Posts
February 1, 2010
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Move over Jimmuh Carter. More mush from the wimp. Some thoughts on your continuing descent into territory marked by warnings not to handle heavy machinery or work with sharp objects. Sunday’s offering in the Sun-Sentinel is called “Time for the Party to send the GOP reeling”.
My dear Professor,
Can we stipulate that the last good Republican was Abraham Lincoln?
The names Javits and Weicker have been struck from the register. Danforth may have made the cut except for his sponsorship of Clarence Thomas. That leaves Jeffords and Specter. I don’t expect that either will be in the new edition of “Profiles in Courage”. You can have them.
Perhaps you can explain to my why, if deficits under Bush were bad, deficits under Obama are good?
You say that the stimulus money “created or saved an estimated 87,000 jobs”. Could you tell me the methodology you used to get to that number?
You say that “employment will improve when 524 stimulus-funded highway projects begin” in Florida.
Has the term “shovel ready” been sent down the memory hole so beloved of modern American Liberals? It is now more than a year since the stimulus package became law. We were told that unemployment would level off at 8%. It is now above 10%. What happened? Where did the money go?
Why should the Chinese continue to lend us money to build roads in Florida?
You say that “it’s time to end [what should be illegal] fixing of district lines”. Maybe you were taking Kumbaya bel canto lessons. Maybe you were trying to pass the ERA. Perhaps you were ministering to non-gendered illegal aliens. Maybe you were working on manatee suffrage and 5th trimester abortions. Whatever you were doing you missed the bargain struck by an electoral Mephistopheles. With prominent Democrat Elbridge Gerry as the guide a number of exclusively Colored, Negro, African-American, Black seats were created.
Districts were drawn in such a manner that a candidacy by O.J. Simpson or Michael Jackson would be successful.
Congresswoman Carrie Meek willed her seat to her son Kendrick Meek-lite. That she did so while breaking the first rule of Probate Court – Somebody has to die – is a testament to a new chapter in estate planning.
Florida bypassed the time required for new members of Congress to get felonious intentions. The election of Alcee Hastings, an already convicted felon, is a testament to good husbandry.
You say that “Florida’s $1,500,000,000 investment in places like Scripps and Max Planck will never work”. They might not. Why then do you think “524 stimulus-funded highway projects” will work?
Speaking of Republicans do you think there is any hope for Scott Brown?
Thank you for translating “mitzvah” for the goyim among us.
After Obama finishes his much anticipated English-Austrian dictionary he can work on English-Yiddish. He’ll have no trouble defining “putz”.
Your picture is worth 1,000 words.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald
January 31, 2010
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Words have consequences – An attempt to find out what you meant in your op-ed in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
“And the Bauers of this world need to know:
Sometimes stray animals bite.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
The “stray animals” are the poor people that South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer referred to by citing a lesson his grandmother taught him. “Don’t feed stray animals. It allows them to reproduce.”
I don’t know how old his grandmother was when she told him that. It is possible that she was influenced by Margaret Sanger, the patron saint of modern American Liberalism, who championed birth control and abortion as a means of culling the herd of undesirables. Hitler was so taken by her works that he used them as the basis for his 1934 Nuremberg Race Laws. Just one more example of the unintended consequences of words carelessly strewn about.
You tell us that they may “bite”.
I paraphrased Richard Weaver. “Ideas Have Consequences”
Do you mean that they will “bite” like the Helots did when they turned on their Spartan masters?
Do you mean that they will “bite” like Spartacus?
Do you mean that the Bastille already having been stormed that the next logical target will be the White House?
Do you mean that there will be a replay of “Ten Days That Shook the World”?
Do you mean that Howard Fast novels and Howard Zinn menaderings will give us lessons on how, when, and who to “bite”?
You say that “they” didn’t get out of New Orleans because “they” had neither cars nor credit cards. [Why New Orleans let 250 buses sit in a compound until they became waterlogged and useless is for a different discussion. The question of why the Mayor went to Houston is still open.] So there is no misunderstanding “they” are the poor urban Blacks that Kanye West told us were not Bush’s best buds.
You make mention of two men fighting each other while they are in a sinking boat. The analogy was first used by Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman to describe the mutual assured destruction of xenophobic trade policies. When ever elephants fight the one sure victim is the grass. Every time any “Buy American” policy gains traction there is one group of people destined to suffer the most. You guessed it. “They” will get still more lashes on their already bashed, bruised, and bloody backsides. Last ones hired; first ones fired.
The best cure, the only cure for, forgive me, “poorness” is a job.
Yet again, as an aside, when was the last time you heard the term “shovel ready” being said without snickering guffaws accompanying it?
Alas, to the consternation of modern American Liberals, the “poor” better their condition when the “rich” hire them. There is no evidence, not even 3rd hand anecdotal hearsay, of anyone being hired by a “poor” person. The only exception would be being recruited for a felony. If you know of any other exceptions please share them with me.
In your penultimate paragraph, the one preceding your reminder that perhaps the feeding hand will be bitten by the fed hand, you exhort the poor “to organize their votes [and] push their issues into the public discourses”.
That sounds like a job for an experienced community organizer. Do you have any candidates in mind?
“How sad of all the things that men endure,
How few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
4 centuries of being true but its lesson must be learned anew every generation.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Words have consequences – An attempt to find out what you meant in your op-ed in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Pitts,
“And the Bauers of this world need to know:
Sometimes stray animals bite.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
The “stray animals” are the poor people that South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer referred to by citing a lesson his grandmother taught him. “Don’t feed stray animals. It allows them to reproduce.”
I don’t know how old his grandmother was when she told him that. It is possible that she was influenced by Margaret Sanger, the patron saint of modern American Liberalism, who championed birth control and abortion as a means of culling the herd of undesirables. Hitler was so taken by her works that he used them as the basis for his 1934 Nuremberg Race Laws. Just one more example of the unintended consequences of words carelessly strewn about.
You tell us that they may “bite”.
I paraphrased Richard Weaver. “Ideas Have Consequences”
Do you mean that they will “bite” like the Helots did when they turned on their Spartan masters?
Do you mean that they will “bite” like Spartacus?
Do you mean that the Bastille already having been stormed that the next logical target will be the White House?
Do you mean that there will be a replay of “Ten Days That Shook the World”?
Do you mean that Howard Fast novels and Howard Zinn menaderings will give us lessons on how, when, and who to “bite”?
You say that “they” didn’t get out of New Orleans because “they” had neither cars nor credit cards. [Why New Orleans let 250 buses sit in a compound until they became waterlogged and useless is for a different discussion. The question of why the Mayor went to Houston is still open.] So there is no misunderstanding “they” are the poor urban Blacks that Kanye West told us were not Bush’s best buds.
You make mention of two men fighting each other while they are in a sinking boat. The analogy was first used by Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman to describe the mutual assured destruction of xenophobic trade policies. When ever elephants fight the one sure victim is the grass. Every time any “Buy American” policy gains traction there is one group of people destined to suffer the most. You guessed it. “They” will get still more lashes on their already bashed, bruised, and bloody backsides. Last ones hired; first ones fired.
The best cure, the only cure for, forgive me, “poorness” is a job.
Yet again, as an aside, when was the last time you heard the term “shovel ready” being said without snickering guffaws accompanying it?
Alas, to the consternation of modern American Liberals, the “poor” better their condition when the “rich” hire them. There is no evidence, not even 3rd hand anecdotal hearsay, of anyone being hired by a “poor” person. The only exception would be being recruited for a felony. If you know of any other exceptions please share them with me.
In your penultimate paragraph, the one preceding your reminder that perhaps the feeding hand will be bitten by the fed hand, you exhort the poor “to organize their votes [and] push their issues into the public discourses”.
That sounds like a job for an experienced community organizer. Do you have any candidates in mind?
“How sad of all the things that men endure,
How few laws or kings can cause or cure.”
4 centuries of being true but its lesson must be learned anew every generation.
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
January 29, 2010
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316
RE: In which I point out the missing link in your ca-ca column about why the Courts need more Liberals lest we perish form the burden of governing ourselves.
My dear Professor,
You are recognized as the world leader in the practice of conducting self examinations in proctology. I know it’s dark, dangerous, and lonely work but if you don’t do it the terrorists, in some strange way, win.
I mention terrorists because it is back in vogue having been sent to Coventry by, as Fatso Kennedy used to call him, Yokahama Bahama Yomama, at his inauguration last January.
Can it be a year? Time flies when you are enjoying yourself, doesn’t it?
[As an aside, with no connection to the reason for my note, I must tell you as we enter the holy season of Lent that I have already had an Epiphany moment. I know I have speeded up the liturgical calendar but the cause is great and the hour is late. Despite the scientific consensus that man was causing the polar bears to drown, despite former Vice President Alpha Gump’s appeal to reason in the form of inverted hockey sticks, despite the evidence provided centuries ago by the noted Italian weatherperson, Tony Vivaldi, despite the involvement of Halliburton and the Bush family in causing the earthquake in Haiti I refused to believe. It took the arguments put forward by that noted agrarian reformer and Alinsky acolyte, Osama bin Laden to make me a believer. Indeed Allah is really Akbar if he can convince a wretch like me to turn off my air conditioner to save the planet. He is now my favorite WOG.]
When you go to your proctologic quiet place to formulate your argument there is one constant. Facts are never allowed to intrude on your major premise.
Thus your contention about the 2000 election being preordained by the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991 is a classic example of “right church, wrong pew”. The decision not to confirm Judge Bork in 1987 spared us from Alpha Gump becoming the President in 2000.
You focus on the 5-4 vote rather than the 7-2 vote in the Supreme Court because 5-4 suits your argument better. We will never know whether Judge Bork would have been part of the 7-2 vote to uphold that part of the Constitution that concerns itself with
equal protection under the law. We can be positive that he never would have voted to accept the case. Thus the 5-4 vote would have been beloved by you.
In the fog of the battle about the election of 2000 it is well to note a conveniently forgotten fact.
If the Vice President had carried Tennessee, his home state, or the President had carried Arkansas, his home state, Florida’s electoral votes would have been irrelevant. The Republicans could have done a Cook County/Hudson County recount and pitched a shut out. It still wouldn’t have put George Bush in the White House.
To me the highlight of the 2000 election kerfluffle was when Daley, son of King Richard the First of Chicago, headed the Democratic effort to undo the Constitution. He said, with a straight face, with no hint of whimsy that he was in charge of the recount. If Frank Perdue had put a fox in charge of hen house security it would not have been worse than that.
You may use the above as a real world example of “hoist on one’s own petard”.
Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
Since I have changed my mind about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, and who knows what the next name will be, it is time for you to change your mind about George W. Bush.
You mention, sneeringly, “the trillion dollar Iraq invasion”.
That he was able to pull this off in broad daylight without anyone catching on was a stroke of genius. That he was able to get Congress to authorize the funds for it without knowing what they were for makes Bush a political Houdini. That he was able to get the New York Times to devote more Page 1 coverage to whether or not chicks could play golf at the Masters rather than focusing on men going into battle makes him a master political puppeteer.
Not bad for a dummy, right?
You criticize the recent affirmation of free speech by the Supreme Court by saying it “overturned more than 100 years of settled law”. [Actually it was only 20 years but why pick at nits?] Are you a closet racist? Are you in favor of segregation? Plessy v Ferguson was “settled law” for 59 years until the Supreme Court “unsettled” it. Your Logic would dictate that we would not have women voting, the direct election of Senators, and slavery. I never knew this about you. I am shocked, shocked to find this out. Are there any other skeletons in your closet?
“Ultimately, forces beyond you will improve our
economy – or it will take care of itself.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
When was Lord Keynes expelled from your Liberal pantheon? Just before he died he wrote to Friedrich Hayek and said he had been wrong and that Hayek was right. Do you have a picture of Milton Friedman in your closet?
Logic would dictate that not only was the Stimulus law – When was the last time you heard a rational adult use the term “shovel ready” without snickering? – was not needed but that it was harmful If deficits under Bush were bad why are they good under Obama? Do you think we should stop spending all those gazillions of dollars that we borrowed from the Chinese?
There is one benefit from you performing your own proctoscopy.
One more upward thrust and you can examine your back teeth.
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316
RE: In which I point out the missing link in your ca-ca column about why the Courts need more Liberals lest we perish form the burden of governing ourselves.
My dear Professor,
You are recognized as the world leader in the practice of conducting self examinations in proctology. I know it’s dark, dangerous, and lonely work but if you don’t do it the terrorists, in some strange way, win.
I mention terrorists because it is back in vogue having been sent to Coventry by, as Fatso Kennedy used to call him, Yokahama Bahama Yomama, at his inauguration last January.
Can it be a year? Time flies when you are enjoying yourself, doesn’t it?
[As an aside, with no connection to the reason for my note, I must tell you as we enter the holy season of Lent that I have already had an Epiphany moment. I know I have speeded up the liturgical calendar but the cause is great and the hour is late. Despite the scientific consensus that man was causing the polar bears to drown, despite former Vice President Alpha Gump’s appeal to reason in the form of inverted hockey sticks, despite the evidence provided centuries ago by the noted Italian weatherperson, Tony Vivaldi, despite the involvement of Halliburton and the Bush family in causing the earthquake in Haiti I refused to believe. It took the arguments put forward by that noted agrarian reformer and Alinsky acolyte, Osama bin Laden to make me a believer. Indeed Allah is really Akbar if he can convince a wretch like me to turn off my air conditioner to save the planet. He is now my favorite WOG.]
When you go to your proctologic quiet place to formulate your argument there is one constant. Facts are never allowed to intrude on your major premise.
Thus your contention about the 2000 election being preordained by the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991 is a classic example of “right church, wrong pew”. The decision not to confirm Judge Bork in 1987 spared us from Alpha Gump becoming the President in 2000.
You focus on the 5-4 vote rather than the 7-2 vote in the Supreme Court because 5-4 suits your argument better. We will never know whether Judge Bork would have been part of the 7-2 vote to uphold that part of the Constitution that concerns itself with
equal protection under the law. We can be positive that he never would have voted to accept the case. Thus the 5-4 vote would have been beloved by you.
In the fog of the battle about the election of 2000 it is well to note a conveniently forgotten fact.
If the Vice President had carried Tennessee, his home state, or the President had carried Arkansas, his home state, Florida’s electoral votes would have been irrelevant. The Republicans could have done a Cook County/Hudson County recount and pitched a shut out. It still wouldn’t have put George Bush in the White House.
To me the highlight of the 2000 election kerfluffle was when Daley, son of King Richard the First of Chicago, headed the Democratic effort to undo the Constitution. He said, with a straight face, with no hint of whimsy that he was in charge of the recount. If Frank Perdue had put a fox in charge of hen house security it would not have been worse than that.
You may use the above as a real world example of “hoist on one’s own petard”.
Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
Since I have changed my mind about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, and who knows what the next name will be, it is time for you to change your mind about George W. Bush.
You mention, sneeringly, “the trillion dollar Iraq invasion”.
That he was able to pull this off in broad daylight without anyone catching on was a stroke of genius. That he was able to get Congress to authorize the funds for it without knowing what they were for makes Bush a political Houdini. That he was able to get the New York Times to devote more Page 1 coverage to whether or not chicks could play golf at the Masters rather than focusing on men going into battle makes him a master political puppeteer.
Not bad for a dummy, right?
You criticize the recent affirmation of free speech by the Supreme Court by saying it “overturned more than 100 years of settled law”. [Actually it was only 20 years but why pick at nits?] Are you a closet racist? Are you in favor of segregation? Plessy v Ferguson was “settled law” for 59 years until the Supreme Court “unsettled” it. Your Logic would dictate that we would not have women voting, the direct election of Senators, and slavery. I never knew this about you. I am shocked, shocked to find this out. Are there any other skeletons in your closet?
“Ultimately, forces beyond you will improve our
economy – or it will take care of itself.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
When was Lord Keynes expelled from your Liberal pantheon? Just before he died he wrote to Friedrich Hayek and said he had been wrong and that Hayek was right. Do you have a picture of Milton Friedman in your closet?
Logic would dictate that not only was the Stimulus law – When was the last time you heard a rational adult use the term “shovel ready” without snickering? – was not needed but that it was harmful If deficits under Bush were bad why are they good under Obama? Do you think we should stop spending all those gazillions of dollars that we borrowed from the Chinese?
There is one benefit from you performing your own proctoscopy.
One more upward thrust and you can examine your back teeth.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Augustin Torres The Jersey Journal
January 21, 2010
Augustin Torres
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ 07306-4101
Mr. Torres,
I left New Jersey in 1996. I left Bayonne in 1965. I check the Irish sports pages to see who has left to go to the “undiscovered country”. I try to keep abreast of Hudson County politics because there was a “moral clarity” there that is not here. “I seen my opportunities and I took’em” was sound advice when Hinnnisy the Publican offered it to aspiring pols.
Down here, while no hot stove is safe and the pennies on a dead man’s eyes are quickly gone, they still want to “pee on your back and tell you it’s rain”.
In your column of January 2, 2010 you mention Dennis McAlevy, Esq. you asked “who picked up the tab at Amanda’s. I know it wasn’t McAlevy.”
Some things never change.
24 years ago I hosted a dinner for 5 at Gerrino’s. He knew two of the people at the table so he sat down and ordered some Irish whisky. There now being 3 lawyers at the table there was no way I wasn’t going to duck that tab. Admission to the New Jersey Bar requires short arms and long pockets. In the course of table badinage a wager with McAlevy was entered into about the identity of the Captain of the R.M.S. Titanic. In due course he left. He offered neither to pay for his drinks nor did he offer to leave something for the waiter.
The next day I sent him photographic evidence supporting my side of the wager.
He never paid.
Some contracts are unenforceable. Those are the ones with markers that you have to cover.
“Nothing lost save honor.” Like I said, some things never change
Kevin Smith
Augustin Torres
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ 07306-4101
Mr. Torres,
I left New Jersey in 1996. I left Bayonne in 1965. I check the Irish sports pages to see who has left to go to the “undiscovered country”. I try to keep abreast of Hudson County politics because there was a “moral clarity” there that is not here. “I seen my opportunities and I took’em” was sound advice when Hinnnisy the Publican offered it to aspiring pols.
Down here, while no hot stove is safe and the pennies on a dead man’s eyes are quickly gone, they still want to “pee on your back and tell you it’s rain”.
In your column of January 2, 2010 you mention Dennis McAlevy, Esq. you asked “who picked up the tab at Amanda’s. I know it wasn’t McAlevy.”
Some things never change.
24 years ago I hosted a dinner for 5 at Gerrino’s. He knew two of the people at the table so he sat down and ordered some Irish whisky. There now being 3 lawyers at the table there was no way I wasn’t going to duck that tab. Admission to the New Jersey Bar requires short arms and long pockets. In the course of table badinage a wager with McAlevy was entered into about the identity of the Captain of the R.M.S. Titanic. In due course he left. He offered neither to pay for his drinks nor did he offer to leave something for the waiter.
The next day I sent him photographic evidence supporting my side of the wager.
He never paid.
Some contracts are unenforceable. Those are the ones with markers that you have to cover.
“Nothing lost save honor.” Like I said, some things never change
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald
January 26, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: What happened to the “penumbras”? Where did the “emanations” go? Some musings on your editorial comments on the Supreme Court reinforcing the right to free speech.
Sirs,
Is the newspaper business so bad that you are now opposed to free speech?
Former Senator and former Governors Jon Corzine spent $130,000,000 of his own money in the last 10 years to win 2 out of 3 elections in New Jersey. Was that “fair” to the Jersey version of Joe the Plumber? Do you think that newspapers in New Jersey should have been “encouraged” to run Joe’s ads for free?
You say that “Justice Stephens properly called this decision a radical departure from established law…” Do you think Justice Stephens would have voted against repealing Plessy v Ferguson? It was “established law” for 59 years.
You say that there “is nothing in the First Amendment that would suggest that the Framers intended to protect the rights of corporations to spend freely in elections”. There is nothing in the First Amendment that mandates the separation of church and state either. [You can look it up.]
You refer to the Founders in the reverential tone used by modern American Liberals when it suits them. A bit of Googling on your part would show you that the Founders were deeply religious men who used Natural Law, a “gift from beyond the stars”, that is ours at birth as the basis for our Constitution.
Does anyone know how much money George Soros spent to advance his political beliefs? The money, being his, was his to spend as he saw fit, wasn’t it? Should we “level the playing field” – And if there is a dumber term anywhere I would like to see it – so Jersey Joe the Plumber turned Politician can compete against Corzine or Soros?
I am sure the omission was unintentional but the Supreme Court decision applies to unions also. They are free to spend their members’ dues to promote their political beliefs. Would you apply the same rules to unions that you would apply to corporations for political expenditures? You say that shareholders must “specifically approve the allocation”. There is a plumbers’ union. Jersey Joe may have belonged to it. Should he be allowed to vote on “specific allocations”? Should a dollar amount be applied to the work done by “union volunteers”?
Even though I am a Roman Catholic I am not supposed to question the use of taxpayers’ funds to subsidize the production of the play Corpus Cristi. The play’s premise is that Jesus Christ was crucified because of a homosexual lovers quarrel with Judas Iscariot. Judas, in a fit of pique, dropped a dime on Jesus. As a result of him ratting Jesus out He wound up nailed to a cross.
I am hectored that my religious beliefs are trumped by the playwright’s unfettered right to free speech. One of Justice Stephens’ predecessors wrote “That we must have room for what we hate”.
The Bill of Rights numbers things that the government cannot do.
The First Amendment begins with the majestic words “Congress shall make no law…” The Founders put them in there because they wanted them in there. As someone who was visited 3 times by police for things that I have written I am glad that they are there.
That it took 103 years for the Court to correct a Constitutional mistake is a testament to the document and the men who wrote it.
“Free men speak with free tongues”
Good advice 25 centuries ago; good advice today.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: What happened to the “penumbras”? Where did the “emanations” go? Some musings on your editorial comments on the Supreme Court reinforcing the right to free speech.
Sirs,
Is the newspaper business so bad that you are now opposed to free speech?
Former Senator and former Governors Jon Corzine spent $130,000,000 of his own money in the last 10 years to win 2 out of 3 elections in New Jersey. Was that “fair” to the Jersey version of Joe the Plumber? Do you think that newspapers in New Jersey should have been “encouraged” to run Joe’s ads for free?
You say that “Justice Stephens properly called this decision a radical departure from established law…” Do you think Justice Stephens would have voted against repealing Plessy v Ferguson? It was “established law” for 59 years.
You say that there “is nothing in the First Amendment that would suggest that the Framers intended to protect the rights of corporations to spend freely in elections”. There is nothing in the First Amendment that mandates the separation of church and state either. [You can look it up.]
You refer to the Founders in the reverential tone used by modern American Liberals when it suits them. A bit of Googling on your part would show you that the Founders were deeply religious men who used Natural Law, a “gift from beyond the stars”, that is ours at birth as the basis for our Constitution.
Does anyone know how much money George Soros spent to advance his political beliefs? The money, being his, was his to spend as he saw fit, wasn’t it? Should we “level the playing field” – And if there is a dumber term anywhere I would like to see it – so Jersey Joe the Plumber turned Politician can compete against Corzine or Soros?
I am sure the omission was unintentional but the Supreme Court decision applies to unions also. They are free to spend their members’ dues to promote their political beliefs. Would you apply the same rules to unions that you would apply to corporations for political expenditures? You say that shareholders must “specifically approve the allocation”. There is a plumbers’ union. Jersey Joe may have belonged to it. Should he be allowed to vote on “specific allocations”? Should a dollar amount be applied to the work done by “union volunteers”?
Even though I am a Roman Catholic I am not supposed to question the use of taxpayers’ funds to subsidize the production of the play Corpus Cristi. The play’s premise is that Jesus Christ was crucified because of a homosexual lovers quarrel with Judas Iscariot. Judas, in a fit of pique, dropped a dime on Jesus. As a result of him ratting Jesus out He wound up nailed to a cross.
I am hectored that my religious beliefs are trumped by the playwright’s unfettered right to free speech. One of Justice Stephens’ predecessors wrote “That we must have room for what we hate”.
The Bill of Rights numbers things that the government cannot do.
The First Amendment begins with the majestic words “Congress shall make no law…” The Founders put them in there because they wanted them in there. As someone who was visited 3 times by police for things that I have written I am glad that they are there.
That it took 103 years for the Court to correct a Constitutional mistake is a testament to the document and the men who wrote it.
“Free men speak with free tongues”
Good advice 25 centuries ago; good advice today.
Kevin Smith
Finally, my Epiphany moment or what really is behind the curtain at The Washington Post
January 23, 2010
Increasing my carbon footprint is my main avocation. I cruise the internet, a device for which I never properly thanked former Vice President Alpha Gump, in search of intelligent life. Finding none I move on to raising hackles, trapping manatees, buckling swashes, training pythons, and trying to find a perfect sentence.
[Full disclosure requires me to reveal that I too drive a pick up truck. Red, 5 speed, hole in the driver’s seat, 6 foot plumber’s snake, fading radio, 122,000 miles, and sometimes internal combustion eructations. I mention it because not “everybody can buy a truck” as the best President we have told us. Further, and like Trollope stating the obvious, if everybody did buy a truck wouldn’t most of our economic problems be solved? Just asking.]
I was watching Chris Cizzilla of the Washington Post on C-Span3 discoursing on the Brown Senate campaign. Two things were obvious:
#1 – “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is terra incognita for him. In the real world, results, not effort, count. I can play football as hard as Peyton Manning. I can’t play it as well. That’s why I’ll watch him play on TV tomorrow. Senator-elect Brown is going to Washington. Marcia Coakley, as the really dumb Kennedy called her, will be the Assistant Vice Deputy Grand Marshalette of the fan appreciation parade for Curt Schilling. She’ll be the one behind the elephant. [There is now one more reason to call in artillery and air strikes on Fenway Park. I just completed a 2976 mile round trip in my gas guzzling SUV. By the Boston Marathon the only CITGO sign left in America will be the one behind the Green Monster. Viva Chavez. Go Hugo.] That David Gergen asked Marcia what her favorite color was just before he asked Senator-elect Brown why did he stop beating his wife didn’t hurt either. Has anyone looked the possibility that Gergen is on the Tea Party payroll?
#2 – I am glad to see that some people still drink whisky at lunch. I thought I was the last one keeping that tradition alive. Go Chris!
I read Post’s E.J. Dionne premature eulogy to civil discourse in politics.
As I recall the President reached out to WOG terrorists at his inauguration. “We will extend our hand if you will unclench your fist.” Lame brained when confronted by History but at least he can say that he took a shot.
The first Republican he spoke to, Senator Kyl of Arizona, got a different greeting. “We won.” That‘s a polite way of saying, “Play ball with me or I’ll shove the bat up your ass”. His flunkies soon added that he should “shit in his hat and pull it down over his ears because he looks good in brown”.
I am surprised he hasn’t sent Predator drones to Glenn Beck’s house.
The fact that he had unassailable majorities in both houses seems not to have caught Mr. Dionne’s attention. The American people dealt the President a pat hand. He blew it.
My only regret about the Health Care plan going walkabout is that I was looking forward to being on the Death Panels. I’ve been keeping a list for years. Lately, it has been growing exponentially. It is at a secure, undisclosed location just in case.
Howie Kurtz, a Post chattering head for whom the term “amiable dunce” could have been coined, is rambling forth in his usual combination of “What, me worry” and “I desperately want to be a smarmy bastard” about the National Enquirer, John Edwards, and Pulitzer Prizes.
It is indeed fitting and proper to mention Janet Cook whenever the words Washington Post and Pulitzer Prizes appear in the same sentence, the same paragraph, or the same page.
It is to the Post’s credit that they immediately defenestrated Ms. Cook when her Pulitzer fraud was discovered. They took her name off the Hall of Fame wall and drew a line through it before consigning it to the Hell fires of media Gehenna.
No mention of Pulitzer Prizes can be made without citing the New York Times. They cling to the memory of Walter Duranty, their employee, who was the winner for Foreign Correspondence in 1932. That he was bought and paid for by the KGB is of no import. That he lied about the extermination of the Kulaks made the New York Times acquiescent in the horrors that the 1930s produced. If you recall it was Auden who called it a “low dishonest decade. One more argument against inherited wealth.
Your actions merit you an indulgence and entry into the newspaper hagiography.
John Edwards and Sarah Palin have one thing in common.
They both lost elections to become Vice President.
John Edwards then lost his race to become the Democrat nominee in 2008.
What if he had been elected?
Save for the Enquirer no other media outlet investigated him and his dalliance.
Modern American Liberal journalists were aghast at the thought of Sarah Palin one step from the Oval Office. John Edwards in the Oval Office didn’t seem to bother them one whit. There’s a disconnect there.
Then I thought of Tom Shales, Eugene Robinson, Sally what’s her name, Bradlee’s goomah, Dana Milbank, Wilhelm Boysenberry, David Broder, Ellen Goodman inter alia. Post toadies all.
POW!
I got knocked off my horse without ever getting to see Damascus.
The truth is simple.
The Washington Post is like the “Boy in the Bubble”. It is enveloped in a large penumbra of “non-malodorous fecal matter”. Beyond being permeated by it, beyond wallowing in it, they generate it. To be fair, they try to do it in an environmentally sensitive manner. Febreeze at the Post is like holy water to a vampire.
I have tried to arrange my affairs in such a manner so that I run out of money and breath at the same time. I had set early Fall as the time when the lines would most likely converge. I knew I was going to fall 3 short of my goal set foot in each of the 50 states.
Now that President Yokahama Messiah Osama Bahama, to quote the late Senator Kennedy, has found either 7 or 8 more states my Stygian crossing will have to be delayed. This is the first time I have ever gone mano a mano against deus ex machina.
Just as I was almost back in the saddle I get knocked of again. It was all made clear to me.
Do you remember the famous line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
“Morons! I am surrounded by morons.”
Bad enough that the dunces are in the ascendancy but their shoes never wear out because their feet never touch the ground.
How, you ask, can they defy gravity?
Dr. Johnson explained it all.
“The triumph of hope over experience.”
Kevin Smith
Increasing my carbon footprint is my main avocation. I cruise the internet, a device for which I never properly thanked former Vice President Alpha Gump, in search of intelligent life. Finding none I move on to raising hackles, trapping manatees, buckling swashes, training pythons, and trying to find a perfect sentence.
[Full disclosure requires me to reveal that I too drive a pick up truck. Red, 5 speed, hole in the driver’s seat, 6 foot plumber’s snake, fading radio, 122,000 miles, and sometimes internal combustion eructations. I mention it because not “everybody can buy a truck” as the best President we have told us. Further, and like Trollope stating the obvious, if everybody did buy a truck wouldn’t most of our economic problems be solved? Just asking.]
I was watching Chris Cizzilla of the Washington Post on C-Span3 discoursing on the Brown Senate campaign. Two things were obvious:
#1 – “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is terra incognita for him. In the real world, results, not effort, count. I can play football as hard as Peyton Manning. I can’t play it as well. That’s why I’ll watch him play on TV tomorrow. Senator-elect Brown is going to Washington. Marcia Coakley, as the really dumb Kennedy called her, will be the Assistant Vice Deputy Grand Marshalette of the fan appreciation parade for Curt Schilling. She’ll be the one behind the elephant. [There is now one more reason to call in artillery and air strikes on Fenway Park. I just completed a 2976 mile round trip in my gas guzzling SUV. By the Boston Marathon the only CITGO sign left in America will be the one behind the Green Monster. Viva Chavez. Go Hugo.] That David Gergen asked Marcia what her favorite color was just before he asked Senator-elect Brown why did he stop beating his wife didn’t hurt either. Has anyone looked the possibility that Gergen is on the Tea Party payroll?
#2 – I am glad to see that some people still drink whisky at lunch. I thought I was the last one keeping that tradition alive. Go Chris!
I read Post’s E.J. Dionne premature eulogy to civil discourse in politics.
As I recall the President reached out to WOG terrorists at his inauguration. “We will extend our hand if you will unclench your fist.” Lame brained when confronted by History but at least he can say that he took a shot.
The first Republican he spoke to, Senator Kyl of Arizona, got a different greeting. “We won.” That‘s a polite way of saying, “Play ball with me or I’ll shove the bat up your ass”. His flunkies soon added that he should “shit in his hat and pull it down over his ears because he looks good in brown”.
I am surprised he hasn’t sent Predator drones to Glenn Beck’s house.
The fact that he had unassailable majorities in both houses seems not to have caught Mr. Dionne’s attention. The American people dealt the President a pat hand. He blew it.
My only regret about the Health Care plan going walkabout is that I was looking forward to being on the Death Panels. I’ve been keeping a list for years. Lately, it has been growing exponentially. It is at a secure, undisclosed location just in case.
Howie Kurtz, a Post chattering head for whom the term “amiable dunce” could have been coined, is rambling forth in his usual combination of “What, me worry” and “I desperately want to be a smarmy bastard” about the National Enquirer, John Edwards, and Pulitzer Prizes.
It is indeed fitting and proper to mention Janet Cook whenever the words Washington Post and Pulitzer Prizes appear in the same sentence, the same paragraph, or the same page.
It is to the Post’s credit that they immediately defenestrated Ms. Cook when her Pulitzer fraud was discovered. They took her name off the Hall of Fame wall and drew a line through it before consigning it to the Hell fires of media Gehenna.
No mention of Pulitzer Prizes can be made without citing the New York Times. They cling to the memory of Walter Duranty, their employee, who was the winner for Foreign Correspondence in 1932. That he was bought and paid for by the KGB is of no import. That he lied about the extermination of the Kulaks made the New York Times acquiescent in the horrors that the 1930s produced. If you recall it was Auden who called it a “low dishonest decade. One more argument against inherited wealth.
Your actions merit you an indulgence and entry into the newspaper hagiography.
John Edwards and Sarah Palin have one thing in common.
They both lost elections to become Vice President.
John Edwards then lost his race to become the Democrat nominee in 2008.
What if he had been elected?
Save for the Enquirer no other media outlet investigated him and his dalliance.
Modern American Liberal journalists were aghast at the thought of Sarah Palin one step from the Oval Office. John Edwards in the Oval Office didn’t seem to bother them one whit. There’s a disconnect there.
Then I thought of Tom Shales, Eugene Robinson, Sally what’s her name, Bradlee’s goomah, Dana Milbank, Wilhelm Boysenberry, David Broder, Ellen Goodman inter alia. Post toadies all.
POW!
I got knocked off my horse without ever getting to see Damascus.
The truth is simple.
The Washington Post is like the “Boy in the Bubble”. It is enveloped in a large penumbra of “non-malodorous fecal matter”. Beyond being permeated by it, beyond wallowing in it, they generate it. To be fair, they try to do it in an environmentally sensitive manner. Febreeze at the Post is like holy water to a vampire.
I have tried to arrange my affairs in such a manner so that I run out of money and breath at the same time. I had set early Fall as the time when the lines would most likely converge. I knew I was going to fall 3 short of my goal set foot in each of the 50 states.
Now that President Yokahama Messiah Osama Bahama, to quote the late Senator Kennedy, has found either 7 or 8 more states my Stygian crossing will have to be delayed. This is the first time I have ever gone mano a mano against deus ex machina.
Just as I was almost back in the saddle I get knocked of again. It was all made clear to me.
Do you remember the famous line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
“Morons! I am surrounded by morons.”
Bad enough that the dunces are in the ascendancy but their shoes never wear out because their feet never touch the ground.
How, you ask, can they defy gravity?
Dr. Johnson explained it all.
“The triumph of hope over experience.”
Kevin Smith
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
January 18, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Tone deaf, a Pompous Fart, or both? A day after look at your column of 1/17/10 on football, “misplaced priorities”, educational woes, and why you don’t know Jack about the infield fly rule.
My dear Professor,
It is at least 50 years since Jacques Barzun said, “If you want to know America, you must know baseball”. Since he said it before microwave popcorn or Microsoft I rather imagine he would include the Super Bowl and NASCAR should he care to update his dictum.
“I’ve never understood anyone’s fascination with football.”
“It’s a game for sissies.”
“Real men have the guts to play rugby.”
“I also don’t understand fan mentality.”
Sun-Sentinel
Sunday
You
Because you don’t “understand” it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. There is much to be said for the discipline of a team sport. At its core, it demands the subordination of the individual to a higher goal. The individual voluntarily accepts this dedication to perceived greater good. The Iron Duke said that “Waterloo was decided on the playing fields of Eton”. General McArthutr once asked for a volunteer for a dangerous mission. “Get me an Army football player” was his only criterion
As the paradigmatic template of modern American Liberalism I know that one of your problems with football is that, in the end, excellence prevails. Score is kept. The team with the most points at the end wins. There is no “affirmative action” plan for picking wedge busters. Pass blocking is a harsh task master. If your quarterback’s jersey is dirty you have not been doing your job very well. Running back punts is normally not a subject for judicial review.
You say “it’s a game for sissies”. That statement presupposes that you have never been hit in the throat by a forearm.
Lyndon Johnson was President the last time I played competitive rugby. I am down to not quite one good leg left. If I were to see you on the other side of a scrum it would give me the strength of ten.
I saw the way some fans dressed at the NFL playoff games this weekend. It was as if the Village People were running a costume call for La Cage aux Folles. Several things should be self evident, even to you.
A – They were all adults who chose to dress like that.
B – Some of the outfits were amusing.
C – What harm is done? I’ll bet that some Stimulus money was involved.
D – Perhaps if you were to dress up as a Raider fan you might have a different view of it. You may want to try a weekend as the San Diego chicken first.
Bear Bryant said that football didn’t build character. It revealed it. He also said that whatever his salary was the university President was to be paid $1 more.
As to a “Super Bowl of Learning” let me tell you that the co-captains of my high school team – Marist High School of Bayonne, New Jersey – each has a Ph.D.
Would that high school academics were held to the same standard as the football coach! At the end of the year his record determines whether or not he keeps his job. There is an accounting of his stewardship. Teachers who can’t teach and administrators who can’t lead are given a pass year after year. If the football coach goes 1 and 8 two years on a row his next job is at an insurance agency.
I can see why the sound made by fans on the right side of the score would be alien to you. Your cure for teenage unemployment is a higher minimum wage. You believe, achingly so, that we can tax our way to prosperity. Your attempt to level the playing field for high school football would have Barney Frank as the prototypical head coach.
You say that we should “start appreciating brains”. This may come as a shock to you but the last 4 Presidents hold 6 degrees from Ivy League schools.
I don’t think any of them ever played football.
Kevin Smith
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Tone deaf, a Pompous Fart, or both? A day after look at your column of 1/17/10 on football, “misplaced priorities”, educational woes, and why you don’t know Jack about the infield fly rule.
My dear Professor,
It is at least 50 years since Jacques Barzun said, “If you want to know America, you must know baseball”. Since he said it before microwave popcorn or Microsoft I rather imagine he would include the Super Bowl and NASCAR should he care to update his dictum.
“I’ve never understood anyone’s fascination with football.”
“It’s a game for sissies.”
“Real men have the guts to play rugby.”
“I also don’t understand fan mentality.”
Sun-Sentinel
Sunday
You
Because you don’t “understand” it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. There is much to be said for the discipline of a team sport. At its core, it demands the subordination of the individual to a higher goal. The individual voluntarily accepts this dedication to perceived greater good. The Iron Duke said that “Waterloo was decided on the playing fields of Eton”. General McArthutr once asked for a volunteer for a dangerous mission. “Get me an Army football player” was his only criterion
As the paradigmatic template of modern American Liberalism I know that one of your problems with football is that, in the end, excellence prevails. Score is kept. The team with the most points at the end wins. There is no “affirmative action” plan for picking wedge busters. Pass blocking is a harsh task master. If your quarterback’s jersey is dirty you have not been doing your job very well. Running back punts is normally not a subject for judicial review.
You say “it’s a game for sissies”. That statement presupposes that you have never been hit in the throat by a forearm.
Lyndon Johnson was President the last time I played competitive rugby. I am down to not quite one good leg left. If I were to see you on the other side of a scrum it would give me the strength of ten.
I saw the way some fans dressed at the NFL playoff games this weekend. It was as if the Village People were running a costume call for La Cage aux Folles. Several things should be self evident, even to you.
A – They were all adults who chose to dress like that.
B – Some of the outfits were amusing.
C – What harm is done? I’ll bet that some Stimulus money was involved.
D – Perhaps if you were to dress up as a Raider fan you might have a different view of it. You may want to try a weekend as the San Diego chicken first.
Bear Bryant said that football didn’t build character. It revealed it. He also said that whatever his salary was the university President was to be paid $1 more.
As to a “Super Bowl of Learning” let me tell you that the co-captains of my high school team – Marist High School of Bayonne, New Jersey – each has a Ph.D.
Would that high school academics were held to the same standard as the football coach! At the end of the year his record determines whether or not he keeps his job. There is an accounting of his stewardship. Teachers who can’t teach and administrators who can’t lead are given a pass year after year. If the football coach goes 1 and 8 two years on a row his next job is at an insurance agency.
I can see why the sound made by fans on the right side of the score would be alien to you. Your cure for teenage unemployment is a higher minimum wage. You believe, achingly so, that we can tax our way to prosperity. Your attempt to level the playing field for high school football would have Barney Frank as the prototypical head coach.
You say that we should “start appreciating brains”. This may come as a shock to you but the last 4 Presidents hold 6 degrees from Ivy League schools.
I don’t think any of them ever played football.
Kevin Smith
Senator Dan Gelber
January 20, 2010
Senator Dan Gelber
1920 Meridian Avenue
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
RE: The wonders of make-up plus a good photographer and no one need ever know.
Senator Gelber,
By now you must be minus your lower lip.
I say this because if your resume is correct and that you went to college, law school, passed a Bar exam, and prosecuted people it is inconceivable that you could make, continuously make, statements such as the one below and keep said lip.
“Florida has an insurance crisis – 20% of our citizens
have no insurance,” Gelber said. “I have no idea what
McCollum will do to solve this crisis other than to sue
Congress when it tries to solve the problem.”
[As an aside, and for the record, perhaps you could clear some fuzzy math about the “insurance crisis”. 17 years when Czarina Hillary’s plan to graft the wildly popular Bulgarian health template onto the American health system we were told that we had 43,000,000 uninsured people in this country. By last year the number had grown to 47,000,000. President Obama twice said that the number was 30,000,000. How many are there? How are they counted? Was “statistical sampling”, a methodology that the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional when ACORN grifters tried to use it in the Census, used? Just asking?]
I thought the Constitution was a document that said what government could do.
I thought the Bill of Rights was a document that said what government could not do.
Can you tell me “where I can lay my finger on the part of the Constitution” that says government can mandate the purchase of insurance? If you can find that it should be no problem finding the part that says government can punish those who fail to do so.
I wrote to you a while back congratulating you for sending your children to the same public grammar school that you attended. I asked you to find out why President Obama doesn’t send his daughters to fine schools run by the District of Columbia. By the perpetual mantra of modern American Liberals the DC school should be the finest in the country because they have far and away the highest per pupil expenditure in the United States. Why wouldn’t he take advantage of that?
I haven’t heard back from you.
Do you think I ever will?
Kevin Smith
P.S. – since you keep your plastic surgeon’s cell # on your speed dial may I suggest that the next time you chomp through your lower lip you go for the Julia Roberts look? Anyone running as a Democrat is a member of a party that says the best way to fight unemployment is to increase taxes and raise the minimum wage. Also, their plan to tax the bejeezus out of the banks to make them lend so jobs can be created is priceless. They run the risk of bleeding to death. Call me if you need a pint
Senator Dan Gelber
1920 Meridian Avenue
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
RE: The wonders of make-up plus a good photographer and no one need ever know.
Senator Gelber,
By now you must be minus your lower lip.
I say this because if your resume is correct and that you went to college, law school, passed a Bar exam, and prosecuted people it is inconceivable that you could make, continuously make, statements such as the one below and keep said lip.
“Florida has an insurance crisis – 20% of our citizens
have no insurance,” Gelber said. “I have no idea what
McCollum will do to solve this crisis other than to sue
Congress when it tries to solve the problem.”
[As an aside, and for the record, perhaps you could clear some fuzzy math about the “insurance crisis”. 17 years when Czarina Hillary’s plan to graft the wildly popular Bulgarian health template onto the American health system we were told that we had 43,000,000 uninsured people in this country. By last year the number had grown to 47,000,000. President Obama twice said that the number was 30,000,000. How many are there? How are they counted? Was “statistical sampling”, a methodology that the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional when ACORN grifters tried to use it in the Census, used? Just asking?]
I thought the Constitution was a document that said what government could do.
I thought the Bill of Rights was a document that said what government could not do.
Can you tell me “where I can lay my finger on the part of the Constitution” that says government can mandate the purchase of insurance? If you can find that it should be no problem finding the part that says government can punish those who fail to do so.
I wrote to you a while back congratulating you for sending your children to the same public grammar school that you attended. I asked you to find out why President Obama doesn’t send his daughters to fine schools run by the District of Columbia. By the perpetual mantra of modern American Liberals the DC school should be the finest in the country because they have far and away the highest per pupil expenditure in the United States. Why wouldn’t he take advantage of that?
I haven’t heard back from you.
Do you think I ever will?
Kevin Smith
P.S. – since you keep your plastic surgeon’s cell # on your speed dial may I suggest that the next time you chomp through your lower lip you go for the Julia Roberts look? Anyone running as a Democrat is a member of a party that says the best way to fight unemployment is to increase taxes and raise the minimum wage. Also, their plan to tax the bejeezus out of the banks to make them lend so jobs can be created is priceless. They run the risk of bleeding to death. Call me if you need a pint
Douglas C. Lyons The Sun-Sentinel
January 16, 2010
Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Why mean, nasty, and forgetful White people should give to Haiti. Some comments on your stern, finger wagging op-ed in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
If, as you say, “The U.S. owes Haiti, big time” for their supporting our revolution and for our occupying their country are there any other inclusions/exemptions for Uncle Sam voluntarily emptying his pockets plus borrowing from the Chinese every time the beggar’s bowl is presented to him?
President Obama unilaterally canceled a missile pact with Poland. History shows a large Polish presence, exponentially larger than Haiti’s, in our revolution. What do we owe them?
The Union cemeteries at Gettysburg are filled with 1000s of Irishmen who died fighting for the North. A case could be made that they died to end slavery. They lie there, in silent repose, “still wrapped in their faded coats of Blue”. What do we “owe” Ireland?
Each and every time, without exception, that this country took up arms in the 20th century, we had one ally, the same ally, every time. What do we “owe” Australia?
You speak of Pat Robertson’s “absurdities”. What number would you give on the umbrage scale for his verbal diarrhea to Danny Glover? Would I have my toes on the edge of racism if I were to suggest that your scorn for a White man clearly in his dotage is not matched by your remonstrations [absent] about the movie star? At least both of them were “clean” and “articulate”.
Your view of Haitian history is, in typical modern American Liberal fashion, unhampered by facts.
If there is a root cause to the sad tale of Haiti, a tale replete with murders, assassinations voo-doo, thievery on a Herculean scale, zombies, the national pastime of biting the head off a chicken [Don’t tell PETA], Graham Greene novels, and an absolute indifference or ignorance to and of the rubrics common to any nation claiming to be civilized, it is the absence of any semblance or memory of the Rule of Law.
Years ago I sat in on a session of the Barbados Parliament. It was the House of Commons a la Caribbean. Adults were arguing with each other because they could and because it made them a better people. There were no Poppa Docs there.
The people of the United States shouldn’t help Haiti because we “owe” them. If the quality of mercy is to be judged by what the donor “owes” the donee, why, pray tell, did we give aid to the Asian tsunami victims? Why were American lives at risk to stop the genocide of Serbian Muslims? Why should we do anything about Darfur? They are, as Chamberlain said about the Czechs. “A faraway people about whom we know little”.
In typical modern American Liberal fashion you bend History to your view of contemporary politics.
I’ll write slowly. Try to follow.
The French and the English began fighting in North America in 1755. This fight continued on 5 continents and 3 oceans until 1815. Clearly, these people had no exit strategy.
The French stayed out of the American Revolution until we defeated the British at Saratoga. It was clearly in the rational self interest of the French to keep as many British military personnel as far away from Europe as possible. The war ended at Yorktown with the colonials outgunning the Red Coats from the front and the French Navy blocking both reinforcement of and retreat by Cornwallis from the rear.
Clearly, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” worked for the French and the Americans.
As an aside, do you think the Americans have covered the marker held by the French? I don’t know what the ratio is but there is one Hell of a lot of American graves in France.
Does it – mercy – “fall like gentle rain” or is it doled out like redeemed frequent flyer miles?
How big, in terms of money, water, penicillin, and MREs, is the marker held by Haitians? Would the absence of any Cubans or Venezuelans suggest that the scales are balanced among them? I saw a group from Iceland trying to rescue a trapped child. Why where they there? I am unaware of any Historical or commercial intercourse between Port-a-Prince and Reykjavik.
Let us hope that the aid soon to be given to Haiti is better spent than previous American attempts.
The United States began sending aid to Africa in 1960.
Would it be politically incorrect to ask for an accounting? What if I were to ask for but one African success story? Does that mean that we should stop all aid to Africa?
The United States declared war on poverty in this country in 1964.
Despite one trillion dollars [That’s $1,000,000,000,000.00] it would seem that we have lost that war also. Do you think it’s time for a “surge”?
In the end, Americans will give because they want to, not because they have to.
Your snarky admonition diminishes the charitable History that speaks so well of American exceptionalism. Moreover, it diminishes you.
Kevin Smith
PS – There may yet be some good that can be gained from this terrible situation. How about we field test the end of life questions that will soon be foisted on us should the Health Care plan pass? If you are to be saved you must not be older than a certain age. You must have knowledge of mathematics and a foreign language. Your blood pressure must fall within acceptable levels. Diabetics, those with osteoarthritis in 2 joints, arrhythmia, alopecia, extreme myopia, and the heartbreak of psoriasis are automatic disqualifiers. Let Haiti be remembered for decreasing its carbon footprint in a spectacular fashion! Undrowned polar bears will remember them, if they were able, with great fondness.
Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Why mean, nasty, and forgetful White people should give to Haiti. Some comments on your stern, finger wagging op-ed in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Lyons,
If, as you say, “The U.S. owes Haiti, big time” for their supporting our revolution and for our occupying their country are there any other inclusions/exemptions for Uncle Sam voluntarily emptying his pockets plus borrowing from the Chinese every time the beggar’s bowl is presented to him?
President Obama unilaterally canceled a missile pact with Poland. History shows a large Polish presence, exponentially larger than Haiti’s, in our revolution. What do we owe them?
The Union cemeteries at Gettysburg are filled with 1000s of Irishmen who died fighting for the North. A case could be made that they died to end slavery. They lie there, in silent repose, “still wrapped in their faded coats of Blue”. What do we “owe” Ireland?
Each and every time, without exception, that this country took up arms in the 20th century, we had one ally, the same ally, every time. What do we “owe” Australia?
You speak of Pat Robertson’s “absurdities”. What number would you give on the umbrage scale for his verbal diarrhea to Danny Glover? Would I have my toes on the edge of racism if I were to suggest that your scorn for a White man clearly in his dotage is not matched by your remonstrations [absent] about the movie star? At least both of them were “clean” and “articulate”.
Your view of Haitian history is, in typical modern American Liberal fashion, unhampered by facts.
If there is a root cause to the sad tale of Haiti, a tale replete with murders, assassinations voo-doo, thievery on a Herculean scale, zombies, the national pastime of biting the head off a chicken [Don’t tell PETA], Graham Greene novels, and an absolute indifference or ignorance to and of the rubrics common to any nation claiming to be civilized, it is the absence of any semblance or memory of the Rule of Law.
Years ago I sat in on a session of the Barbados Parliament. It was the House of Commons a la Caribbean. Adults were arguing with each other because they could and because it made them a better people. There were no Poppa Docs there.
The people of the United States shouldn’t help Haiti because we “owe” them. If the quality of mercy is to be judged by what the donor “owes” the donee, why, pray tell, did we give aid to the Asian tsunami victims? Why were American lives at risk to stop the genocide of Serbian Muslims? Why should we do anything about Darfur? They are, as Chamberlain said about the Czechs. “A faraway people about whom we know little”.
In typical modern American Liberal fashion you bend History to your view of contemporary politics.
I’ll write slowly. Try to follow.
The French and the English began fighting in North America in 1755. This fight continued on 5 continents and 3 oceans until 1815. Clearly, these people had no exit strategy.
The French stayed out of the American Revolution until we defeated the British at Saratoga. It was clearly in the rational self interest of the French to keep as many British military personnel as far away from Europe as possible. The war ended at Yorktown with the colonials outgunning the Red Coats from the front and the French Navy blocking both reinforcement of and retreat by Cornwallis from the rear.
Clearly, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” worked for the French and the Americans.
As an aside, do you think the Americans have covered the marker held by the French? I don’t know what the ratio is but there is one Hell of a lot of American graves in France.
Does it – mercy – “fall like gentle rain” or is it doled out like redeemed frequent flyer miles?
How big, in terms of money, water, penicillin, and MREs, is the marker held by Haitians? Would the absence of any Cubans or Venezuelans suggest that the scales are balanced among them? I saw a group from Iceland trying to rescue a trapped child. Why where they there? I am unaware of any Historical or commercial intercourse between Port-a-Prince and Reykjavik.
Let us hope that the aid soon to be given to Haiti is better spent than previous American attempts.
The United States began sending aid to Africa in 1960.
Would it be politically incorrect to ask for an accounting? What if I were to ask for but one African success story? Does that mean that we should stop all aid to Africa?
The United States declared war on poverty in this country in 1964.
Despite one trillion dollars [That’s $1,000,000,000,000.00] it would seem that we have lost that war also. Do you think it’s time for a “surge”?
In the end, Americans will give because they want to, not because they have to.
Your snarky admonition diminishes the charitable History that speaks so well of American exceptionalism. Moreover, it diminishes you.
Kevin Smith
PS – There may yet be some good that can be gained from this terrible situation. How about we field test the end of life questions that will soon be foisted on us should the Health Care plan pass? If you are to be saved you must not be older than a certain age. You must have knowledge of mathematics and a foreign language. Your blood pressure must fall within acceptable levels. Diabetics, those with osteoarthritis in 2 joints, arrhythmia, alopecia, extreme myopia, and the heartbreak of psoriasis are automatic disqualifiers. Let Haiti be remembered for decreasing its carbon footprint in a spectacular fashion! Undrowned polar bears will remember them, if they were able, with great fondness.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Representative Jim Waldman
January 9, 2010
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 West Copans Road
Coconut Creek, Florida33063
RE: Can Conundrums about Ethics be unethical? The Sun-Sentinel reports on Page 1 today that modern American Liberals who make up the Broward County legislative delegation are now in pretzel mode because of the threat of tougher ethics rules
Representative Waldman,
One of the main points of Nicomachean Ethics is the quest for balance. Since Aristotle, the father of Ethics, is now known as a Dead White European Male it might be better to leave him out of the discussion and switch to the moral relativism of situational Ethics.
“State Representative Jim Waldman, [D-Coconut Creek], expressed
Concern about a new entity of government being created
“with greater powers than the state attorney.”
Do you remember Judge Walsh, the special prosecutor of Iran/Contra fame? For that matter do you remember any of the special prosecutors? I search, vainly, for any modern American Liberal politician who opposed any of them not because they favored crime but rather that it was offensive to the legal system... Further, it allowed a spirit of “eclectic indignation” loose in the land that caused great harm to the body politic. Each and every “special prosecutor” loosed upon a Republican was greeted with huzzahs by the chattering classes. The silence was deafening when the tables were turned.
Do you think the WOG terrorist with a scrotum pocket rocket should be investigated by a “special prosecutor”? Do you think he should be charged with a hate crime? Christmas is still a sacred day for many people in this country.
I enclose a quote from A.V. Dicey about the Rule of Law. For some strange reason it is as clear as a 10 to 1 Tanqueray martini to all non-lawyers. To those officially steeped in pettifoggery and the marvelous labyrinthine ways of Jarndyce v Jarndyce it is good some of the time but never all of the time.
But back to Ethics.
In our conversation almost one year ago you made it clear that, if you had the power, you would ban all tobacco products in Florida.
I don’t suppose you’ve given much thought to uprisings led by the non-Casino Indians but I suppose they could be included ex post facto in the Stimulus program or shoved into the Health Care program.
My question to you is simple.
Is it ethical for the state of Florida to benefit from the sale of tobacco?
It is, as former Vice President Alpha Gump says about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, & the new bogey man, drowning polar bears, “settled science” that tobacco kills.
Should Florida benefit from the suicide of any of its citizens?
At the very least shouldn’t you return the portion of your state paycheck equal to the percentage of the state budget that comes from taxing tobacco?
If you cash it you are compliant in death of your fellow citizens. I believe the adage qui tacet consentit is still valid.
Don’t you?
Kevin Smith
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 West Copans Road
Coconut Creek, Florida33063
RE: Can Conundrums about Ethics be unethical? The Sun-Sentinel reports on Page 1 today that modern American Liberals who make up the Broward County legislative delegation are now in pretzel mode because of the threat of tougher ethics rules
Representative Waldman,
One of the main points of Nicomachean Ethics is the quest for balance. Since Aristotle, the father of Ethics, is now known as a Dead White European Male it might be better to leave him out of the discussion and switch to the moral relativism of situational Ethics.
“State Representative Jim Waldman, [D-Coconut Creek], expressed
Concern about a new entity of government being created
“with greater powers than the state attorney.”
Do you remember Judge Walsh, the special prosecutor of Iran/Contra fame? For that matter do you remember any of the special prosecutors? I search, vainly, for any modern American Liberal politician who opposed any of them not because they favored crime but rather that it was offensive to the legal system... Further, it allowed a spirit of “eclectic indignation” loose in the land that caused great harm to the body politic. Each and every “special prosecutor” loosed upon a Republican was greeted with huzzahs by the chattering classes. The silence was deafening when the tables were turned.
Do you think the WOG terrorist with a scrotum pocket rocket should be investigated by a “special prosecutor”? Do you think he should be charged with a hate crime? Christmas is still a sacred day for many people in this country.
I enclose a quote from A.V. Dicey about the Rule of Law. For some strange reason it is as clear as a 10 to 1 Tanqueray martini to all non-lawyers. To those officially steeped in pettifoggery and the marvelous labyrinthine ways of Jarndyce v Jarndyce it is good some of the time but never all of the time.
But back to Ethics.
In our conversation almost one year ago you made it clear that, if you had the power, you would ban all tobacco products in Florida.
I don’t suppose you’ve given much thought to uprisings led by the non-Casino Indians but I suppose they could be included ex post facto in the Stimulus program or shoved into the Health Care program.
My question to you is simple.
Is it ethical for the state of Florida to benefit from the sale of tobacco?
It is, as former Vice President Alpha Gump says about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, & the new bogey man, drowning polar bears, “settled science” that tobacco kills.
Should Florida benefit from the suicide of any of its citizens?
At the very least shouldn’t you return the portion of your state paycheck equal to the percentage of the state budget that comes from taxing tobacco?
If you cash it you are compliant in death of your fellow citizens. I believe the adage qui tacet consentit is still valid.
Don’t you?
Kevin Smith
Tom Shales The Washington Post
January 10, 2010
Tom Shales
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20051
RE: Time to bring back public floogings? Some comments about your comments on Brit Hume.
Mr. Shales,
Brit Hume suggested that Tiger Woods consider Christianity for the amazing grace that redemption brings. That comment caused you to consign him to the modern American Liberal version of Gehenna.
You said that “even only a few days into January it [the comment] is one of the most ridiculous of the year”.
I would suggest that a brief teaching moment from the cat, perhaps two dozen well laid on would be appropriate, save that you would probably enjoy it..
Instead, even though it is “only a few days into January” you are to be singled out for a rare honor
You have swept three of my most prestigious awards long before the Super Bowl. Accordingly, you are named
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH
SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR
Most ill-tempered scribes would slack off, like Alexander in tears after conquering Afghanistan [evidence that surges work?], because there were no other motivations. I believe in your enthusiasm for being the paradigmatic template for modern America Liberal ink stained wretches will enable you to overcome this.
I wait to hear the sound of one hand not clapping as you ignore Senator Reid’s comments about “light skinned Negros”. Actually, a “light skinned Negro”, one who is as then Senator Biden said, “clean and articulate”, could go far in American politics, don’t you think?
You may wish to cite the fact that neither Reid nor Biden called B. Hussein Obama a “macaca”. That would have been unforgiveable.
“Men without chests”
C.S. Lewis was right.
Kevin Smith
PS – As I write this I am watching the ordination of a former KKK organizer as a Minister by a Black Bishop into a Black congregation. [I want to mention the Senator Byrd KKK connection but I won’t.] While you await your orders from the Church of Secular Humanism, Moral Relativism, and What’s Happening Now you may wish to Google up Dismas. I hope that it is not too late for you to try to become familiar with Dante.
Tom Shales
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20051
RE: Time to bring back public floogings? Some comments about your comments on Brit Hume.
Mr. Shales,
Brit Hume suggested that Tiger Woods consider Christianity for the amazing grace that redemption brings. That comment caused you to consign him to the modern American Liberal version of Gehenna.
You said that “even only a few days into January it [the comment] is one of the most ridiculous of the year”.
I would suggest that a brief teaching moment from the cat, perhaps two dozen well laid on would be appropriate, save that you would probably enjoy it..
Instead, even though it is “only a few days into January” you are to be singled out for a rare honor
You have swept three of my most prestigious awards long before the Super Bowl. Accordingly, you are named
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH
SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR
Most ill-tempered scribes would slack off, like Alexander in tears after conquering Afghanistan [evidence that surges work?], because there were no other motivations. I believe in your enthusiasm for being the paradigmatic template for modern America Liberal ink stained wretches will enable you to overcome this.
I wait to hear the sound of one hand not clapping as you ignore Senator Reid’s comments about “light skinned Negros”. Actually, a “light skinned Negro”, one who is as then Senator Biden said, “clean and articulate”, could go far in American politics, don’t you think?
You may wish to cite the fact that neither Reid nor Biden called B. Hussein Obama a “macaca”. That would have been unforgiveable.
“Men without chests”
C.S. Lewis was right.
Kevin Smith
PS – As I write this I am watching the ordination of a former KKK organizer as a Minister by a Black Bishop into a Black congregation. [I want to mention the Senator Byrd KKK connection but I won’t.] While you await your orders from the Church of Secular Humanism, Moral Relativism, and What’s Happening Now you may wish to Google up Dismas. I hope that it is not too late for you to try to become familiar with Dante.
Robert Watson, Ph.D. Lynn University
January 10, 2010
Robert Watson, Ph.D.
Lynn University
3601 North Military Trail
Boca Raton, FL 33431
RE: who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes? – Some thoughts on your marvelous op-ed Republican liars in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Professor,
Presidents lie? I am shocked, shocked to find that out. I thought I was too old to learn anything new.
I’m fooling.
Presidents are supposed to lie. We expect it of them.
Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 by promising to keep America out of wars overseas. Mexico didn’t bother him. Incidentally, Thurgood Marshall said that Wilson was the most bigoted, biased, and anti-Negro President in his life time. Do you agree with that?
Franklin Roosevelt set a Nixon standard for lying to Americans in 1939 and 1940 about America and the European War. I’ve read a bit too much about Churchill to think that he tip-toed in to some American Naval Bases and made off with all those destroyers on his own. They addressed and signed their personal correspondence with “Former Naval person”.
As to Clinton’s lying the cause, his stepping out on the Missus for “a bit of the gobble”, is irrelevant. My morning episode of the Sopranos included Carmella telling the shrink that her husband would “poke anything with a pulse”. Ah! To have been a fly on the wall during the post-Monica make up sessions led by the snake handling minister!
But I digress.
I will share something that is so obvious that only a really smart person could miss it.
Clinton didn’t just lie. Clinton perjured himself.
“A man on oath holds his soul in his hand as if it were water.
He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
As to the wretched excesses of the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” I am glad to see that you have debunked the ammo shortage myth being caused by Obama. Your explanation – a classic case of supply and demand imbalances – is straight from the Austrian School. Does that make you a closet Friedmanite?
In your rush to castigate the “birthers” – those mostly angry, bitter gun clingers who shrieked that Obama wasn’t born in this country – you probably didn’t have time to turn your wrath on the “truthers”.
They are the ones who say that Halliburton wired the WTC and the Pentagon to blow up after a fabulous light show and illusion paid for by the Carlyle Group, a known Bush family satrapy, to convince some Red Necks that peace loving Islamists, convinced by enemies of Georg Soros that they didn’t have to die to get their 72 virgins, to fly into buildings. Bringing Rosie O’Donnell into the public arena to caterwaul that steel doesn’t melt was a stroke of genius. I haven’t yet tied Fox News to this but I will, I will.
How Joe the Plumber, in cahoots with those Tea Party people, convince the Christmas bomber, heretofore a banker whose father didn’t much like him, armed only with a scrotum pocket rocket, to try to send that big plane down the only working chimney in Detroit is beyond me.
Any clues?
Kevin Smith
PS – Did President Obama, the one whose shadow need but fall on us for miracles to occur, promise to televise the Health Care hearings in 2008 or 2009?
Robert Watson, Ph.D.
Lynn University
3601 North Military Trail
Boca Raton, FL 33431
RE: who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes? – Some thoughts on your marvelous op-ed Republican liars in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Professor,
Presidents lie? I am shocked, shocked to find that out. I thought I was too old to learn anything new.
I’m fooling.
Presidents are supposed to lie. We expect it of them.
Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 by promising to keep America out of wars overseas. Mexico didn’t bother him. Incidentally, Thurgood Marshall said that Wilson was the most bigoted, biased, and anti-Negro President in his life time. Do you agree with that?
Franklin Roosevelt set a Nixon standard for lying to Americans in 1939 and 1940 about America and the European War. I’ve read a bit too much about Churchill to think that he tip-toed in to some American Naval Bases and made off with all those destroyers on his own. They addressed and signed their personal correspondence with “Former Naval person”.
As to Clinton’s lying the cause, his stepping out on the Missus for “a bit of the gobble”, is irrelevant. My morning episode of the Sopranos included Carmella telling the shrink that her husband would “poke anything with a pulse”. Ah! To have been a fly on the wall during the post-Monica make up sessions led by the snake handling minister!
But I digress.
I will share something that is so obvious that only a really smart person could miss it.
Clinton didn’t just lie. Clinton perjured himself.
“A man on oath holds his soul in his hand as if it were water.
He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
As to the wretched excesses of the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” I am glad to see that you have debunked the ammo shortage myth being caused by Obama. Your explanation – a classic case of supply and demand imbalances – is straight from the Austrian School. Does that make you a closet Friedmanite?
In your rush to castigate the “birthers” – those mostly angry, bitter gun clingers who shrieked that Obama wasn’t born in this country – you probably didn’t have time to turn your wrath on the “truthers”.
They are the ones who say that Halliburton wired the WTC and the Pentagon to blow up after a fabulous light show and illusion paid for by the Carlyle Group, a known Bush family satrapy, to convince some Red Necks that peace loving Islamists, convinced by enemies of Georg Soros that they didn’t have to die to get their 72 virgins, to fly into buildings. Bringing Rosie O’Donnell into the public arena to caterwaul that steel doesn’t melt was a stroke of genius. I haven’t yet tied Fox News to this but I will, I will.
How Joe the Plumber, in cahoots with those Tea Party people, convince the Christmas bomber, heretofore a banker whose father didn’t much like him, armed only with a scrotum pocket rocket, to try to send that big plane down the only working chimney in Detroit is beyond me.
Any clues?
Kevin Smith
PS – Did President Obama, the one whose shadow need but fall on us for miracles to occur, promise to televise the Health Care hearings in 2008 or 2009?
Senator Dan Gelber
January 11, 2010
Senator Dan Gelber
1920 Meridian Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139
RE: “Are you serious”?
Senator Gelber,
I read recently of you getting your knickers in a knot because the Attorney General, Bill McCollum, believes that the proposed Health Care legislation is unconstitutional. Since we live in a most litigious society I can see no reason why this shouldn’t wind up in a court. Since you covet his office you would oppose him if were to declare himself on the side of the angels.
That’s politics. That’s why we have campaigns. It is good to hear free men yelling at each other.
A horse of quite a different color is the response of Speaker Pelosi to the question of does the Constitution give Congress the power to do what they are determined to do via health care. “Are you serious, are you serious”? was her response as if her questioner’s nose “was being eaten by weevils”.
I am serious. You are an attorney. You want to be Attorney General. Where does it say in the Constitution that Congress can do that? Also, buried deep in the proposed bill is a legal IED. It specifically forbids any future Congress from changing any parts of the proposed legislation. Do you think that would pass legislative and then judicial muster? If you are elected attorney General and the Florida legislature moved to bind the hands of a future Florida legislature would you defend said legislation?
Here’s a campaign tip.
If you could prevent the horde of rude, cheap, nasty, and generally rotten Quebecois from despoiling South Florida you would be elected in a landslide.
Get back to me on the first matter.
Kevin Smith
Senator Dan Gelber
1920 Meridian Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139
RE: “Are you serious”?
Senator Gelber,
I read recently of you getting your knickers in a knot because the Attorney General, Bill McCollum, believes that the proposed Health Care legislation is unconstitutional. Since we live in a most litigious society I can see no reason why this shouldn’t wind up in a court. Since you covet his office you would oppose him if were to declare himself on the side of the angels.
That’s politics. That’s why we have campaigns. It is good to hear free men yelling at each other.
A horse of quite a different color is the response of Speaker Pelosi to the question of does the Constitution give Congress the power to do what they are determined to do via health care. “Are you serious, are you serious”? was her response as if her questioner’s nose “was being eaten by weevils”.
I am serious. You are an attorney. You want to be Attorney General. Where does it say in the Constitution that Congress can do that? Also, buried deep in the proposed bill is a legal IED. It specifically forbids any future Congress from changing any parts of the proposed legislation. Do you think that would pass legislative and then judicial muster? If you are elected attorney General and the Florida legislature moved to bind the hands of a future Florida legislature would you defend said legislation?
Here’s a campaign tip.
If you could prevent the horde of rude, cheap, nasty, and generally rotten Quebecois from despoiling South Florida you would be elected in a landslide.
Get back to me on the first matter.
Kevin Smith
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Representative Jim Waldman
January 9, 2010
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 West Copans Road
Coconut Creek, Florida33063
RE: Can Conundrums about Ethics be unethical? The Sun-Sentinel reports on Page 1 today that modern American Liberals who make up the Broward County legislative delegation are now in pretzel mode because of the threat of tougher ethics rules
Representative Waldman,
One of the main points of Nicomachean Ethics is the quest for balance. Since Aristotle, the father of Ethics, is now known as a Dead White European Male it might be better to leave him out of the discussion and switch to the moral relativism of situational Ethics.
“State Representative Jim Waldman, [D-Coconut Creek], expressed
Concern about a new entity of government being created
“with greater powers than the state attorney.”
Do you remember Judge Walsh, the special prosecutor of Iran/Contra fame? For that matter do you remember any of the special prosecutors? I search, vainly, for any modern American Liberal politician who opposed any of them not because they favored crime but rather that it was offensive to the legal system... Further, it allowed a spirit of “eclectic indignation” loose in the land that caused great harm to the body politic. Each and every “special prosecutor” loosed upon a Republican was greeted with huzzahs by the chattering classes. The silence was deafening when the tables were turned.
Do you think the WOG terrorist with a scrotum pocket rocket should be investigated by a “special prosecutor”? Do you think he should be charged with a hate crime? Christmas is still a sacred day for many people in this country.
I enclose a quote from A.V. Dicey about the Rule of Law. For some strange reason it is as clear as a 10 to 1 Tanqueray martini to all non-lawyers. To those officially steeped in pettifoggery and the marvelous labyrinthine ways of Jarndyce v Jarndyce it is good some of the time but never all of the time.
But back to Ethics.
In our conversation almost one year ago you made it clear that, if you had the power, you would ban all tobacco products in Florida.
I don’t suppose you’ve given much thought to uprisings led by the non-Casino Indians but I suppose they could be included ex post facto in the Stimulus program or shoved into the Health Care program.
My question to you is simple.
Is it ethical for the state of Florida to benefit from the sale of tobacco?
It is, as former Vice President Alpha Gump says about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, & the new bogey man, drowning polar bears, “settled science” that tobacco kills.
Should Florida benefit from the suicide of any of its citizens?
At the very least shouldn’t you return the portion of your state paycheck equal to the percentage of the state budget that comes from taxing tobacco?
If you cash it you are compliant in death of your fellow citizens. I believe the adage qui tacet consentit is still valid.
Don’t you?
Kevin Smith
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 West Copans Road
Coconut Creek, Florida33063
RE: Can Conundrums about Ethics be unethical? The Sun-Sentinel reports on Page 1 today that modern American Liberals who make up the Broward County legislative delegation are now in pretzel mode because of the threat of tougher ethics rules
Representative Waldman,
One of the main points of Nicomachean Ethics is the quest for balance. Since Aristotle, the father of Ethics, is now known as a Dead White European Male it might be better to leave him out of the discussion and switch to the moral relativism of situational Ethics.
“State Representative Jim Waldman, [D-Coconut Creek], expressed
Concern about a new entity of government being created
“with greater powers than the state attorney.”
Do you remember Judge Walsh, the special prosecutor of Iran/Contra fame? For that matter do you remember any of the special prosecutors? I search, vainly, for any modern American Liberal politician who opposed any of them not because they favored crime but rather that it was offensive to the legal system... Further, it allowed a spirit of “eclectic indignation” loose in the land that caused great harm to the body politic. Each and every “special prosecutor” loosed upon a Republican was greeted with huzzahs by the chattering classes. The silence was deafening when the tables were turned.
Do you think the WOG terrorist with a scrotum pocket rocket should be investigated by a “special prosecutor”? Do you think he should be charged with a hate crime? Christmas is still a sacred day for many people in this country.
I enclose a quote from A.V. Dicey about the Rule of Law. For some strange reason it is as clear as a 10 to 1 Tanqueray martini to all non-lawyers. To those officially steeped in pettifoggery and the marvelous labyrinthine ways of Jarndyce v Jarndyce it is good some of the time but never all of the time.
But back to Ethics.
In our conversation almost one year ago you made it clear that, if you had the power, you would ban all tobacco products in Florida.
I don’t suppose you’ve given much thought to uprisings led by the non-Casino Indians but I suppose they could be included ex post facto in the Stimulus program or shoved into the Health Care program.
My question to you is simple.
Is it ethical for the state of Florida to benefit from the sale of tobacco?
It is, as former Vice President Alpha Gump says about Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, & the new bogey man, drowning polar bears, “settled science” that tobacco kills.
Should Florida benefit from the suicide of any of its citizens?
At the very least shouldn’t you return the portion of your state paycheck equal to the percentage of the state budget that comes from taxing tobacco?
If you cash it you are compliant in death of your fellow citizens. I believe the adage qui tacet consentit is still valid.
Don’t you?
Kevin Smith
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Senator Christopher Dodd
January 6, 2010
Senator Christopher Dodd
30 Lewis Street #110
Hartford, CT 06103
RE: What a piece of mierda!
Senator Dodd,
“None of us are irreplaceable. None of us are indispensable.”
Or so your website tells us.
Other than trying to stay out of jail here’s what you can do in retirement.
Study English grammar and composition.
The word none is a collective noun. In the present tense all 3rd person singular verbs end in “s”. Your sentences should have read “None of us is…”.
The plane rides back and forth to Ireland, your ancestral home and the current home of your wee little cottage and its bogus mortgage, should have given you time to become more familiar with other Irishmen. Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett, Yeats – My God, you have offended all of them – shuddered when they read those sentences.
Maybe you and your special pal Angelo can study it when you get to America’s newest prison for smarmy politicians.
Adios!
Bienvenidos a Gitmo.
Kevin Smith
Senator Christopher Dodd
30 Lewis Street #110
Hartford, CT 06103
RE: What a piece of mierda!
Senator Dodd,
“None of us are irreplaceable. None of us are indispensable.”
Or so your website tells us.
Other than trying to stay out of jail here’s what you can do in retirement.
Study English grammar and composition.
The word none is a collective noun. In the present tense all 3rd person singular verbs end in “s”. Your sentences should have read “None of us is…”.
The plane rides back and forth to Ireland, your ancestral home and the current home of your wee little cottage and its bogus mortgage, should have given you time to become more familiar with other Irishmen. Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett, Yeats – My God, you have offended all of them – shuddered when they read those sentences.
Maybe you and your special pal Angelo can study it when you get to America’s newest prison for smarmy politicians.
Adios!
Bienvenidos a Gitmo.
Kevin Smith
John Brennan – Czar
January 6, 2010
John Brennan – Czar
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
RE: Now what?
Mr. Brennan,
I cringe when I think that we may both be Irish Catholics. That’s why God gave me broad shoulders.
Since you have already offered the Detroit WOG bomber a plea deal may I suggest an alternative interrogation method?
Water boarding is so yesterday.
Give him a chance to give everybody up.
If he doesn’t cooperate start a fire fueled by copies of the Koran. Skin a pig and cook it down to fat. Pour the fat on him. Wrap him in the pig skin. Parachute him into Mecca with a note stapled to him saying, “Next time no more Mr. Nice Guy”.
If that doesn’t work lock him in a closet with Barney Frank and Barbara Mikulski.
That may be a bit over the top. Make him choose between Barney and Barbara.
V.P. Curley Biden, named in honor of the smartest stooge, must be your new best friend. He found someone in D.C. who is dumber than he is.
If Barack, the Big Boss man, sends you a sword it’s because he wants you to fall on it.
Kevin Smith
PS – Send me a photo. I will include it in my new dictionary to illustrate what an ohmadahn looks like.
John Brennan – Czar
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
RE: Now what?
Mr. Brennan,
I cringe when I think that we may both be Irish Catholics. That’s why God gave me broad shoulders.
Since you have already offered the Detroit WOG bomber a plea deal may I suggest an alternative interrogation method?
Water boarding is so yesterday.
Give him a chance to give everybody up.
If he doesn’t cooperate start a fire fueled by copies of the Koran. Skin a pig and cook it down to fat. Pour the fat on him. Wrap him in the pig skin. Parachute him into Mecca with a note stapled to him saying, “Next time no more Mr. Nice Guy”.
If that doesn’t work lock him in a closet with Barney Frank and Barbara Mikulski.
That may be a bit over the top. Make him choose between Barney and Barbara.
V.P. Curley Biden, named in honor of the smartest stooge, must be your new best friend. He found someone in D.C. who is dumber than he is.
If Barack, the Big Boss man, sends you a sword it’s because he wants you to fall on it.
Kevin Smith
PS – Send me a photo. I will include it in my new dictionary to illustrate what an ohmadahn looks like.
Janet Napolitano – Secretary Department of Homeland Security
January 6, 2010
Janet Napolitano – Secretary
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528
RE: Congratulations!
Madame Secretary,
Although you did it last year I am naming you the first winner this year of one of my most prestigious awards. You are hereby named
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
It took but 3 days for your comment “the system worked” to the President, taking a break from his luau poi, to speak of the “systemic failure” of your department.
You may remember back in the early days of the Clinton administration when a respected public servant named Craig Livingstone embarrassed Bill and Hillary. Congressman Lontos asked him if the ever considered suicide. If I were you I’d get some food tasters, just like Lucrezia Borgia did, on the payroll.
That warning notwithstanding, what you said makes you a boob, a ninny, I daresay even an oblatratrix. Showing my gender sensitivity I will allow you to call yourself a boobette.
Here’s a tip.
When the father of a WOG terrorist twice drops dimes on his son pay attention.
Here’s another tip.
If somebody looking like Abdul the Butcher tries to get on a plane have him first blow his nose into a page ripped from the Koran. For special cases have him wipe his ass with another page.
Wear your laurels proudly. You got them the old fashioned way.
You earned them.
Kevin Smith
Janet Napolitano – Secretary
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528
RE: Congratulations!
Madame Secretary,
Although you did it last year I am naming you the first winner this year of one of my most prestigious awards. You are hereby named
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
It took but 3 days for your comment “the system worked” to the President, taking a break from his luau poi, to speak of the “systemic failure” of your department.
You may remember back in the early days of the Clinton administration when a respected public servant named Craig Livingstone embarrassed Bill and Hillary. Congressman Lontos asked him if the ever considered suicide. If I were you I’d get some food tasters, just like Lucrezia Borgia did, on the payroll.
That warning notwithstanding, what you said makes you a boob, a ninny, I daresay even an oblatratrix. Showing my gender sensitivity I will allow you to call yourself a boobette.
Here’s a tip.
When the father of a WOG terrorist twice drops dimes on his son pay attention.
Here’s another tip.
If somebody looking like Abdul the Butcher tries to get on a plane have him first blow his nose into a page ripped from the Koran. For special cases have him wipe his ass with another page.
Wear your laurels proudly. You got them the old fashioned way.
You earned them.
Kevin Smith
Customer Service
January 6, 2010
David Kong – CEO
Best Western
6201 North 24th Parkway
Phoenix, AZ 85016-2023
Mr. Kong,
Enclosed are our two most recent invoices from Best Western Hammond Inn.
On the morning of January 3, 2010 we were two hours out of Hammond, LA when I realized I had left my phone charger in your motel.
I called the desk and, to my surprise, it had been found it in Room 117. It was at the front desk. I asked if it could be forwarded to me with any expenses being billed to my wife’s credit card, said card being the one used to settle the bill for the previous night’s lodgings. The desk attendant told me that it would be no problem but that it would have to wait for the manager’s OK on Monday morning. I was told that the manager would arrive at 6:00 AM Monday.
I called at 8:30 Monday morning and was told that the manager was not in yet but that it would be sent out straight away upon her arrival.
I called Tuesday afternoon to check on the status. This time I spoke to the manager. She told me that it hadn’t been shipped; it wouldn’t be shipped; that I would have to call FedEx or UPS and have them pick it up. Further, she said that she couldn’t imagine any employee telling me otherwise.
I asked her if anyone was going to tell me this. She did not answer.
I bought a new phone charger. Please dispose of the old one in an environmentally sensitive manner. I say that because if the way you dispose of good customers is any indication of your disposal techniques I probably should call the Louisiana Haz-Mat emergency response team.
Kevin Smith & Amy Smith
David Kong – CEO
Best Western
6201 North 24th Parkway
Phoenix, AZ 85016-2023
Mr. Kong,
Enclosed are our two most recent invoices from Best Western Hammond Inn.
On the morning of January 3, 2010 we were two hours out of Hammond, LA when I realized I had left my phone charger in your motel.
I called the desk and, to my surprise, it had been found it in Room 117. It was at the front desk. I asked if it could be forwarded to me with any expenses being billed to my wife’s credit card, said card being the one used to settle the bill for the previous night’s lodgings. The desk attendant told me that it would be no problem but that it would have to wait for the manager’s OK on Monday morning. I was told that the manager would arrive at 6:00 AM Monday.
I called at 8:30 Monday morning and was told that the manager was not in yet but that it would be sent out straight away upon her arrival.
I called Tuesday afternoon to check on the status. This time I spoke to the manager. She told me that it hadn’t been shipped; it wouldn’t be shipped; that I would have to call FedEx or UPS and have them pick it up. Further, she said that she couldn’t imagine any employee telling me otherwise.
I asked her if anyone was going to tell me this. She did not answer.
I bought a new phone charger. Please dispose of the old one in an environmentally sensitive manner. I say that because if the way you dispose of good customers is any indication of your disposal techniques I probably should call the Louisiana Haz-Mat emergency response team.
Kevin Smith & Amy Smith
Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald
January 8, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Enough with these sea sloths and feral predators! Some comments on your editorial of 1/7/10 suggesting universal health care for 2 of Florida’s tourist attractions.
Sirs,
I refuse, absolutely and unconditionally, to accept the primacy of primates, invertebrates, Bambi wanabees, and feline man eaters over the rights of man.
Man’s rights are a gift from God. They are ours at birth, “a gift from beyond the stars”. We extend rights to animals as a condition of our humanity.
Having said that let me add that my first Old English sheepdog had his own credit card from the Speyer Animal Clinic in Manhattan on 61st Street. His name was on it but it required my signature. They couldn’t help Falstaff so we took him to the veterinary school at Cornell University where he died on the operating table. The veterinarian who treated him was the author of the book on his particular ailment.
Fast forward 35 years.
It cost me almost $1,000 for Sharpton to die in May, 2007. Yes, he was a black cat and, yes, he was named after the Reverend Al.
I tell you this lest you think I am a closet vivisectionist.
Your editorial on manatees and panthers is, to borrow the most sagacious comment about Jimmy Carter, “more mush from the wimp”.
You say that numbers for the “elusive panther” – Unless you count the cinematic panther are there any other kind? – are “very disappointing”. In the same paragraph you say the population may have increased 5 fold.
Which is it?
“Very disappointing”, “disappointing”, or not “disappointing”?
It can’t be all of them. It may be none of them.
Since panthers are cursory hunters I suggested at the height of the Mad Cow buncombe the importation and release of them into the swamp West of the Sawgrass Mall as a great example of recycling. Even though the word had not entered our lexicon it would have reduced our carbon footprint immensely.
As to the manatees, am I the only person in Florida to say that if the ultimate goal of the alpha male is to eat 2 week old kale and endive tossed from a bridge or a dock by an anti-rational twit and then to swim into a whirling propeller it may be time for them to go?
What would happen if a Florida Wildlife Officer, a person with a badge, a gun, and police powers, were to come upon a Florida panther trying to eat a manatee?
Would he intervene on behalf of the losing party?
Would he shoot both of them?
Would he try to arrange conflict resolution and anger management sessions?
There can be no doubt that the boobies are running the hatch.
Any conversation that brings Orwell into it is improved. He said
“The obvious and true have got to be defended. The
solid world exists. Stones are hard. Water is wet.
Objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center.”
In an age when frigid weather is used as proof of Global Warming, in an age when a filthy WOG terrorist’s inability to light the fuse and kill 300 people is used as proof that “the system worked”, in an age when man, the planet’s most endangered species, is made subordinate to lesser breeds such as the Furbish Lousewort and the Snail Darter it may be time to “retire to bedlam”.
Alas, that is not the nature of man. He, as the poet said, will “not only endure he will prevail”. His enemies are not the hapless animals he protects but, rather, members of the chattering class who, through moral relativism, equate men with apes.
Kevin Smith
PS – I have been trying since 1997 to get the Miami Herald to turn off the A/C in your HQ by the bay. What better example could there be of a commitment to save the planet, not to mention the drowning polar bears, by reducing your dependence on green house gas producing fuels? Should I hope that this is the year you will change?
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Enough with these sea sloths and feral predators! Some comments on your editorial of 1/7/10 suggesting universal health care for 2 of Florida’s tourist attractions.
Sirs,
I refuse, absolutely and unconditionally, to accept the primacy of primates, invertebrates, Bambi wanabees, and feline man eaters over the rights of man.
Man’s rights are a gift from God. They are ours at birth, “a gift from beyond the stars”. We extend rights to animals as a condition of our humanity.
Having said that let me add that my first Old English sheepdog had his own credit card from the Speyer Animal Clinic in Manhattan on 61st Street. His name was on it but it required my signature. They couldn’t help Falstaff so we took him to the veterinary school at Cornell University where he died on the operating table. The veterinarian who treated him was the author of the book on his particular ailment.
Fast forward 35 years.
It cost me almost $1,000 for Sharpton to die in May, 2007. Yes, he was a black cat and, yes, he was named after the Reverend Al.
I tell you this lest you think I am a closet vivisectionist.
Your editorial on manatees and panthers is, to borrow the most sagacious comment about Jimmy Carter, “more mush from the wimp”.
You say that numbers for the “elusive panther” – Unless you count the cinematic panther are there any other kind? – are “very disappointing”. In the same paragraph you say the population may have increased 5 fold.
Which is it?
“Very disappointing”, “disappointing”, or not “disappointing”?
It can’t be all of them. It may be none of them.
Since panthers are cursory hunters I suggested at the height of the Mad Cow buncombe the importation and release of them into the swamp West of the Sawgrass Mall as a great example of recycling. Even though the word had not entered our lexicon it would have reduced our carbon footprint immensely.
As to the manatees, am I the only person in Florida to say that if the ultimate goal of the alpha male is to eat 2 week old kale and endive tossed from a bridge or a dock by an anti-rational twit and then to swim into a whirling propeller it may be time for them to go?
What would happen if a Florida Wildlife Officer, a person with a badge, a gun, and police powers, were to come upon a Florida panther trying to eat a manatee?
Would he intervene on behalf of the losing party?
Would he shoot both of them?
Would he try to arrange conflict resolution and anger management sessions?
There can be no doubt that the boobies are running the hatch.
Any conversation that brings Orwell into it is improved. He said
“The obvious and true have got to be defended. The
solid world exists. Stones are hard. Water is wet.
Objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center.”
In an age when frigid weather is used as proof of Global Warming, in an age when a filthy WOG terrorist’s inability to light the fuse and kill 300 people is used as proof that “the system worked”, in an age when man, the planet’s most endangered species, is made subordinate to lesser breeds such as the Furbish Lousewort and the Snail Darter it may be time to “retire to bedlam”.
Alas, that is not the nature of man. He, as the poet said, will “not only endure he will prevail”. His enemies are not the hapless animals he protects but, rather, members of the chattering class who, through moral relativism, equate men with apes.
Kevin Smith
PS – I have been trying since 1997 to get the Miami Herald to turn off the A/C in your HQ by the bay. What better example could there be of a commitment to save the planet, not to mention the drowning polar bears, by reducing your dependence on green house gas producing fuels? Should I hope that this is the year you will change?
George Weigel National Review
December 14, 2009
George Weigel
National Review
215 Lexington Avenue
New York, New York 10016
RE: The Just-War Tradition
Mr. Weigel,
In your article in National Review – “The Just-War Tradition” – you pose a hypothetical question of what would Admiral Halsey do if he found Admiral Nagumo’s fleet before Pearl Harbor.
I refer you to pages 37 and 38 of “The Battle for Leyte Gulf” by Thomas J. Cutler.
“Admiral, did you authorize this thing?” Commander Buracker asked.
“Yes,” said Halsey.
“Do you realize this means war?” Buracker asked.
“Yes,” Halsey repeated laconically.
“Goddammit Admiral,” Buracker said. “You can’t start a private war of your own! Who’s going to take responsibility?”
“I’ll take it. If anything gets in the way we’ll shoot first and argue afterwards.”
Thus was the Gordian knot of soul searching culpability cut.
In the movie “The Bridges of Toko-Ri” Frederick March plays an Admiral who asks the question asked in every war. “Where do we find such men?”
When Colman McCarthy and Father Hehir save Tibet I’ll reread Thucydides and try to figure out what he would have done.
Kevin Smith
George Weigel
National Review
215 Lexington Avenue
New York, New York 10016
RE: The Just-War Tradition
Mr. Weigel,
In your article in National Review – “The Just-War Tradition” – you pose a hypothetical question of what would Admiral Halsey do if he found Admiral Nagumo’s fleet before Pearl Harbor.
I refer you to pages 37 and 38 of “The Battle for Leyte Gulf” by Thomas J. Cutler.
“Admiral, did you authorize this thing?” Commander Buracker asked.
“Yes,” said Halsey.
“Do you realize this means war?” Buracker asked.
“Yes,” Halsey repeated laconically.
“Goddammit Admiral,” Buracker said. “You can’t start a private war of your own! Who’s going to take responsibility?”
“I’ll take it. If anything gets in the way we’ll shoot first and argue afterwards.”
Thus was the Gordian knot of soul searching culpability cut.
In the movie “The Bridges of Toko-Ri” Frederick March plays an Admiral who asks the question asked in every war. “Where do we find such men?”
When Colman McCarthy and Father Hehir save Tibet I’ll reread Thucydides and try to figure out what he would have done.
Kevin Smith
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
They're Back!
December 29, 2009
Rock Groove lichen, Dwarf Wedge mussel, Comal Springs Drypoid beetle, Delta smelt, Delhi fly, Snail darter, and my favorite, the Furbish lousewort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week a Muslim wingnut tried to blow up a Delta jet with 300 passengers inbound to Detroit from Kafiristan. His 72 infidel virgins would have had a purchase price of 300 people. A good deal using the new 3rd world math.
The beast outside the gates, the one with the awful eyes and the unsmiling face, is upon us again.
I wait in vain for a terrorist to be named Slojanowski or Nunzio. Let me know when a jet is hijacked by someone from Finland. Is there anyone from Chile other than a garden variety bank robber on the “Don’t Fly” list?
Beginning with the Munich Olympics in 1972 straight through to Saturday last there is a single thread common to all these despicable acts. Whether it was embassies, war ships, office buildings, airplanes, or Jewish reporters soon to have their heads cut off the sound common to all these things was… Allah Akbar!
I read today that the Rock Groove lichen, the Dwarf Wedge mussel, and the Comal Springs Drypoid beetle have been added to the Endangered Species list. We have been told that Carbon Dioxide is a poison gas. With regards to the former has anyone else noticed that Jabberwocky is the new official language and that the boobies are running the hatch? With regards to the latter can we expect an official ukase from one of the czars limiting exhaling?
We have given Swift - Jonathan, not Taylor - a new dimension. We have allowed the dunces to rule us.
I am in Texas with my 3 granddaughters. I am 61 years older than the youngest. I have been “in disfavor with fortune and men’s eyes” for so long that the estate tax changes will encompass no effect on me at all. The only legacy I can be certain of leaving them is the one I got at birth.
There is much to be learned from Buddhism, from the Hindus and the Shintos. Let whatever Vegans can add to the Western Canon be added to it. Flat Earthers and Truthers should be encouraged to put something into the pot if they can.
Is there a Buddhist Homer? Is there an Antigone waiting to be discovered? Was there a Hindu Cicero of whom I am unaware? Is there a Dante shaped by the people and customs of the Tigris and the Euphrates? How about a Bach? How about a cello? If Allah is so Akbar why would a few cartoons bother him?
If I mention leisure suits, due process, Zippo lighters, canned food for dogs an will have d cats, polio vaccine, the Green Bay Packer sweep, short selling, or walking on the moon I run the risk of being called an elitist.
The line from Jerusalem to Athens to Rome to London to America is both plain and straight and true. Here I enter the obligatory footnote that “Men are not angels” and say that bad things happened. Having said that can someone tell me who else has done what “we” have done? Can someone tell me what other system has lifted so many people to undreamed of heights such as “we” have done?
Rights that were mine at birth, rights that were “a gift from beyond the stars”, these things I want to make sure that Caitlin, Caroline, and Julia will have and can pass on to their grandchildren.
We care more about flora, fauna, and “whether or not the Constable has blundered” then facing down the evil men who want to kill us, who want to destroy our way of life, and who want to salt our fields.
The time for turning the other cheek is gone.
The time for weasel words like balance, fairness, open mindedness and its bitch spawn, multi-culturalism, is gone.
Nolo me tangere cum impecunis
Mecca delenda est.
Kevin Smith
Rock Groove lichen, Dwarf Wedge mussel, Comal Springs Drypoid beetle, Delta smelt, Delhi fly, Snail darter, and my favorite, the Furbish lousewort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week a Muslim wingnut tried to blow up a Delta jet with 300 passengers inbound to Detroit from Kafiristan. His 72 infidel virgins would have had a purchase price of 300 people. A good deal using the new 3rd world math.
The beast outside the gates, the one with the awful eyes and the unsmiling face, is upon us again.
I wait in vain for a terrorist to be named Slojanowski or Nunzio. Let me know when a jet is hijacked by someone from Finland. Is there anyone from Chile other than a garden variety bank robber on the “Don’t Fly” list?
Beginning with the Munich Olympics in 1972 straight through to Saturday last there is a single thread common to all these despicable acts. Whether it was embassies, war ships, office buildings, airplanes, or Jewish reporters soon to have their heads cut off the sound common to all these things was… Allah Akbar!
I read today that the Rock Groove lichen, the Dwarf Wedge mussel, and the Comal Springs Drypoid beetle have been added to the Endangered Species list. We have been told that Carbon Dioxide is a poison gas. With regards to the former has anyone else noticed that Jabberwocky is the new official language and that the boobies are running the hatch? With regards to the latter can we expect an official ukase from one of the czars limiting exhaling?
We have given Swift - Jonathan, not Taylor - a new dimension. We have allowed the dunces to rule us.
I am in Texas with my 3 granddaughters. I am 61 years older than the youngest. I have been “in disfavor with fortune and men’s eyes” for so long that the estate tax changes will encompass no effect on me at all. The only legacy I can be certain of leaving them is the one I got at birth.
There is much to be learned from Buddhism, from the Hindus and the Shintos. Let whatever Vegans can add to the Western Canon be added to it. Flat Earthers and Truthers should be encouraged to put something into the pot if they can.
Is there a Buddhist Homer? Is there an Antigone waiting to be discovered? Was there a Hindu Cicero of whom I am unaware? Is there a Dante shaped by the people and customs of the Tigris and the Euphrates? How about a Bach? How about a cello? If Allah is so Akbar why would a few cartoons bother him?
If I mention leisure suits, due process, Zippo lighters, canned food for dogs an will have d cats, polio vaccine, the Green Bay Packer sweep, short selling, or walking on the moon I run the risk of being called an elitist.
The line from Jerusalem to Athens to Rome to London to America is both plain and straight and true. Here I enter the obligatory footnote that “Men are not angels” and say that bad things happened. Having said that can someone tell me who else has done what “we” have done? Can someone tell me what other system has lifted so many people to undreamed of heights such as “we” have done?
Rights that were mine at birth, rights that were “a gift from beyond the stars”, these things I want to make sure that Caitlin, Caroline, and Julia will have and can pass on to their grandchildren.
We care more about flora, fauna, and “whether or not the Constable has blundered” then facing down the evil men who want to kill us, who want to destroy our way of life, and who want to salt our fields.
The time for turning the other cheek is gone.
The time for weasel words like balance, fairness, open mindedness and its bitch spawn, multi-culturalism, is gone.
Nolo me tangere cum impecunis
Mecca delenda est.
Kevin Smith
Ellen Goodman The Boston Globe
December 29, 2009
Ellen Goodman
The Boston Globe
135 Morrissey Street
Boston, MA. 02205
RE: Is this the end of “Little Rica”? Is that what your column in today’s Dallas Morning News says? If so, farewell to one of my favorite piñatas.
Ellie! Sweetheart!
Based on the new picture attached to your column a few months ago I know what your new career will be.
You are going to franchise retail Cougar outlets. There may be a market for ancient bearded clams. If so, you are ahead of the curve. Plus there is nothing more carbon neutral.
Colonel Sanders was 65 when he took his birds public. If there isn’t a market for arthritic “Afternoon Delights” the solution is typically American. Create one. Down South they are called ‘Nooners”.
Meanwhile, based on your last column, congratulations are in order.
Your paean to progesterone has, a la James Joyce, expanded our language. Solipsism is no longer an individual trait. You’ve made it a group characteristic.
Whatever progress has been made by women is because of WOMEN.
Am I the first to notice that the chicks’ progress is coincident with your career as an ink stained wench?
I am fighting the temptation to toss in Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc because it came from Dead White European Males. Since you are heading to a new life at the Medicare assisted Mustang Ranch I’ll do my best to overcome this heretofore irresistible impulse.
You say “nearly a quarter-million women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan” and that “120 have died and 650 have been wounded but there is still no ERA”. Logic would dictate that if the Amazon Brigade under the stalwart leadership of Brigadier Bodacia, ably assisted by Gunnery Sergeant Mikulski and Shalala the sublime sapper, were to replace the 173rd Infantry Brigade their casualty rate would go up dramatically. The ERA would become part of the Constitution by acclamation. While you’re at it you could begin to end the gender disparity in Arlington Cemetery.
Your verbal ca-ca includes the oft-repeated shibboleth that chicks are paid 77% of what guys make. If that is the case I can’t imagine how you spent the last 40 years as an underpaid wage slave. Did you have to make coffee for the bosses? Did you have to make meat loaf for the company rarees? Is there anything else you want to share with us?
Were you doing the Monica before Monica? If you did you have an obligation to the newly arriving female scribes. To tell them to keep their MACE and their self respect handy.
You take the obligatory modern American Liberal poke at Sarah Palin by calling her a “Title 1X baby”. You succeed in making it sound like a 4 letter word. How would you describe the “wise Latina” currently sitting on the Supreme Court?
Who gets the credit for Paris Hilton? Are there any volunteers?
Other than you there is only one other columnist in Boston with whom I am familiar. I will send a copy of this farewell note to Howie Carr. I am certain he will pass the hat to help finance your move.
Maybe you could read up on Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher to see how they overcame gender and class to become leaders. Did they have Affirmative Action on the kibbutz or at Oxbridge?
God luck in your new venture
Kevin Smith
Ellen Goodman
The Boston Globe
135 Morrissey Street
Boston, MA. 02205
RE: Is this the end of “Little Rica”? Is that what your column in today’s Dallas Morning News says? If so, farewell to one of my favorite piñatas.
Ellie! Sweetheart!
Based on the new picture attached to your column a few months ago I know what your new career will be.
You are going to franchise retail Cougar outlets. There may be a market for ancient bearded clams. If so, you are ahead of the curve. Plus there is nothing more carbon neutral.
Colonel Sanders was 65 when he took his birds public. If there isn’t a market for arthritic “Afternoon Delights” the solution is typically American. Create one. Down South they are called ‘Nooners”.
Meanwhile, based on your last column, congratulations are in order.
Your paean to progesterone has, a la James Joyce, expanded our language. Solipsism is no longer an individual trait. You’ve made it a group characteristic.
Whatever progress has been made by women is because of WOMEN.
Am I the first to notice that the chicks’ progress is coincident with your career as an ink stained wench?
I am fighting the temptation to toss in Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc because it came from Dead White European Males. Since you are heading to a new life at the Medicare assisted Mustang Ranch I’ll do my best to overcome this heretofore irresistible impulse.
You say “nearly a quarter-million women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan” and that “120 have died and 650 have been wounded but there is still no ERA”. Logic would dictate that if the Amazon Brigade under the stalwart leadership of Brigadier Bodacia, ably assisted by Gunnery Sergeant Mikulski and Shalala the sublime sapper, were to replace the 173rd Infantry Brigade their casualty rate would go up dramatically. The ERA would become part of the Constitution by acclamation. While you’re at it you could begin to end the gender disparity in Arlington Cemetery.
Your verbal ca-ca includes the oft-repeated shibboleth that chicks are paid 77% of what guys make. If that is the case I can’t imagine how you spent the last 40 years as an underpaid wage slave. Did you have to make coffee for the bosses? Did you have to make meat loaf for the company rarees? Is there anything else you want to share with us?
Were you doing the Monica before Monica? If you did you have an obligation to the newly arriving female scribes. To tell them to keep their MACE and their self respect handy.
You take the obligatory modern American Liberal poke at Sarah Palin by calling her a “Title 1X baby”. You succeed in making it sound like a 4 letter word. How would you describe the “wise Latina” currently sitting on the Supreme Court?
Who gets the credit for Paris Hilton? Are there any volunteers?
Other than you there is only one other columnist in Boston with whom I am familiar. I will send a copy of this farewell note to Howie Carr. I am certain he will pass the hat to help finance your move.
Maybe you could read up on Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher to see how they overcame gender and class to become leaders. Did they have Affirmative Action on the kibbutz or at Oxbridge?
God luck in your new venture
Kevin Smith
Monday, December 28, 2009
Congressman Ron Klein
December 22, 2009
Congressman Ron Klein
800 Broward Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: As is said down South, “It’s nut cuttin’ time”. – A request for the yeas or nays.
Congressman Klein,
If Israel decides to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities will you support their decision?
If American military intervention is required will you support that?
Kevin Smith
Congressman Ron Klein
800 Broward Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: As is said down South, “It’s nut cuttin’ time”. – A request for the yeas or nays.
Congressman Klein,
If Israel decides to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities will you support their decision?
If American military intervention is required will you support that?
Kevin Smith
Beth Reinhard The Miami Herald
December 22, 2009
Beth Reinhard
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Tales of “Hootie” and what did Alex Sink do when she worked for him.
Ms. Reinhard,
As a leading regional ink stained wench and as a proud card carrying member of the South Florida modern American Liberal cabal maybe you can get me an answer.
In your column of 12/12/09 you comment on the “white male GOP stronghold” and the futile attempts of Antigone wanabees to gain access to the testosterone laden redoubt. From your vantage point the only requirement to be a member and gain all the benefits appurtenant thereto is to have or to have had a prostate gland.
I have been trying to get an answer on Alex Sink’s acquiescence in this young century’s most blatant exercise of public misogyny.
In the winter/spring of 2003 the New York Times gave equal Page 1 coverage to two upcoming events.
One was the onset of the Congressionally approved war with Iraq. The other was an annual golf tournament held in a privately owned gold club in rural Georgia.
A war with men killing each other, with modern technology perverted to aid in this unholy cause, with an unwise war mongering lout trying to secure oil benefits for his family, with a demonic puppet master Vice President who long ago had sold his soul to the forces of the Dark Side, was one thing to protest. But worse, far worse things were happening.
White guys didn’t want to play golf with chicks. Further, they didn’t want to have lunch with them, particularly in the Men’s Grill. Despite this slap in the face of American women these guys were able to make their tournament one of the premier sporting events in the world. As much as the country celebrated the girls’ soccer team beating the…the…Who the Hell did they beat?...the highlight was the skinny chick taking her shirt off.
It was like central casting, with the able help of NOW and EMILY’S list, had chosen the nickname of the knuckle dragging dude in charge of this affront to American women. “Hootie” was his name. Discrimination was his game. “Hootie” would have to answer for his and his gender’s sins.
Pandora’s Box was open but the task proved too much for Lady Sisyphus.
The ladies did not prevail. They did not get to tee up with the rich White guys. They did not get to slurp down a few see-throughs in the sacrosanct grill. The damage done to them will take generations to repair.
In charge of this was the aforementioned “Hootie”.
Here’s where my unanswered question comes in.
Alex Sink worked for “Hootie” at the Bank of America. One might say that she was his “Gal Friday”. As she pondered the thickets of Glass-Steagel and the intricacies of fractional reserves she may have had to get him coffee and take car of his dry cleaning and dental appointments. I can not attest to the last sentence because I can’t get an answer.
Was “Hootie” always “Hootie”? Was he a woman hater when she worked for him? Did he demean and harass her? Did he tell jokes at her expense? Was she paid as much as her male counterparts? Why didn’t she resign in protest at his antics?
Now that she is running for the Senate she is entitled to a “mulligan” on this. “Mulligan” is a golfing term for “do-over”.
Maybe if you were to ask her we could get to the bottom of this vexing question.
I am not sure how the war will end but it pales in comparison to the brouhaha at Augusta Golf Club.
Besides, if “Hootie” drank in the morning – and she would know, wouldn’t she? - it would explain a lot of things.
Please get back to me before next November’s election.
Thank you.
Kevin Smith
PS – I am having a senior moment. Was it President Carter or President Mondale who appointed Sandra Day O’Connnor to the Supreme Court?
Beth Reinhard
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: Tales of “Hootie” and what did Alex Sink do when she worked for him.
Ms. Reinhard,
As a leading regional ink stained wench and as a proud card carrying member of the South Florida modern American Liberal cabal maybe you can get me an answer.
In your column of 12/12/09 you comment on the “white male GOP stronghold” and the futile attempts of Antigone wanabees to gain access to the testosterone laden redoubt. From your vantage point the only requirement to be a member and gain all the benefits appurtenant thereto is to have or to have had a prostate gland.
I have been trying to get an answer on Alex Sink’s acquiescence in this young century’s most blatant exercise of public misogyny.
In the winter/spring of 2003 the New York Times gave equal Page 1 coverage to two upcoming events.
One was the onset of the Congressionally approved war with Iraq. The other was an annual golf tournament held in a privately owned gold club in rural Georgia.
A war with men killing each other, with modern technology perverted to aid in this unholy cause, with an unwise war mongering lout trying to secure oil benefits for his family, with a demonic puppet master Vice President who long ago had sold his soul to the forces of the Dark Side, was one thing to protest. But worse, far worse things were happening.
White guys didn’t want to play golf with chicks. Further, they didn’t want to have lunch with them, particularly in the Men’s Grill. Despite this slap in the face of American women these guys were able to make their tournament one of the premier sporting events in the world. As much as the country celebrated the girls’ soccer team beating the…the…Who the Hell did they beat?...the highlight was the skinny chick taking her shirt off.
It was like central casting, with the able help of NOW and EMILY’S list, had chosen the nickname of the knuckle dragging dude in charge of this affront to American women. “Hootie” was his name. Discrimination was his game. “Hootie” would have to answer for his and his gender’s sins.
Pandora’s Box was open but the task proved too much for Lady Sisyphus.
The ladies did not prevail. They did not get to tee up with the rich White guys. They did not get to slurp down a few see-throughs in the sacrosanct grill. The damage done to them will take generations to repair.
In charge of this was the aforementioned “Hootie”.
Here’s where my unanswered question comes in.
Alex Sink worked for “Hootie” at the Bank of America. One might say that she was his “Gal Friday”. As she pondered the thickets of Glass-Steagel and the intricacies of fractional reserves she may have had to get him coffee and take car of his dry cleaning and dental appointments. I can not attest to the last sentence because I can’t get an answer.
Was “Hootie” always “Hootie”? Was he a woman hater when she worked for him? Did he demean and harass her? Did he tell jokes at her expense? Was she paid as much as her male counterparts? Why didn’t she resign in protest at his antics?
Now that she is running for the Senate she is entitled to a “mulligan” on this. “Mulligan” is a golfing term for “do-over”.
Maybe if you were to ask her we could get to the bottom of this vexing question.
I am not sure how the war will end but it pales in comparison to the brouhaha at Augusta Golf Club.
Besides, if “Hootie” drank in the morning – and she would know, wouldn’t she? - it would explain a lot of things.
Please get back to me before next November’s election.
Thank you.
Kevin Smith
PS – I am having a senior moment. Was it President Carter or President Mondale who appointed Sandra Day O’Connnor to the Supreme Court?
Senator Christopher Dodd
December 24, 2009
Senator Christopher Dodd
30 Lewis Street #110
Hartford, CT 06103
RE: The traditions of the Senate
Senator Dodd,
And a non-denominational carbon free Season’s Greetings to you!
Churchill said that the traditions of the Royal Navy were “rum, sodomy, and the lash”. Who knows what you and Teddy were up to but I digress.
Since you are the only member of Congress ever to lie to my face I have always felt a certain kinship to you. I’ll get to that later.
I read your statement about newer members of the Senate “deeply disturbing” you what with their disregard for tradition or, as you say, a “lack of appreciation for what this chamber means and how we work together”.
If I were to use the word “hubris” you might think me an elitist. I’ll settle for you being enveloped in an aura of “non-malodorous fecal matter”. Some of your bluer collar neighbors by your castle in Ireland would say that you think that your shit doesn’t stink.
It does. In fact, the ordure is redolent to the point of nausea.
Is being a “Friend of Angelo” a tradition of the Senate?
Is having a bogus mortgage transaction a tradition of the Senate?
One of the traditions of the Senate that you have – forgive me – scrupulously upheld, the one taught to you by your father, is, “If it ain’t nailed down, grab it”.
You could be your own Stimulus Package if you were to open your windows and start tossing out $20 bills from the swag you got from Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Sallie Mae, and, since Lard Kennedy was your role model, Ellie Mae.
I’ll say this for you, as far as we can tell, you’ve never killed any of them.
As to your lying to me…
Think back to the summer of 1979. There was fund raiser for you in a luxury Park Avenue apartment. I was with Norman Kelly, a man who had performed some personal service for your mother. Your gratitude to him went from effusive to fulsome.
It turned out we had a lot in common.
Our fathers both were lawyers. We both went to Catholic schools. We both majored in History. We both were in the Peace Corps.
I asked you about Central America in general and Nicaragua and the Sandinistas in particular.
You told me that you would be “tough” on them. Further, you told me that the safety and security of the United States were paramount and that it trumped any other concern. You even expressed some concern over President Carter and his head up his ass views on everything. [30 years later and as one History major to another we can stipulate that he was the worst President of the 20th Century, can’t we?]
Alas, everything you told me was a lie.
You have lived up to that tradition since you have been in the Senate.
30 years of lies, big and small, must be a terrible burden on one’s soul.
May I suggest that you re-read “The Hound of Heaven”?
After the people of Connecticut retire you next November I suggest that a lucrative career awaits you. As the paradigmatic template for the modern American Liberal a telemarketing career as a negative example will enable you to earn the first honest dollars in your life. As far as I can tell your motto since you have been in public life has been “Nothing lost save honor”.
You have lived up to that tradition.
Kevin Smith
Senator Christopher Dodd
30 Lewis Street #110
Hartford, CT 06103
RE: The traditions of the Senate
Senator Dodd,
And a non-denominational carbon free Season’s Greetings to you!
Churchill said that the traditions of the Royal Navy were “rum, sodomy, and the lash”. Who knows what you and Teddy were up to but I digress.
Since you are the only member of Congress ever to lie to my face I have always felt a certain kinship to you. I’ll get to that later.
I read your statement about newer members of the Senate “deeply disturbing” you what with their disregard for tradition or, as you say, a “lack of appreciation for what this chamber means and how we work together”.
If I were to use the word “hubris” you might think me an elitist. I’ll settle for you being enveloped in an aura of “non-malodorous fecal matter”. Some of your bluer collar neighbors by your castle in Ireland would say that you think that your shit doesn’t stink.
It does. In fact, the ordure is redolent to the point of nausea.
Is being a “Friend of Angelo” a tradition of the Senate?
Is having a bogus mortgage transaction a tradition of the Senate?
One of the traditions of the Senate that you have – forgive me – scrupulously upheld, the one taught to you by your father, is, “If it ain’t nailed down, grab it”.
You could be your own Stimulus Package if you were to open your windows and start tossing out $20 bills from the swag you got from Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Sallie Mae, and, since Lard Kennedy was your role model, Ellie Mae.
I’ll say this for you, as far as we can tell, you’ve never killed any of them.
As to your lying to me…
Think back to the summer of 1979. There was fund raiser for you in a luxury Park Avenue apartment. I was with Norman Kelly, a man who had performed some personal service for your mother. Your gratitude to him went from effusive to fulsome.
It turned out we had a lot in common.
Our fathers both were lawyers. We both went to Catholic schools. We both majored in History. We both were in the Peace Corps.
I asked you about Central America in general and Nicaragua and the Sandinistas in particular.
You told me that you would be “tough” on them. Further, you told me that the safety and security of the United States were paramount and that it trumped any other concern. You even expressed some concern over President Carter and his head up his ass views on everything. [30 years later and as one History major to another we can stipulate that he was the worst President of the 20th Century, can’t we?]
Alas, everything you told me was a lie.
You have lived up to that tradition since you have been in the Senate.
30 years of lies, big and small, must be a terrible burden on one’s soul.
May I suggest that you re-read “The Hound of Heaven”?
After the people of Connecticut retire you next November I suggest that a lucrative career awaits you. As the paradigmatic template for the modern American Liberal a telemarketing career as a negative example will enable you to earn the first honest dollars in your life. As far as I can tell your motto since you have been in public life has been “Nothing lost save honor”.
You have lived up to that tradition.
Kevin Smith
Senator Charles Schumer
December 25, 2009
Senator Charles Schumer
RE: Follow the bouncing ball: Putz, dreck, bitch, schmucks
Yo! Chuckie,
You were shocked, shocked in 1996 when Senator D’Amato said you were a putz.
It turned out he was right.
Further, the facts would support the interpretation that you are dreck.
Then you called the flight attendant a bitch.
The above enables a neutral observer to say that the voters of New York are schmucks.
And a non-denominational carbon free Season’s Greetings to you.
Kevin Smith
Senator Charles Schumer
RE: Follow the bouncing ball: Putz, dreck, bitch, schmucks
Yo! Chuckie,
You were shocked, shocked in 1996 when Senator D’Amato said you were a putz.
It turned out he was right.
Further, the facts would support the interpretation that you are dreck.
Then you called the flight attendant a bitch.
The above enables a neutral observer to say that the voters of New York are schmucks.
And a non-denominational carbon free Season’s Greetings to you.
Kevin Smith
Monday, December 14, 2009
Navy beat Army on Saturday but can they beat the Manatees?
December 14, 2009
Navy beat Army on Saturday but can they beat the Manatees?
As bad as trying those WOG terrorists in Manhattan will be this is worse.
Friends of the Manatees, or so the Sun-Sentinel tells us this morning, are suing the United States Navy. It seems that their big bad nuclear submarines, the ones that emit death rays that diminish the libidos of the big buck males and cause the cows to shun estrus, are acting as home wreckers.
Would it cause me to be stoned by the “Trousered Apes” who proclaim that Nature is All if I were to say that maybe it’s time for these uglisome hazards to navigation to go, as in extinct? If it weren’t for ohmadahnish bi-peds throwing week old cabbages at them they would have long ago starved.
Speaking of starving, why don’t the alligators take them out? How about loosing some Burmese pythons or, better still, their nastier cousins, the anacondas in the manatee pre-school? Has anybody thought about training some endangered Florida panthers to do their duty?
13 years ago I presented a plan that I was certain would gain national prestige. Since it was presented at the same time that “Midnight Basketball” was offered as sound public policy I thought I would be “Man of the Year” among the few remaining rational adults.
It was simple.
Gather up all the rotten vegetables south of Charleston and bring them here.
Use them for chum everywhere these dullards float. [Who says I am against sound re-cycling?]
Keep herding them into bigger groups in smaller areas. It works with 4 legged cows. Why shouldn’t it work with these bricks?
Force them into 20 foot diameter floating Cuisinarts.
SAUSAGE FOR THE HOMELESS!
I don’t know why it never gained traction.
I tell you that are people in caves in Kafiristan who hear of this story and proclaim that Allah is really, really Ahkbar.
The idea of a Zip-Loc bag and food for dogs and Mozart and leisure suits and representative democracy and microwave pop corn and Zippo lighters and women yelling at men in public and Ronald McDonald and the cathedral at Chartres and James Joyce and barbed wire and synchronized swimming and people shaking their fists at their governments and keeping them attached to their wrists and men always yearning, always striving to be free is alien to these murderers as a pulled pork sandwich.
“The infidels are worried about 1000 pound blobs who think that the high point of their existence is to swim into a whirling propeller. We dream about tearing the finger nails off women who use nail polish. We dream about cutting the heads off unbelievers. We dream of killing all the Jews. We dream of the glorious times before plastic. We will win because God is on our side. I know this because people who build machines that can send men to the moon and bring them back don’t think that way unless Allah, and blessed be his Name, wants them to. Surely the hand of God is present when men who made the atoms dance say that an animal is worth more than their security.”
Somewhere close the 13th Imam is gathering strength. Somewhere close he is waiting to be called to power. The virgins are being gathered up for the martyrs. Who would have thought that a manatee would be this generation’s John the Baptist?
Soon, they will have no guards on the towers. Soon, they will leave the gates open. In the end we will walk in.
Kevin Smith
Navy beat Army on Saturday but can they beat the Manatees?
As bad as trying those WOG terrorists in Manhattan will be this is worse.
Friends of the Manatees, or so the Sun-Sentinel tells us this morning, are suing the United States Navy. It seems that their big bad nuclear submarines, the ones that emit death rays that diminish the libidos of the big buck males and cause the cows to shun estrus, are acting as home wreckers.
Would it cause me to be stoned by the “Trousered Apes” who proclaim that Nature is All if I were to say that maybe it’s time for these uglisome hazards to navigation to go, as in extinct? If it weren’t for ohmadahnish bi-peds throwing week old cabbages at them they would have long ago starved.
Speaking of starving, why don’t the alligators take them out? How about loosing some Burmese pythons or, better still, their nastier cousins, the anacondas in the manatee pre-school? Has anybody thought about training some endangered Florida panthers to do their duty?
13 years ago I presented a plan that I was certain would gain national prestige. Since it was presented at the same time that “Midnight Basketball” was offered as sound public policy I thought I would be “Man of the Year” among the few remaining rational adults.
It was simple.
Gather up all the rotten vegetables south of Charleston and bring them here.
Use them for chum everywhere these dullards float. [Who says I am against sound re-cycling?]
Keep herding them into bigger groups in smaller areas. It works with 4 legged cows. Why shouldn’t it work with these bricks?
Force them into 20 foot diameter floating Cuisinarts.
SAUSAGE FOR THE HOMELESS!
I don’t know why it never gained traction.
I tell you that are people in caves in Kafiristan who hear of this story and proclaim that Allah is really, really Ahkbar.
The idea of a Zip-Loc bag and food for dogs and Mozart and leisure suits and representative democracy and microwave pop corn and Zippo lighters and women yelling at men in public and Ronald McDonald and the cathedral at Chartres and James Joyce and barbed wire and synchronized swimming and people shaking their fists at their governments and keeping them attached to their wrists and men always yearning, always striving to be free is alien to these murderers as a pulled pork sandwich.
“The infidels are worried about 1000 pound blobs who think that the high point of their existence is to swim into a whirling propeller. We dream about tearing the finger nails off women who use nail polish. We dream about cutting the heads off unbelievers. We dream of killing all the Jews. We dream of the glorious times before plastic. We will win because God is on our side. I know this because people who build machines that can send men to the moon and bring them back don’t think that way unless Allah, and blessed be his Name, wants them to. Surely the hand of God is present when men who made the atoms dance say that an animal is worth more than their security.”
Somewhere close the 13th Imam is gathering strength. Somewhere close he is waiting to be called to power. The virgins are being gathered up for the martyrs. Who would have thought that a manatee would be this generation’s John the Baptist?
Soon, they will have no guards on the towers. Soon, they will leave the gates open. In the end we will walk in.
Kevin Smith
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Jackie Bueno Sosa The Miami Herald
December 9, 2009
Jackie Bueno Sosa
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: It’s time for you to step up to the plate – Some comments on our failures to strike a blow for drowning polar bears even if they eat those cute baby seals. Thank you for pointing this out in your thoughtful column in today’s Miami Herald.
Ms. Sosa,
I must confess that at the end of the 1970s, a glorious time what with Jimmy Carter in charge and the big climate problem being Global Cooling, I used to squirt Right Guard spray deodorant out my bathroom window every morning. Before I got my mind straight I used to say, “To Hell with the ozone layer”. Who knew?
Page 1 of today’s Miami Herald features the gruesome photo of the rape, looting, and pillaging of the sacred Amazon rain forest. Thank God my children are long gone because the photo reminded me of a still from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The sight of a noble teak and a majestic mahogany accepting their fate like Gandhi was more than I could bear. I folded the first section over and put it in my compost bin.
The only good thing coming from that photo of the flora and fauna Holocaust was that I got to your column quicker than usual.
You chronicle our environmental sins in a most artful manner.
That we are at fault there can be no doubt.
Man’s greed fueled the Industrial Revolution. It ended the era of Man living as Noble Savages. The first Devil’s instrument was the steam engine. Not being quick enough man then spawned the internal combustion engine. It was bad enough that the dinosaurs died out but their bones became yucky hydrocarbons. Having exploited the limited supply of organic plastic to extinction we then combined both Pandora and Prometheus and invented inorganic plastic. Having challenged the Gods we now suffer their wrath.
The noted medieval climatologist, Tony Vivaldi, was the original chronicler of climate change. We ignored him.
You showpiece some revolutionary changes adopted by Miami/Dade county in the early ‘90s. Alas, they were never fully implemented. There are rumors of a hunchbacked gnome known as Cheney the Destroyer who unleashed his dreaded doomsday Halliburton device on the elected officials. They could not resist his proffered lucre and swag. “They” should be tied to the docks behind Herald HQ so they can die slowly once the water from the melting icebergs gets here.
You state, quite correctly, that over population is the problem
Until 4th or 5th trimester abortions are allowed we will have that problem. Perhaps Death Panels can be formed to pick and choose, “cull the herd” as Margaret Sanger suggested. Every 10 years, on our birthdays, we see who makes the cut, so to speak, and who gets the chop. Perhaps coincident with your first Social Security check, gratefully drawn from the sacred Lock Box, your name is entered into a Terri Schiavo reverse tontine. If you draw the short straw you get to starve to death. Your journey to the “undiscovered country” will be made easier by the facts that you are decreasing the world’s carbon footprint and that whatever remains of you will be fed to the endangered Florida panther. You’ll cross the Styx singing Kumbayah.
There is one thing we can do right now.
Since I am neither a media person nor an ink stained wretch the burden falls on you to start us on the path to righteousness.
If you believe in what you write and in what you tell us to do you will no longer live in an air conditioned world.
Did you know that more than 50% of the electricity generated in this country comes from burning coal? Floridians are complicit in the destruction of our planet, and don’t forget that it’s the only one we have, by their acquiescence to this genocide. It’s bad enough our planet is going to burn up but it’s going to burn up in a lung charring smog.
Turn off the A/C in your house. Turn off the A/C in your car. Tell the Big Bosses at the Herald to turn off the A/C where you work. Believe me, they will jump on this cost cutting move the way a drowning polar bear jumps on an injured baby seal.
I loooove it when a plan comes together. Thanks for your column.
Kevin Smith
PS – Enclosed is a letter I sent to your bosses. I am sure they will be most receptive. The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. You go, girl! I’m right behind you.
Jackie Bueno Sosa
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: It’s time for you to step up to the plate – Some comments on our failures to strike a blow for drowning polar bears even if they eat those cute baby seals. Thank you for pointing this out in your thoughtful column in today’s Miami Herald.
Ms. Sosa,
I must confess that at the end of the 1970s, a glorious time what with Jimmy Carter in charge and the big climate problem being Global Cooling, I used to squirt Right Guard spray deodorant out my bathroom window every morning. Before I got my mind straight I used to say, “To Hell with the ozone layer”. Who knew?
Page 1 of today’s Miami Herald features the gruesome photo of the rape, looting, and pillaging of the sacred Amazon rain forest. Thank God my children are long gone because the photo reminded me of a still from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The sight of a noble teak and a majestic mahogany accepting their fate like Gandhi was more than I could bear. I folded the first section over and put it in my compost bin.
The only good thing coming from that photo of the flora and fauna Holocaust was that I got to your column quicker than usual.
You chronicle our environmental sins in a most artful manner.
That we are at fault there can be no doubt.
Man’s greed fueled the Industrial Revolution. It ended the era of Man living as Noble Savages. The first Devil’s instrument was the steam engine. Not being quick enough man then spawned the internal combustion engine. It was bad enough that the dinosaurs died out but their bones became yucky hydrocarbons. Having exploited the limited supply of organic plastic to extinction we then combined both Pandora and Prometheus and invented inorganic plastic. Having challenged the Gods we now suffer their wrath.
The noted medieval climatologist, Tony Vivaldi, was the original chronicler of climate change. We ignored him.
You showpiece some revolutionary changes adopted by Miami/Dade county in the early ‘90s. Alas, they were never fully implemented. There are rumors of a hunchbacked gnome known as Cheney the Destroyer who unleashed his dreaded doomsday Halliburton device on the elected officials. They could not resist his proffered lucre and swag. “They” should be tied to the docks behind Herald HQ so they can die slowly once the water from the melting icebergs gets here.
You state, quite correctly, that over population is the problem
Until 4th or 5th trimester abortions are allowed we will have that problem. Perhaps Death Panels can be formed to pick and choose, “cull the herd” as Margaret Sanger suggested. Every 10 years, on our birthdays, we see who makes the cut, so to speak, and who gets the chop. Perhaps coincident with your first Social Security check, gratefully drawn from the sacred Lock Box, your name is entered into a Terri Schiavo reverse tontine. If you draw the short straw you get to starve to death. Your journey to the “undiscovered country” will be made easier by the facts that you are decreasing the world’s carbon footprint and that whatever remains of you will be fed to the endangered Florida panther. You’ll cross the Styx singing Kumbayah.
There is one thing we can do right now.
Since I am neither a media person nor an ink stained wretch the burden falls on you to start us on the path to righteousness.
If you believe in what you write and in what you tell us to do you will no longer live in an air conditioned world.
Did you know that more than 50% of the electricity generated in this country comes from burning coal? Floridians are complicit in the destruction of our planet, and don’t forget that it’s the only one we have, by their acquiescence to this genocide. It’s bad enough our planet is going to burn up but it’s going to burn up in a lung charring smog.
Turn off the A/C in your house. Turn off the A/C in your car. Tell the Big Bosses at the Herald to turn off the A/C where you work. Believe me, they will jump on this cost cutting move the way a drowning polar bear jumps on an injured baby seal.
I loooove it when a plan comes together. Thanks for your column.
Kevin Smith
PS – Enclosed is a letter I sent to your bosses. I am sure they will be most receptive. The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. You go, girl! I’m right behind you.
Senator Max Baucus
December 7, 2009
Senator Max Baucus
122 West Towne Street
Glendive, MT 59330
Senator Baucus,
Congratulations!
Only a United States Senator cruising for and catching the wily bearded clam could knock Tiger Woods off the premier public pussy perch.
You did it.
I read where your lady friend is very smart.
In addition to her law background was she graduated from the Monica Lewinsky School of Knob Polishing?
She got her job the old fashioned way.
She earned it.
Kevin Smith
Senator Max Baucus
122 West Towne Street
Glendive, MT 59330
Senator Baucus,
Congratulations!
Only a United States Senator cruising for and catching the wily bearded clam could knock Tiger Woods off the premier public pussy perch.
You did it.
I read where your lady friend is very smart.
In addition to her law background was she graduated from the Monica Lewinsky School of Knob Polishing?
She got her job the old fashioned way.
She earned it.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Jerry Adler – Senior Editor Newsweek
December 8, 2009
Jerry Adler – Senior Editor
Newsweek
251 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019-1894
RE: How yesterday is Global Warming?
Mr. Adler,
I enclose a copy of the letter dated 1/28/08 that you sent to me. I also enclose a copy of a letter I sent to the Miami Herald on 12/7/09.
About your letter…
The Kyoto treaty was neither ratified nor was it rejected. The President never submitted it to the Senate for its advice and consent as the Constitution requires. The fact that the Senate had just voted 95 to 0 against the general terms of the treaty may have had some effect on its quick trip to the memory hole.
T.E. Lawrence said that very little could be gained from a certain victory but that much could be gleaned from a certain defeat. If ever a Non-Profiles in Courage is published I suggest it could be Chapter 1.
You say that Bush “reversed a commitment in principle” to abide by the treaty.
I seem to recall that President B.O. was signing his Executive Orders undoing Bush’s Executive Orders on the trip from the Capitol to the White House after his inauguration. If you could explain the difference I would be most grateful.
I’ll spare you any homilies on the Rule of Law but I remember Paul Begala, trusted Clinton advisor and a law professor, saying he loved executive decisions. “A flick of the wrist and it’s law.”
Further, your note includes phrases such as “depending on how you read the data”, “believe it is more likely”, “perhaps the effect will be offset”, and “most climatologists see no reason to take that risk”.
Not exactly words and phrases that you will find on a Chemistry or a Physics final, are they?
You said that a lack of food is not a problem.
I immediately reached for my 1969 edition of “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich, Ph.D. To the wild applause of the chattering classes and even Johnny Carson this faker told us that it was a race between starving to death or freezing to death by the year 2000.
My calendar tells me it is 2009 and, if truth be known, I am a bit calorically challenged. Do you think Professor Ehrlich fell for the hockey stick graph before it became popular?
Facts are hard things
That’s why Pi isn’t 3.0. If it were I would have done better in Geometry. The down side of that is that if I built any bridges they would have long since fallen down.
The edges of ancient maps said “Terra Incognita” or “Sunt Leones”.
I thought Ptolemy’s view of the earth, the sun, and the universe was the first great example of “settled science”. I am glad that those original explorers didn’t believe it.
U.K. Prime Minister gave the world 50 days to live beginning with the end of October. I wrote to him asking if he could stretch it a few more days because I wanted to see my family in Texas. I also asked him if he could toss in at least one BCS game.
I haven’t heard back from him.
Do you think I should go to Dallas?
Kevin Smith
Jerry Adler – Senior Editor
Newsweek
251 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019-1894
RE: How yesterday is Global Warming?
Mr. Adler,
I enclose a copy of the letter dated 1/28/08 that you sent to me. I also enclose a copy of a letter I sent to the Miami Herald on 12/7/09.
About your letter…
The Kyoto treaty was neither ratified nor was it rejected. The President never submitted it to the Senate for its advice and consent as the Constitution requires. The fact that the Senate had just voted 95 to 0 against the general terms of the treaty may have had some effect on its quick trip to the memory hole.
T.E. Lawrence said that very little could be gained from a certain victory but that much could be gleaned from a certain defeat. If ever a Non-Profiles in Courage is published I suggest it could be Chapter 1.
You say that Bush “reversed a commitment in principle” to abide by the treaty.
I seem to recall that President B.O. was signing his Executive Orders undoing Bush’s Executive Orders on the trip from the Capitol to the White House after his inauguration. If you could explain the difference I would be most grateful.
I’ll spare you any homilies on the Rule of Law but I remember Paul Begala, trusted Clinton advisor and a law professor, saying he loved executive decisions. “A flick of the wrist and it’s law.”
Further, your note includes phrases such as “depending on how you read the data”, “believe it is more likely”, “perhaps the effect will be offset”, and “most climatologists see no reason to take that risk”.
Not exactly words and phrases that you will find on a Chemistry or a Physics final, are they?
You said that a lack of food is not a problem.
I immediately reached for my 1969 edition of “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich, Ph.D. To the wild applause of the chattering classes and even Johnny Carson this faker told us that it was a race between starving to death or freezing to death by the year 2000.
My calendar tells me it is 2009 and, if truth be known, I am a bit calorically challenged. Do you think Professor Ehrlich fell for the hockey stick graph before it became popular?
Facts are hard things
That’s why Pi isn’t 3.0. If it were I would have done better in Geometry. The down side of that is that if I built any bridges they would have long since fallen down.
The edges of ancient maps said “Terra Incognita” or “Sunt Leones”.
I thought Ptolemy’s view of the earth, the sun, and the universe was the first great example of “settled science”. I am glad that those original explorers didn’t believe it.
U.K. Prime Minister gave the world 50 days to live beginning with the end of October. I wrote to him asking if he could stretch it a few more days because I wanted to see my family in Texas. I also asked him if he could toss in at least one BCS game.
I haven’t heard back from him.
Do you think I should go to Dallas?
Kevin Smith
The Editorial Board The Miami Herald
December 7, 2009
The Editorial Board
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: GlobalCoolingGlobalWarmingClimateChange – Jabberwocky writ large is bad enough and now you have found co-conspirators in this unholy antinomianalistic crusade against reason.
Sirs,
“Even though the newspapers’ editorial boards may disagree on
Numerous other issues, the evidence – notwithstanding the recent
Brouhaha about quashed scientific memos – does not change the
Reality about the need to reduce our carbon footprint.”
Page 1
Today
You
Italics mine
I wish I could say that I thought what you wrote was funny. It’s not; it’s tragic.
What if your spouse had been diagnosed with a cancer that would have required radical surgery? What if one of the pathologists said he had mixed up the slides and may have come to the wrong conclusion? Would you still go ahead with the operation?
Only a barking mad loon would ever say that “the science is settled”.
Is anyone familiar with the Logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc? It’s been around since the world was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, and tomatoes were poison. I know enough about the Scientific Method to know that correlation is not causation.
In 1997 President Clinton offered a hot August day in Washington as proof that there was Global Warming. I guess it depends on what “hot” means.
Check and see if the Ptolemaic universe – as settled a science as there ever was – is still taught in Astronomy classes.
Find out if the Piltdown Man is still high on the list for the Missing Link theory.
Einstein said that he only had to be proved wrong once. Then, he is supposed to have said, he could “get on to other things”.
I offer you the same plan that I have been offering the Miami Herald since 1997. The term “carbon footprint”, the one you are so desperate to reduce, had not yet appeared.
Turn off your A/C.
Practice what you preach. You would have been 12 years into your campaign to make us better people. Surely your well intentioned plan would have paid dividends by now. Plus, think how much money you would have saved on your electric bill.
Here’s something else you can do.
Go to the roof of your waterfront HQ.
If the icebergs are melting because of man and because of bovine, porcine, and orvine borborygymy tell me how high the water has risen. If all these icebergs are melting the water has to go somewhere. Where the Hell is it?
When St. Augustine was still in his formative years he said, “Lord make me strong. Tomorrow.”
The noise coming from the Amen corner occupied by charlatans, shamans, and profiteers nesting under the tent erected by Chicken Little is cacophonous. It is also wrong.
The world of Climate Change is filled with scientific Bernie Madoffs.
Your joining it doesn’t make it right. It makes you worse.
Kevin Smith
The Editorial Board
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: GlobalCoolingGlobalWarmingClimateChange – Jabberwocky writ large is bad enough and now you have found co-conspirators in this unholy antinomianalistic crusade against reason.
Sirs,
“Even though the newspapers’ editorial boards may disagree on
Numerous other issues, the evidence – notwithstanding the recent
Brouhaha about quashed scientific memos – does not change the
Reality about the need to reduce our carbon footprint.”
Page 1
Today
You
Italics mine
I wish I could say that I thought what you wrote was funny. It’s not; it’s tragic.
What if your spouse had been diagnosed with a cancer that would have required radical surgery? What if one of the pathologists said he had mixed up the slides and may have come to the wrong conclusion? Would you still go ahead with the operation?
Only a barking mad loon would ever say that “the science is settled”.
Is anyone familiar with the Logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc? It’s been around since the world was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, and tomatoes were poison. I know enough about the Scientific Method to know that correlation is not causation.
In 1997 President Clinton offered a hot August day in Washington as proof that there was Global Warming. I guess it depends on what “hot” means.
Check and see if the Ptolemaic universe – as settled a science as there ever was – is still taught in Astronomy classes.
Find out if the Piltdown Man is still high on the list for the Missing Link theory.
Einstein said that he only had to be proved wrong once. Then, he is supposed to have said, he could “get on to other things”.
I offer you the same plan that I have been offering the Miami Herald since 1997. The term “carbon footprint”, the one you are so desperate to reduce, had not yet appeared.
Turn off your A/C.
Practice what you preach. You would have been 12 years into your campaign to make us better people. Surely your well intentioned plan would have paid dividends by now. Plus, think how much money you would have saved on your electric bill.
Here’s something else you can do.
Go to the roof of your waterfront HQ.
If the icebergs are melting because of man and because of bovine, porcine, and orvine borborygymy tell me how high the water has risen. If all these icebergs are melting the water has to go somewhere. Where the Hell is it?
When St. Augustine was still in his formative years he said, “Lord make me strong. Tomorrow.”
The noise coming from the Amen corner occupied by charlatans, shamans, and profiteers nesting under the tent erected by Chicken Little is cacophonous. It is also wrong.
The world of Climate Change is filled with scientific Bernie Madoffs.
Your joining it doesn’t make it right. It makes you worse.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
December 2, 2009
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pines Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: Why modern American Liberals need to keep a chiropractor on staff. Some comments on President B.O. and your public reaction to it.
Congresswoman Debbie-Debbie,
You said on 2/??/09 that with a few “minor adjustments” the “problem” – as Speaker Pelosi called it – in Afghanistan would be “solved”.
What took so long?
9 months is the normal gestation period for a woman.
Is 11 months the normal gestation period for the President, any President, to make a decision regarding the safety of our country and the lives of American troops?
Do you think the coming “surge” in Afghanistan will be based on the successful “surge” in Iraq? Alas, my memory fails me. Fill me in. You supported that one, didn’t you?
It is a sign of my naïveté but if it were President McCain suggesting the surge would you still support it?
No wonder your back hurts.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pines Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33026
RE: Why modern American Liberals need to keep a chiropractor on staff. Some comments on President B.O. and your public reaction to it.
Congresswoman Debbie-Debbie,
You said on 2/??/09 that with a few “minor adjustments” the “problem” – as Speaker Pelosi called it – in Afghanistan would be “solved”.
What took so long?
9 months is the normal gestation period for a woman.
Is 11 months the normal gestation period for the President, any President, to make a decision regarding the safety of our country and the lives of American troops?
Do you think the coming “surge” in Afghanistan will be based on the successful “surge” in Iraq? Alas, my memory fails me. Fill me in. You supported that one, didn’t you?
It is a sign of my naïveté but if it were President McCain suggesting the surge would you still support it?
No wonder your back hurts.
Kevin Smith
Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
December 4, 2009
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Beware of what you ask Santa for Christmas. There may be more in the stocking than you bargained for. Some comments on your column of 12/4/09.
My dear Professor,
First, let me extend a sincere non-denominational Season’s Greetings to you.
Second, let me congratulate you for writing, yet again, a column unencumbered by facts. This one was about the inadequacy of the state tax system. Of course, it goes without saying, which is why I must say it that you find it woefully inadequate in that it doesn’t take all the money produced by the citizens of Florida.
The basic premise of each of your columns is that life would be good, better, indeed it could be heaven on earth, just like that noted labor leader, Jake Kite, said “All them corn fields and ballet at night”, if we could exile every Republican to a minor moon of Jupiter. I say exile because modern American Liberals are opposed to capital punishment – except in the case of Ricky Ray Rector. I wonder if the bullets issued to the American troops who will spearhead Obama’s Afghanistan “surge” will be non-lethal?
Your solution to every political, economic, culinary, cultural, and ethical question is simple: Raise taxes!
What caught my eye as I was wading through your rhetorical incontinence this A.M. was the following throwaway line.
“In addition, it’s about time that Florida taxed internet sales.”
Thank you for giving me, however unintentionally, a “teaching moment”.
It may well be time to tax internet sales.
The problem will not be solved in the legislature. It begins with overturning Gibbons v Ogden. G v O should be a TV series. It involves New Jersey, my home state, and Surprise! Surprise! political corruption. It also involves taxation. Long before Chris Matthews talked about a thrill going up his leg the thought of raising taxes was always greeted by you with a tumescent look of anticipation.
You may remember the questions asked of Judge Roberts and Judge Alito at their confirmation hearings. The term “settled law” was often used. The real question was always about abortion. Would they vote to overturn Roe v Wade?
We were lectured, perhaps hectored is a better word, that Roe v Wade was “settled law”. Some of the more glib modern American Liberals used the term “stare decisis”.
The “settled law” part of Gibbons v Ogden is that no state may tax the transactions of any other state. It has been around much, much longer than Roe v Wade. I’m not sure if seniority attaches to “settled law” but why not?
The Dred Scott case was “settled law”. It was overturned on the field of battle in less than 7 years.
Plessy v Ferguson was “settled law”. It was overturned by the Supreme Court 59 years after it became “settled law”. I would be remiss if I did not point out that the Court that overturned it was led by a former Republican Governor who was appointed by a Republican President. Surely you remember that one of the leading Democrats on that Court, Hugo Black, was a member of the KuKluxKlan.
Who was it who said that they best way to repeal an old law is to enforce it?
Alas, from your viewpoint, the process needed to tax internet sales is the same to undo Roe v Wade.
In the spirit of a “teaching moment” I present you with a choice that only Hobson would relish.
Which would you prefer?
If the people in their wisdom overturn Gibbons v Ogden and give you a tsunami of new tax revenue with which you can fight bullying and non-gendered discrimination would you be OK with Roe v Wade being overturned?
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking in a reverential tone of things that are “settled”, what’s up with all this cheating on Climate Change? You may recall that the Ptolemaic universe was “settled science”. So was the Piltdown man. We went from Global Cooling to Global Warming to Climate Change before anything could be “settled”. I just hope that all this change doesn’t become too audacious. I wouldn’t want it disrupt your manatee suffrage plan.
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: Beware of what you ask Santa for Christmas. There may be more in the stocking than you bargained for. Some comments on your column of 12/4/09.
My dear Professor,
First, let me extend a sincere non-denominational Season’s Greetings to you.
Second, let me congratulate you for writing, yet again, a column unencumbered by facts. This one was about the inadequacy of the state tax system. Of course, it goes without saying, which is why I must say it that you find it woefully inadequate in that it doesn’t take all the money produced by the citizens of Florida.
The basic premise of each of your columns is that life would be good, better, indeed it could be heaven on earth, just like that noted labor leader, Jake Kite, said “All them corn fields and ballet at night”, if we could exile every Republican to a minor moon of Jupiter. I say exile because modern American Liberals are opposed to capital punishment – except in the case of Ricky Ray Rector. I wonder if the bullets issued to the American troops who will spearhead Obama’s Afghanistan “surge” will be non-lethal?
Your solution to every political, economic, culinary, cultural, and ethical question is simple: Raise taxes!
What caught my eye as I was wading through your rhetorical incontinence this A.M. was the following throwaway line.
“In addition, it’s about time that Florida taxed internet sales.”
Thank you for giving me, however unintentionally, a “teaching moment”.
It may well be time to tax internet sales.
The problem will not be solved in the legislature. It begins with overturning Gibbons v Ogden. G v O should be a TV series. It involves New Jersey, my home state, and Surprise! Surprise! political corruption. It also involves taxation. Long before Chris Matthews talked about a thrill going up his leg the thought of raising taxes was always greeted by you with a tumescent look of anticipation.
You may remember the questions asked of Judge Roberts and Judge Alito at their confirmation hearings. The term “settled law” was often used. The real question was always about abortion. Would they vote to overturn Roe v Wade?
We were lectured, perhaps hectored is a better word, that Roe v Wade was “settled law”. Some of the more glib modern American Liberals used the term “stare decisis”.
The “settled law” part of Gibbons v Ogden is that no state may tax the transactions of any other state. It has been around much, much longer than Roe v Wade. I’m not sure if seniority attaches to “settled law” but why not?
The Dred Scott case was “settled law”. It was overturned on the field of battle in less than 7 years.
Plessy v Ferguson was “settled law”. It was overturned by the Supreme Court 59 years after it became “settled law”. I would be remiss if I did not point out that the Court that overturned it was led by a former Republican Governor who was appointed by a Republican President. Surely you remember that one of the leading Democrats on that Court, Hugo Black, was a member of the KuKluxKlan.
Who was it who said that they best way to repeal an old law is to enforce it?
Alas, from your viewpoint, the process needed to tax internet sales is the same to undo Roe v Wade.
In the spirit of a “teaching moment” I present you with a choice that only Hobson would relish.
Which would you prefer?
If the people in their wisdom overturn Gibbons v Ogden and give you a tsunami of new tax revenue with which you can fight bullying and non-gendered discrimination would you be OK with Roe v Wade being overturned?
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking in a reverential tone of things that are “settled”, what’s up with all this cheating on Climate Change? You may recall that the Ptolemaic universe was “settled science”. So was the Piltdown man. We went from Global Cooling to Global Warming to Climate Change before anything could be “settled”. I just hope that all this change doesn’t become too audacious. I wouldn’t want it disrupt your manatee suffrage plan.
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