April 26, 2017

Gary Stein

The Sun Sentinel

Big Stein,

A Christian mitzvah is about to descend on you. I don’t want you out there, totally unprepared, when, to quote Senator Summer Winter Fall Warren, AKA Liawatha, the “poop” hits the fan. Senator Warren, the paradigmatic template of forked tongue hypocritical modern American Liberals – Did I just repeat myself? – now pitches her tent in Harvard Square where she can better give drunken Redskins a good name.

That’s why I want you to be ready, to have mucho arrows in your ideological quiver, the ones that enable you to slay the shibboleths sure to come with the new Trump tax plan.

Like the homophobic Boy Scouts of old used to say to little old ladies, “Be prepared”.

“It is a patriot’s duty to arrange his affairs in such 

a manner that he pays the least amount of taxes

possible. At best, taxation is an enforced exactitude,

not a voluntary contribution.”

Who said that?

What was the context?

Get smart right quick about such deadly, dull things as Subchapter ‘S’ corporations, about accelerated depreciation, about the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit, about debits and credits. Stuff like that.

Resist the temptation to babble on about Clinton’s balanced budget and his surplus. In the vernacular, “It sounds like bullshit to me”. 

When the construction of a Nimitz-class carrier and Midnight Basketball are treated the same on the Federal balance sheet, when the co-mingling of Social Security funds didn’t cause Treasury SWAT teams to arrest everybody involved – Here’s another Pop Quiz. Why weren’t the Clinton surpluses used to pay down the national debt? It wasn’t. Not by a thin dime or a red cent – when contingent liabilities become 4 letter words, when the vaunted “lock box”, the one that everyone fought about 17 years ago, was last seen trying to catch the Pioneer Space Probe, it may be time to reach for a stun grenade.

If the Sun Sentinel ran their books the way the Feds run theirs your formerly bankrupt company would disappear a la Solyndra.

Don’t let anyone bamboozle you with the typical modern American Liberal flapdoodle, nit-wit balderdash about tax cuts having to pay for themselves, or they have to be revenue neutral, or they have to disproportionately help those with little or no income, the folks that Congressman Gephardt, Howdy-Doody to his BFF, said were “unlucky in life’s lottery”. God’s Holy Trousers, but how do you cut taxes on someone who has no tax liability?

“Even the Devil can quote scripture” so I hope you don’t mind if I cite the great Lord Keynes. Alas, he is a man more quoted than read. In addition to predicting World War 2 in 1920 and running a successful hedge fund, his constant advice was for the central bank to buy government bonds, cut taxes, and “loosen the animal spirits”.

I am going to let you in on a little secret.

Rich people hire poor people for 2 reasons:

#1 – They want to stay rich.

#2 – They want to get richer.

Poor people work for rich people for 2 reasons:

#1 – They like eating.

#2 – They want to be rich, like the people who hire them.

Any government policy that advances these things is good. Any government policy that impedes them is bad.

Any fool who believes that raising taxes, raising barriers to job creation, raising the minimum wage [And yes, I have worked for the minimum wage and was fired from the job because, as the manager said, “Business sucked”. I wanted to be unemployed at a higher minimum wage but I couldn’t swing the deal.] should not be allowed to operate heavy equipment. Of course, “twisting truth to make to make a trap for fools” may be the only career path open to them. MSNBC is “the last refuge for these scoundrels”.

Now that modern American Liberals have taken to re-hab John Calhoun and his Theory of Nullification, the theory that said it was OK for a state to allow slavery because they “nullified” any Federal law that challenged it, I have 2 things to share with you.

While checking on my manatee traps early this AM, I heard a train whistle for almost 3 minutes as it was heading South. I am sure it woke Bowser whose barking awakened little Herschel whose squeals disturbed any number of disabled senior citizens, folks like me. I was up anyway so it was no big deal. BTB, 4-month-old manatee sushi with a hint of Sriracha is to die for.

Pass a law banning train whistles after 10:00 PM. You won’t have to arrest more than 2 engineers for the rest of them to get the message.

The Feds may take umbrage at this, like they did in May, 2016. That was when Loretta Lynch, after getting the OK from Mr. Hillary Clinton, they guy who gave her her first big job in 1998, gave every school district in America 5 business day to comply with the Federal regulation about non-gender specific. She wanted toilet seats on urinals or she would stop all Federal funding for education. 

Thank God a Federal Judge put a stop to that.

OOOPS! Strike that. Nobody stopped Obama. The Judge stopped Trump. Go figure. I guess sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander. Yet again, the beauty of modern American Liberal “eclectic indignation” is made manifest.

Maybe we should stick to jobs.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

April 25, 2017

Gary Stein

The Sun Sentinel

RE: CONGRATULATIONS!

Big Stein:

After an exhaustive nationwide search, a search that included “fly-over states”, turn coat states, Blue states, Red states, and Mauve states, and states that oppose abortion and favor capital punishment, the Committee, with several vigorous dissents, has chosen you to be ground zero, the ten ring, the piñata, the catcher on the javelin team, of modern American Liberalism.

I say this because this week promises to knot modern American Liberal knickers into a state of randyness surpassed only by a gaggle of rutting Kardashians.

#1 – The second female Muslim M.D. was arrested for female genital mutilation. You’ll have no adult problems finding that damned elusive G-spot if yours was filleted away when you were 6. 

Here comes the sticky part.

Modern American Liberals are justifiably proud of their diversity, their exclusive inclusivity, and their never-ending fight against “cultural arrogance”. [A word or two about the term “cultural arrogance”. It was coined by Anthony Lewis, late of the New York Times, who used it to castigate anyone who was opposed to Pol Pot and his killing of 1/3^rd of his country, said country being Cambodia. Honest Injun. You could look it up.]

Sharia law, be it Sunni or Shiite, condones female genital mutilation. One of them allows a swab of Preparation H pre-op and some baby aspirin – that’s because they are babies – post-op. I am not sure which one does and which doesn’t. What difference does it make? Allah is always Akbar, right?

If the “twinkie defense”, the one that got Mayor Moscone’s killer off the hook, is an example of zealous defense tactics why not say that the Koran says it’s Kosher? Since, as previously stated, Allah is so friggin’ Akbar where do simple mortals come off trying to get over on the Big Boss.

Wouldn’t it be great if Justice Gorsuch got to cast the deciding vote? Who says God, by whatever name He chooses to call Himself, doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Anyway, I ask you to give me a head’s up on what the Elders of modern American Liberalism will say when they speak ex catherda. Professional courtesy.

#2 – A proposal to cut the corporate tax rate by more than 50% will be introduced this week. [I have a long-held premise, one that I defend brilliantly, that corporations don’t pay taxes. Never have, never will. Don’t worry. They get paid. Their customers or their end users pay them. Sometimes their shareholders pay them. You can look that one up too.]

That the hive filled with mentally awry, about a quarter of a bubble off plumb, modern American Liberals will roil the masses with banshee caterwauling about “fairness” and my favorite from the pen of the late, lamented Harriet van Horne, she of the pre-Murdoch New York Post, who in a fit of lachrymosity, would conjure up the image of “another lash on the backs of the poor”, there can be no doubt.

Here’s my question. 

How do you cut taxes for someone with no income?

4 times in the last 95 years the result of tax cuts has been phenomenally beneficial, particularly to those who are “unlucky in life’s lottery”. Just one more thing you can look up.

#3 – You gave us a lower-case snarky definition of Republican book-burning Sunday last.

Buckle up. It’s going to be bumpy ride.

A – Should Ann Coulter be given police protection when she speaks? The Nazi wanabees got it at Skokie, remember?

B – Howard Dean, he of the primal political howl, said “Hate speech is not protected by the Constitution”. “Twinkle, Twinkle” is but that doesn’t need a 2^nd Amendment to defend it. Pop quiz – Who said “We must have room for what we hate”?

C – What would Justice Brennan, Justice Douglas, indeed, Justice Black say about Middlebury College and CAL-Berkeley? “Prior restraint” gets a whole new meaning when it is accompanied by pepper spray and a smack in the chops.

When did modern American Liberals, self-proclaimed champions of the underdog and the most vulnerable members of society, unborn babies excepted, become ignorant of History? When did they become forgetful of Natural Law, the one that told us of the gifts that were ours at birth, “gifts from beyond the stars”? These were the gifts that guided the hands of our Founding Fathers. These were the gifts that gave us a Constitution, a guide for what government can do and a Bill of Rights that told us what a government cannot do. 

Norman Rockwell gave us a portrait of one man standing in front of others and speaking his mind. The dreaded Word Police would not let him do that today. And, worse, they would be praised by the more enlightened among us.

When did the face of the Democratic Party become covered with a black bandana? When did the voice of the Democratic Party become the “Go Fuck Yourself” greeting from the SEIU thugs in Wisconsin? Remember, that was when Obama was busy “calming the seas and cooling the earth”. When did a brick through a window followed by a kick in the teeth replace “Happy Days are Here Again”?

Confusion is sweeping over me like a “wine dark sea”.

Please help me understand the squared circle, the one that sits on the 4-sided triangle, of modern American Liberalism.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – Washington, DC has local elections where Republicans not only must have 2 photo IDs, a record of their vaccinations, and a note from the precinct captain before they can vote. Did you know that the city council outlawed the word “niggardly” and fired the city employee who used it? Did you know that in 2006 Senator Obama, Senator Schumer, and Senator Clinton voted in favor of the wall on the Mexican border? I think it was because it was supposed to keep bigoted Americans in rather than feral 3^rd Worlders out.

Either way, they voted for it. What was the name of the guy who was killed with Moscone? He was a paedophile, wasn’t he? Will the Sentinel ever publish the Mohammed cartoons?

Just kidding. Speaking of free speech, Obama is going to get $400,000 from a Wall Street firm to speak to them. Not as good as Handsome Billy from Hot Springs or his wide bottomed, put upon and much abused lady but not bad for a community activist

April 24, 2017

Gary Stein

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Wait, wait…Don’t tell me what not to read! Some comments on your achingly familiar Sunday AM Jeremiad about the wascally Wepublicans, homophobic racists plus climate change deniers all, and their Trump-led jihad to ban and burn books.

Big Stein,

Ah! The beauty of culturally disabled modern American Liberals as they do their unique dance, the “eclectically indignant”, down the convenient memory hole, two step.

As you point out in Sunday’s homily, the usual suspects, John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou, Judy Blume, John Irvine, inter alia, having been rounded up by the usual Cossacks, we are now distracted by the sound of a big old turd bobbing in the modern American Liberal punch bowl: non Right-Wing censorship.

Black folk don’t much like Huckleberry Finn.

Some “stiff necked” Sons of the Desert don’t much like Shylock.

What to do, what to do?

I know.

Fuhgedaboutit

Your dudgeon overflows about Harper Lee but not about Mark Twain. Can I toss Shakespeare into the stew? Don’t they count?

[I was shocked, shocked when a non-Caucasian columnist called me a racist when I suggested that despite a fascinating bio Maya Angelou was not a very good poet. Maybe he was still mad when I suggested that Truman Capote and James Baldwin had many intriguing parallels in both their personal and professional lives. And, to add insult to injury, I said that if Zora Neale Hurston had been White her books would have disappeared long ago.]

Speaking of brown-shirted book burners, people whose idea of reasoned discourse at its most civil revolves around a boot on a neck, people who begin your part of the dialogue by telling you to shut up, see if you can track down a copy of “Sexual Suicide” by George Gilder. It, and he, were sent to the isolated island reserved for writers who make you feel uncomfortable, an island from which no writer ever returns.

Speaking of friggin’ hypocrites, I haven’t been in Books & Books since December, 1996. It was a marvelous store filled with, you guessed it, Books & Books. I was in the poetry section when I asked where Ezra Pound was hiding. “We don’t carry him,” I was told. “Why not?”, I asked. “Ask him”, I was told. “Him” was Mitchell Kaplan, the gaunt, bearded owner and renowned champion of free speech. “He was an anti-Semite so I don’t carry him.” Since it was his store who was I to tell him who should be or not be on his shelves. I haven’t been back since.

2 things:

#1 – I was a lay missionary in Mexico in Mexico in 1963. My main mission was to build a 6-bed clinic in Huejutla. I learned how to thread a pipe because I knew, having done it, that hauling water uphill coolie-style was a waste of time and talent. Plus, it hurt like Hell. Also, a wandering gringo became a prize catch for rich peoples’ dinner tables. In addition to the great chow I became a piñata upper middle class Mexican who suffered from “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome”. They loved to lecture me on the evils of my country’s racist policies. That they were delivered by well-dressed ladies with hair hanging from their armpits made their earnest hectoring just a tad redolent. Women would not shave their armpits until the hair reached their elbows. Visible arm pit hair was the easiest way to show that there were no Mestizos in your genetic woodpile, that you were blanco puro. Pure White. Just like the little White girls that Senator Ervin, Senator Fulbright, and Senator Gore spent their entire adult lives trying to stop little Black boys from going to school with them. 

#2 is easy. As my aunt [by marriage] from Hester Street always said, “Don’t pee on my back and tell me it’s rain”.

I don’t know what the modern American Liberal position on using secondary boycotts is – Yes, I do. Ask Bill O’Reilly – but if Pound is verboten shouldn’t Joyce, Eliot, Hemingway, and Yeats get the silent treatment also. Each of them was indebted incalcubably to Pound for his editing. 

Ask Little Stein, your perpetual college student, what 20^th century literature would have looked like absent Pound.

Was it Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson who used the term “hook-nosed diamond merchant”? Isn’t it true that many children of “hook-nosed diamond merchants” become “New York lawyers” a la Bernie Nussbaum?

If Little Stein has found the library ask him which dead male Greek said, “Free men speak with free tongues”. I wouldn’t want to get him confused with Antigone.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

April 16, 2017

Kathleen Cannon – CEO

The United Way

One South Andrews Avenue

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316

Ms. Cannon, 

Since “modesty is an overrated virtue” I have  no choice but to believe with ypiur muted praise of my writing skills.

I enclose Saturday’s piñata about “a modest man with much to be modest about”, a man who took a lot of beatings in high school – that’s a guy thing, trust me – a man who is ready to give Midnight Basketball a fair shot this time. In the alternative universe universe, the one occupied by modern American Liberals, the one where stones aren’t hard and water isn’t wet, results don’t count, only expectations. He made his bones the old-fashioned way, he earned them. I hope he doesn’t send the Word Police after me, men with badges, guns, and the full majesty of the law like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz did.

Plus, I enclose the e-mail address of my blog site. It is now in its 10^th year of paying homage to Madison, Eliot, Johnson – Samuel, not Lyndon, and a whole bunch of dead White European males. 

Pay close attention to 1/23/16. That was the day I granted an indulgence to anyone e who wanted to vote for Trump. Also, May 25^th of any year is a significant date. “Terra incognito” or “sunt leones” monitums should be attached to it.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – My Easter bonnet today will be my PROUD GLOBALWARMER cap

April 16, 2017

Gary Stein

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Welcome Back!

Big Stein:

First, congratulations on escaping the clutches of the Koch Brothers-funded Somali pirates. Did you go over the wall a la Churchill or did the Sun Sentinel pay the ransom, the dhimmi? Either way, you’re out and I am happy.

Your absence filled me with inestimable sorrow. Since Little Stevie Goldstein got the boot I have relied on you to give me the latest head up your ass modern American mantra, chazzerai like “never bring a knife to a gun fight”, or “if you like your doctor you can keep him”, or “cross my red line and you’re toast”? Who can forget the discovery of an additional 7 or 8 states? I can’t. I nurture my bonsai plants by playing President B.O. promising to “calm the seas and cool the earth”.  I used to live in Sea Bright, NJ. Imagine how bad it would have been with Super Storm Sandy if he hadn’t “calmed the seas”.

When I asked about “paying the ransom” I am referring to the first great low light and low life of American History; John Adams. As difficult as it would seem to be he topped the Alien & Sedition Acts by agreeing to pay 20%, 1/5^th, of America’s operating budget to, and I hate to profile, radical Islamic terrorists, AKA the Barbary Pirates. [Additional History lessons about “Leathernecks” or “Do  you seek the protection of the American flag?” That was 220 years ago and some things never change, do they? A parting word about Adams the Elder. Since Prozac and Thorazine were not yet available it is obvious that he should have been packed in ice every night. Maybe he could freeze the demons to death, the ones that came in one ear and ran across his brain and out the other.

Here is my question about your column today.

I know, as the poet said, that “after the first death there are no others”. You may wish to consult Little Stein, your perpetual college student, about that. Y0ur column states that “Hitler exterminated 6,000,000 Jews. If the SEC looked at that statement, the 10b5 alarm bell would be ringing. That’s the section that covers fraud, both civil and criminal. Fraud can be committed by a commission or omission. The number of people who were non-combatants totaled 12,000,000.

Would it make me a racist anti-Semitic homophobe to suggest that the last 6,000,000 are as dead as the first 6,000,000? That’s a risk I accept.

In for a pence, in for a pound.

A bit further along in your column you say “the world has never seen an evil like Hitler”. From a subjective point of view, you may be right. From an objective point of view, he was way down the list. 

Stalin killed at least 5,000,000 Kulaks. That is the classic example of a euphemism. When Bernie Nussbaum cleaned out Vince Foster’s office after he ate his gun he was called a “New York lawyer”. Having employed a lot of them in my other life in my other life I know what that means. Send a SASE if you don’t know. Kulak means in early ‘30s Cyrillic/Russian jargon “Jew”. Vide Walter Duranty. Stalin did in 30,000,000 people. Compared to that number Hitler was a jaywalker.

Mao did in 60,000,000 gomers and slopes. That’s 10 times the number of Jews killed by Hitler. He made Hitler look like an odd-lotter.

“Attention must be paid” – Ask Student Stein – to Pol Pot. He took out 1/3^rd of his country. That’s an amount worthy of notice, worthy of being mentioned in dispatches.

Anyway, I’m glad you’re back. A non-denominational Pesach and Easter greeting to you.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET 

April 12, 2017

Mike Jackson – CEO

Auto Nation

200 SW 1^st Avenue

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: Decisions, decisions or, as Homer Simpson said, “Don’t make me choose”

Mr. Jackson,

The ’79 Talbot or the ’75 Lascombe?

What do you think?

Rack of lamb, slathered in Dijon sauce, al dente string beans, and Amy’s potatoes.

I am asking you because I read in the WSJ this A.M. that you were able to detect a “Ponzi” scheme disguised as a car company, in this case Tesla. Then, to prove that you can multi-task, you psychoanalyzed the President of the United States. The cherry on the sundae was your pronouncement of fealty and obeisance to Hillary Clinton. All this before breakfast!

I have a classmate I have known for 58 years, He was CEO of a multi-billion-dollar bank in New Jersey. It began life as a not quite regional bank, neighborhood being a better description. In 1991 he took a public stand on a contentious state tax plan. I knew – know – him well enough that I called and asked him how many stupid bills he taken. before his announcement.

The banking business is like the car business in one important aspect. They both buy wholesale and then they sell retail. [Why any business would offer to sell at or below cost is a sure sign that they think their customers are friggin’ morons but that’s a story for a different time.]

The reason I asked my pal, a guy I have known since Eisenhower was President and Kennedy’s best male friend in DC was Nixon, if he had an “irresistible impulse” to piss off half his customers. We exchanged 4 letter observations with ethnic references and questions about the validity of our parents’ marriages, assuming they had them.

If no one is in the showroom or the lobby, be they brick and mortar or electronic, inventory piles up. It is a well-known fact that I am bound and determined not to be cliché ridden. The only people who make money on inventory are hookers and loan sharks.

Which brings me back to you.

Thoreau, America’s great 19^th century tax protestor, always sought the “simplicity” of things. You have a very simple job. The owners of the place where you work, your shareholders, will reward you on how many and how well you sell their cars.

If you sell them at a loss they know that you can’t make it up on volume. If you price them too high you can’t sell them at all. Simple, isn’t it?

Why muck it up by picking stocks? 

Why muck it up by trying to give Hillary a tongue bath?

About Hillary…the great Dr. Johnson, although he was addressing a different subject, spoke about supposedly rational adults voting for modern American Liberals and then being overcome by the urge to proclaim it publicly. Modern American Liberals are defined as people who know that raising taxes and increasing the minimum wage is the sure way to prosperity. The tie-breaker is that, deep down, they believe that Midnight Basketball could have worked if more community support could have been mustered. He said, “it is the triumph of hope over experience”. 

I issued an indulgence on January 23, 2016 for anyone who wanted to vote for Trump but had some doubts. It was like a consent decree with yourself and the voting booth. Any and all punishment for the sin of voting for the Donald was forgiven forever. I said that there was the possibility that he could become the worst President ever. It was beyond doubt that if she had been elected the American people would have sent the worse person ever to the Oval Office.

Plus, he would get to pick the Judges and the Justice. I’m sponsoring Ruth Bayer Ginsburg for a senior triathlon. Wanna help?

Kevin Smith

PS – I’m going with the Talbot. The Lascombe is overpriced and has turned. As a recovering wine snob, I know these things

April 10, 2017

Howard Satz – Publisher & Editor

The Sun Sentinel

500 E. Broward Blvd.

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33394

RE: The non-barking dog?

Mr. Satz,

If you were to tell me that no one but me complained about the absence of your mini Op-Ed page this Sunday past I would, in keeping with the tradition of Holy Week, rend my garment and proclaim in my best banshee style that your paper is doomed.

The usual stodge of Big Stein telling me how evil, how mean, how rotten, how nasty, how brutish, and how just plain shitty Republicans are, coupled with the “loonies have taken over the bin” extra-terrestrial wing nut, moon bats who are pissed off at me for not believing that umbrellas cause rain, that no tax is ever high enough, that Midnight Basketball didn’t get a fair shot, that results don’t count, only expectations, and that evil, like bullying and teenage obesity, can be legislated away if only enough men of good will are willing to fight the special interests who hate change was what caused me to drop my Sunday morning treat of manatee sushi and Tanqueray, lots of Tanqueray, with ice, Schweppes, and lime. [Can’t be too safe when it comes to the ravages of Scurvy]

If it is gone forever I will be gone forever. That’s not a threat; that’s a promise.

Kevin Smith

PS – When I got to Florida in 1996 I read 6, sometimes 7, papers a day. I am now down to one on Saturday and, maybe, one on Sunday.

Do you think that murder of 80 Coptic Christians in Egypt yesterday was the result of moderate Muslim terrorists losing hope because of Trump’s xenophobia?

April 10, 2017

Here’s a fight I can’t win.

In fact, the Syrian and the Iranian Air Forces will put a Texas-sized ass whupping on the Sons of the Desert Flying Circus and do barrel rolls over the Wailing Wall before I squeeze out a tie.

I told the clerk at the Post Office that I did not want any stamps with Harvey Milk on them. [I turned down the Eid Muslim stamp in Texas a few years back. De gustibus, I suppose.]

Plan B was the Indiana commemorative. Westbound into Indiana on IS 80 is a pleasant relief from deadly dull Ohio That was OK with me because I have 2 cousins, both Benedictine monks, buried at Saint Meinrad’s Abbey in Vincennes, Indiana.

I turned it down for 2 reasons:

#1 – When Milk was murdered the man he was standing next to, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, was shot and killed also. Milk isn’t any more dead than Moscone. They were shot and killed by the same man. Why does one get a stamp while the other gets kicked to the curb?

#2 – Harvey Milk was an accused paedophile who was never bought to trial. The victim, of course, of course, the alleged victim, the under aged catcher on the wrump wrangling pitching team killed himself before the trial could begin.

I used the Duke Lacrosse team lacrosse case and the University of Virginia fraternity rape case as my template. Shape the narrative to whatever is available. Never let facts interfere with an argument. The charge is more important than the disposition.  The racial, social, economic, and cultural status of the participants is more important than facts. Rich White guys are bad and presumptively guilty unless their name is Kennedy.

The Milk/Moscone trial ended in a “not guilty” verdict thanks to a brilliant use of the heretofore unused “Twinkie” defense. Look it up. Maybe the lawyer should get a stamp.

Since Harvey Milk has a stamp how about one for Bill Cosby? How about one for Big Bill Tilden? Errol Flynn was acquitted of a rape charge. How about a lick both sides, “In Like Flynn” special delivery stamp for him? Does Rock Hudson have a stamp? How about Clifton Webb? Is Harvey Fierstein still alive? I know that Barney Frank is

I have fears of being branded a gay bashing homophobe with a Scarlet H to prove it. I am searching for a safe spot, a sanctuary closet if you will, where my thoughts will not infect the body politick. Or maybe not.

I am still searching for those elusive Mohammed cartoons. I want the ones that show him cavorting and gamboling with prepubescent girls and boys and middle age bovines. 

I guess it’s OK to say such things because the United States government taxes its citizens to subsidize the traveling company of “Corpus Cristi”. It is a play that posits that Christ was crucified because of a lovers’ quarrel with his boy-toy Judas Iscariot. Judas dropped a dime on him and the rest, as they say, is History. Strange indeed that the anniversary of the events is fast upon us. It’s too late for a high noon rollout of a stamp featuring Judas, the King of the Christ Killers but

“Free men speak with free tongues:”

Kevin Smith

PS – On of my favorite unknown movies is “Guns of Batasi”. Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Flora Robson, and Mia Farrow share the leads.  Simple enough story about a new African country tossing out the old boss for a new boss who turns out to be like the old boss. What sets it apart is the dialogue with shades of Kipling and Wellington going over the top. Attenborough is particularly fine as RSM Lauderdale. Bosley Crowther, the famed cinematic critic of the New York Times, kind of liked it save for the fact that 1964 was not the time to have White men criticizing Black men, particularly if the Black men were in the egg-breaking process of African nation building. Does James Baldwin have a stamp?

April 8, 2017

Reverend Oliver Williams, C.S.C.

Mendoza School of Business

University of Notre Dame

South Bend, IN 46556

Father Williams,

Concupiscence, one of the convenient crutches that Uncle Screwtape provides to all Wormwood wanabees, is the only reason – not an excuse – for not writing sooner. May I add, somewhat belatedly, that I greatly enjoyed your Saturday morning part homily, part seminar, part tutorial on Ethics? And, just think, nobody mentioned Aristotle!

When old guys, particularly those with a curmudgeonly streak, think of the Permanent Things, they think more of their grandchildren than of the not quite black, not quite white choices on which polemicists pounce. 

I was in McDonald’s today at 5:30AM. The pre-6:00AM staff has been cut by 2/3 positions to reflect higher wage rates.  [Unless you have done a payroll the reality of cost above income is alien. I did my first one for Tino DeAngelis of the Soybean oil scam in Bayonne a very long time ago.] Would you rather be employed at $X an hour or unemployed at $X+x% an hour is a question seldom asked of – forgive the euphemism –  inner city youths of limited skills save the desire to work. It should be.

In my other life, I brought 255 out of work coal miners back to work out of a bankruptcy court. 3 days after they went back on the clock they went on strike over a uniform allowance. My mom was right. “Eaten bread is soon forgotten.” I hasten to add that it covers dough kneaded by an invisible hand.

Bill Belicheck says his best pep talk consists of 3 words: “Do your job”. He was updating Alexander Pope who said, ”Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part. There all honor lies.”

For your next plane ride, I suggest “Property and Freedom” by Richard Pipes.

I am in your debt for breakfast for a second time, the first was in South Bend in 1994 and the second was 3 weeks ago.

Kevin Smith

PS – I enclose the web address of my blog-site for your edification and/or enjoyment. I am most proud that a sovereign nation, the Republic of South Africa, banned my writings as “offensive’. Also, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, yes, that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, sent the police to my house because of something that I wrote. One more thing, as Columbo would say. It may be time to bring back defenestration. If there is a window in the Golden Dome lure the football coach to it. Use a 19-year-old football [layer who wants to be insulted on national TV as the bait. When he gets there fling him as violently as possible through it. Gravity will do the rest.

Jimmy just sent me a Facebook entry saying that Seattle’s unemployment rate has declined since its minimum wage was raised. He is too good a friend and host for me to point out the 25-century old Logical fallacy of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. Modern American Liberals constantly and confusingly conflate causation with correlation. If it weren’t for tautologies the poor buggers would never use their brains at all. Also, if $15 an hour is good wouldn’t $26 an hour be better.? Is $38 an hour too much of a stretch? Bernie Sanders, who never earned a paycheck until he was 40, would be able to buy an additional set of drawers, this time silk, so he could fart through them. The next time we get together I will tell you of my Damascus moment in re economics when I was a lay missionary in Mexico

April 2, 2017

Kathleen Cannon – President

United Way of Broward County

1300 South Andrews Avenue

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316:

Ms. Cannon,

In your mini Op-Ed in today’s Sun Sentinel on “Women of Courage” you bemoan, not so subtly, the fact that 2 of the13 honorees would not have been allowed into this country if Trump’s travel ban had not been overturned. [That the above can be used to vindicate George C. Wallace’s belief in John C. Calhoun’s Theory of Nullification, the one that was rendered moot by force of arms at Appomattox, is indeed passing strange. You may remember that Governor Wallace stood in the doorway of the schoolhouse and told the Feds that they could not come in. They did but that’s a tale for a different time.]

It may or not be the case but are those 2 countries among the dozen or so Sharia-run countries that condone and encourage cliteroidectomies on pre-pubescent teenage girls? Did you know that there is a protocol for stoning women “taken in adultery”? The stones can neither be too big lest death come too quickly nor can they be too small lest the death agonies are made too prolonged. Plus, a quick rinse and the stones are reusable lest the stonee be Jewish.

Are these awards made posthumously? If they are I would like to nominate Antigone. Now that was a woman of courage. Even Creon, her killer, thought so. 25 centuries after the fact and maybe it’s time to honor her. Didn’t Chelsea Clinton just get a lifetime achievement award from some chick group with far too much time on its hands for being President of the Lucky Sperm club? And she didn’t even have to die!

Kevin Smith

April 2, 2017

Irela Bague – President

The Bague Group

15 Madeira Way #15

Coral Gables, FL 33134

Ms. Bague,

 “funding external outreach” 

“closing the racial gap in Global Warming”

“major inequities between diverse populations 

& the environmental movement”

From your website

  I am in awe of anyone who use terms like the above and not incur the wrath of Strunck & White and H.M. Fowler. Thoughts like that could awaken the Great Dr. Johnson, a wrath-filled Dr. Johnson.

You say kaddish for coal in your mini Op-Ed in today’s Sun Sentinel without mentioning a tumescently growing market for American coal.

Tom Steyer, hero to the wing-nut, moon bat, tree hugging loons, made billions of dollars selling “dirty” coal, coal which could not be burned in this country, to 3^rd Worlders. Coal, used in this country to provide electricity that powers A/Cs, must not exceed 1% sulfur. The Chinese and the Indians, the Gunga Din Indians, have no such qualms. Both countries build almost 4 new coal fired utilities a week. They have to burn something.

Why not American coal, produced in American mines, dug by American miners, carried on American trains, loaded on to American ships by American workers, and taken to foreign countries to be burned so that their people may both survive and prevail? These countries are not concerned with the undrowning of polar bears, the plight of the beleaguered furbish lousewort, or the threat of a soupcon of acid rain.

I hate to burst the bubble that is welded to your pretty little head but the abundance of natural gas, an abundance that can make this country energy independent before the end of Trump’s 2^nd term, has been caused by one thing. Drum roll, please. FRACKING. As to “renewable energy sources”…. I have some Solyndra solar panels at a great price.

Kevin Smith

PS: As to quotes from your website, “it sounds like bullshit to me”.

April 1, 2017

Congresslady Nancy Pelosi

90 7^th Street 2-800

San Francisco, CA 94103

MS Pelosi,

I have to limit myself to the number of responses to your quotidian output of the . egregiously asinine, Guinness Book dumb-ass remarks, you make constantly. I did say daily, didn’t I?

Your numbingly boobish remarks about Russia are worthy of special notice and even more special handling.

You say that Trump is an honorary member of the KGB. You say that he runs Karamazov study groups. You say that if he drank he would drink Stolichnaya and that if it was OK for Stalin it’s OK for him to like Putin.

When did the Democrats turn on the Russkies?

Walter Duranty, a favorite of the New Dealers when he won a Pulitzer Prize as the Foreign Correspondent of the New York Times, was a bought and paid for stooge of the KGB. The Dems loved him. Didn’t Alger Hiss, an ardent New Dealer, spend his entire adult life trying to get America to get along with the Russians? Didn’t Julie 7& Ethel Rosenberg give their lives for the same cause?

Modern American Liberals still loathe Nixon because he preached the old Russian adage “Just because a wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling”. Modern American Liberals despised Reagan for 2 reasons: #1 SDI – Not only did they hope it wouldn’t work, they prayed it couldn’t work and #2 – He preached the old Russian adage “Keep your ax handy.

If, as you say, the Russians committed an act of war, do you think we should lob one into the men’s room at the Kremlin? Do you think a line in the sand has lost its credibility?

Kumbaya, you twit. How’s Cindy Sheehan doing these days? 

Kevin Smith