Monday, May 25, 2015


May 25, 1945 – May 25, 2015
He died quick and he died clean. It probably was a Japanese Type 98 mortar that took the upper right quadrant  of his torso off. 
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon

I never met him. I was not even 2 when he was killed. I knew his wife for less than 2 years before she died. Inter alia, there was large box that came with some old furniture and some cutlery that I still use. The scroll hangs on my wall.

There was also a scroll signed by the President of the United States and a picture of a simple grave marker.

He stands in the unbroken line of patriots
Who have dared to die that freedom might live, 
And grow, and increase its blessings.
FREEDOM LIVES, AND THROUGH IT HE LIVES-
In a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.
Harry S. Truman

The grave marker reads:

Leonard W. Putnam
New Jersey
CPL US ARMY
World War 11
Nov 12, 1902   May 25, 1945

Raise a glass and offer a prayer to the memory of a 42 year old piano salesman 

“Why us, Sarge? Why us?
Because we’re here lad. Because we’re here.”




KS




May 25, 2015
Letter to the Editors
The Miami Herald
3511 NW 91stAvenue
Miami, FL 33172

RE: Same sex referenda as proof that “eclectic indignation” still lives and prospers at World HQ of the Miami Herald.

Sirs,

62% of the Irish electorate voted to approve same sex marriage for which modern American Liberals have become positively tumescent.

62% of the Florida electorate voted to oppose same sex marriage for which modern American Liberals becomes positively apoplectic.

Vox populi is a 2-edged sword, isn’t it?

Swift and Joyce are stifling guffaws and Wilde and Behan still don’t approve of marriage, any kind of marriage.

Ireland is still “the land of happy wars and sad love songs”.









Kevin Smith

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

May 13, 2015
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga
The Vatican
Rome, Italy

RE: The weather and why Vivaldi is still the gold standard when it comes to climate change

Eminenza,

Mater si. Magistra no.

I thought of using Dante as my guide and begin by saying “Because your ass is wrapped in purple it doesn’t make you a maven”. 

Ignorance, both invincible and its ugly twin, vincible, has plagued Western man long before Ptolemy ruled the world of Astronomy. I daresay that there are more than a few gaps in your otherwise astonishing academic background.

The scientific method and reasoned discourse are more than just old chapters in the History of civilization.

The Trivium is the crown jewel, not just of critical thinking, but of man’s quest to ask where am I from and where am I going. Logic is the capstone of it. Two of its bedrock rules are still both valid and truthful.

One of the first rules of logic is that no matter how many particulars you have you can’t make a universal out of them. If a bearded man who sings in the choir is also a murderer it doesn’t make all hirsute top tenors killers. The other, Hoc Post Ergo, Propter Hoc is the centuries old “trap set by knaves for fools”.

“After this, because of this” is a facile substitute for thinking. It is as if the Devil himself offers Man the forbidden apple of mental sloth. Its hand maiden, tautologies, condemn Man to the circular reasoning that goes nowhere.

My country had a President in 1998 who told a national TV audience that it was very hot in Washington, DC in August. He then said it was hot because of Global Warming. Further, he said with no hint of sarcasm or wit, that Global Warming was caused by hot summer days in Washington, DC. [I have been in DC in August. There are 3 kinds of weather. #1 – Very hot - #2 – Unbelievably unbearably hot - #3 – A heat that Dante would have been intimately familiar with because of his journey when “halfway through his journey he found himself in the dark wood of error”.

How simple it is to substitute feelings for ideas!

Your bosh balderdash on politics and the economy make your gibberish on  science seem majestic.

If I may be so bold as to posit a thought on why you and the Holy Father think, when it comes to our daily bread, that rocks are not hard and water is not wet.

You are both from a culture that has no regard of the Rule of Law and for the acquisition and disposal of real property. Thus it is easy to believe that since the “fix” is always favoring the rich that if good people who care for the poor are in control all will come right in the end. At least Peron gave us some good soccer players

It has never happened. It never will.

More than 50 years after Los Hermanos Castro took over Cuba it still has 3 unsolvable problems: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. As my friend, the legendary Big Mike form Bayonne, always say, “That’s why you never see anybody swimming TO  Cuba”.

Do you favor the traditional Bulgarian method of economic reform or the gravity defying nonsense of Hugo Chavez? God surely has a sense of mirth in that He has allowed Maduro to succeed him. If you find a bigger buffoonish ohmadahn in charge anywhere else let me know. 

If you swim to get out of Venezuela the first place is Cuba. If the tiburones don’t get you the Castros will. Worse than Hobson’s choice.

“The problem with Capitalism is Capitalists. The problem with Socialism is Socialism.” On a more moral note – if that is still permitted – “The trouble with Socialism is that it is an attempt to make a system so perfect that on one will have to be good”.

The subject of GlobalCoolingGlobalWarmingClimateChangeClimateDestruction requires a passionate preacher for whom truth is the first casualty. It also demands a choir filled with equally passionate willing disbelievers of self-evident fact.

When the Pope prepares his encyclical about the weather please remind him that it took a long time to get over the Galileo fracas. Meantime, Ego te absolvo 


Kevin Smith

St. Mary’s Grammar School – 1957
Marist High School – 1961
Seton Hall University - 1965


Monday, May 11, 2015

May 10, 2015
Mitchell Berger, Esq.
350 E Las Olas Blvd #1000
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: Mite auxilium!

Mr. Berger,

Here it is, Mother’s Day and things are both askew and awry or, worse, both.

#1 – 6 states have snow on the ground. New England ski slopes are up and running…in May.
#2 – Erupting volcanoes are here, there, and everywhere.
  #3 – Polar bears are still dying leading to a surplus of those cute baby seals.
#4 – Will your wife try to get Cuba to go vegan?
#5 – The head WOG from Saudi Arabia just told President B. O. to bugger off.
#6 – Is this year’s Summer of Recovery on schedule?
#7 – Is Roger Clinton in Gitmo?
#8 – If not showing Muhammad cartoons is a sign of respect for Muslim Sharia fans should we hang homosexuals and stone women as a sign of our good intentions?
#9 – Because of rising sea-levels you have stopped handling water front real estate transactions, haven’t you?

What caused these things to   happen?

A – The Koch Brothers?
B – The Bush family, particularly George the Younger?
C – fracking?
D – Mean spirited people who don’t like manatees and who think Hillary Clinton, with a ass that Oliver Hardy would envy, couldn’t lie straight in bed?
E – Rush Limbaugh and Pam Geller?
F – All of the above?
G – Some of the above?
H – None of the above…just  kidding!

I am enclosing my plans for the 4th of July. I’d like you to come. Regrets only.





Kevin Smith

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

May 5, 2015

“FREE MEN SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES”
The 25 century old breach between Antigone and
Marcel Duchamp has been closed.
Also, a crowd funding plea for a really bang-up
Fourth of July celebration.

King Creon told Antigone that she could not bury her brother. She did. The King killed her.

Marcel Duchamp had an exhibit in Paris 100+ years ago featuring his latest work “Nude Descending a Staircase”. Parisians rioted, not because their sensibilities were outraged by the sight of Frog ta-tas and Gallic yoo-has, but because there weren’t any. Google up the picture to see why they did what they did.

The gap was closed last Sunday in Garland, Texas.

If Allah is so friggin’ Akbar what difference does it make what his main man, his go to guy, Muhammed, looks like?  There were no cameras 14 centuries ago when he was busy eye-balling pre-pubescent teen age girls and/or goats. Maybe he looks like Omar Sharif. Maybe he looks like Yasser Arafat. Maybe he looks like the Elephant Man. Brad Pitt? Ru Paul? Yogi Berra? Al Sharpton?  Bruce Jenner? Bruja Jenner? Dorian Gray? Dr. Jekyll? Mister Hyde? 

Nobody knows.

If I draw a picture of a somewhat Semitic man with a face that would stop a clock and say it is my Uncle Baba Ganoosh a gazillion Muslims would say Oy! or the  Sunni/Shia equivalent. If I say it is MoMo, the mover of mountains and the bane of G-spots, they go from being wanabee feral Muslim thugs to becoming real life feral Muslim thugs who Kill the Infidels, preferably by cutting their heads off or blowing them up. Hijacking a plane and flying it into a skyscraper remains a viable option.

13 centuries after Jesus Christ, and Blessed be His name, The Divine Comedy was published. Dante tore his church apart. He and Petrarch were the first 2 artists in a phenomenon of Western Civilization called the Renaissance. Alas, 10 centuries ago, Islam turned inward. They began to eat their own seed corn. 10 centuries of forbidden DNA transfers has produced a culture where rage rules.

 Crucify Christians. Burn prisoners. Hang homosexuals. Flog women. All done to please Allah and his prophet. 

Somebody sure has some sense of humor.

Does the Medina Symphony feature Mozart or Stravinsky? Has the Dance theatre of Harlem been to Riyadh? Has the Fertile Crescent produced an Islamic Shakespeare? How about a James Joyce? Has a Muslim Samuel Johnson or a burnoosed Edmund Burke been hidden? Where is the Martin Luther of the desert? Any Walt Disneys at the next oasis? Andrew Carnegie? Bill Gates? Clarence Birdseye? Jonas Salk? Abdul Einstein?

You won’t have to take your socks off to count the number of Muslim Nobel Prize winners in the last century.

Speech is either free or it isn’t.

You are either pregnant or you’re not.

The tumor is either malignant or it isn’t.

The killing of those 2 thugs on Sunday proves a few things”

#1 – The express road to 72 virgins begins and ends in Texas.
#2 – If you tell me you want to kill my family do not expect to be welcomed.
#3 – The West, when enraged, will put paid on all those open bills.
#4 - The Southern Poverty Law Center did not approve this message.
#5 – Pam Geller, please come and bring your flame thrower

But wait. There’s more. 

My crowd-fund appeal is simple.

I want to have a demonstration on the steps of the nearest Federal Court House  in Fort Lauderdale, FL at noon on July 4th, 2015.

I have picked Fort Lauderdale for one obvious reason. Broward County is Ground Zero for the antinomianilistic Nihilists known as modern American Liberals. These vipers are in favor of manatee suffrage, 4th and  5th trimester abortion, and banning Rush Limbaugh. Because of his progressive views on abortion Dr. Mengele would any Democratic primary he ran in.

 They also hectored me about “Piss Christ” and why I had to support it. “Piss Christ”, by Andres Serrano, is a clear container in which a crucifix is suspended. It is them filled with, you guessed it. Piss. I was told that the artist’s rights trumped mine and that it was the price we pay for an open society. They also told me that I had to acquiesce in the taxpayer supported “Corpus Crista”. It is a play whose premise is simple: Jesus Christ was crucified because of a lovers’ quarrel with Judas Iscariot. Judas, feeling betrayed, dropped a dime on the late and great JC and the Romans did the rest. 

I was told that nothing can come between the artist and his artistic expression. If I objected I would be consigned to the knuckle dragging Troglodyte dungeon from which no escape was possible

Besides, it was only a play and I should get over it.

Preliminary plans call for the American flag to be burned. No problem there, right? I will wrap a bible in the flag. Still no problem. I will also wrap a Koran in the flag. [As an aside, why is it always the “sacred” Koran? Why can’t the bible be “sacred”? Just asking.]

Further, I will have a gallon of pork piss nearby in case the fire gets out of control.

I need funds for suitable adult libations. No sense risking dehydration while doing the Lord’s work. I need funds for a getaway car. I need funds for bail. I need funds for legal and medical services. Since I am from Bayonne, NJ I will need street money. 

I will be easy to spot

I am a somewhat calorically challenged handsome bearded curmudgeon with a gimpy gait. I may be wearing an eye patch. I keep 2 hats handy. The oldest one, the bearing the title “Right-Wing Conspirator”, was worn by me in front of the white House in 1998. I shook my fist while shouting “Come Out with your hands up, you son of a Bitch. We have the Place Surrounded”.  Alas, he got away. 

The newer one, the one that says “Proud Global Warmer”, is used when I come across people who confuse correlation with causation and believe that tautologies are a really cool way to avoid thinking.

Whichever hat I wear, whichever way I choose to express myself, I will be exercising a right that is mine when I was born. I got it, not from the local magistrate, but “from beyond the stars”. And can someone bring me the latest Arabic translation of “A Modest Proposal”?

Nobody asked me but Hillary’s Ass is now an axe handle and a half wide. She needs a quart of industrial strength of WD40 it get her drawers on and the Jaws of Life to get them off. When she hauls ass it takes two trips with the last one in a wheelbarrow. She switched from Botox to Crème Brule because it is organic and it decreases her carbon footprint. Plus, it’s the only way she can get Handsome Billy to lick her.

FREE MEN STILL SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES, RIGHT?

Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET



Monday, May 4, 2015

May 1, 2015

Rick Sanchez
WIOD – 610AM
Miramar, FL 33025

RE: Adios, amigo! A bit too much redolence when “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome” goes unchecked will drive rational people away

Mr. Sanchez,

The lead is in Spanish to show my sensitivity to the need for diversity and for the mandatory genuflection at the shrine of multi-culturalism.

In Spanish or in English this gringo is outta here.

At about 10:10 this morning you were conflating – great new word, huh? – the commentator on CNN and your ACELA Amtrak train ride.

ACELA is the high speed train that runs between Boston and Washington. Regardless of the direction the train must go through Baltimore. You said that the CNN commentator “knew” there would be “trouble’ there because he could see the blighted area when he rode the train.

You had just begun your frumpishly fustian polemic about the upper income, mostly White, commuters, doubtless card carrying members of the privileged 1% mover and shakers cabal, and how their callous indifference fed the flames of the urban thuggery, thugishness or whatever will soon be the politically correct synonym for the activities done by what used to be known as thugs.

Cato-like, I hit the off switch with a speed and ferocity that exceeded my minimum daily allowance for random carbon foot-printing.

I did this for a variety of reasons.

If you ever get involved with Al-Anon you will appreciate the universality of their mantra: You didn’t cause it and you can’t cure it.

Next up is a sum of money somewhere between $12,000,000,000,000 – that’s T, as in trillion – and $17,000,000,000,000, also T, as in  that this country has spent since 1964 on ‘it”. You may remember that Lyndon Johnson fought 2 wars. There is a wall in Washington marking the first one, the one in Vietnam. At least that one ended. The other one, the War on Poverty is now 51 years old. The “inconvenient truths”, the hard statistics, the objective indices, that caused him to give the “over the top” order are worse now than when he gave it. 

Having dug ditches in 3 countries I assure you with 100% metaphysical certitude that when you find out that you are digging a ditch on the wrong side of the road you stop digging.

Skip the good intentions, forget about the efforts of really good people who were/are/will be exceptional avatars of altruism, there are no success stories to be told. The alms givers did OK for themselves. 

Other than erecting “ a multitude of new offices, and send[ing] hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance”, the only thing of lasting substance is a slough of despond that we have burdened our people with. 

The drought in California, partly caused by a mad scientist using taxpayer money to convince a nit-wit Judge that the inedible Delta Smelt is worthy of more protection than a farmer whose job is to feed people, is governmental lunacy on steroids. 

If a fully grown T-Rex mama were to appear outside Hammond, LA would she be granted protected status as she feasted on the nearest pre-school?

An argumentum ad absurdum writ large, I daresay tattooed, on the body politick. 

 I am not a heartless social Darwinist.  I am an Irish-Catholic, born and raised in Bayonne, NJ. Republicans had to get out of town by sundown. I had an uncle who, despite dying in 1956, voted Row A, the Regular Hudson County Democratic ticket, until he was stopped by a Federal Judge in 1971. 

I assure you my modern American Liberal credentials are in order. I even worked for 2 Democratic congressmen who went to prison.

The Hippocratic Oath demands that the physician “first, do no harm”. By our own hand, in election after election, we authorize yet more gasoline to be delivered to a fire that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and Nero would have been proud. In fact, they would have been speechless

The sophistry of elected officials and pseudo-shamans who hector us on the virtues of arson, brigandry, and mayhem is contemptible. Worse, the bowel cleansing fear of being called a racist freezes any rational discussion of the rampant jackassery. 

I know that the patient is critical. I don’t know what the prescription should be. I know what it shouldn’t be.



Kevin Smith

PS – The Urban League did a commercial featuring a commuter train going through a riot ravaged Harlem. The White people kept their heads down. Malcolm X and James Baldwin told us of “the fire next time”. That was 50 years and 9 Presidents ago.

 Can I get my money back?



“He arado en el mar?”