August 29, 2018 Randy Schultz The Sun Sentinel

August 29, 2018

Randy Schultz

The Sun Sentinel

Mr. Schultz,

A big fat juicy target, akin to Keats’s “new planet swimming into view”, has precluded my response to your weekly quasi-screed that is, as usual, a POO [Perpetually Outraged and Offended] lamentation concentrating on what rat bastards those Republicans are.

Anytime someone like Mark Reynolds shows up with a “Please Kick Me Before I Do It Again” billboard around his torso, well, attention must be paid. God’s Holy Trousers, but he is something. I hope he becomes a regular. He’s better than Viagra.

But I haven’t forgotten you: 2 things.

#1 -You say that a Rick Scott ad would have been better if he had told the truth. Would you care to comment on 3 ads in 48 years – 1916, 1940, & 1964 – by 3 different   Presidents – Wilson, Roosevelt, & Johnson – all of whom happened to have been Democrats, that they would not send American boys to fight in foreign wars?

#2 – “Losing a job can push people into poverty.” Ya think? Move over Trollope. How about “Rain will wet you”? Or “Snow is cold”? “Fire burns”? The possibilities are endless. Stones are hard; water is wet?

Pop quiz. Should the Governor order a special prosecutor to look into Gillum’s graft and bribery ties? Also, should he be elected, will he adopt the traditional Cuban model, with a bow to Bulgaria, road to Socialism or the more Millennial oriented Venezuelan template with a bow to Zimbabwe AKA, Shining Path to Scientific Socialism?

It seems to me that more than a century after the USSR stopped exporting wheat and 60 years after the Castros took over the casinos and 20 years after Chavez repealed all the laws governing gravity, Socialists world-wide have the same 3 insurmountable problems: A – Breakfast B – Lunch – Dinner.

Get back to me when UBER figures out where Utopia is and will I finally get to cross the horizon to get to it.

Kevin Smith

August 29, 2018 Mark Reynolds The Sun Sentinel

August 29, 2018

Mark Reynolds

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Have you tried the legendary and quite successful Canute model on dealing with sea levels? Some comments on your unscientific – At least you didn’t use the word consensus, a word that describes Quint, the Sharker in Jaws, dragging his fingernails across the blackboard - cup runneth over verbal diarrhea on Global Cooling which morphed into Global Warming which jumped the shark of Climate Destruction and landed, like the proverbial big old turd in the Sun Sentinel Op-Ed punch bowl today.

Mr. Reynolds,

Just when I thought I was out they – grifters, louts, charlatans, buffoons, and ohmadahns – pull me back in. Just when I was going to start a pool aimed at Progressive modern American Liberal wing-nut moon bats who believe, sincerely, that gravity is an option, subject to enlightened legislation, whether Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, who is, as of today, about 2 lengths ahead of the FBI, favors the traditional Cuban model of Socialism or the more aggressive “Speed the Plow”, “Force the Spring”, screw up a wet dream, eat the zoo animals, when do we get to the unicorn ranch and rainbow stew collective, Venezuelan model of Socialism. 

Before I get to your offensive to Logic statements, and why did we outlaw flogging, there is a point of personal privilege I must address. You use the word existential as if you know what it means. Like gravitas from the 2000 election, it is a word that means all things to all men. That means it has no meaning. One of my minors in college was Philosophy. The only existential threat I see is when loutish churls, people like you, having become expert in sticking their head up their ass and seeing it tattooed somewhere decide it is a sign from above that they have the universal “fill in any empty blank space” word. The only existential threat you face is that I will beat you senseless for violating a sacred dialectic.

Like I said, a brief digression.

You say that Hurricane Katrina “left 1836 people dead”. Small potatoes; chump change. The 1908 hurricane in Galveston killed either side of 10,000 Texans. The Florida hurricane of 1925 tore up 100 miles of railroad. The hurricane that landed on Long Island in 1938 created the Shinnecock inlet by cutting an island in half. Look them up.

What man-made actions caused them?

How about Krakatoa? How about Mt. Pinatubo? How about the Yellowstone Basin? Aren’t we past due there? Did fracking cause them?

Would I be on strong scientific grounds if I were to say that the last Ice Age was stopped by Global Warming? Let me answer that. Yes.

See if you can follow this tricky quasi-algorithm.

About 10 centuries ago there was an upward spike in temperature in Western Europe. It gets a bit tricky here so, if possible, pay close attention More land became more arable. More protein, both animal and vegetable became available to more people. 

More people became smarter. It may be an egregious example of conflating causation and correlation but along came the Renaissance. Unless you have a problem with Dante

and Petrarch you would be well advised to keep your doubts to yourself. 

About 5 centuries ago there was a downward spike in temperature in Western Europe. It was called the Medieval Little Ice Age. About 150 years later a man named Stradivarius noticed that the annual rings on some cedar trees were much tighter. About 1100 of the stringed instruments he crafted survived. $2,000,000 is the opening bid on any of them that come to the market. Did the Medicis or the Borgias cause that? You say that a “Yale study found that 77% of U.S. adults believe” …. something or the other. I have a Yale survey that says 100% of everybody alive today will die. Nobody is going to get out of here alive. Can I stretch the envelope to include “filled with sound and fury signifying nothing”?

You say that “Curbelo’s bill is a major crack in the dam holding back effective climate legislation”. That would be absurd on its face but you believe it, don’t you? Let’s legislate against hurricanes, earthquakes, cyclones, unplanned eclipses, both solar, lunar, and intergalactic. Let’s make rainy weekends illegal. Also, teenage bullying and obesity. How about making Solyndra solar panels mandatory on public housing. Talk about shovel-ready jobs!

“The terrifying vortex of fire that swept through Redding, California is the latest Pearl Harbor moment for climate change in a year filled with such moments” bespeaks a mind overcome with Homeric ignorance. Did the evil Trump cause Mrs. O’Leary’s cow to burn down Chicago? How about Rome? Is Nero off the hook? There is a Russian River in California. Did they cause the San Francisco earthquake? I beg you not to handle sharp instruments or to operate heavy equipment.

Whatever happened to Ptolemy? The consensus of scientists for fifteen friggin’ centuries said that the science was settled. Here was the earth and here was the sun and that was that. If you objected you were killed. Along came a Pole and an Eye-Tie and all those books became obsolete. Burn them, right?

“Triple-digit temperatures in California….” + “Hundreds of deaths around the world” + “Smoke from western wildfires is drifting east…” is still more empirical evidence that absent tautologies – circular reasoning for the uninitiated – modern American Liberals, and they are always easy to spot because using both hands and having someone read their GPS to them, they still couldn’t find their ass would never have to use their brains.

You look like you are old enough to know better. Silly me. I have a ball cap that says ‘PROUD GLOBAL WARMER”. Want one?

Is there anyone out there who will “calm the seas and cool the earth” or was that just Sophistry?

Kevin Smith

PS – You are opposed to single use plastic, like in straws and hospitals, right? But you are strongly in favor of nuclear power as the only possible replacement for fossil fuels, right? Or are  you just a closeted Luddite?

August 26, 2018 Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor The Sun Sentinel

August 26, 2018

Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Judges and grinding other axes – Some comments on the shortcomings of Judge Scherer as seen through the eyes of an ink-stained modern American Liberal.

MS O,

Your capacity to shock, to shock is a testament to my septuagenarian naivete. You would think by now it would have ben beaten out of me.

You say that Judge Scherer, she of the latest outrage, outrage to uber-sensitive, self-appointed guardians of some of the Bill of Rights, lacks gravitas, a word from the election of 2000, remember, got her job because her father knew the Governor.

For this revelation I confess that I am shocked, shocked.

Would I be a “green suited cad” if I were to ask how John McCain got into the Naval Academy? And then, despite an abysmal academic record, got into flight school and, further, despite abysmal personal evaluations, got his wings? If I were to tell you that he was the son and grandson of Admirals would that be a surprise? Actually, it adds to his warrior status. Achilles, John Waldron, Ulysses, John Basilone,  Cervantes, and Stephen Gregg will still welcome him.

Pray tell me how all those Kennedys got in and stayed in at all those Ivy League schools? Papa Joe, Hitler’s not so secret admirer, began the tradition of being The Juice Man, remember? He called in a marker he had on Senator McCarthy – Joe, not Gene – to get Bobby his first job as a government attorney. Then his brother hired him to be his Attorney General because, as he said, he wanted to give him some legal assistance. You can call the current cabal of Kennedy freeloaders a lot of things but “bright” ain’t one of them. 

Didn’t Congresswoman Carrie Meek bequeath her son Kendrick the Mediocre her seat in Congress without dying? You betcha.

I thought it was verboten for anyone, particularly modern American Liberals who deem themselves guardians of public group-think, to interfere with the judicial process? That once lawyers, the first target of Shakespeare’s purge, put on black robes they become 10-foot-tall and bulletproof from the slings and arrows of not quite deplorable journalists.

Some good things have come out of your editorial.

Running for the bench is like trying to become a little bit pregnant. “Politics ain’t beanbag”, remember? You step into the arena pf public choice and you expect to be pummeled and reviled with billingsgate. But here the candidate can’t fling it back. Unnatural. And it is an offense to the First Amendment.

My personal solution to the soto vocce appeal for judicial votes is simple and direct. I will no longer vote for any of them. They’re on their own. I will keep my 54-year voting streak alive by voting for the least evil of two lessers down the ticket

As an aside to the Please Vote to make me a Judge mailing pieces – How many trees had to die and how much polar bear drowning petrochemicals were used to stuff my mail box? – if the candidate does not list the law school they attended it’s a chalk bet that their degree is from Nova. I don’t want to say that the Broward Judiciary is overrun with incest but most of them can look through a key hole with both eyes.

Here are a few “what ifs”.

What if Nikolas Cruz’s name was Ricky Ray Rector?

What if Bill and Hillary ran the state?

What would be the odds that the alleged perpetrator would be toe-tagged by election day?

Quick ending: Should the plans for a 3-D printing of a plastic gun, a gun absolutely undetectable by current technology, be printed in a book which somehow was able to overcome the homeless barricade at the main library and wind up on its shelves, would you support the removal and burning of said book?

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

August 25, 2018 Randy Schultz The Sun Sentinel

 August 25, 2018

Randy Schultz

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Addendum, not erratum, to my “rant” of 8/23/18 about the Broward Board of Education spending new tax dollars “responsibly”.

Mr. Schultz,

You say, with nary a hint of irony, sarcasm, or a nod to sardonicism that “most voters don’t distinguish between operating expenses and capital expenses”. There is, of course, the modern American Liberal genetic predisposition to looking down on the deplorable pieces of shit who make up the “lesser breeds” of the American electorate. 

I am a voter and, yes, I can distinguish between the two.

 In my other life I was the CFO of a public company so I became biblically familiar with the impedimenta of 10Ks. Signing them causes one to concentrate fully on the consequences. Also, I was General Partner and Tax Managing Partner of 7 distinct partnerships. They did not require 10Ks but had to have certified statements. A layman’s definition of them was simple: If it took more than 2 paragraphs for the accountants to explain what they were opining on it was like a fart in church. Please note that I did not use the more offensive “turd in a punch bowl”.

I am quite sure that you, as the paradigmatic template of an ink stained POOmAL, that’s real-world shorthand for Perpetually Outraged and Offended modern American Liberal, and as such you are genetically repelled by husbandry of any sort wretch, you should feel feel ill at ease when things such as retained earnings, ROIC, recapture, and loss-carry forward are mentioned. 

It’s OK because as Inspector Callahan said, “It’s a wise man who knows his limitations.”

Anyway, your elitist scorn must extend to B of E aparatchiks.

In 1997 I presented myself to the public information window of the Broward Board of Education seeking a copy of the proposed budget. I was told that none was available but the earnest bureaucrat in training offered me a pie chart.

It fell to me to explain, using only declarative sentences, short, simple declarative sentences, the difference between capital items and expense items. Sensing that my excellent tutorial was bringing on the MEGO – My Eyes Glaze Over – look I switch to a full-bore version of Ockham’s Razor.

“The kitchen of every school in Broward County has at least one large shiny metal box. Sometimes there are 2 or 3 of them. They are called refrigerators and because they are expected to have a use life of at least 3 years they are called capital items. Inside the box you can find small boxes filled with milk, with juice, with yogurt, with environmentally sensitive other diverse things. Since they have a shelf life of considerably less than 3 years, they are called expense items.”

I asked her if she thought I was going too fast.

Since bureaucrats – “flack catchers”, no? – can take anything but contempt, she was angry. And apparently, they have stayed angry through 4 Presidents and 4 Governors.

Since these loutish churls think that the money they spend is theirs I wouldn’t trust them any farther than I could fling any of those shiny metal boxes in the kitchen.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

August 23, 2018 Randy Schultz The Sun Sentinel

August 23, 2018

Randy Schultz

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Some comments on your Op-Ed of August 22, 2018 why Broward voters should give drunken sailors and besotted Injuns still more fire water. I daresay that your unlinkable column shows why Logic, teenage bullying, and the heartbreak of psoriasis will be anathema, should a nut case like Senator SummerFallWinterWarren dump Trump and take over.

Mr. Schultz,

“BROWARD MUST SHOW VOTERS TAX

INCREASE WILL BE SPENT RESPONSIBLY”

I don’t know if quoting African Bishops is playing to your strong suit but Augustine, a “clean and articulate” community activist from almost 2 millennia ago said, “Lord, make me strong. Tomorrow.” Wasn’t it Wimpy, he of Popeye fame, who said, indeed made a living, “I will gladly pay you on Thursday for a hamburger I eat on Monday”? 

Is that headline you or The Onion?

Who writes your stuff? Mel Brooks? Professor Irwin Corey? George Costanza? Kramer? Maxine Waters?

Lest you think I am a modern-day Jeremiah, one given to perpetual Lamentations 

that would shame Chicken Little, I am about to pay a back-handed compliment.

You mention Northeast High School by saying “the cost of renovating it has increased from $14.5 million to $41.2 million”.

Has titanium replaced steel?

Since guns are verboten will a moat be installed?

Will an emergency trauma unit, complete with a triage station, be installed?

Will the moat double as a dunking pool for bullies?

Your mention of a not-quite tripling of construction costs – and Yes, I have GCed several multi-million-dollar construction projects in my other life -  suggests that you are not part of the real world. My “real world” is the one where “water is wet and stones are hard” and deplorable pieces of shit have to clean up after the elephant tramples Granny’s garden. That world.

If costs on a publicly funded project triple, my Hudson County DNA kicks in in a most tumescent manner. How much of the difference between $14.5 and $41.2 winds up in white envelopes distributed in the parking lot of an upscale Eye-Tie bistro? If burglars are not leading this thievery then we must assume incompetence on a scale that only Zeus or veterans of the CCC could appreciate.

Somebody should be bastinadoed. Repeatedly. And then spayed. This line must end.

Napoleon would execute 3 poilus for cowardice before a battle. He said it “encouraged the others”.

Shoot the bastards at Northeast High School. Put their heads on pikes. Let crows eat out their eyes. That leads me to my compliment.

With the possible exception of Brasilia, which I have not seen, Northeast High School, as an example of public architecture from design to construction to upkeep and maintenance, is the worst, the pits, the nadir, the how can it be any uglier and Deo Gracias for Albert Speer or it really would be unique. Should Howard Roarke suddenly appear he would lead a Kamikaze attack against it. Add the last 50 years of Frank Gehry to the Death Row list also.

Russell Kirk, certainly one of the very great men of letters in the 20^th century – You cannot “know” Edmund Burke and T.S. Eliot without Kirk – said that ugly public architecture leads to riots with race becoming the acceptable scapegoat. He cites the razing of Detroit to save it with public housing and the Shermanesque march across the Bronx led by Robert Moses NY to give White people an escape hatch out a “changing” city. Any chance to mention Kirk makes the day a blessed one.

[The Sword of Imagination by Kirk is still an absolute joy.]

Speaking of “tax money on education being spent responsibly”, we are 40+ plus years into the Department of Education. It’s about the same number of the Department of Energy but, curses, fracking has altered the comparison so let’s just stick to one comparison.

Let’s start the baseline at one day before the arrival of the DoE swag. Let’s take the reading scores of Johnny, Fatima, and Little Jezdrul as a given. How much have they improved since Federal dollars rode to the rescue?

I sat on one Board of Review for a Boy Scout to attain the rank of Eagle, the highest honor that a Scout can earn. He never earned it because he lacked the necessary backup documents for it to begin. Plus, there was past history of poor performance. 

The same procedures should apply to the BofE plea for an unending line of credit from the citizens of Broward County to spend $ like a – pick one – drunken sailors or lit up Payutes? How did they ever beat Custer? Russian collusion?

That was the only Board of Review I ever sat on.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH,NET

August 20, 2018 Governor Andrew Coumo

August 20, 2018

Governor Andrew Coumo,

Brother William Francis, FMS; Brother Ignatius Anthony, FMS; Brother Vincent Jerome, FMS; Brother James Gerard, FMS; Brother Christopher Robert, FMS; Brother Kevin Luke, FMS; Brother Raymond Richard, FMS; Brother Thomas Alban, FMS; Brother Hugh Arthur, FMS; Brother Leo Francis, FMS, Brother Charles Marcelin, FMS; and, of course, Brother Leo Sylvius, FMS. 

Recognize any of those names? 

They were some of the Marist Brothers at Marist High School in Bayonne, NJ. That there may have been some overlap when you were at Archbishop Malloy in Queens. That you were always available as a RC,mAL –[Retired Catholic, modern American Liberal] beach balloon-sized target of opportunity, there is no doubt. That I pulled back, not out of fear of missing the target, but rather out of concern that I may have, as is my wont, of hitting it too well and disturbing some of the above-mentioned Brothers

I am cured of that dread because whatever your academic strong points were American History was not one of them.

[I cannot mention the name Cuomo, father or son, without mentioning 2 letters, both unanswered. One went to your father while the other went to you. Your father gave a speech at Notre Dame where he said that while he was personally opposed to abortion he had no choice but to uphold it because it was the law of the land. I avoided the obvious Thomas More example, the Gandhi example, the Maximillian Kolbe example, the Solzhenitsyn example, the MIndszenty example, the Martin Luther King example, the Mandela example – Doubtless we can stipulate that the above is a list of super stars, yes? – of men, who facing the same choice, chose the heroic path. The question I asked was what if you were the Governor when Dred Scott was on the loose and he was captured in New York. Would you have ignored the legal request for his extradition, remembering that the Constitution specifically mentions it, in Article IV, Section 1? “Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state”. At least Hobson gave you a choice, however limited. Here, none was allowed. Would you have succumbed to the discredited on the field of battle Theory of Nullification of John C. Calhoun or would you have put his felonious Black ass back on the midnight train to Dixie? I am not going to get an answer from your father but how about you?]

Thus the template, not the paradigmatic template of “eclectic indignation” and political cognitive dissonance, without which modern American Liberals would surely go quite mad, I mean absolutely bonkers, if they possessed even a sliver of their souls, but the one that I hope you did not learn from either of the first 2 mentioned Brothers.

I can begin my History lesson with a clear conscience and a light hand.

Can we make America “great” again? Or, to quote you, “It never was that great”, remember?

Let us count the ways and note the dates.

July 4, 1776 – The Declaration of Independence. The codification of rights “that were ours from beyond the stars”. If that’s not great you will not like the next one.

September 17, 1787 – The Constitution. What government can do, and more importantly, what government cannot do. That’s pretty great too.

April 12, 1865 – Appomattox, Virginia – Dred Scott is repealed. Also great, too.

September 2, 1945 – Tokyo Bay - “These proceedings are closed.” Was there ever a country more powerful than we were that day? We rebuilt our enemies and guarded the World. If that ain’t “great” what the Hell is?

July 21, 1969 – The moon. Or to cite The Onion, “the firggin’ moon”. And back.

November 30, 1989 – The Wall comes down, the Russkies are beaten and the World is saved, Thanks Ron, plus a tip of the hat to the Polish Pope and Lady Thatcher.

And now, if we listen to the wing-nut moon bats who serenade you like you were a half-assed Ulysses, the only thing holding back mankind from reaching and stepping over the horizon, is that silly law involving gravity. That’s the first thing on the list next time you get the whip hand.

Kevin Smith

Marist High School – 1961

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – addendum – I mentioned a few big great things. Here’s a little great thing that shows how “great” America was and how great she can be. No apologies. No excuses. No global mea culpa tour. September 22, 1948 – Captain Gale Halverson, United States Air Force, commanding a C-54, opened his window and “parachuted” out a whole bunch of Hershey Chocolate Bars, all of which had almonds. He was on final approach to Templehof Air Field, Berlin. It was the Berlin Air Lift. A whole lot of kids thought he was “great” and that America was “great”. Do you? Does “Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself has said, ’This is my own, my native land’”? I guess you haven’t. Your loss. As Marley said, “Save yourself” or “your fate is stark and plain, unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung”.

August 12, 2018 Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor The Sun Sentinel

August 12, 2018

Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor

The Sun Sentinel

RE: A target-rich environment – Everything except the classified ads enters the ten ring in today’s Sun Sentinel plus the serendipitous arrival of the New York Times. Modern American Liberalism at its tumescent best.

Ms. O’Hara,

Where to begin?

Let’s start with “Should Broward School Superintendent Runcie be fired?”

For decades I have been advocating that educators be held to the same high standards that are demanded of high school football coaches.

17 people were killed on his watch.

Eisenhower wrote a letter of resignation in case D-Day turned out like Dieppe. Either Killer Cruz was in the Promise Program or he wasn’t. It can’t be both. Runcie tried to square that circle. [Am I the only one to notice that Promise, an evil spawn of Obama, Holder, and Duncan, is predicated on the bed-rock modern American liberal premise that man is perfectible and that human nature, unlike the stripes on a cat, can change? It may work if Father Flanagan is the paradigmatic template for forming social policy, with a thankful bow to the George Costanza School of Public Policy and Personal Probity, but only if you forget the Chicago example of this weekend. That’s the one where the adage “Never bring a knife to a gun fight” and its corollary, “Get in their face” was proved empirically correct.

 Let me ask, somewhat gratuitously, ‘cuz I know the answer, whether those 3 DC swells sent their children to public schools? Don’t be silly. And since Obama lived rent-free in public housing he was better able to afford the $60,000 tuition, lunch included, for each of his children in a school that was redolent with classic White Privilege.

As to Runcie, “Fire his ass”. Yesterday.

Doug Hyde, your lachrymose sports commentator who really, really wants to toil for the Nation – Whatever happened to just telling me who won the Goddamn game? – just informed me of the right of NFL players to protest. They don’t have that right. If they choose to protest and are willing to accept the consequences – think Socrates, Saul of Tarsus, Abelard, Thomas More, Sydney Carton, Joseph Smith, Thoreau, Norman Thomas, Gandhi, Maximillian Kolbe, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Curt Flood – go for it.

 Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? si. Long snapper, wedge buster, or 3^rd down nickel back? No.

Your endorsement of Ashley Moody for Attorney General in the Republican primary includes the damning with faint praise, dog whistle words “smart, attractive and well spoken”. That’s almost as good as Curley Biden’s praise of Senator Barack H. Obama, noted Chicago community activist, whose first job as a Senator was to get his wife a $4,000 a week raise, paid for by a $1,000,000 earmark to the University of Chicago Hospital where she was in charge of midnight shift bed pan inventory and single-use plastic environmentally sensitive disposal procedures, taking into account the wishes of the indigenous population. Biden said Obama was “clean and articulate”.

You may want to look both up.

You condemn her opponent, Frank White, thusly: “White has never so much as prosecuted a single case.” 

Neither did Bobby Kennedy.

 Earl Warren and William O. Douglas never donned silk until their nominations to the Supreme Court. [Indeed, Brennan was a recess appointment] Eric Holder’s main experience was vetting pardons – a task for which Hillary Clinton’s brothers were well paid, remember? – for President Handsome Billy from Hot Springs, the King of the One-Eyed Trouser Snakes.

Would it be showing a bit too much cheek if I were to point out that before Senator Hugo Black became Justice Black he was a cross burning, Nigrah whippin’, lynching Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan? Ditto Senator Robert Byrd [D-WVA] who despite being a top recruiter for the Klan went on to become the “Cicero of the Senate”. If he had he would not have died in his bed.

You criticize Frank White for spending his family’s money. How did we wind up with a plague of Kennedys in pubic office? Is it morally neutral for Jeff Greene to spend his own money, money made by betting against the American housing industry? What about Murphy of Pam Beach, proud member of the Lucky Sperm Club, who used his daddy’s swag to contend for a statewide office? Tom Steyer, he of the sainted resistance, made his swag by selling “dirty” coal, coal which could not be legally burned in any state in this country, to the Chinese and the Red Dot Indians. What the Hell, they’re “lesser breeds”, right? George Soros went from being a zonderkommando for Hitler to being a party apparatchik for Stalin before he started to rob banks. I don’t recall any highly dudgeoned modern American Liberal editorials condemning his money

Greene made a fortune betting against American homeowners while Steyer actively supported the release of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide. Baby seals must love him because he killed so many polar bears that the seals are about to invade Minnesota, Michigan, New York, and Maine. Maybe we should rethink getting rid of ICE, no?

Irela Bague tells us in her mini Op-Ed that the California fires were caused by the “trends of global warming of the last century”. Yet again the confusing conflation of causation and correlation and why, absent tautologies, modern American Liberals would never ever have to use their brain. It was Samuel Johnson who warned us of the troubles caused by “wretched, un-idea’d girls”. Is it too late to support Margaret Sanger’s ideas on eugenics?

But I digress.

All right-minded people hate political gridlock. Let’s run this up the old political flag pole and see who salutes. A Governor of one political party tells the Attorney General of a different political party to pursue a particular legal policy. He refuses. An unlike-minded AG gets a court order that the Governor refuses to enforce. And you think it’s bad in Washington? How about gun fights in Tallahassee?

All my Texas ladies are in town. In addition to some early Sunday AM goodies they got me the Sunday NY Times. It has not been in my house for 15 years.

I stopped doing the NYT crossword puzzle on Monday, October 3, 1999.  I did my last puzzle, in ink of course, in ink, on a flight from Dallas to Fort Lauderdale. It was witnessed by Tom Fiedler, one-time Big Boss of the Miami Herald and now head of all the ink-stained wench and wretch wanabees at Boston University. When I stopped I was approaching B+ status.

 I stopped reading the Times during the first week of March, 2003.

 You may recall that the United States was preparing to go to war, a war that was authorized by some 3/4s of Congress, against Iraq. I stopped reading the NYT because, by then, it had devoted more Page 1 coverage to whether or not chicks would be allowed to join the August National Golf Club, home of the Masters. To coin a word – gravitas – a word made fashionable by Bush-loathing modern American Liberals – “Bush-loathing modern American Liberals”? Did I just repeat myself in a regrettably redundant manner? You betcha - in 2000 when he picked Cheney because he lacked gravitas and Cheney, despite his lamentable myriad faults, didn’t. Who cares about the ladies’ tees as long as they get the meat loaf right and the shirts lightly starched and ironed and only say no when someone tries to sell them magazines.

My decision to stop reading the NYT was not made lightly. Despite their acquiescence in calling Lincoln a “baboon” in 1864, coupled with their tacit approval of slavery the same year and then, 68 years later, their collusion with the Russkies, the wardens of the Evil Empire, in their attempt to take over the world [vide Walter Duranty] I grew up with the NYT. My father used to read the 2 Arthurs – Krock and Daley – to me every Sunday beginning when Truman was first President.  Does anyone else remember that H.L. Matthews indeed did help Fidel Castro get his job? How about Harrison Salisbury canonizing Ho Chi Minh? How About Howell Raines canonizing himself? How about various Sulzbergers offering proof positive that there should be a 105% estate tax whenever the media is involved. Jayson Blair, who worked the Affirmative Action White guilt trip life plan, like a Swiss watch, Allesandra Stanley who couldn’t lie straight in bed, Ali Watkins, who minored in the famous Horizontal Tango and banged her way to the top, and now Sarah Jeong, who is the opposite of Will Rogers in that she never saw a Caucasian she liked are, to cite noted pundit Willie Nelson, “Reasons to Quit”, in this case the New York Times

It didn’t take a 12-Step program.

I don’t know whether it’s terminal but their “non-olfactory fecal matter syndrome” is suffocating. In Sunday’s NYT Book Review, a man named Michael Roth takes aim at Roger Scruton and his book “Conservatism” by saying that while Edmund Burke may have opposed slavery a lot of conservatives did not.

Pot, I would like you to meet kettle. Or maybe having a working knowledge of the NYT is not necessary to review books as long as the “good guys”, modern American Liberals all, come out on top.

Sandra Barnard-Bastien, in her mini Op-Ed takes somewhat neutral view on whether or not the Sandy Hook shooting occurred. Hillary Clinton implied that Obama may have been born in Kenya. Van Jones and Rosie O’Donnell said that the WTC was blown up by the Feds. 

What is truth?

KEVIN SMITH

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – Tell Fred Grimm that when Florida’s coral reefs finally, finally die I will say an environmentally sensitive kaddish for them. Also, the NYT business section is simply terrible. Basic info and its accompanying data are not to be found. If God is in the details maybe He is dead.

   

August 6, 2018 Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor The Sun Sentinel

August 6, 2018

Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Jeff Greene for Governor – Some comments on your editorial endorsement for Governor, a one-time devoted capitalist.

Ms. O’Hara,

Your editorial endorsement of Jeff Greene, coupled with his myriad TV ads promising to “stop Trump on day one”, led me to some serious Historical head scratching. Clio, my favorite Muse, was pestered with my inquiries.

Revealing my elitist background – I went to private schools and I read a lot – convinced me that John C. Calhoun was still dead.

By any standard, save for results, the one fluid template that modern American Liberals must never acknowledge lest they go mad and drown in the River Styx, the one where the freshet of “false news” is always at flood stage, Calhoun was one of the most interesting characters this country has ever produced. Not too many of today’s pols can claim to be fluent in Latin and Greek and to being an honors graduate of Yale College. It must be noted that he was no stranger to the Trivium. Also, no one else ever resigned from the Vice Presidency over a matter of principle. It must also be noted that Andrew Jackson, the President under whom he served and the man that today’s Democrats, spineless shits all, stopped using his name to sell mid-winter dinner tickets, said his biggest public regret was not executing him for treason.

I told you I read a lot.

Unless Governor Greene orders the Florida National Guard to shoot down Air Force One when it enters Florida air space how can he “stop him on day one”?

Lyndon Johnson stopped construction on Interstate 10 in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana because he didn’t like Boss Leander Perez’s views on education. Johnson nullified the nullifier which brings us back to Calhoun.

Calhoun’s Theory of Nullification, simply put, says that states don’t have to follow Federal law if they don’t like it. [Governor Faubus, Governor Barnett, Governor Wallace, call your offices]

His interesting theory was put to test on the field of combat and found wanting, woefully wanting. Except when “eclectic indignation” allows modern American Liberals to stand athwart History and say “Stop”.

But there is no sense in being a half-assed modern American Liberal.

He said he would fully fund Planned Parenthood.

He said he would support single payer health care.

Did he say he would “cool the earth and calm the seas”? Not yet, but he will.

Will “Midnight Basketball” be made mandatory?

Will manatees vote?

Will he build affordable housing by shorting the mortgage market like last time?

62% of Florida’s voters said “NO” to Same sex marriage. If fact, it has never been approved by voters anywhere and any place it has been on any ballot. How will he “stand up to Trump” on this? The Supreme Court has signed off on this. Can he tell us of any other Supreme Court decisions he will support?

One of my children was bullied in grammar school. I stopped it the old-fashioned Bayonne, NJ way. Interested? Send a SASE.

If, as his ads say, he “has experience in building affordable housing”, why didn’t he? Did any of his “experience” use tax shelters, schemes, or quasi-fraud artifices to get the Federal government to bear a disparate share of the risk? 

There is one positive thing he has done.

He has made Philip Levine, he of the magical Miami Beach pumps [Where does that water go?] look like an odd-lotter.

The Brothers Koch, George Soros, Tom Steyer, he of the dirty coal, and now Jeff Greene. At least they’re spending their own money.

KEVIN SMITH

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – Indeed, a touching story about his father dying at the age of 51 as he worked to support his family. My father was 26 years old before he went to high school. When he died he was a Judge. His law school yearbook says he would “hark to a wager”.

I am less than 10 feet from an autographed picture of the “Enola Gay”.

August 3, 2018

I am less than 10 feet from an autographed picture of the “Enola Gay”. It is signed by the chief negotiator of the most successful arms limitation treaty of the 20^th century. He was also the pilot of the B29 that delivered the first atomic bomb dropped in anger. Paul Tibbetts led the negotiations, and it must be said that they were full and frank with an open discussion of opposing viewpoints. The talks lasted 3 days – August 6, 1945 to August 9, 1945. The treaty was signed on September 2, 1845 in Tokyo harbor with 1000 American planes flying overhead. General MacArthur, with his customary flourish, said “These proceedings are closed”. 

73 years later and we still enjoy a nuclear-free zone, viz, the Earth. Way to go, Paulie!

Directly above the picture is a scroll memorializing the death of Corporal Leonard W. Putnam who died “in the Pacific area on May 25, 1945”. It was signed by President Harry Truman. His upper right torso was blown off by a Japanese mortar shell on Okinawa. He was a 42-year-old piano salesman from Jersey City, NJ who married my wife’s Aunt Millie.

At the end of “The Bridges of Toko-Ri”, the Admiral, played superbly well by Frederic March, says, upon being informed of the death of a Naval aviator on this mission,  “Where do we find such men?”

Would I be “painting the lily” if I were to point out that these men weren’t snowflakes and that these men created their own safe spaces wherever they went and that we are forever in their debt?

No.

“The whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men.”

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET