not do right by him.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz told us that the reason why Congresswoman Giffords was shot was because the formerly irenic shooter was forced to kill people because he listened to Rush Limbaugh. Doubtless, the decision not to prosecute him because he had snakes for brains, made by a United States Attorney appointed by a Democratic President, was controlled by the NRA.

By now you must be aware of the crazy man who killed 3 dozen kids in Michigan in 1927. He didn’t use an assault weapon; he used dynamite. Did the world cancel the Nobel Prizes?

I am having difficulty following your column because your bankrupt employer wants me to spend 59 cents a day to access it. I read some of it and then a screen blocking ad pops up. I’ll not be buying it. I guess that means I won’t be able to send a link to your column I, believing that the world would succumb to the polar reversal and subsequent loss of gravity as predicted by the usually reliable Mayan shamans had all my outstanding notes come due on December 24th. That means I will be “in permanent disfavor with fortune and men’s eyes”. Since I am in Texas for Christmas there is no one selling it in the busy intersections. I think you want someone who is familiar with the subjunctive mood and fractional deposits, someone who is able to tell the difference between Chiaroscuro and Caravaggio, someone who knows the difference between malum per se and malum prohibitum to explain things.

I’ll try.

First, the Constitution, the document that modern American Liberals believe must adapt to modern times, says that the accused must understand the charges against him. Did Jared Loughner and Howard Unruh understand what they were accused of? If they did they would have been tried and convicted of their crimes. They did not so they weren’t.

Second, there is one thing that baffles, bewilders, and bedazzles modern American Liberals. It is the existence and presence of evil. I will let the theologians and psychiatrists argue why this is. Suffice to say someone who lives in the real world, the world where “stones are hard and water is wet”, knows this to be a cold hard fact. Another lump in the craw of true believers that creatures can change spots is that they don’t. If they did would not the War on Poverty been won long ago? If the tenets of modern American Liberalism worked why were there 27 homicides in Chicago last month? Sad to say, they do not. That it did not was, in hindsight, eminently predictable.



12/24/12

Big Stein,

My father was in an automobile accident last night. Any landing you walk away from is considered a good one. He hopes to finish this in 2 or 3 days. Meanwhile, he extends a culturally diverse, non-denominational Seasons’ greetings to all men of good will.


Sean Smith