February 14, 2013
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 333132-1693

RE: The world is turned upside down – Some comments on the first section of today’s paper.

Sirs,

A faceless internet [Again, thanks to Vice President Alpha Gump] allows people to praise a killer in California.
Waiting in line to vote is now considered malum per se and prima facie proof of racism.
A gazillionaire wants the undeserving poor of Miami/Dade County to pay for his new workplace.
The shocking, shocking news that another Democratic Congressman from Hudson County, NJ would steal a hot stove after taking the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.
Indians, the ones with the red dot, not the ones with tomahawks and casinos, are aborting baby girls.

But then I got to your editorial page.

Judge Scott Silverman tells us that Franklin Roosevelt “led our country out of the great Depression…” Thank God we’re in Florida and Thank God this sad ssack sorry ass is of the bench. It takes huevos grandes for him to say say that because of one reason. It ain’t true. By any economic indicator, including some that weren’t even invented yet, the country was in worse shape 6 years after he was inaugurated. Look it up, Your Honor. Get back to me.

Next up is Senator Bill Bradley, AKA “Mumbles”. He speaks about Social Security. Should Cecil Rhodes suddenly reappear he would want his money back. I cite the following as the first count of the indictment.

“The next commissioner, unlike some predecessors, should
bring to the job a detailed historical knowledge of Social Security –
of decisions that have made the system stronger and of others
that have weakened it.”
The Miami Herald
Today
Page 19A
Bradley OP-ED

Which predecessor[s] weakened it? How was it weakened?

History tells us that it was destined to be weakened for 3 reasons.

#1 – When it first started the country had 30 people paying in for each person receiving a check. Then it was 20. Then 10. Now it is 3 to 1. Do the math.

#2 - My mother received checks, including her annual “raise’, until she was one month shy of her 95th birthday. Her sister went 4 years longer. Is it too late to shout that people are living longer?

#3 – In 1964, with the approval of both parties, the deductions from both employees and employers went directly into the general accounts of the United States of America. Once a year, the “trustees” of the Social Security system meet with the Treasury Department. [I hope it is under a bridge at night] I hope somebody brings some good liquor to this meeting. The Department of Treasury says this is how much money we took from you. They then issue an IOU, a chit, a marker. The saps who paid in have now become Wimpy’s greatest enabler. Wimpy was Popeye’s friend who would say without a hint of irony, “I will gladly pay you on Thursday for a hamburger I eat on Monday”.

It is well to note that if a private company, say McClatchy, were to do that, grim men with green eyeshades, badges, and guns would appear at your offices and begin to handcuff people and drag them out.

Would it not be incumbent on Senator Bradley to tell us who “weakened” the system and how did “they” do it?

Talk about trying to find invisible Easter eggs! Assuming I stumbled upon my own “lock box” There would be nothing in it. It would take a century of perpetual “Summers of Recovery”, coupled with Death Panels at least equal to those established by the previous century’s 3 most prominent community activists: Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, to approach solvency.

I enclose a copy of a letter I received from Senator Mumbles. If you can tell me what the second paragraph means it will end a quest lasting, like Ulysses’, 20 years.

Then I got to Kathleen Parker’s screed.

50 years ago, Betty Freidan, apparently the inspiration for Peggy Lee’s song “Is That All There Is”, acidly etched her “angst” at not being able to have it all. [The lesson that modern American Liberals of all stripes never learn is that it is called the horizon because, try, try, try the lesson of the Little Engine doesn’t cut it. The horizon can’t be reached. The Yellow Brick Road never gets to Oz. Thank God for Prozac.]

On Page 17A, the page just before the editorial pages, there is a story about “female feticide”. Talk about a place that needs an ERA! If you want to go to full term in the Punjab it is best to have a wang like a policeman’s billy. If I were in the baby clothes business I would never have to order pink. I’d rather be Ken than Barbie in utero.

One of my favorite authors said

“Focus on the absurd lest reality drive you mad.”

Sometimes the lines blur.

Anyway, thanks for starting my day.





Kevin Smith