Posts
June 27, 2010
E.J. Dionne
The Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th St. NW
Washington, DC 20017
RE: “Dems Need To Snap Out Of It” – Some comments and questions on your “look how well we’ve done and why don’t they love us” column in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Dionne,
When you’re right, by crikey you’re right.
And this from a Biden certified “smartass”.
[Maybe Curley Biden, named Curley in honor of the smartest Stooge, has found a shovel ready project for the money we borrowed from the Chinese to stimulate our economy. He finds and names all the “smartasses” in America. Our President, The lord Barack the Beneficent, “kicks their asses”. If a follow-up treatment is needed Secretary Salazar will come and “put his boot on their neck”. No threat to the Burke-Fox or the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the civil discourse Hall of Fame there, right?]
Obama is not like Carter.
He lacks Jimmuh’s charm, grace, wit, and most of all, that certain picaresque air about him that we all came to love.
There are three things in which they are similar.
Jimmuh had a brother who sold really bad beer and then shilled for Qadafi. Barry has a brother who lives in a mud hut in the bad section of Fugowi.
Other than his time in the Navy Jimmuh worked in heavily regulated, hugely subsidized business. When he was booted out of the White House he couldn’t even run that business. In fact, he couldn’t run a two car funeral. If it weren’t for Dwayne Andreas and Archer Daniels Midland buying him by picking up his open markers he would have wound up by the side of the road doing his best Deliverance banjo imitation. ADM picked up an ex-President for, forgive me, peanuts.
Barry never worked. Ever. The most prominent part of his CV is his stint as a community organizer. He spent a few years bellyaching about how bad the government was in Chicago. Naturally enough, having solved all the problems in Cook County, a grateful electorate, most of whom were alive when they voted for him, sent him to the Illinois legislature and then the United States Senate. In 2013 he will either take Oprah’s time slot or become Pope. Maybe he will solve Chris Matthews’ randy leg.
Among the 20th century’s other well known Community Organizers are Evita, Che, and the mother of all Community Organizers, the paradigmatic template of modern American Liberals, Adolph Hitler.
You say that Republicans are “conspicuously vague about what they would cut”. Maybe they are. Not me.
Here are the first 3 lucky winners.
#1 – The Department of Agriculture
#2 – The Department of Energy
#3 – The Department of Education.
Perhaps as part of the soon to be assembled “death panels” for Medicare patients we could have flying squads visiting the above named dead zones. You can change their order of departure as long as the stage directions are followed by “pursued by a bear”.
Perhaps you could tell me which two wars did Bush get this country into?
The one in Afghanistan that had Democratic members of Congress sounding like a cross between Vercingetorix and Patton or was it the one in Iraq that ¾s of Congress approved in a blood lust worthy of the Hoplites forming a phalanx. You can’t mean them, can you?
There is one other thing that Jimmuh and Barry share.
Neither of them likes Jews. Considering where they came from, considering who they listened to, it is not a big surprise.
You say the big issue in the fall election will be government spending. It is but a side issue. Which candidate better understands how fragile liberty is, which candidate knows that our freedoms come not from the government but are ours at birth, “a gift from beyond the stars”, is the worthy one
Obama is a technocrat without soul. He believes that the government does know better. You are his pleader. He and Carter can compare Nobel Peace Prizes and say how bad Israel is.
“Will there ever be another Ronald Reagan?”
Kevin Smith
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Fred Grimm The Miami Herald
June 24, 2010
Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Pols Unfazed by Specter of a Submerged Coast” – Some comments on your “we are sooooo guilty” Jeremiad in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Grimm,
I think we can end the search for Ned Lud.
He has not been kidnapped by Somali pirates; he is alive and well and living in the aggressively air conditioned world HG of the Miami Herald.
Your phrase “thermally expanded sea” prompted me to use the soon to be totally unremembered “scientific method”. I filled a pot with water. I added salt to it. I boiled it. If that’s not “thermal expansion” I don’t know what is. The salted water went up in smoke, so to speak.
Empirical evidence, evidence as real as your boot, is lacking in these never ending “the sky is falling” scenarios.
40 years ago an academic huckster, the Bernie Madoff of PhDs., a snake oil salesman named Paul Ehrlich, told us that the only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether we would starve to death or freeze to death. He was certain one of them would happen before the end of the 20th century. Check the date on your newspaper. Also, check the meat and produce section at Publix. Get back to me.
In the 1970s we were told that we would run out of everything – except malaise – in about 10 years. There are but two things of which I am certain that are no longer on the radar screen: Disco and leisure suits.
The clear and present danger of Global Cooling morphed seamlessly into the clearer and more present danger of Global Warming. Look at the ozone layer, we were told. When it goes we’re gone. [I must confess that I added to the diminishing of the beleaguered and battered O.L. Every morning I would open the window in my bathroom and squirt some Right Guard deodorant out of it. I can probably trace my various skin cancers back to that. Hey! Who knew?]
In the summer of 1996, President Clinton warned us of the imminent dangers of Global Warming by using a tautology that is the foundation of the thought processes of modern American Liberalism.
He told us that we had Global Warming because it was hot in Washington in the summer. In case you missed that it was hot because of Global Warming which was caused by summer heat. Accompanying him was Donna Shalala, then the Secretary of No-No, who said we would all be dead from AIDS in 10 years.
Check the date on today’s paper and get back to me.
I am sure you know that the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is receding. I am sure you don’t know that the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro has been receding since 1888. Incidentally, 1888 was the first year it was measured. What we do know, what we can prove, is that absent Acid Rain, an overload of CO2, Global Cooling, and Global Warming the snows of Kilimanjaro have been melting. Go figure. It started before BP was born. Go figure.
The soul of Physics is that everything is measurable.
If the icebergs are melting where is the water going? If the seas are “thermally expanding” where is the water going? The Miami Herald HQ is right on Biscayne Bay. Go out the back door. Has the water come over the sea wall? Are docks and piers awash? Have any boats gone over any bridge rather than the old fashioned way of going under it? Are insurance companies adjusting their premiums to factor in rising water levels? If not, why not? Has the Coast Guard told Miami Airport to expect water from the Miami River to cover Terminal A?
It is an unfortunate inconvenient truth but at its root the claptrap pseudo-science that rules today is anti-intellectual and anti-rational. Do you remember that tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous? Wasn’t broccoli genetically engineered? 1000 years ago we had an upward spike in temperature in Europe. We would up with the Renaissance. Do you have a problem with Dante? Alas, but it appears that you are “halfway through your journey” and you don’t know that you are in “the dark wood of error”.
It is time, it is past time, to come out and “look up and see the stars”.
Kevin Smith
PS – I must acknowledge my Italian climatological rabbi, Tony Vivaldi. His treatise on the various equinoxes is still valid after all these years.
Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Pols Unfazed by Specter of a Submerged Coast” – Some comments on your “we are sooooo guilty” Jeremiad in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Grimm,
I think we can end the search for Ned Lud.
He has not been kidnapped by Somali pirates; he is alive and well and living in the aggressively air conditioned world HG of the Miami Herald.
Your phrase “thermally expanded sea” prompted me to use the soon to be totally unremembered “scientific method”. I filled a pot with water. I added salt to it. I boiled it. If that’s not “thermal expansion” I don’t know what is. The salted water went up in smoke, so to speak.
Empirical evidence, evidence as real as your boot, is lacking in these never ending “the sky is falling” scenarios.
40 years ago an academic huckster, the Bernie Madoff of PhDs., a snake oil salesman named Paul Ehrlich, told us that the only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether we would starve to death or freeze to death. He was certain one of them would happen before the end of the 20th century. Check the date on your newspaper. Also, check the meat and produce section at Publix. Get back to me.
In the 1970s we were told that we would run out of everything – except malaise – in about 10 years. There are but two things of which I am certain that are no longer on the radar screen: Disco and leisure suits.
The clear and present danger of Global Cooling morphed seamlessly into the clearer and more present danger of Global Warming. Look at the ozone layer, we were told. When it goes we’re gone. [I must confess that I added to the diminishing of the beleaguered and battered O.L. Every morning I would open the window in my bathroom and squirt some Right Guard deodorant out of it. I can probably trace my various skin cancers back to that. Hey! Who knew?]
In the summer of 1996, President Clinton warned us of the imminent dangers of Global Warming by using a tautology that is the foundation of the thought processes of modern American Liberalism.
He told us that we had Global Warming because it was hot in Washington in the summer. In case you missed that it was hot because of Global Warming which was caused by summer heat. Accompanying him was Donna Shalala, then the Secretary of No-No, who said we would all be dead from AIDS in 10 years.
Check the date on today’s paper and get back to me.
I am sure you know that the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is receding. I am sure you don’t know that the snow cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro has been receding since 1888. Incidentally, 1888 was the first year it was measured. What we do know, what we can prove, is that absent Acid Rain, an overload of CO2, Global Cooling, and Global Warming the snows of Kilimanjaro have been melting. Go figure. It started before BP was born. Go figure.
The soul of Physics is that everything is measurable.
If the icebergs are melting where is the water going? If the seas are “thermally expanding” where is the water going? The Miami Herald HQ is right on Biscayne Bay. Go out the back door. Has the water come over the sea wall? Are docks and piers awash? Have any boats gone over any bridge rather than the old fashioned way of going under it? Are insurance companies adjusting their premiums to factor in rising water levels? If not, why not? Has the Coast Guard told Miami Airport to expect water from the Miami River to cover Terminal A?
It is an unfortunate inconvenient truth but at its root the claptrap pseudo-science that rules today is anti-intellectual and anti-rational. Do you remember that tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous? Wasn’t broccoli genetically engineered? 1000 years ago we had an upward spike in temperature in Europe. We would up with the Renaissance. Do you have a problem with Dante? Alas, but it appears that you are “halfway through your journey” and you don’t know that you are in “the dark wood of error”.
It is time, it is past time, to come out and “look up and see the stars”.
Kevin Smith
PS – I must acknowledge my Italian climatological rabbi, Tony Vivaldi. His treatise on the various equinoxes is still valid after all these years.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Congressman Ed Markey
June 20, 2010
Congressman Ed Markey
5 High Street #101
Medford, MA 02155
RE: Apologies all around
Congressman Markey,
After seeing you on television asking for an apology I decided to give you one.
For years the presence of Lard Kennedy, the supposedly immortal moral slag heap, and Barney the Wump Wangling Modern Model of a Mendacious Massachusetts Mortgage Maven, dominated politics in your state. Not that there weren’t public thieves and poltroons in abundance but those two took all the air out of the room. Now that Ted the Tosspot has finally crossed a bar, any bar, there is an opening for new characters. Nature abhors a vacuum. You have the inside track for greatness.
I apologize for not recognizing you sooner.
Accordingly, I name you
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
If apologizing could plug the Goddamn hole I would be all for it. If sinking the sailboat the BP boob was on would plug the Goddamn hole I would go after it like it was the Bismarck. If Lord Barack the Beneficent playing 36 holes could plug the Goddamn hole I’d tee them up for him. That’s why you are now a recognized HORSE’S ASS.
The next two awards
POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH
&
SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR
are a bit harder to win.
No Affirmative Action here. You get them the old fashioned way. You have to earn them. I have faith in you.
Kevin Smith
PS – I have a fondness for Irish Catholics and bachelors from Bayonne.
Congressman Ed Markey
5 High Street #101
Medford, MA 02155
RE: Apologies all around
Congressman Markey,
After seeing you on television asking for an apology I decided to give you one.
For years the presence of Lard Kennedy, the supposedly immortal moral slag heap, and Barney the Wump Wangling Modern Model of a Mendacious Massachusetts Mortgage Maven, dominated politics in your state. Not that there weren’t public thieves and poltroons in abundance but those two took all the air out of the room. Now that Ted the Tosspot has finally crossed a bar, any bar, there is an opening for new characters. Nature abhors a vacuum. You have the inside track for greatness.
I apologize for not recognizing you sooner.
Accordingly, I name you
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
If apologizing could plug the Goddamn hole I would be all for it. If sinking the sailboat the BP boob was on would plug the Goddamn hole I would go after it like it was the Bismarck. If Lord Barack the Beneficent playing 36 holes could plug the Goddamn hole I’d tee them up for him. That’s why you are now a recognized HORSE’S ASS.
The next two awards
POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH
&
SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR
are a bit harder to win.
No Affirmative Action here. You get them the old fashioned way. You have to earn them. I have faith in you.
Kevin Smith
PS – I have a fondness for Irish Catholics and bachelors from Bayonne.
Thomas L. Friedman The New York Times
June 24, 2010
Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, New York 10018
RE: “Obama Lacks Guts to Exit Afghanistan” – Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Freidman,
I am loath to criticize however mildly, however genteelly, however sensitively, a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner. Adding to that is the daunting fact that your ex cathedra thunderbolts come from the aerie high up in the debt-ridden New York Times, the redoubt of modern American Liberalism. By the rules governing the not so benevolent despotism of said modern American Liberalism I should be prostrate.
I am not.
The first reason is that you have shown no public shame at being associated with another Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times alumnus, Walter Duranty. A brief reprise shows that he was the bought and paid for agent of the KGB while he was your man in Moscow. It would not be too difficult to make a case that his reportage led to the deaths of 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 Kulaks in Ukraine. That the majority of them were Jews and that the world did nothing was noted by another community organizer, Adolph Hitler. The New York Times has kept his name on its impressive Hall of Fame wall to the detriment and debasement of all other winners.
I wonder what its reaction would have been if the 1934 winner, Freidrich Birchall, your man in Berlin, was found to be in the employ of the Gestapo.
But enough of that.
Since the President lacks, as you say, the cojones to act Presidentially, does that mean that the change all the mush brained loons of the Left lusted for has gone walkabout? How many times must we prove Dr. Johnson correct when he said of a different matter “It is the triumph of hope over experience”?
Why would you be upset about a stolen election in Afghanistan when the President and his gang of thugs are from Chicago? The only place less corrupt than Chicago is Gomorrah. Will Governor Blago be allowed to keep his hair in prison? King Richard the First gave us Kennedy in 1960. There is an entire wing in the local Federal prison devoted to Windy City elected grifters and appointed poltroons. Kids in public schools, the schools that no politician sends his kids to, have a new anthem that they sing. “No Hot Stove is Safe” is a catchy tune.
You say “the President can bring U.S. Grant back from the dead to run the Afghan war”. I rather think he’ll come back only if he can bring Sherman with him. Sherman’s policy of “Make’m howl” shortened the Civil War by 12 to 18 months. When does “Uncle Billy” get the green light? When did President Obama become Audie Murphy?
Lyndon Johnson boasted that “a Vietnamese shit house couldn’t be bombed without his OK”.
Will David Axelrod be in charge of F-18 strikes? Will Rahm Emanuel find some Afghani asses to kick? Is there a new Curtis LeMay in the Pentagon who is being groomed for big things? Will Van Jones get to wear a Green Beret? Will Nancy Pelosi become the new Mata Hari? Will the “Courageous Restraint” medal be scrapped?
Do you think the Chinese will lend us the money to do all of this?
Speaking of the Chinese, you said a while back that we need a good dose of Chinese moxie, of Sino grit, to get this country back on track. Is now the time?
Do you think we need a Yellow Peril Cincinnatus?
It may be that the world isn’t as flat as you thought.
Kevin Smith
PS - Can we expect to see Cindy Sheehan picket the Rezko financed Obama home in Chicago?
Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, New York 10018
RE: “Obama Lacks Guts to Exit Afghanistan” – Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Freidman,
I am loath to criticize however mildly, however genteelly, however sensitively, a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner. Adding to that is the daunting fact that your ex cathedra thunderbolts come from the aerie high up in the debt-ridden New York Times, the redoubt of modern American Liberalism. By the rules governing the not so benevolent despotism of said modern American Liberalism I should be prostrate.
I am not.
The first reason is that you have shown no public shame at being associated with another Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times alumnus, Walter Duranty. A brief reprise shows that he was the bought and paid for agent of the KGB while he was your man in Moscow. It would not be too difficult to make a case that his reportage led to the deaths of 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 Kulaks in Ukraine. That the majority of them were Jews and that the world did nothing was noted by another community organizer, Adolph Hitler. The New York Times has kept his name on its impressive Hall of Fame wall to the detriment and debasement of all other winners.
I wonder what its reaction would have been if the 1934 winner, Freidrich Birchall, your man in Berlin, was found to be in the employ of the Gestapo.
But enough of that.
Since the President lacks, as you say, the cojones to act Presidentially, does that mean that the change all the mush brained loons of the Left lusted for has gone walkabout? How many times must we prove Dr. Johnson correct when he said of a different matter “It is the triumph of hope over experience”?
Why would you be upset about a stolen election in Afghanistan when the President and his gang of thugs are from Chicago? The only place less corrupt than Chicago is Gomorrah. Will Governor Blago be allowed to keep his hair in prison? King Richard the First gave us Kennedy in 1960. There is an entire wing in the local Federal prison devoted to Windy City elected grifters and appointed poltroons. Kids in public schools, the schools that no politician sends his kids to, have a new anthem that they sing. “No Hot Stove is Safe” is a catchy tune.
You say “the President can bring U.S. Grant back from the dead to run the Afghan war”. I rather think he’ll come back only if he can bring Sherman with him. Sherman’s policy of “Make’m howl” shortened the Civil War by 12 to 18 months. When does “Uncle Billy” get the green light? When did President Obama become Audie Murphy?
Lyndon Johnson boasted that “a Vietnamese shit house couldn’t be bombed without his OK”.
Will David Axelrod be in charge of F-18 strikes? Will Rahm Emanuel find some Afghani asses to kick? Is there a new Curtis LeMay in the Pentagon who is being groomed for big things? Will Van Jones get to wear a Green Beret? Will Nancy Pelosi become the new Mata Hari? Will the “Courageous Restraint” medal be scrapped?
Do you think the Chinese will lend us the money to do all of this?
Speaking of the Chinese, you said a while back that we need a good dose of Chinese moxie, of Sino grit, to get this country back on track. Is now the time?
Do you think we need a Yellow Peril Cincinnatus?
It may be that the world isn’t as flat as you thought.
Kevin Smith
PS - Can we expect to see Cindy Sheehan picket the Rezko financed Obama home in Chicago?
Steven L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
June 18, 2010
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: Congratulations on your plan for combining your “shovel ready” unicorn farm projects with plans for culturally sensitive groves of organically grown, as opposed to the inorganically grown Bush era “rainbow soup” trees, and the novel idea of people taxing themselves if we can’t borrow any more money from the Chinese to do this.
My dear Professor,
Your column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel calls for an advanced lesson in History and Economics.
Let’s begin with John Maynard Keynes.
He was one of the 20th Century’s most influential and fascinating characters. Alas, like any great man engaged in obfuscatory endeavors – money supply, accelerated demand, fractional reserves, fiscal v monetary policy, inter alia – “he is more quoted than read”. How many people really know what Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking are talking about?
Since “all History is biography and all biography is anecdote” some things about him should be noted.
#1 – Until he turned 30 he was a predatory homosexual. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles. Their main extracurricular intramural activity was buggering the young lads who worked “below stairs”. He did a 180 when he was 30. As he was later to write, “I met a woman and she has changed everything”.
#2 – He was, in English terms, a hugely successful “punter”. He was a savvy stock market speculator. He was also a big sports gambler who eschewed betting “chalk”.
#3 – He predicted World War 2 a year after World War 1 ended. His book, “The Economic Consequences of Peace”, was oft-times cited by Churchill in the 1930s.
#4 – At no time, in no place, in none of his books, tracts, letters, or public addresses did he ever recommend, suggest, hint, infer, or wish for an increased tax rate, particularly an increased personal income tax rate, when an economy was in decline.
#5 – When asked why he changed his mind on a specific policy, he responded in a tone of absolute incredulity, “The facts changed. What would you have me do?”
#6 – Before he died he was convinced that Hayek, the author of “The Road to Serfdom”, was right on the Big Things and that he was wrong.
Your claim…
“Florida needs a massive infusion of dollars to jump-start a
dying economy. And that can only come from a state income tax.”
is astonishing in its anti-gravity implications. “Stones are hard. Water is wet” seems to have never entered your consciousness. It is possible that you have no idea how the world works. You may be beyond redemption. If you are it won’t be because I didn’t try.
A – There is no instance in recorded History, none whatsoever anywhere, where a civilization taxed itself into prosperity. The great reign of the 5 Emperors showed almost a century of continuous tax cuts. Harding in 1921, Kennedy in 1962, and the great Reagan in 1983 are inconvenient truths that not only do tax cuts work but that they work superbly well.
B – “When you subsidize something you have more of it. When you tax something you have less of it.”
Pay attention. I’ll write slowly.
We borrow gazillions of dollars from the Chinese, a practice that Hillary Clinton condemned about twice a week for the 8 years that she was in the Senate, to fill the public teat with “Mother’s Milk”. We then wet nursed the states and cities to meet their payrolls. That’s why the public payrolls went up while the private payrolls were going down. Those borrowed funds will not be available next year. Your solution is to raise the personal income tax rates to meet next year’s payroll. That is breathtaking even for an economic mooncalf like you.
My Uncle Adam, a canny Scot from Edinburgh said, “What is prudence in running the affairs of a household can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”.
In the world run by Goldstein the Juggling Wizard, a world where water isn’t wet and stones are not hard, a world where “the comic inversion of old certitudes” is mandated, says naught.
Your paradigmatic template is Lord Barack the Beneficent. You may recall that he promised us he would heal the world and make the oceans recede. He can’t even plug a hole in the “vasty deep”. Soon his sycophantic satraps will carry him to the water’s edge where his commands will be fruitless.
Yours and his Plan B solution is simple.
Raise Taxes
Samuel Johnson, another of those oddly magnificent Englishmen, responded when asked how he could confuse the bones in a horse’s leg, “Ignorance madam, pure ignorance.”
Send a SASE and I will fill it with my reading lists for adults who are lost in “the dark wood of error” and don’t even know it.
Kevin Smith
Board Certified Life Coach
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: Congratulations on your plan for combining your “shovel ready” unicorn farm projects with plans for culturally sensitive groves of organically grown, as opposed to the inorganically grown Bush era “rainbow soup” trees, and the novel idea of people taxing themselves if we can’t borrow any more money from the Chinese to do this.
My dear Professor,
Your column in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel calls for an advanced lesson in History and Economics.
Let’s begin with John Maynard Keynes.
He was one of the 20th Century’s most influential and fascinating characters. Alas, like any great man engaged in obfuscatory endeavors – money supply, accelerated demand, fractional reserves, fiscal v monetary policy, inter alia – “he is more quoted than read”. How many people really know what Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking are talking about?
Since “all History is biography and all biography is anecdote” some things about him should be noted.
#1 – Until he turned 30 he was a predatory homosexual. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles. Their main extracurricular intramural activity was buggering the young lads who worked “below stairs”. He did a 180 when he was 30. As he was later to write, “I met a woman and she has changed everything”.
#2 – He was, in English terms, a hugely successful “punter”. He was a savvy stock market speculator. He was also a big sports gambler who eschewed betting “chalk”.
#3 – He predicted World War 2 a year after World War 1 ended. His book, “The Economic Consequences of Peace”, was oft-times cited by Churchill in the 1930s.
#4 – At no time, in no place, in none of his books, tracts, letters, or public addresses did he ever recommend, suggest, hint, infer, or wish for an increased tax rate, particularly an increased personal income tax rate, when an economy was in decline.
#5 – When asked why he changed his mind on a specific policy, he responded in a tone of absolute incredulity, “The facts changed. What would you have me do?”
#6 – Before he died he was convinced that Hayek, the author of “The Road to Serfdom”, was right on the Big Things and that he was wrong.
Your claim…
“Florida needs a massive infusion of dollars to jump-start a
dying economy. And that can only come from a state income tax.”
is astonishing in its anti-gravity implications. “Stones are hard. Water is wet” seems to have never entered your consciousness. It is possible that you have no idea how the world works. You may be beyond redemption. If you are it won’t be because I didn’t try.
A – There is no instance in recorded History, none whatsoever anywhere, where a civilization taxed itself into prosperity. The great reign of the 5 Emperors showed almost a century of continuous tax cuts. Harding in 1921, Kennedy in 1962, and the great Reagan in 1983 are inconvenient truths that not only do tax cuts work but that they work superbly well.
B – “When you subsidize something you have more of it. When you tax something you have less of it.”
Pay attention. I’ll write slowly.
We borrow gazillions of dollars from the Chinese, a practice that Hillary Clinton condemned about twice a week for the 8 years that she was in the Senate, to fill the public teat with “Mother’s Milk”. We then wet nursed the states and cities to meet their payrolls. That’s why the public payrolls went up while the private payrolls were going down. Those borrowed funds will not be available next year. Your solution is to raise the personal income tax rates to meet next year’s payroll. That is breathtaking even for an economic mooncalf like you.
My Uncle Adam, a canny Scot from Edinburgh said, “What is prudence in running the affairs of a household can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”.
In the world run by Goldstein the Juggling Wizard, a world where water isn’t wet and stones are not hard, a world where “the comic inversion of old certitudes” is mandated, says naught.
Your paradigmatic template is Lord Barack the Beneficent. You may recall that he promised us he would heal the world and make the oceans recede. He can’t even plug a hole in the “vasty deep”. Soon his sycophantic satraps will carry him to the water’s edge where his commands will be fruitless.
Yours and his Plan B solution is simple.
Raise Taxes
Samuel Johnson, another of those oddly magnificent Englishmen, responded when asked how he could confuse the bones in a horse’s leg, “Ignorance madam, pure ignorance.”
Send a SASE and I will fill it with my reading lists for adults who are lost in “the dark wood of error” and don’t even know it.
Kevin Smith
Board Certified Life Coach
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Letter to the Editor The Sun-Sentinel
June 15, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Ass Kicking from the Oval Office” – Soon to be an Olympic sport?
Sirs,
Thank God the President is fully limbed because nobody is busier than the one legged man in the ass kicking contest. Before he starts giving external “colonic massages” to the evil polluters from perfidious Albion I suggest a few pre-season matches here.
#1 – I enclose a printed copy of Congressman Klein’s website dated 6/8/10
#2 – I enclose a copy of two envelopes addressed to Congressman Klein that were returned to me. The return date on one is 5/5/10. The mail date on the other is 6/3/10.
#3 – Whose ass gets kicked first? The Congressman or the Post Office?
#4 – Until the arrival of the great Reagan the United States government had done two things superbly well in my lifetime. The first was the fighting of World War 2. The other one was being the General Contractor on the moon shot. Reagan rescued the country from the clutches of Carter’s thanatoptic malaise. He also beat the Russkies and saved the Western World without ever taking his sword out of his scabbard.
#5 – If the government’s attempts at plugging the well are as successful as the Department of Energy and the Department of Education are at reaching their goals we will be knee deep in goo by the time our football season starts.
#6 – If History is a guide we know with boot in the ass certainty that if the government is put in charge of the beach they will be importing sand in short order.
#7 – It would be anatomically difficult but I hope the first ass he kicks is his own. That would be a change we would all welcome.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Ass Kicking from the Oval Office” – Soon to be an Olympic sport?
Sirs,
Thank God the President is fully limbed because nobody is busier than the one legged man in the ass kicking contest. Before he starts giving external “colonic massages” to the evil polluters from perfidious Albion I suggest a few pre-season matches here.
#1 – I enclose a printed copy of Congressman Klein’s website dated 6/8/10
#2 – I enclose a copy of two envelopes addressed to Congressman Klein that were returned to me. The return date on one is 5/5/10. The mail date on the other is 6/3/10.
#3 – Whose ass gets kicked first? The Congressman or the Post Office?
#4 – Until the arrival of the great Reagan the United States government had done two things superbly well in my lifetime. The first was the fighting of World War 2. The other one was being the General Contractor on the moon shot. Reagan rescued the country from the clutches of Carter’s thanatoptic malaise. He also beat the Russkies and saved the Western World without ever taking his sword out of his scabbard.
#5 – If the government’s attempts at plugging the well are as successful as the Department of Energy and the Department of Education are at reaching their goals we will be knee deep in goo by the time our football season starts.
#6 – If History is a guide we know with boot in the ass certainty that if the government is put in charge of the beach they will be importing sand in short order.
#7 – It would be anatomically difficult but I hope the first ass he kicks is his own. That would be a change we would all welcome.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
June 13, 2010
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pembroke Pines Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
RE: What’s that smell? You, your husband, your proposed Federal banking legislation, your self serving self interest [as if there were any other kind] and the perpetual ailment, the constant fatal flaw of all true believing modern American Liberals, as proclaimed in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Congressperson,
The character defect that enables rational adults to know that they are in the company of card carrying, true believing modern American Liberals is…drum roll please…”non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome”.
People who believed that “Midnight Basketball” was good public policy, people who believe that low prices a la Wal Mart hurt consumers, people who condemned the Congressionally approved deficits in the Bush administration but believe that increasing them by a factor of 4 under the guidance of Lord Barack the Beneficent is divinely inspired don’t need to announce their arrival. The ordure, the sure sign of hubris gone wild, will tell of their arrival long before they are in sight.
If we are serious about mass transit any train system running to Bedlam would be overflowing with neither student nor senior citizen discount.
Aristotle, or was it Plato, said, “Something cannot be that which it is not”. He never met any modern American Liberals in the Agora.
OOPS! I just said “agora”.
Your CV says that you have two degrees in Political Science from the University of Florida. If you earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree you did so without ever attending the classes that would have made you familiar with the birth of free speech in the Hellenic agoras.
Incidentally, isn’t it about time we did away with the sexist term “Bachelor” when it is used in an academic context? Surely it is time for a “Mistress of Arts” degree, don’t you think?
Free speech has come a long way since those days.
Today it is considered a sign of maturity for the Federal government to subsidize tours featuring art such as “Piss Christ”. Stick a crucifix into a vat filled with urine and voila! you have art. When the Federal government subsidizes tours featuring the cartoons of Mohammed giving bestiality a bad name I will know that my Redeemer liveth.
That will happen when, to cite Hubert Humphrey, we have a balanced budget or a fifth Gospel.
This morning’s Sun-Sentinel has a story that shows that, in addition to missing all your classes on the origins of human rights, you missed your classes on Plutarch.
It is a sad tale. I mention Plutarch because he told us about one of Caesar’s spouses. Flying back and forth to DC should give you ample time to play catch up ball on all your missed reading.
You just can’t be “not guilty”. “Innocent” is not sufficient either.
You husband is the Vice President of Commercial Lending at the Community Bank of Broward.
You are trying to get the House of Representatives to soften legislation directly affecting his industry and his livelihood. I assume that you file a joint tax return. It does not take 7 League Boots to jump the chasm to say that it directly affects your livelihood. Logic, the keystone of the Trivium [I can’t get away from those Greeks] demands that I do so.
Maybe if you sent your kids to any of the really fine public schools in the county you could save a few dollars. As a bonus you could save your honor.
At least you were never bound by a Code of Honor as was Congressman Sestak. In your case there is “nothing lost save honor”.
James Madison, author of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, answered thus when asked what was the most important trait to look for in a candidate for public office. “Character. Character is all.”
There is no second place in the race. It would be like being a little bit pregnant.
If “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome” stumps you send a SASE.
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pembroke Pines Boulevard
Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
RE: What’s that smell? You, your husband, your proposed Federal banking legislation, your self serving self interest [as if there were any other kind] and the perpetual ailment, the constant fatal flaw of all true believing modern American Liberals, as proclaimed in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
My dear Congressperson,
The character defect that enables rational adults to know that they are in the company of card carrying, true believing modern American Liberals is…drum roll please…”non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome”.
People who believed that “Midnight Basketball” was good public policy, people who believe that low prices a la Wal Mart hurt consumers, people who condemned the Congressionally approved deficits in the Bush administration but believe that increasing them by a factor of 4 under the guidance of Lord Barack the Beneficent is divinely inspired don’t need to announce their arrival. The ordure, the sure sign of hubris gone wild, will tell of their arrival long before they are in sight.
If we are serious about mass transit any train system running to Bedlam would be overflowing with neither student nor senior citizen discount.
Aristotle, or was it Plato, said, “Something cannot be that which it is not”. He never met any modern American Liberals in the Agora.
OOPS! I just said “agora”.
Your CV says that you have two degrees in Political Science from the University of Florida. If you earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree you did so without ever attending the classes that would have made you familiar with the birth of free speech in the Hellenic agoras.
Incidentally, isn’t it about time we did away with the sexist term “Bachelor” when it is used in an academic context? Surely it is time for a “Mistress of Arts” degree, don’t you think?
Free speech has come a long way since those days.
Today it is considered a sign of maturity for the Federal government to subsidize tours featuring art such as “Piss Christ”. Stick a crucifix into a vat filled with urine and voila! you have art. When the Federal government subsidizes tours featuring the cartoons of Mohammed giving bestiality a bad name I will know that my Redeemer liveth.
That will happen when, to cite Hubert Humphrey, we have a balanced budget or a fifth Gospel.
This morning’s Sun-Sentinel has a story that shows that, in addition to missing all your classes on the origins of human rights, you missed your classes on Plutarch.
It is a sad tale. I mention Plutarch because he told us about one of Caesar’s spouses. Flying back and forth to DC should give you ample time to play catch up ball on all your missed reading.
You just can’t be “not guilty”. “Innocent” is not sufficient either.
You husband is the Vice President of Commercial Lending at the Community Bank of Broward.
You are trying to get the House of Representatives to soften legislation directly affecting his industry and his livelihood. I assume that you file a joint tax return. It does not take 7 League Boots to jump the chasm to say that it directly affects your livelihood. Logic, the keystone of the Trivium [I can’t get away from those Greeks] demands that I do so.
Maybe if you sent your kids to any of the really fine public schools in the county you could save a few dollars. As a bonus you could save your honor.
At least you were never bound by a Code of Honor as was Congressman Sestak. In your case there is “nothing lost save honor”.
James Madison, author of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, answered thus when asked what was the most important trait to look for in a candidate for public office. “Character. Character is all.”
There is no second place in the race. It would be like being a little bit pregnant.
If “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome” stumps you send a SASE.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
E. J. Dionne Washington Post Writers Group
June 7, 2010
E. J. Dionne
Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street NW
Washington. D.C. 20017
RE: “Some people never let you down” – Some musings on your column in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Dionne,
There is a formulaic consistency common to best selling novelists and modern American Liberal pundits.
A flow, mellifluous and euphonic, and the total willingness to shun as if they were anathema any facts that contradict the main thesis or argument are musts.
Thus, your column in today’s Miami Herald is the journalistic equivalent of a good old porch hound warming your feet.
That the President, Lord Barack the Beneficent, is good, kind, gentle, sensitive plus a good basketball player is a given.[If I were to tell you that he throws a baseball like my daughter and her daughters would that make me mildly seditious?] His satraps engage in self flagellation because “We don’t communicate it well”. It becomes the reason for the coming seasons of discontent. “If only the American people knew, really knew the real President we would be gamboling in Elysian Fields” is a familiar cry when it is becoming obvious that the President needs a new tailor. In fact, he is about 2 gaffes away from needing any tailor, even a blind one. The lipstick on a pig remark is a bit stale so I won’t use it.
The jobs report of Friday last was preceded by 3 days of “Wait ‘til you see the jobs report” and “Go Stimulus!”.
I could say the jobs report was a bit like a fart in Church but usually they are involuntary. If these guys are so smart they should have known. A good CEO always picks subordinates that he believes are smarter, harder working, or luckier than he thinks he is. Last week the heads up their asses leaks about good times are upon us is proof that Jesse Jackson was right when he said that “the only thing Obama ever run was his mouth”. Wasn’t that just before he said he wanted to cut his ball off? Whodathunk that the Reverend Jackson was a charter member of the Tea Party or maybe the Militia?
[As an aside, I worked briefly for the Census Bureau. I can say two things with 100% metaphysical certitude. #1 – I fulfilled my life long ambition to become a “seasonally adjusted statistic”. #2 – It should be obvious but if there is a better trained, more highly motivated, ready to hit the ground running Federal employee base – with the possible exception of the Post Office – ready to take over the quotidian operations of the hydrocarbon incident in the Gulf of Mexico I would like to see it.]
You mention White House hack flack Christine Romer. Her weekly attempts to make cow chips into rib-eye are hugely entertaining. Her CV shows her to be an accomplished academician – Is that an oxymoron? – who, after getting a Krispy Kreme enema, is rolled out in front of the White House to do George Orwell proud. I hope her sunny disposition and perpetual 25 tooth grin are chemically induced. If she is auditioning for the job of event planner on the Titanic she has my vote. She tells the world at least once a week that the light at the end of the tunnel is Diogenes when it just might be the 20th Century Express.
Too bad. She seems like a nice lady.
You then bemoan and bewail that the well intentioned Congress lacks the huevos to borrow $23,000,000,000 from the Chinese to meet the payroll for 300,000 teachers.
#1 – Capitalizing day to day expenses is a no-no. My largest payroll had 256 workers on it. Many times we did the banking equivalent of the 4 corner offense to meet it. The thought of borrowing long term to meet Friday’s eagle would have led to a shareholders’ revolt, a visit from the SEC, and a pissed off United States Attorney.
#2 – Would you share with me the Logic that condemns Bush deficits but praises Obama’s? If Bush borrowing billions is poor husbandry why is Barack borrowing 4 times as much the wonder of the age?
The faint sound you hear is that of the Gods of the Copy Headings sitting quietly and scribbling on the mountainside. It’s called keeping score. It’s what people in the real world do.
Finally you end by invoking the demon spirit of Jimmy Carter.
By any standard imaginable, by universal acclaim, by common consent, by volcanic acclamation – Mt. Saint Helen’s happened on his watch – Jimmy Carter was the worst President of the 20th Century. He alone makes Hoover [Herbert, not J. Edgar] admirable. He was nasty and mean but in no way tough. By his 3rd year the world was falling apart. At home, he gave new meaning to the term “misery index”. His brother sold truly bilious beer when he wasn’t working for Qadafi. There would be no debate about abortion if it could be made retroactive.
He will be remembered for many things.
He couldn’t direct a two car funeral.
If he had been reelected this country would have been in a shooting war at a time and at a place not of our own choosing.
He made effort the ultimate arbiter. Results didn’t matter.
Thus, he became the paradigmatic template for clueless modern American Liberals.
The only thing that will redound to his credit is that he was so bad, so inept, so God-awful a man as has ever sat in the White House, that he made it easy for the great Reagan to come in a save our nation from its self inflicted toxic ‘malaise’. As a bonus, he beat the Russkies and saved the world.
Thanks for reminding me.
Kevin Smith
PS – When I see Joe Sestak and the way he abuses the Naval Academy Honor Code and then I see Helen Thomas, and if she isn’t the best cougar in town I want to see the other contestants, I think that either Lee Atwater is haunting the White House or Dick Cheney has made the basement his best “undisclosed location”. If they are doing this all to themselves I wouldn’t worry about Iran getting nuclear weapons. With a little luck those WOGS will blow themselves up. I would worry about the Rootie Kazooties at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue eyeballing the “reset” button.
Has the statute of limitations on blaming Bush run out yet?
One last request. I search for an answer. You‘re in Washington. Maybe you can find it. If Clinton gave us surpluses in the late ‘90s why didn’t the debt go down? Maybe the answer is in one of those famous lock boxes. Help me, Obi Wan Kanobe.
E. J. Dionne
Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street NW
Washington. D.C. 20017
RE: “Some people never let you down” – Some musings on your column in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Dionne,
There is a formulaic consistency common to best selling novelists and modern American Liberal pundits.
A flow, mellifluous and euphonic, and the total willingness to shun as if they were anathema any facts that contradict the main thesis or argument are musts.
Thus, your column in today’s Miami Herald is the journalistic equivalent of a good old porch hound warming your feet.
That the President, Lord Barack the Beneficent, is good, kind, gentle, sensitive plus a good basketball player is a given.[If I were to tell you that he throws a baseball like my daughter and her daughters would that make me mildly seditious?] His satraps engage in self flagellation because “We don’t communicate it well”. It becomes the reason for the coming seasons of discontent. “If only the American people knew, really knew the real President we would be gamboling in Elysian Fields” is a familiar cry when it is becoming obvious that the President needs a new tailor. In fact, he is about 2 gaffes away from needing any tailor, even a blind one. The lipstick on a pig remark is a bit stale so I won’t use it.
The jobs report of Friday last was preceded by 3 days of “Wait ‘til you see the jobs report” and “Go Stimulus!”.
I could say the jobs report was a bit like a fart in Church but usually they are involuntary. If these guys are so smart they should have known. A good CEO always picks subordinates that he believes are smarter, harder working, or luckier than he thinks he is. Last week the heads up their asses leaks about good times are upon us is proof that Jesse Jackson was right when he said that “the only thing Obama ever run was his mouth”. Wasn’t that just before he said he wanted to cut his ball off? Whodathunk that the Reverend Jackson was a charter member of the Tea Party or maybe the Militia?
[As an aside, I worked briefly for the Census Bureau. I can say two things with 100% metaphysical certitude. #1 – I fulfilled my life long ambition to become a “seasonally adjusted statistic”. #2 – It should be obvious but if there is a better trained, more highly motivated, ready to hit the ground running Federal employee base – with the possible exception of the Post Office – ready to take over the quotidian operations of the hydrocarbon incident in the Gulf of Mexico I would like to see it.]
You mention White House hack flack Christine Romer. Her weekly attempts to make cow chips into rib-eye are hugely entertaining. Her CV shows her to be an accomplished academician – Is that an oxymoron? – who, after getting a Krispy Kreme enema, is rolled out in front of the White House to do George Orwell proud. I hope her sunny disposition and perpetual 25 tooth grin are chemically induced. If she is auditioning for the job of event planner on the Titanic she has my vote. She tells the world at least once a week that the light at the end of the tunnel is Diogenes when it just might be the 20th Century Express.
Too bad. She seems like a nice lady.
You then bemoan and bewail that the well intentioned Congress lacks the huevos to borrow $23,000,000,000 from the Chinese to meet the payroll for 300,000 teachers.
#1 – Capitalizing day to day expenses is a no-no. My largest payroll had 256 workers on it. Many times we did the banking equivalent of the 4 corner offense to meet it. The thought of borrowing long term to meet Friday’s eagle would have led to a shareholders’ revolt, a visit from the SEC, and a pissed off United States Attorney.
#2 – Would you share with me the Logic that condemns Bush deficits but praises Obama’s? If Bush borrowing billions is poor husbandry why is Barack borrowing 4 times as much the wonder of the age?
The faint sound you hear is that of the Gods of the Copy Headings sitting quietly and scribbling on the mountainside. It’s called keeping score. It’s what people in the real world do.
Finally you end by invoking the demon spirit of Jimmy Carter.
By any standard imaginable, by universal acclaim, by common consent, by volcanic acclamation – Mt. Saint Helen’s happened on his watch – Jimmy Carter was the worst President of the 20th Century. He alone makes Hoover [Herbert, not J. Edgar] admirable. He was nasty and mean but in no way tough. By his 3rd year the world was falling apart. At home, he gave new meaning to the term “misery index”. His brother sold truly bilious beer when he wasn’t working for Qadafi. There would be no debate about abortion if it could be made retroactive.
He will be remembered for many things.
He couldn’t direct a two car funeral.
If he had been reelected this country would have been in a shooting war at a time and at a place not of our own choosing.
He made effort the ultimate arbiter. Results didn’t matter.
Thus, he became the paradigmatic template for clueless modern American Liberals.
The only thing that will redound to his credit is that he was so bad, so inept, so God-awful a man as has ever sat in the White House, that he made it easy for the great Reagan to come in a save our nation from its self inflicted toxic ‘malaise’. As a bonus, he beat the Russkies and saved the world.
Thanks for reminding me.
Kevin Smith
PS – When I see Joe Sestak and the way he abuses the Naval Academy Honor Code and then I see Helen Thomas, and if she isn’t the best cougar in town I want to see the other contestants, I think that either Lee Atwater is haunting the White House or Dick Cheney has made the basement his best “undisclosed location”. If they are doing this all to themselves I wouldn’t worry about Iran getting nuclear weapons. With a little luck those WOGS will blow themselves up. I would worry about the Rootie Kazooties at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue eyeballing the “reset” button.
Has the statute of limitations on blaming Bush run out yet?
One last request. I search for an answer. You‘re in Washington. Maybe you can find it. If Clinton gave us surpluses in the late ‘90s why didn’t the debt go down? Maybe the answer is in one of those famous lock boxes. Help me, Obi Wan Kanobe.
John Cook Senior National Reporter Yahoo! News
June 5, 2010
John Cook
Senior National Reporter
Yahoo! News
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
RE: Ragheads and Gamecocks – Why the Palmetto State has a special place in the heart of America. Some comments on your article on South Carolina politics and how it may challenge 1800 and 1876 for pushing the envelope on political speech.
Mr. Cook,
I write for 2 reasons.
#1 – In 1967 I lived at 436 Lincoln Avenue in Orange, New Jersey. One of the other tenants was Lt. John Cook. He was a recruiting officer for the U.S. Army. Although Bess was his wife’s name she was known as “Bess Darling” because that was how he referred to her. They were from South Carolina. I think he was graduated from Furman. If so, Go Paladins! Is there any possibility that you are part of the Cook clan? If so, please send my regards to your parents, your uncles, your aunts, or your cousins.
#2 – ‘Raghead’ is a term that I have not heard in a long time. Its cousin, ‘Nappy Head’, was used by Miami Commissioner Something Spence-Jones as she was taking the perp walk required of all indicted pols. She declared herself a “Nappy haired daughter of the Lord who is innocent”. She was found guilty.
As I read your article about the genteel style of politics in South Carolina I am more and more convinced that the only tactical mistake made by that great American, William Tecumseh Sherman, was that he did no flatten, like the Romans flattened Carthage, the entire state of South Carolina.
The whole place should have been carpet bombed a la Dresden in so far as 19th century technology would permit.
I mention Rome and Carthage because it’s been 23 centuries since Scipio took off the gloves. The battle cry “Cartago delenda est” must have worked. When was the last time you heard of Carthage attacking Italy?
The same can be said for the solution to the witch problem in Salem, MA. All it took was stretching a few necks and New England has been free of witches for more than 300 years.
Who says an activist government can’t do some good? Even a blind pig can find a truffle.
Your problem is, that having started the war, the Civil War, you weren’t prepared for the dogs of war and the havoc they sometimes cause. As long as it was in Tennessee or Pennsylvania or Mississippi it was OK. Who knows? If you hadn’t fired on Ft. Sumter perhaps you could have gone through the unpleasantness like Ireland went through World War 2. “Uncle Billy”, the sobriquet his devoted troops gave him, served as a role model for Curtis LeMay.
There is one other thing. It is something that is “owed to the ledger”.
You mention Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush, and Willie Horton.
Willie Horton is sometimes known as the poster boy for prison rehab gone bad. He was in prison in Massachusetts for rape and murder. Governor Dukakis, “Wee Mikey” to his friends, is a firm believer in “there is no such thing as a bad boy”. He furloughed him for a long weekend. He went to Maryland where, Surprise! he raped and murdered again. The parents of the Maryland victims went to Massachusetts where Governor Dukakis was too busy to meet with them.
I point this out because it’s true and because you left out one teeny weeny little fact. Even though it’s not much bigger than a turd in a punch bowl it is a material fact. The omission of same constitutes fraud.
Willie Horton was introduced to America by Senator Albert Arnold Gore. Jr. in the New York Democratic Primary in March, 1988. I call him Alpha Gump because he was, is, and shall be a horse’s ass of Homeric proportions. He is dumber than a box of starch.
He was smart enough to hammer Mikey with a simple slogan.
“The Willie Hortons of the world never let you down.”
Chances are if you hadn’t fired on Ft. Sumter the above may not have happened. Since Arnold Schwarzenegger will be between assignments shortly. Maybe you can get him to go back in time and put South Carolina on the winning side.
Kevin Smith
John Cook
Senior National Reporter
Yahoo! News
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
RE: Ragheads and Gamecocks – Why the Palmetto State has a special place in the heart of America. Some comments on your article on South Carolina politics and how it may challenge 1800 and 1876 for pushing the envelope on political speech.
Mr. Cook,
I write for 2 reasons.
#1 – In 1967 I lived at 436 Lincoln Avenue in Orange, New Jersey. One of the other tenants was Lt. John Cook. He was a recruiting officer for the U.S. Army. Although Bess was his wife’s name she was known as “Bess Darling” because that was how he referred to her. They were from South Carolina. I think he was graduated from Furman. If so, Go Paladins! Is there any possibility that you are part of the Cook clan? If so, please send my regards to your parents, your uncles, your aunts, or your cousins.
#2 – ‘Raghead’ is a term that I have not heard in a long time. Its cousin, ‘Nappy Head’, was used by Miami Commissioner Something Spence-Jones as she was taking the perp walk required of all indicted pols. She declared herself a “Nappy haired daughter of the Lord who is innocent”. She was found guilty.
As I read your article about the genteel style of politics in South Carolina I am more and more convinced that the only tactical mistake made by that great American, William Tecumseh Sherman, was that he did no flatten, like the Romans flattened Carthage, the entire state of South Carolina.
The whole place should have been carpet bombed a la Dresden in so far as 19th century technology would permit.
I mention Rome and Carthage because it’s been 23 centuries since Scipio took off the gloves. The battle cry “Cartago delenda est” must have worked. When was the last time you heard of Carthage attacking Italy?
The same can be said for the solution to the witch problem in Salem, MA. All it took was stretching a few necks and New England has been free of witches for more than 300 years.
Who says an activist government can’t do some good? Even a blind pig can find a truffle.
Your problem is, that having started the war, the Civil War, you weren’t prepared for the dogs of war and the havoc they sometimes cause. As long as it was in Tennessee or Pennsylvania or Mississippi it was OK. Who knows? If you hadn’t fired on Ft. Sumter perhaps you could have gone through the unpleasantness like Ireland went through World War 2. “Uncle Billy”, the sobriquet his devoted troops gave him, served as a role model for Curtis LeMay.
There is one other thing. It is something that is “owed to the ledger”.
You mention Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush, and Willie Horton.
Willie Horton is sometimes known as the poster boy for prison rehab gone bad. He was in prison in Massachusetts for rape and murder. Governor Dukakis, “Wee Mikey” to his friends, is a firm believer in “there is no such thing as a bad boy”. He furloughed him for a long weekend. He went to Maryland where, Surprise! he raped and murdered again. The parents of the Maryland victims went to Massachusetts where Governor Dukakis was too busy to meet with them.
I point this out because it’s true and because you left out one teeny weeny little fact. Even though it’s not much bigger than a turd in a punch bowl it is a material fact. The omission of same constitutes fraud.
Willie Horton was introduced to America by Senator Albert Arnold Gore. Jr. in the New York Democratic Primary in March, 1988. I call him Alpha Gump because he was, is, and shall be a horse’s ass of Homeric proportions. He is dumber than a box of starch.
He was smart enough to hammer Mikey with a simple slogan.
“The Willie Hortons of the world never let you down.”
Chances are if you hadn’t fired on Ft. Sumter the above may not have happened. Since Arnold Schwarzenegger will be between assignments shortly. Maybe you can get him to go back in time and put South Carolina on the winning side.
Kevin Smith
Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
June 4, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Ugly lies in the eye of the beholder – A take on this morning’s column, one that ends not so surprisingly in you saying all will be well if we are less free.
My dear Professor,
“Ugly” is oft times a subjective thing.
Far be if for me to say that Helen Thomas is ugly but her family washed her hair with Alpo to get the dog to play with her. That is clearly argumentum ad hominem. I wrote that after I read that she said that “Jews should get out of Israel and go back to Germany and Poland”. That doesn’t make her look any better, does it?
You say in this morning’s column that anyone who wants to spend their own money to get elected is “ugly”.
You give Ross Perot the ultimate “ugly” honor when you label him the “quintessential ugly”. Jon Corzine and Michael Bloomberg fall into your killing zone also. Perhaps your objection to self financing a campaign is that they will not fall prey to the hated “special interests” groups. Lord knows what the SEIU, the Teachers unions, and pro-abortion groups get for their campaign bucks but it must be steep.
[In a bow to diversity, multi-culturalism, and Affirmative Action Warbucks Corzine gave $25,000 to every living, living being defined as not yet 2 years dead, Black minister in New Jersey. Since they weren’t candidates it was kosher to give them cash. He said it was to “introduce” him to their parishioners.]
Jeff Green and Rick Scott are your two favorite local “uglies”. Both men seem to have disregarded Lord Barack’s warning about “having too much money”. Perhaps they realized that they have too much of it so they have decided to rid themselves of it
Their method of disposal, alas, is not favored by you. Cocaine, gambling, and gamboling have their drawbacks. They want to give it to ad makers, political consultants, beer salesmen, event planners, lawyers, columnists and other hucksters, and probably a few bail bondsmen.
In other words, one wants to be Governor and the other wants to be Senator. If Florida and the United States can survive Jimmy Carter we can survive either of them.
You mention famous names being used by dullards, bounders, ne’eer do wells, and lesser breeds running for public office.
Congressman Kendrick Meek go this job the old fashioned way. His Mommy gave it to him. He gave a new meaning to the word primogeniture. Mommy, AKA Congresswoman Carrie Meek, gave Junior her crown, her mace, her great seals of office, plus an Escalade, the preferred conveyance of choice. Here’s the good part. She didn’t have to die!
A special section should be devoted to Senator Kennedy. In addition to never having worked a day in his life the man was a moral slag heap. If his license, presuming he got it back, read Teddy Goldstein he would have been a whiskey salesman who died 25 years ago of an exploding liver.
Too harsh? Not compared to Helen Thomas.
Whatever your academic training you seemed to have slept in whenever Logic was being taught.
Following your construct of eliminating whatever offends you, one that screams modern American Liberalism, we would shortly have no flowers in the world because of your aversion to bees. And should said bees show a proclivity for stinging women, minorities, and the various less than gendered or over gendered types that you champion you would use DDT on steroids cum plutonium to get rid of them.
In the end the mAL way, soon to be known as the Progressive way, is always the same. You put an iron fist inside an iron glove. Then you pass a law outlawing something.
“They are proof that we need public financing of campaigns.”
Your dictum, “taking private money out of public campaigns”, suggests a wish for expanded unicorn ranches with a side crop of rainbow stew. Where did Lord Barack the Beneficent get his campaign money? I am sure that his Chicago Best Buds, Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, the organizers of the Gaza Peace Flotilla, gave him a few bucks.
Maybe they can give some money to have someone take a back hoe to the face of Helen Thomas. She’s so ugly only Dr. John Deere could help her.
The above has been a brief lesson in the First Amendment. It begins with the majestic words “Congress shall make no law…”. Further, in one sentence it specifically mentions 4 separate rights.
Reductio ad absurdum – there’s that bug eyed ape Logic again – the one you most object to, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”, is because they may get the legislature to do something that you object to. Should the legislature pass a bill that outlaws same sex marriage you would object to that. Should the legislature pass a bill that permits 4th and 5th trimester abortions you would arrange for a secular “Te Deum” for that.
The problem with competing in the arena of ideas is that sharp elbows are a must. Free men speaking freely leave wounds. Wars have been fought over those words.
With the exception of the Mohammed cartoons there are no strictures on art.
“Piss Christ”, a cross suspended in urine. “Corpus Cristi” is a play whose premise is that Christ was crucified because of a lovers’ quarrel. Jesus’ lover was Judas Iscariot. The American taxpayers have subsidized both.
How about a tax payer sponsored tour of the Mohammed cartoons? I know that the ones showing him giving bestiality a bad name may be a bit much for young eyes but it’s the price we must pay to learn more about our neighbors.
I will know that “Trousered Apes”, people like you, will have won when the Clerk begins the next session with the words “May some unknown entity bless this Supreme Court”.
Thus ends today’s lesson on liberty.
Kevin Smith
PS – Jeezus Haitch Keerist but Helen Thomas fits Fred Sanford’s spot on description of women with a certain grace. “There ain’t nothing uglier than an ugly old white woman.” She would make Medusa cut her hair.
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Ugly lies in the eye of the beholder – A take on this morning’s column, one that ends not so surprisingly in you saying all will be well if we are less free.
My dear Professor,
“Ugly” is oft times a subjective thing.
Far be if for me to say that Helen Thomas is ugly but her family washed her hair with Alpo to get the dog to play with her. That is clearly argumentum ad hominem. I wrote that after I read that she said that “Jews should get out of Israel and go back to Germany and Poland”. That doesn’t make her look any better, does it?
You say in this morning’s column that anyone who wants to spend their own money to get elected is “ugly”.
You give Ross Perot the ultimate “ugly” honor when you label him the “quintessential ugly”. Jon Corzine and Michael Bloomberg fall into your killing zone also. Perhaps your objection to self financing a campaign is that they will not fall prey to the hated “special interests” groups. Lord knows what the SEIU, the Teachers unions, and pro-abortion groups get for their campaign bucks but it must be steep.
[In a bow to diversity, multi-culturalism, and Affirmative Action Warbucks Corzine gave $25,000 to every living, living being defined as not yet 2 years dead, Black minister in New Jersey. Since they weren’t candidates it was kosher to give them cash. He said it was to “introduce” him to their parishioners.]
Jeff Green and Rick Scott are your two favorite local “uglies”. Both men seem to have disregarded Lord Barack’s warning about “having too much money”. Perhaps they realized that they have too much of it so they have decided to rid themselves of it
Their method of disposal, alas, is not favored by you. Cocaine, gambling, and gamboling have their drawbacks. They want to give it to ad makers, political consultants, beer salesmen, event planners, lawyers, columnists and other hucksters, and probably a few bail bondsmen.
In other words, one wants to be Governor and the other wants to be Senator. If Florida and the United States can survive Jimmy Carter we can survive either of them.
You mention famous names being used by dullards, bounders, ne’eer do wells, and lesser breeds running for public office.
Congressman Kendrick Meek go this job the old fashioned way. His Mommy gave it to him. He gave a new meaning to the word primogeniture. Mommy, AKA Congresswoman Carrie Meek, gave Junior her crown, her mace, her great seals of office, plus an Escalade, the preferred conveyance of choice. Here’s the good part. She didn’t have to die!
A special section should be devoted to Senator Kennedy. In addition to never having worked a day in his life the man was a moral slag heap. If his license, presuming he got it back, read Teddy Goldstein he would have been a whiskey salesman who died 25 years ago of an exploding liver.
Too harsh? Not compared to Helen Thomas.
Whatever your academic training you seemed to have slept in whenever Logic was being taught.
Following your construct of eliminating whatever offends you, one that screams modern American Liberalism, we would shortly have no flowers in the world because of your aversion to bees. And should said bees show a proclivity for stinging women, minorities, and the various less than gendered or over gendered types that you champion you would use DDT on steroids cum plutonium to get rid of them.
In the end the mAL way, soon to be known as the Progressive way, is always the same. You put an iron fist inside an iron glove. Then you pass a law outlawing something.
“They are proof that we need public financing of campaigns.”
Your dictum, “taking private money out of public campaigns”, suggests a wish for expanded unicorn ranches with a side crop of rainbow stew. Where did Lord Barack the Beneficent get his campaign money? I am sure that his Chicago Best Buds, Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, the organizers of the Gaza Peace Flotilla, gave him a few bucks.
Maybe they can give some money to have someone take a back hoe to the face of Helen Thomas. She’s so ugly only Dr. John Deere could help her.
The above has been a brief lesson in the First Amendment. It begins with the majestic words “Congress shall make no law…”. Further, in one sentence it specifically mentions 4 separate rights.
Reductio ad absurdum – there’s that bug eyed ape Logic again – the one you most object to, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”, is because they may get the legislature to do something that you object to. Should the legislature pass a bill that outlaws same sex marriage you would object to that. Should the legislature pass a bill that permits 4th and 5th trimester abortions you would arrange for a secular “Te Deum” for that.
The problem with competing in the arena of ideas is that sharp elbows are a must. Free men speaking freely leave wounds. Wars have been fought over those words.
With the exception of the Mohammed cartoons there are no strictures on art.
“Piss Christ”, a cross suspended in urine. “Corpus Cristi” is a play whose premise is that Christ was crucified because of a lovers’ quarrel. Jesus’ lover was Judas Iscariot. The American taxpayers have subsidized both.
How about a tax payer sponsored tour of the Mohammed cartoons? I know that the ones showing him giving bestiality a bad name may be a bit much for young eyes but it’s the price we must pay to learn more about our neighbors.
I will know that “Trousered Apes”, people like you, will have won when the Clerk begins the next session with the words “May some unknown entity bless this Supreme Court”.
Thus ends today’s lesson on liberty.
Kevin Smith
PS – Jeezus Haitch Keerist but Helen Thomas fits Fred Sanford’s spot on description of women with a certain grace. “There ain’t nothing uglier than an ugly old white woman.” She would make Medusa cut her hair.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
June 3, 2010
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pines Blvd
Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
RE: Shades of Boadicea! The female is the deadliest of the species. Some comments on your radio bit this morning about Israel. Who knew that your role model was Vercengetorix? Plus, what’s that smell?
My dear Congressperson,
In the interests of full disclosure I must tell you that I am not a Jew. The Man who founded my Church was. That, plus the fact that the Athens/Jerusalem nexus became the basis, the warp and the woof, the DNA of Western Civilization, automatically predisposes me to the defense of Israel. If we add Rome, 1215, 1688, and the exceptional American experience of 1787 to the pot we have a Western Canon worth defending. I know that you claim 2 degrees in Political Science so these terms and dates should not be foreign to you.
Unlike President Clinton I will make no claims as to my willingness to jump into a bunker should Israel be threatened. I must add that if I were to find myself in a bunker looking at some charging virgin lusting Mahdi men I would know that the sharp end of the cartridge goes up the spout first. The only sharp end that Clinton used was of a more up close and personal nature. I must add that I would not be a candidate for the soon to be announced “Courageous Restraint” medal. [As an aside, today is the anniversary of my last gun fight but that’s a different story.]
If there is one good thing to come out of the ship incident it will be that it puts to rest the claim that all Jews are “smart”. Whoever ordered the first wave of Israeli SEALS to rappel onto the deck of a moving ship filled with people who have sworn to obliterate their country will not be on the short list for MENSA. Those men went because they were part of something greater than themselves. The words Duty, Honor, Country have never had a sweeter sound. They sound good even if a Klezmer accompanies them. The men who sent them should be flogged.
It has been revealed that Barack Obama’s best buds from Chicago, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, helped to organize the so called Peace Flotilla that tried to invade Israel. Two years ago, Congressman Robert Wexler, AKA “Toad”, went to every shul in South Florida – an amazing geographical achievement considering that he hadn’t been in Florida in 8 years, remember? - proclaiming that Barack Obama was a true friend of Israel. Oy! With friends like that who needs enemies? Is it possible that American Jews have voted for the end of Israel? And we get to have our own Death Panels!
Eric Hoffer and Herman Kahn – Phone home. Please.
Would it be a political stretch to say that what is good policy for Israel securing and defending its borders can scarce be folly in defending ours? One of the hallmarks of a sovereign nation is that it sets the terms and conditions for getting into its territory.
How about waterboarding some of the leaders of the bad guys? Trying to get into a country that doesn’t want you can lead to some drastic measures. Following your Logic it is irrelevant if the name is Pancho or Abdul.
As soon as Camp Gitmo is emptied out maybe we can lease it to the Israelis.
Walls work in keeping people out of a country. Vide China and Rome. Perhaps if we were to shoot the next 9 people trying to break into our country it would give the others pause.
We owe so much to Israel. Our laws, our religion, and now, an effective border policy.
Olivay!
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
10100 Pines Blvd
Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
RE: Shades of Boadicea! The female is the deadliest of the species. Some comments on your radio bit this morning about Israel. Who knew that your role model was Vercengetorix? Plus, what’s that smell?
My dear Congressperson,
In the interests of full disclosure I must tell you that I am not a Jew. The Man who founded my Church was. That, plus the fact that the Athens/Jerusalem nexus became the basis, the warp and the woof, the DNA of Western Civilization, automatically predisposes me to the defense of Israel. If we add Rome, 1215, 1688, and the exceptional American experience of 1787 to the pot we have a Western Canon worth defending. I know that you claim 2 degrees in Political Science so these terms and dates should not be foreign to you.
Unlike President Clinton I will make no claims as to my willingness to jump into a bunker should Israel be threatened. I must add that if I were to find myself in a bunker looking at some charging virgin lusting Mahdi men I would know that the sharp end of the cartridge goes up the spout first. The only sharp end that Clinton used was of a more up close and personal nature. I must add that I would not be a candidate for the soon to be announced “Courageous Restraint” medal. [As an aside, today is the anniversary of my last gun fight but that’s a different story.]
If there is one good thing to come out of the ship incident it will be that it puts to rest the claim that all Jews are “smart”. Whoever ordered the first wave of Israeli SEALS to rappel onto the deck of a moving ship filled with people who have sworn to obliterate their country will not be on the short list for MENSA. Those men went because they were part of something greater than themselves. The words Duty, Honor, Country have never had a sweeter sound. They sound good even if a Klezmer accompanies them. The men who sent them should be flogged.
It has been revealed that Barack Obama’s best buds from Chicago, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, helped to organize the so called Peace Flotilla that tried to invade Israel. Two years ago, Congressman Robert Wexler, AKA “Toad”, went to every shul in South Florida – an amazing geographical achievement considering that he hadn’t been in Florida in 8 years, remember? - proclaiming that Barack Obama was a true friend of Israel. Oy! With friends like that who needs enemies? Is it possible that American Jews have voted for the end of Israel? And we get to have our own Death Panels!
Eric Hoffer and Herman Kahn – Phone home. Please.
Would it be a political stretch to say that what is good policy for Israel securing and defending its borders can scarce be folly in defending ours? One of the hallmarks of a sovereign nation is that it sets the terms and conditions for getting into its territory.
How about waterboarding some of the leaders of the bad guys? Trying to get into a country that doesn’t want you can lead to some drastic measures. Following your Logic it is irrelevant if the name is Pancho or Abdul.
As soon as Camp Gitmo is emptied out maybe we can lease it to the Israelis.
Walls work in keeping people out of a country. Vide China and Rome. Perhaps if we were to shoot the next 9 people trying to break into our country it would give the others pause.
We owe so much to Israel. Our laws, our religion, and now, an effective border policy.
Olivay!
Kevin Smith
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Congressman Joe Sestak
May 30, 2010
Congressman Joe Sestak
600 N. Jackson St. #203
Media, PA 19063
RE: What’s a lie among friends or if “honor is a gift we give to ourselves” when did you drop it?
Congressman Sestak,
There is a bit of irony about having Bill Clinton, a convicted perjurer, ask you to step aside for Senator Specter. If this were a spy novel he would be the “cut out”.
As it turns out he came straight from the White House. I have no doubt that President Obama lied. That’s what Presidents do. 3 times in the last century we were told that American boys would not fight in foreign wars, remember? Presidents must lie; they are not duty bound to commit perjury.
And just how far have you come from the Honor Code?
“A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal.
He will not tolerate those among him who do.”
It was simple enough when you said those words on your first day at Annapolis. I understand that your father is an alumnus of the Naval Academy also. At some point he must have told you about the Honor Code.
Where did it all go wrong?
The details, whether it was quid for a quo or the other way around, are not really relevant. Your ethical antennae, the ones that you got when you voluntarily chose to subscribe to a personal code of honor, should have been quivering as soon as the operator said that President Clinton was on the line. You seem to have become willing Wormwood to his Screwtape exhortations.
There is a scene in “A Man for all Seasons” when Thomas More knows he is going to have his head cut off because of one man’s perjury.
He asks the judge what chain of office his accuser is wearing.
“He is made Attorney General for Wales.”
“For Wales? It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?”
Your desire to become a United States Senator has broken the bonds that have bound you to something greater than yourself.
I believe that this is going to wind up in front of a Grand Jury.
There you will have a chance to retell your story, this time under oath.
It will be easier then both to lie and to tolerate those liars with whom you have chosen to associate yourself. After the first lie there are no others.
“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands as if it were water.
He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
“Duty, honor, country” was MacArthur’s last exhortation to the cadets at West Point. Too bad he didn’t get to the Naval Academy.
Kevin Smith
Congressman Joe Sestak
600 N. Jackson St. #203
Media, PA 19063
RE: What’s a lie among friends or if “honor is a gift we give to ourselves” when did you drop it?
Congressman Sestak,
There is a bit of irony about having Bill Clinton, a convicted perjurer, ask you to step aside for Senator Specter. If this were a spy novel he would be the “cut out”.
As it turns out he came straight from the White House. I have no doubt that President Obama lied. That’s what Presidents do. 3 times in the last century we were told that American boys would not fight in foreign wars, remember? Presidents must lie; they are not duty bound to commit perjury.
And just how far have you come from the Honor Code?
“A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal.
He will not tolerate those among him who do.”
It was simple enough when you said those words on your first day at Annapolis. I understand that your father is an alumnus of the Naval Academy also. At some point he must have told you about the Honor Code.
Where did it all go wrong?
The details, whether it was quid for a quo or the other way around, are not really relevant. Your ethical antennae, the ones that you got when you voluntarily chose to subscribe to a personal code of honor, should have been quivering as soon as the operator said that President Clinton was on the line. You seem to have become willing Wormwood to his Screwtape exhortations.
There is a scene in “A Man for all Seasons” when Thomas More knows he is going to have his head cut off because of one man’s perjury.
He asks the judge what chain of office his accuser is wearing.
“He is made Attorney General for Wales.”
“For Wales? It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?”
Your desire to become a United States Senator has broken the bonds that have bound you to something greater than yourself.
I believe that this is going to wind up in front of a Grand Jury.
There you will have a chance to retell your story, this time under oath.
It will be easier then both to lie and to tolerate those liars with whom you have chosen to associate yourself. After the first lie there are no others.
“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands as if it were water.
He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
“Duty, honor, country” was MacArthur’s last exhortation to the cadets at West Point. Too bad he didn’t get to the Naval Academy.
Kevin Smith
Anthony Man The Sun-Sentinel
June 1, 2010
Anthony Man
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: An addition to your time line for the career of Little Debbie, AKA Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, as published in the Sun-Sentinel on May 26, 2010.
Mr. Man,
I would like to add an additional date to your timeline of Little Debbie’s public accomplishments.
I would like to add September 18, 2001.
That was the day when Agent Thomas and Agent Pineva, both members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, men with badges and guns, came to my house. They were sent by Hauptman Wasserman-Schultz because of some things I wrote to and about her.
Scratch a Liberal and you find a Fascist.
She is, to use the doublespeak so common to modern American Liberalism, the paradigmatic template of the closet Nazis who tell us that up is down, hot is cold and keep your mouth shut lest we shut it for you.
That day the policemen played the “good cop/bad cop” routine to perfection. One of them, Agent Pineva, actually told me to stop writing about her lest I “get in trouble”. [I have had policemen visit me several times about things I have written to and about public officials. One of them, Broward Sheriff Office Detective Joe Kessling, began his investigation of me by saying that I was “not in trouble”. I said, “You have a badge and a fucking gun. What do you mean I am not in trouble?”] Agent Thomas told me he and other investigators liked my letters.
I mentioned that the lady storm trooper cum ideological succubus claimed to have two degrees in political science. How she could have done this without stumbling over the statement “Free men speak with free tongues” is beyond me. The words “Congress shall make no law…” are nowhere to be found in her political makeup.
You could include one of her photo ops with any of the teachers’ unions’ caudillos before they went to prison. If memory serves one of them went to jail for stealing two hot stoves and the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. The other went inside for wanting to play hide the salami with a pre-teen of undetermined sex.
I mention this because she always proclaims her belief in the public school system. A legitimate question would be whether or not her children attend public schools.
A new adjective can be added to her laurels.
That she exhibits the outward traits of a Fascist thug there can be no doubt.
Now she is a hypocritical Fascist thug.
As to the coming election you show a map of her district. It looks like a cartographer on crack constructed it. That is not unusual in Florida. We have districts that would elect Michael Jackson or O.J. Simpson. There are voting districts here that would vote 106% for Dr. Mengele because of his advanced stand on abortion. His pioneering methods on 4th and 5th trimester terminations always excite her base.
In her favor it must be said that she likes old greyhounds.
So did Hitler.
Soon, she will blame Nixon for the Gulf oil spill.
I will send her a copy of this letter. Now that she is a Federal official I hope to have some Federal agents drop in. I live on the water. I would prefer SEALS or Marines.
Kevin Smith
Anthony Man
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: An addition to your time line for the career of Little Debbie, AKA Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, as published in the Sun-Sentinel on May 26, 2010.
Mr. Man,
I would like to add an additional date to your timeline of Little Debbie’s public accomplishments.
I would like to add September 18, 2001.
That was the day when Agent Thomas and Agent Pineva, both members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, men with badges and guns, came to my house. They were sent by Hauptman Wasserman-Schultz because of some things I wrote to and about her.
Scratch a Liberal and you find a Fascist.
She is, to use the doublespeak so common to modern American Liberalism, the paradigmatic template of the closet Nazis who tell us that up is down, hot is cold and keep your mouth shut lest we shut it for you.
That day the policemen played the “good cop/bad cop” routine to perfection. One of them, Agent Pineva, actually told me to stop writing about her lest I “get in trouble”. [I have had policemen visit me several times about things I have written to and about public officials. One of them, Broward Sheriff Office Detective Joe Kessling, began his investigation of me by saying that I was “not in trouble”. I said, “You have a badge and a fucking gun. What do you mean I am not in trouble?”] Agent Thomas told me he and other investigators liked my letters.
I mentioned that the lady storm trooper cum ideological succubus claimed to have two degrees in political science. How she could have done this without stumbling over the statement “Free men speak with free tongues” is beyond me. The words “Congress shall make no law…” are nowhere to be found in her political makeup.
You could include one of her photo ops with any of the teachers’ unions’ caudillos before they went to prison. If memory serves one of them went to jail for stealing two hot stoves and the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. The other went inside for wanting to play hide the salami with a pre-teen of undetermined sex.
I mention this because she always proclaims her belief in the public school system. A legitimate question would be whether or not her children attend public schools.
A new adjective can be added to her laurels.
That she exhibits the outward traits of a Fascist thug there can be no doubt.
Now she is a hypocritical Fascist thug.
As to the coming election you show a map of her district. It looks like a cartographer on crack constructed it. That is not unusual in Florida. We have districts that would elect Michael Jackson or O.J. Simpson. There are voting districts here that would vote 106% for Dr. Mengele because of his advanced stand on abortion. His pioneering methods on 4th and 5th trimester terminations always excite her base.
In her favor it must be said that she likes old greyhounds.
So did Hitler.
Soon, she will blame Nixon for the Gulf oil spill.
I will send her a copy of this letter. Now that she is a Federal official I hope to have some Federal agents drop in. I live on the water. I would prefer SEALS or Marines.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Corporal Leonard W. Putnam, May 25, 1945
May 25, 1945 - May 25, 2010
GO TELL THE SPARTANS, STRANGER PASSING BY,
THAT HERE OBEDIENT TO THEIR LAWS, WE LIE.
27 years after the war to end all wars ended, 18 years after the world outlawed war, 12 years after the great naval powers decided to limit the size of warships my wife’s great uncle was blown up “in the Pacific Area”. It was 65 years ago today.
[As an aside, it is still passing strange that despite the pledges made by the signators of the London Naval Treaty 2 of them, in two different oceans, tried mightily to sink the ship my wife’s surgeon father served on. The treaty that “outlawed war” set a record for Nobel Prizes that was unmatched until they began to be handed out as consolation prizes for losing American Presidential elections and then for winning one.]
My wife’s great uncle was a 42 year old piano salesman from Jersey City, New Jersey. According to eye witnesses a Japanese mortar shell took off the upper right quadrant of his body on May 25, 1945. It was quick and clean. It happened on Okinawa.
I have the scroll signed by President Truman. It reads…
HE STANDS IN THE UNBROKEN LINE OF PATRIOTS
WHO HAVE DARED TO DIE THAT FREEDOM MIGHT LIVE,
AND GROW, AND INCREASE ITS BLESSINGS.
FREEDOM LIVES,
AND THROUGH IT, HE LIVES –
IN A WAY THAT HUMBLES THE UNDERTAKINGS OF MOST MEN.
He and Aunt Millie had no children. My search for other relatives ended in 1997.
I do something like this every May 25th. As long as I mention his name he is among the remembered. His grave number is N 1416.
I have seen the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
I have seen the Queen place a wreath at the Cenotaph.
Corporal Leonard W. Putnam, an American soldier. Sleep well. Achilles has welcomed you.
Your country will be in your debt. Forever.
KS
GO TELL THE SPARTANS, STRANGER PASSING BY,
THAT HERE OBEDIENT TO THEIR LAWS, WE LIE.
27 years after the war to end all wars ended, 18 years after the world outlawed war, 12 years after the great naval powers decided to limit the size of warships my wife’s great uncle was blown up “in the Pacific Area”. It was 65 years ago today.
[As an aside, it is still passing strange that despite the pledges made by the signators of the London Naval Treaty 2 of them, in two different oceans, tried mightily to sink the ship my wife’s surgeon father served on. The treaty that “outlawed war” set a record for Nobel Prizes that was unmatched until they began to be handed out as consolation prizes for losing American Presidential elections and then for winning one.]
My wife’s great uncle was a 42 year old piano salesman from Jersey City, New Jersey. According to eye witnesses a Japanese mortar shell took off the upper right quadrant of his body on May 25, 1945. It was quick and clean. It happened on Okinawa.
I have the scroll signed by President Truman. It reads…
HE STANDS IN THE UNBROKEN LINE OF PATRIOTS
WHO HAVE DARED TO DIE THAT FREEDOM MIGHT LIVE,
AND GROW, AND INCREASE ITS BLESSINGS.
FREEDOM LIVES,
AND THROUGH IT, HE LIVES –
IN A WAY THAT HUMBLES THE UNDERTAKINGS OF MOST MEN.
He and Aunt Millie had no children. My search for other relatives ended in 1997.
I do something like this every May 25th. As long as I mention his name he is among the remembered. His grave number is N 1416.
I have seen the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
I have seen the Queen place a wreath at the Cenotaph.
Corporal Leonard W. Putnam, an American soldier. Sleep well. Achilles has welcomed you.
Your country will be in your debt. Forever.
KS
Monday, May 24, 2010
Margaret Carlson Bloomberg New Service
May 21, 2010
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg New Service
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20005
RE: Tommy Atkins stumbles – Some comments on your column about Connecticut Attorney General Little Dick Blumenthal, AKA Vercingetorix, and the willingness of modern American Liberals to forgive everything but the truth.
Ms. Carlson,
One positive thing about Wee Dickie is, since he never served in Vietnam, he cannot be a tax cheat. The tax cheat reference is based on your statements during the 2000 election recount in Florida. You said that absentee ballots from American military personnel serving overseas shouldn’t be counted. Your reason for disenfranchising people potentially in harm’s way was simple; they were all” tax cheats”.
Since Dead Eye Dick didn’t go to Vietnam we can end the speculation that he was a tax cheat.
I loooooved your reference to Sarah Palin “quoting Madison from memory”. I am not sure where else you would quote him from but I’ll let that one go lest you think ill of me.
Do you suppose that Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his Name could quote “from memory” all 57 or was it 58 states? Then maybe he could recite the Austrian alphabet and show how it differs from the German. Those umlauts always get in the way.
You made one point for which I must criticize you.
You said that “Clinton lied under oath”. You also said that the Nutmeg State Audie Murphy wanabee was the “best Attorney General in Connecticut history”. He would know that lying under oath goes by a different name. Perjury has a quite different ring than fibbing, be they white lies or black.
Presidents are sometimes required to lie. My two favorite Presidential liars of the first half of the 20th century were T. Woodrow Wilson and F. Delano Roosevelt. I don’t have enough ink to do justice to the second half.
Having said that there is no requirement that a President perjure himself. When President Big Bill from Hot Springs was finding a new use for his burnished cheroot whatever he told Monica L. could never be classified as perjury.
Perhaps the following will explain it better.
“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands
as if it were water.
He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
Your judicious use of tu quoque in mentioning the lack of military service of either Bush or Cheney is de rigueur from modern American Liberals. I know of no instance when President Bush ever said he served in Vietnam. If he did perhaps you could tell me when and where.
You say that it is OK to lie if you are a “perfectionist”. Coincident to that is the fact the Tricky Dickie is one of the modern American Liberal good guys. His transition to Progressive will be of seamless web quality.
That is a very big step.
We all have some Wormwood in us.
Congratulations are in order.
You have just become the first Aunt Screwtape.
Kevin Smith
PS – AGRB argued a case in Federal Court that state laws should trump Federal law in certain instances. You would think that a Globe and Anchor tattoed Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar combat hardened Devil Dog would know that that issue was settled at Appomattox, Virginia when Grant made Lee say “Uncle”. Tell him to look it up.
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg New Service
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20005
RE: Tommy Atkins stumbles – Some comments on your column about Connecticut Attorney General Little Dick Blumenthal, AKA Vercingetorix, and the willingness of modern American Liberals to forgive everything but the truth.
Ms. Carlson,
One positive thing about Wee Dickie is, since he never served in Vietnam, he cannot be a tax cheat. The tax cheat reference is based on your statements during the 2000 election recount in Florida. You said that absentee ballots from American military personnel serving overseas shouldn’t be counted. Your reason for disenfranchising people potentially in harm’s way was simple; they were all” tax cheats”.
Since Dead Eye Dick didn’t go to Vietnam we can end the speculation that he was a tax cheat.
I loooooved your reference to Sarah Palin “quoting Madison from memory”. I am not sure where else you would quote him from but I’ll let that one go lest you think ill of me.
Do you suppose that Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his Name could quote “from memory” all 57 or was it 58 states? Then maybe he could recite the Austrian alphabet and show how it differs from the German. Those umlauts always get in the way.
You made one point for which I must criticize you.
You said that “Clinton lied under oath”. You also said that the Nutmeg State Audie Murphy wanabee was the “best Attorney General in Connecticut history”. He would know that lying under oath goes by a different name. Perjury has a quite different ring than fibbing, be they white lies or black.
Presidents are sometimes required to lie. My two favorite Presidential liars of the first half of the 20th century were T. Woodrow Wilson and F. Delano Roosevelt. I don’t have enough ink to do justice to the second half.
Having said that there is no requirement that a President perjure himself. When President Big Bill from Hot Springs was finding a new use for his burnished cheroot whatever he told Monica L. could never be classified as perjury.
Perhaps the following will explain it better.
“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands
as if it were water.
He opens his fingers at his own peril.”
Your judicious use of tu quoque in mentioning the lack of military service of either Bush or Cheney is de rigueur from modern American Liberals. I know of no instance when President Bush ever said he served in Vietnam. If he did perhaps you could tell me when and where.
You say that it is OK to lie if you are a “perfectionist”. Coincident to that is the fact the Tricky Dickie is one of the modern American Liberal good guys. His transition to Progressive will be of seamless web quality.
That is a very big step.
We all have some Wormwood in us.
Congratulations are in order.
You have just become the first Aunt Screwtape.
Kevin Smith
PS – AGRB argued a case in Federal Court that state laws should trump Federal law in certain instances. You would think that a Globe and Anchor tattoed Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar combat hardened Devil Dog would know that that issue was settled at Appomattox, Virginia when Grant made Lee say “Uncle”. Tell him to look it up.
Steven L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
May 23, 2010
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Boycotts Will Teach Florida a Lesson” – Today’s column proves that George Jessel was right when he told a pain in the ass to put his teeth in backwards and chew himself to death.
My dear Professor,
If I read your column correctly are you calling for a boycott of…of…Florida?
We know that Trollope was the master of the obvious so I find myself in good company when I break the sad news that you live in…in…Florida.
I can arrange for you to have access to a 36 inch hedge clipper. Here’s what you do with it. Turn it on. Stick your nose into it. We can all draw strength from the fact that there are people out there who will cut off their nose to spite their face. You shall lead us. Further, it proves that my grandfather was right when he oft times marveled at the fact that there were more horses’ asses than there were horses’ heads.
Congratulations! You ahead 2 to 0 before the game has even begun.
Perhaps it is PTDBHS [Post Traumatic Delayed Bush Hatred Syndrome] Perhaps it is WDESLRRS? [Why Does Everyone Still Love Ronald Reagan Syndrome?] Perhaps it the fierce belief that allows “hope to triumph over experience”, the one common denominator that permits modern American Liberals to know that if we double the minimum wage we will, in short order, all be farting through silk..
Whatever it is, and I for one hope that you are simply off your meds, but you seem to be more than a touch out of focus than usual. You are approaching a full bubble off plumb.
“To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world…”
#1 – You say that women in Florida are discriminated against because Florida didn’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment. [My son Sean, AKA the world famous attorney, is a member of the Bar in 3 states. If you can show me where a female school teacher with the exact same credentials as a male is paid less he will apply for admission to the Florida Bar for the sole purpose of trying that case.]
#2 – Even if Florida had passed the Equal Rights Amendment it still would not have become part of the Constitution.
#3 - Are you saying that states that passed the ERA are free from any discrimination based on gender? I will try to be delicate here but if that is what you are saying that is dumbness on a Homeric scale.
Continuing on your trip where facts never interfere with your argument you say the following:
#4 – “Florida loves gay and lesbian tourist dollars.” Then you say that those dudes and dudettes are discriminated against in every social exchange save for random hooking up. Your solution is to have them stay home. Why do I believe that the hotels, restaurants, bars, bistros, and dance halls that cater to them think poorly of you now? If they stop coming the first thing that happens is that waiters, waitresses, tofu wranglers, bell hops, john moppers, Brie and Chablis event planners, Akita breeders, car parkers, harness makers, rug munching teachers, cotton candy companies, and all the Village People wanabees will be out of work.
In typical modern American Liberal – or should I say Progressive? – fashion somebody else has to make the sacrifice for you to feel warm and fuzzy.
#5 – What about the latest perpetual victim class? Why did you discriminate against them by omitting them from your Hall of Fame?
I mean the cross gendered, the quasi-gendered, the non-gendered and the ungendered boys and girls of Florida. Whom can they boycott? Themselves? The Ghost of Nixon? The Taliban? Sarah Palin? AIG?
Tough choices, no?
My suggestion is that we boycott Washington, DC.
I don’t see you as a football fan but there is a NFL team there called the Redskins, the Washington Redskins.
How about all the pro teams – all the pro teams – in Florida boycott every pro team in Washington until the hatefully named Washington Redskins become the Washington Irenic Native Americans?
The Dolphins, the Bucs, the Jaguars, the Heat, the Magic, the Marlins, the Sting Rays, the Panthers, I think the soccer team is called the Copacabanas, and any other pro team in Florida will not play any team in Washington.
Until the sons of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo, AKA The American Gandhis, are satisfied the DC pro teams can play with themselves. Who says I can’t learn form Lord Barack the Beneficent? Isn’t that what he told Rush Limbaugh to do?
Once you settle that kerfuffle you can turn your boycott power on Florida State University.
Do you know that they still call themselves the Seminoles? Isn’t that a fancy name for Redskins? I say cancel the FSU/Miami game. Then it’s Goodbye Gators.
You have my permission to use my note as an example of reductio ad absurdum. It won’t be topped until the next White House press briefing.
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Boycotts Will Teach Florida a Lesson” – Today’s column proves that George Jessel was right when he told a pain in the ass to put his teeth in backwards and chew himself to death.
My dear Professor,
If I read your column correctly are you calling for a boycott of…of…Florida?
We know that Trollope was the master of the obvious so I find myself in good company when I break the sad news that you live in…in…Florida.
I can arrange for you to have access to a 36 inch hedge clipper. Here’s what you do with it. Turn it on. Stick your nose into it. We can all draw strength from the fact that there are people out there who will cut off their nose to spite their face. You shall lead us. Further, it proves that my grandfather was right when he oft times marveled at the fact that there were more horses’ asses than there were horses’ heads.
Congratulations! You ahead 2 to 0 before the game has even begun.
Perhaps it is PTDBHS [Post Traumatic Delayed Bush Hatred Syndrome] Perhaps it is WDESLRRS? [Why Does Everyone Still Love Ronald Reagan Syndrome?] Perhaps it the fierce belief that allows “hope to triumph over experience”, the one common denominator that permits modern American Liberals to know that if we double the minimum wage we will, in short order, all be farting through silk..
Whatever it is, and I for one hope that you are simply off your meds, but you seem to be more than a touch out of focus than usual. You are approaching a full bubble off plumb.
“To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world…”
#1 – You say that women in Florida are discriminated against because Florida didn’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment. [My son Sean, AKA the world famous attorney, is a member of the Bar in 3 states. If you can show me where a female school teacher with the exact same credentials as a male is paid less he will apply for admission to the Florida Bar for the sole purpose of trying that case.]
#2 – Even if Florida had passed the Equal Rights Amendment it still would not have become part of the Constitution.
#3 - Are you saying that states that passed the ERA are free from any discrimination based on gender? I will try to be delicate here but if that is what you are saying that is dumbness on a Homeric scale.
Continuing on your trip where facts never interfere with your argument you say the following:
#4 – “Florida loves gay and lesbian tourist dollars.” Then you say that those dudes and dudettes are discriminated against in every social exchange save for random hooking up. Your solution is to have them stay home. Why do I believe that the hotels, restaurants, bars, bistros, and dance halls that cater to them think poorly of you now? If they stop coming the first thing that happens is that waiters, waitresses, tofu wranglers, bell hops, john moppers, Brie and Chablis event planners, Akita breeders, car parkers, harness makers, rug munching teachers, cotton candy companies, and all the Village People wanabees will be out of work.
In typical modern American Liberal – or should I say Progressive? – fashion somebody else has to make the sacrifice for you to feel warm and fuzzy.
#5 – What about the latest perpetual victim class? Why did you discriminate against them by omitting them from your Hall of Fame?
I mean the cross gendered, the quasi-gendered, the non-gendered and the ungendered boys and girls of Florida. Whom can they boycott? Themselves? The Ghost of Nixon? The Taliban? Sarah Palin? AIG?
Tough choices, no?
My suggestion is that we boycott Washington, DC.
I don’t see you as a football fan but there is a NFL team there called the Redskins, the Washington Redskins.
How about all the pro teams – all the pro teams – in Florida boycott every pro team in Washington until the hatefully named Washington Redskins become the Washington Irenic Native Americans?
The Dolphins, the Bucs, the Jaguars, the Heat, the Magic, the Marlins, the Sting Rays, the Panthers, I think the soccer team is called the Copacabanas, and any other pro team in Florida will not play any team in Washington.
Until the sons of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo, AKA The American Gandhis, are satisfied the DC pro teams can play with themselves. Who says I can’t learn form Lord Barack the Beneficent? Isn’t that what he told Rush Limbaugh to do?
Once you settle that kerfuffle you can turn your boycott power on Florida State University.
Do you know that they still call themselves the Seminoles? Isn’t that a fancy name for Redskins? I say cancel the FSU/Miami game. Then it’s Goodbye Gators.
You have my permission to use my note as an example of reductio ad absurdum. It won’t be topped until the next White House press briefing.
Kevin Smith
Margaret Carlson Bloomberg News
May 22, 2010
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, DC 20005
RE: Round 2 in the never ending war of “eclectic indignation”, a trait commonly found in liars and the more Progressive modern American Liberal ink stained wenches.
Dear Auntie Screwtapette,
And should the New York Times, soon to be a wholly owned subsidiary of El Grande Frito Bandido, be also classified as “vulgar”?
You say that “Blumenthal’s opponent, wrestling impresario Linda McMahon, star of the WWE ‘vulgar’ program “RAW”, took credit for tipping off the newspaper”. Further, you say “it must have been looking for a needle in a haystack…”.
In reverse chronological order, finding that needle in a haystack, a 2 year old haystack, was not quite akin to finding George W. Bush’s 30 year old traffic citations. And wonder of wonders, how coincidental was it finding them just 3 days before the election? As Jeeves said to Bertie, “About as coincidental as finding a trout in the milk.”
“Vulgar”?
Wasn’t that what was said about “Ulysses”? How about “Nude Descending a Staircase”? “The Rites of Spring” didn’t go to the top of the charts right out of the gate. Van Gogh sold one painting in his life. The buyer, his brother-in-law, stiffed him. Mozart died destitute. Didn’t Karen Finley cover her nude body in chocolate to great acclaim as a performance artist? Vulgar for you may not be vulgar for the other guy.
Society and culture push the edge of the envelope stamped “vulgar” all the time.
“Piss Christ” is exhibited at taxpayers’ expense. “Corpus Cristi”, a play whose major premise is that Christ was crucified because of a homosexual lovers’ quarrel with Judas, is also presented at taxpayers’ expense. Nothing is too vulgar to be accepted, toasted, and extolled by the vulgar modern American Liberal “Trousered Apes” who instinctively reach for their revolvers when the word culture is mentioned. Nothing is out of bounds save for the cartoons suggesting that Mohammed gives bestiality a bad name.
“RAW” is not like school busing. Nobody makes you watch it. Customers do not have to be coerced into watching it.
The McMahon family enterprise rents a hall. They fill it with characters that knock each other around. People pay large amounts of money to watch the characters knock each other around. What’s “vulgar” about that?
If Linda McMahon is “vulgar” what does that make the Kennedys? The Ambassador was an anti-Semitic, Hitler loving bootlegger. He was a Wall Street Buccaneer who abused his wife by repeated public affairs. His children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren seem to thrive in the world of wretched excess.
They get my vote for being the paradigmatic template for “vulgar”.
Would not the New York Times be complicit in her vulgarity? They published the second installment of Tricky Dick’s wrestling with the truth today. OOPS! If wrestling is “vulgar” what does that make General Blumenthal?
Tell Dirty Dick to release his DD214. That’s the form that Senator Jay Forbes Kerry has been threatening to release since 2004. It’s a picture of what you did and where you did it when you were in the service.
Speaking of quoting Madison from memory, as you put it in your column, his response has stood the test of time, time being two centuries.
When asked what was the most important trait to look
for in any candidate for any public office his response was
“Character. Character is all.”
If it is too vulgar to ask that someone standing for public office be truthful about something goes to the heart of man perhaps Samuel Johnson gave us the answer.
“Old men think ill of themselves that they
were not soldiers when they were young.”
Let him concentrate on fighting rapacious landlords and teenage obesity on the state level. Who knows what other sins you may have to forgive him for? Considering the goniff he wants to replace he might have been an improvement.
Kevin Smith
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, DC 20005
RE: Round 2 in the never ending war of “eclectic indignation”, a trait commonly found in liars and the more Progressive modern American Liberal ink stained wenches.
Dear Auntie Screwtapette,
And should the New York Times, soon to be a wholly owned subsidiary of El Grande Frito Bandido, be also classified as “vulgar”?
You say that “Blumenthal’s opponent, wrestling impresario Linda McMahon, star of the WWE ‘vulgar’ program “RAW”, took credit for tipping off the newspaper”. Further, you say “it must have been looking for a needle in a haystack…”.
In reverse chronological order, finding that needle in a haystack, a 2 year old haystack, was not quite akin to finding George W. Bush’s 30 year old traffic citations. And wonder of wonders, how coincidental was it finding them just 3 days before the election? As Jeeves said to Bertie, “About as coincidental as finding a trout in the milk.”
“Vulgar”?
Wasn’t that what was said about “Ulysses”? How about “Nude Descending a Staircase”? “The Rites of Spring” didn’t go to the top of the charts right out of the gate. Van Gogh sold one painting in his life. The buyer, his brother-in-law, stiffed him. Mozart died destitute. Didn’t Karen Finley cover her nude body in chocolate to great acclaim as a performance artist? Vulgar for you may not be vulgar for the other guy.
Society and culture push the edge of the envelope stamped “vulgar” all the time.
“Piss Christ” is exhibited at taxpayers’ expense. “Corpus Cristi”, a play whose major premise is that Christ was crucified because of a homosexual lovers’ quarrel with Judas, is also presented at taxpayers’ expense. Nothing is too vulgar to be accepted, toasted, and extolled by the vulgar modern American Liberal “Trousered Apes” who instinctively reach for their revolvers when the word culture is mentioned. Nothing is out of bounds save for the cartoons suggesting that Mohammed gives bestiality a bad name.
“RAW” is not like school busing. Nobody makes you watch it. Customers do not have to be coerced into watching it.
The McMahon family enterprise rents a hall. They fill it with characters that knock each other around. People pay large amounts of money to watch the characters knock each other around. What’s “vulgar” about that?
If Linda McMahon is “vulgar” what does that make the Kennedys? The Ambassador was an anti-Semitic, Hitler loving bootlegger. He was a Wall Street Buccaneer who abused his wife by repeated public affairs. His children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren seem to thrive in the world of wretched excess.
They get my vote for being the paradigmatic template for “vulgar”.
Would not the New York Times be complicit in her vulgarity? They published the second installment of Tricky Dick’s wrestling with the truth today. OOPS! If wrestling is “vulgar” what does that make General Blumenthal?
Tell Dirty Dick to release his DD214. That’s the form that Senator Jay Forbes Kerry has been threatening to release since 2004. It’s a picture of what you did and where you did it when you were in the service.
Speaking of quoting Madison from memory, as you put it in your column, his response has stood the test of time, time being two centuries.
When asked what was the most important trait to look
for in any candidate for any public office his response was
“Character. Character is all.”
If it is too vulgar to ask that someone standing for public office be truthful about something goes to the heart of man perhaps Samuel Johnson gave us the answer.
“Old men think ill of themselves that they
were not soldiers when they were young.”
Let him concentrate on fighting rapacious landlords and teenage obesity on the state level. Who knows what other sins you may have to forgive him for? Considering the goniff he wants to replace he might have been an improvement.
Kevin Smith
Monday, May 17, 2010
Letter to the Editor The Sun-Sentinel
May 17, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Who will commit juvenile crime?” – A headline from today’s Sun-Sentinel
Sirs,
With neither a hint of irony nor a touch of whimsy I was confronted by the above headline in today’s pre-dawn hours. Just
“Who will commit juvenile crime?”
It was followed by a story of how cash strapped Florida is going to spend $15,000 to buy software that will tell us who will commit juvenile crime. If I save the state $15,000 can I have your support for a fee? 10% sounds OK.
I’ll spare you the suspense.
Juveniles will commit juvenile crime.
Much concern is raised about “profiling” feral youthful offenders.
Thank God for Logic!
While it is true that not all Muslims are anti-American terrorists it is equally true that all anti-American terrorists in this century have been Muslim. There is an old Russian proverb that says, “Just because the wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling”. The follow up adage “Always keep your ax handy” is still good advice.
Is that “profiling”?
Imagine it is 70 years ago. Imagine someone is wearing a black shirt, humming Wagner, and shouting TODT JUDEN. Do you think he would have the best interests of Jews at heart? If you did you would have taken Ambassador Kennedy’s advice to heart and the Hun would still be in Paris.
The question of “juvenile profiling” is not directed at teens in Lighthouse Point or Southwest Ranches. It is directed at Black youth on Sistrunk Boulevard. Kids living in Section 8 housing in Liberty City would qualify also.
Does raising the question constitute “profiling”?
“Headless Body in Topless Bar” was one of the classic headlines. “John Garfield Still Dead” ranks high also. The London Times had a contest in the 1930s for upside down, inside out headlines. “Small Earthquake in Chile – Not Many Die” was the winner.
You told us on Saturday that there were some hidden benefits to the oil spill. Obviously if one bad well is good for the economy think how much better we would all be if 50 wells suddenly blew their tops.
Sunday’s stab at humor was the one about how Florida lags in bad doctors being reported. If I hold that one up to a mirror would it mean that Florida, lagging behind in reading scores while scoring high on teenage obesity, could be #1 in something? Admittedly, unreported bad doctors is not the most worthy of categories but it sure as Hell beats
Who Will Commit Juvenile Crime?
Kevin Smith
PS – About the hidden benefits of oil spills, you may wish to read about “the Broken Window Theory of Economic Growth”. Some time spent learning about Frederic Bastiat would not be wasted either.
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Who will commit juvenile crime?” – A headline from today’s Sun-Sentinel
Sirs,
With neither a hint of irony nor a touch of whimsy I was confronted by the above headline in today’s pre-dawn hours. Just
“Who will commit juvenile crime?”
It was followed by a story of how cash strapped Florida is going to spend $15,000 to buy software that will tell us who will commit juvenile crime. If I save the state $15,000 can I have your support for a fee? 10% sounds OK.
I’ll spare you the suspense.
Juveniles will commit juvenile crime.
Much concern is raised about “profiling” feral youthful offenders.
Thank God for Logic!
While it is true that not all Muslims are anti-American terrorists it is equally true that all anti-American terrorists in this century have been Muslim. There is an old Russian proverb that says, “Just because the wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling”. The follow up adage “Always keep your ax handy” is still good advice.
Is that “profiling”?
Imagine it is 70 years ago. Imagine someone is wearing a black shirt, humming Wagner, and shouting TODT JUDEN. Do you think he would have the best interests of Jews at heart? If you did you would have taken Ambassador Kennedy’s advice to heart and the Hun would still be in Paris.
The question of “juvenile profiling” is not directed at teens in Lighthouse Point or Southwest Ranches. It is directed at Black youth on Sistrunk Boulevard. Kids living in Section 8 housing in Liberty City would qualify also.
Does raising the question constitute “profiling”?
“Headless Body in Topless Bar” was one of the classic headlines. “John Garfield Still Dead” ranks high also. The London Times had a contest in the 1930s for upside down, inside out headlines. “Small Earthquake in Chile – Not Many Die” was the winner.
You told us on Saturday that there were some hidden benefits to the oil spill. Obviously if one bad well is good for the economy think how much better we would all be if 50 wells suddenly blew their tops.
Sunday’s stab at humor was the one about how Florida lags in bad doctors being reported. If I hold that one up to a mirror would it mean that Florida, lagging behind in reading scores while scoring high on teenage obesity, could be #1 in something? Admittedly, unreported bad doctors is not the most worthy of categories but it sure as Hell beats
Who Will Commit Juvenile Crime?
Kevin Smith
PS – About the hidden benefits of oil spills, you may wish to read about “the Broken Window Theory of Economic Growth”. Some time spent learning about Frederic Bastiat would not be wasted either.
Gary Stein – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun-Sentinel
May 16, 2010
Gary Stein – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “It’s good to be the King.” I am shocked, shocked when any modern American Liberal, one well on the path to morphing into a Progressive, reveals his dark side. Your column today on the advantages of not having to cope with the have-nots on our highways reads like Dynasty Lite.
Mr. Stein,
Maybe money can’t buy happiness – We know from the evidence of our own eyes that 45 years of good, really good intentions and 10 trillion dollars worth of canceled checks that it can’t buy our way out of poverty – but it sure helps when you eschew disdainfully the joys and societal benefits of mass transit when you want to get someplace in a hurry.
You write how much you like driving in the express toll lane. If your column had gone one paragraph more you would have become a la Chris Matthews certainly tumescent and possibly priapristic.
Working for a company in bankruptcy gives one a devil may care attitude. Your sprint to the dark side, the side where polluting rich Republicans, Republicans tattooed with Cheney’s snarling happy face, sit and plot how many more lashes they can give to the poor, is proof positive that this is still a great country. “Lord, make me strong”, an African said 18 centuries ago. “Tomorrow.”
Regardless of your brief visit to Xanadu it’s time to wake up and smell the hydrocarbons.
[An aside – Your headline yesterday said that the bright side of the oil spill was that it “created” many new jobs. Would not Logic dictate that if we want to see boom times before the November elections that Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his Name may want to blow up about 15 more wells? Your headline this morning about Florida lagging in the number of complaints about physicians may suggest that medical care in Florida is uncommonly good. Alas, that lacks the “Man bites Dog” mind set but the facts would support that interpretation, don’t you think?]
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico.
I don’t just want you to give up driving in the express lane. I want you to give up driving for one week each month. By the end of the year I want you to give up your car. The Sun-Sentinel can be its own Green Zone. As of January 1, 2011 no Sun-Sentinel employee can use a private automobile to drive to and from work. Unborn polar bears will thank you if only they could
Mass transit is the answer. I am not sure what the question was but since Nobel Laureate and Oscar winning former V.P. Alpha Gump told us that “the internal combustion engine is the worst invention of mankind” the choice is simple.
It’s time for you to take the lead.
But wait. There’s more.
Turn off the A/C in Sun-Sentinel HQ. Full disclosure requires me to tell you that I have been asking the Miami Herald to do the same since 1997. I am still waiting. Maybe you can get a leg up on them.
Open the windows.
Think how proud you’ll be when you bring the hand held fan industry back to our shores. You will have “created” thousands and thousands of new jobs. An added bonus will be the smile on the face of the trustee in bankruptcy when he sees how low your expenses have become. You may save enough money to give your street vendors, modern day matadors all, hospitalization and a retirement package.
50% of the electricity produced in this country comes from coal burning utilities.Ugh. Think of Black Lung and stripped mine mountain tops. Think how much better you’ll feel when you force West Virginia out of the Steam Age and into the Information Age.
We need you to set an example.
We will follow.
Maybe.
Kevin Smith
PS – Skip The Who for your last weeks behind the wheel. Some combination of Mozart and David Allen Coe is what you need. Don’t forget your passing gear.
Gary Stein – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “It’s good to be the King.” I am shocked, shocked when any modern American Liberal, one well on the path to morphing into a Progressive, reveals his dark side. Your column today on the advantages of not having to cope with the have-nots on our highways reads like Dynasty Lite.
Mr. Stein,
Maybe money can’t buy happiness – We know from the evidence of our own eyes that 45 years of good, really good intentions and 10 trillion dollars worth of canceled checks that it can’t buy our way out of poverty – but it sure helps when you eschew disdainfully the joys and societal benefits of mass transit when you want to get someplace in a hurry.
You write how much you like driving in the express toll lane. If your column had gone one paragraph more you would have become a la Chris Matthews certainly tumescent and possibly priapristic.
Working for a company in bankruptcy gives one a devil may care attitude. Your sprint to the dark side, the side where polluting rich Republicans, Republicans tattooed with Cheney’s snarling happy face, sit and plot how many more lashes they can give to the poor, is proof positive that this is still a great country. “Lord, make me strong”, an African said 18 centuries ago. “Tomorrow.”
Regardless of your brief visit to Xanadu it’s time to wake up and smell the hydrocarbons.
[An aside – Your headline yesterday said that the bright side of the oil spill was that it “created” many new jobs. Would not Logic dictate that if we want to see boom times before the November elections that Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his Name may want to blow up about 15 more wells? Your headline this morning about Florida lagging in the number of complaints about physicians may suggest that medical care in Florida is uncommonly good. Alas, that lacks the “Man bites Dog” mind set but the facts would support that interpretation, don’t you think?]
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico.
I don’t just want you to give up driving in the express lane. I want you to give up driving for one week each month. By the end of the year I want you to give up your car. The Sun-Sentinel can be its own Green Zone. As of January 1, 2011 no Sun-Sentinel employee can use a private automobile to drive to and from work. Unborn polar bears will thank you if only they could
Mass transit is the answer. I am not sure what the question was but since Nobel Laureate and Oscar winning former V.P. Alpha Gump told us that “the internal combustion engine is the worst invention of mankind” the choice is simple.
It’s time for you to take the lead.
But wait. There’s more.
Turn off the A/C in Sun-Sentinel HQ. Full disclosure requires me to tell you that I have been asking the Miami Herald to do the same since 1997. I am still waiting. Maybe you can get a leg up on them.
Open the windows.
Think how proud you’ll be when you bring the hand held fan industry back to our shores. You will have “created” thousands and thousands of new jobs. An added bonus will be the smile on the face of the trustee in bankruptcy when he sees how low your expenses have become. You may save enough money to give your street vendors, modern day matadors all, hospitalization and a retirement package.
50% of the electricity produced in this country comes from coal burning utilities.Ugh. Think of Black Lung and stripped mine mountain tops. Think how much better you’ll feel when you force West Virginia out of the Steam Age and into the Information Age.
We need you to set an example.
We will follow.
Maybe.
Kevin Smith
PS – Skip The Who for your last weeks behind the wheel. Some combination of Mozart and David Allen Coe is what you need. Don’t forget your passing gear.
NCAA
May 13, 2010
NCAA
700 W. Washington St.
P.O. Box 6222
Indianapolis, IN 46206-6222
R: What to do about Arizona
Dear Head NCAA Dude,
It seems to me that if Arizona wants to be mean and nasty to people coming into their state that turnabout would be fair play.
How about you ban all NCAA member schools in Arizona from playing any other NCAA schools in any other state? The ASU and the U of A football teams can play each other home and home all season. The same for basketball, baseball, golf, bullfighting, and margarita making teams.
War is too important a thing to be left to the generals.
Sport is too important a thing to be left to the schools particularly when such important matters as a nation’s sovereignty and the Rule of Law are at stake.
If that doesn’t work the next step would be to ban any athletes from Arizona playing for any out of state school belonging to the NCAA.
If that doesn’t work we can have drive-by shootings.
Logically, the floggings will continue until they get their heads straight.
Kevin Smith
NCAA
700 W. Washington St.
P.O. Box 6222
Indianapolis, IN 46206-6222
R: What to do about Arizona
Dear Head NCAA Dude,
It seems to me that if Arizona wants to be mean and nasty to people coming into their state that turnabout would be fair play.
How about you ban all NCAA member schools in Arizona from playing any other NCAA schools in any other state? The ASU and the U of A football teams can play each other home and home all season. The same for basketball, baseball, golf, bullfighting, and margarita making teams.
War is too important a thing to be left to the generals.
Sport is too important a thing to be left to the schools particularly when such important matters as a nation’s sovereignty and the Rule of Law are at stake.
If that doesn’t work the next step would be to ban any athletes from Arizona playing for any out of state school belonging to the NCAA.
If that doesn’t work we can have drive-by shootings.
Logically, the floggings will continue until they get their heads straight.
Kevin Smith
Governor Charlie Crist
May 13, 2010
Governor Charlie Crist
The Capitol
400 S. Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001
RE: Forget about the oil spill
Governor Crist,
What’s a little oil on the beach? It’s biodegradable. It’s low in cholesterol. It’s good for sunburns. Let’s try to put a good face on it, OK?
There are more important – forgive me – fish to fry.
Arizona, for instance.
I suggest that a visible response to the Cossack thugs in Arizona would be any or all of the following:
#1 – Nonstop flights originating in Arizona will not be allowed to land in Florida.
#2 – No Florida school that receives taxpayer money can play against any team from Arizona.
#3 – Any professional team based in Arizona will be subject to a 100% tax on the visitor’s share of revenue on any game played in Florida. The same rule will apply to players.
#4 – Florida has plenty of oranges. If we need any we can get them from Brazil. Ban all Arizona oranges. Have the DMV stop and examine all trucks thought to be from or having transited through Arizona.
#5 – If the Seminoles or Miccosukees are cousins of either the Chiricauha or White Mountain Apaches scalp them
#6 – Invite any harassed Mexicans to Disney World.
The above suggestions are just a start.
Call me if you want to discuss any of them.
Kevin Smith
Governor Charlie Crist
The Capitol
400 S. Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001
RE: Forget about the oil spill
Governor Crist,
What’s a little oil on the beach? It’s biodegradable. It’s low in cholesterol. It’s good for sunburns. Let’s try to put a good face on it, OK?
There are more important – forgive me – fish to fry.
Arizona, for instance.
I suggest that a visible response to the Cossack thugs in Arizona would be any or all of the following:
#1 – Nonstop flights originating in Arizona will not be allowed to land in Florida.
#2 – No Florida school that receives taxpayer money can play against any team from Arizona.
#3 – Any professional team based in Arizona will be subject to a 100% tax on the visitor’s share of revenue on any game played in Florida. The same rule will apply to players.
#4 – Florida has plenty of oranges. If we need any we can get them from Brazil. Ban all Arizona oranges. Have the DMV stop and examine all trucks thought to be from or having transited through Arizona.
#5 – If the Seminoles or Miccosukees are cousins of either the Chiricauha or White Mountain Apaches scalp them
#6 – Invite any harassed Mexicans to Disney World.
The above suggestions are just a start.
Call me if you want to discuss any of them.
Kevin Smith
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Senator Dan Gelber
May 12, 2010
Senator Dan Gelber
1920 Meridian Street
Miami, FL 33139-1818
RE: A suggestion on how to mitigate the effects of the Gulf spill plus other things.
Senator Gelber,
On June 21, 2009 I asked you, a person proud of the fact that your children attend the same public school that you did, it you could find out why President Obama did not send his daughters to some of the really fine public schools in Washington. I still hope to hear from you about that.
You are quoted this morning in the Sun-Sentinel thusly:
“Anyone who thinks the oil industry is going to back down
forever is absolutely mistaken…they absolutely will bully it
[drilling] through the legislature, as they almost did last year.”
Would it be fair for me to believe that should you be elected Attorney General that you would take steps to prevent, as you say, “an army of lobbyists” from lobbying, bullying, intimidating, influencing, coercing, blackmailing, or bribing legislators in Tallahassee? By the by, are you aware of any illegal activities by any lobbyist for any “special interest” group directed toward any legislators? Do you know of any legislators on the take? I was born and raised in Hudson County, New Jersey. Trust me when I tell you that such things happen. I need not remind you that as an officer of the court you are compelled to report any and all crimes by anyone, particularly those in public life.
But that’s not why I write.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf.
Will you join in my crusade to ban the use of private automobiles for a period of not less than one week per month in Florida?
The benefits will be incalculable.
25% fewer automobiles will mean 25% fewer deaths. Who could then say that Democrats aren’t Pro Life?
25% fewer automobiles will mean 25% fewer lawsuits. This may upset some of your lawyer lodge brothers but that will give them more time to sue the oil companies.
25% fewer automobiles will mean people will live longer. This means that the formation of the misunderstood but dreaded death panels can be delayed.
I write to you because, as Don Corleone said, “you are a serious man”.
One of the ways we can help the much needed medicine go down a bit more smoothly would be to mandate that all public employees must use public transportation when going to and from work. Public employees like you. No exceptions.
All good men know that this is the right thing to do. Sometimes we just need a little nudge.
This is big thing to down in one gulp. That’s why I’ll save my plan for turning off and dismantling all air conditioners in public buildings until next time. Provided Haiti has enough electricity we could send some there. Maybe some could be sent to the Arizona border to make the burdens of the émigrés – a neutral term – better. We could paint the Mexican flag on them so they would feel more at home.
Kevin Smith
PS – Whenever a politician, particularly a modern American Liberal politician, talks about lobbyists for the evil “special interests” I reach for my copy of the Constitution. The First Amendment specifically covers the right of “special interests’ to petition the legislature for a redress of grievances. If you don’t like that part how about the other parts, the ones covering religion, speech, or the press? As Attorney General will you lead the fight to undo the First Amendment?
Senator Dan Gelber
1920 Meridian Street
Miami, FL 33139-1818
RE: A suggestion on how to mitigate the effects of the Gulf spill plus other things.
Senator Gelber,
On June 21, 2009 I asked you, a person proud of the fact that your children attend the same public school that you did, it you could find out why President Obama did not send his daughters to some of the really fine public schools in Washington. I still hope to hear from you about that.
You are quoted this morning in the Sun-Sentinel thusly:
“Anyone who thinks the oil industry is going to back down
forever is absolutely mistaken…they absolutely will bully it
[drilling] through the legislature, as they almost did last year.”
Would it be fair for me to believe that should you be elected Attorney General that you would take steps to prevent, as you say, “an army of lobbyists” from lobbying, bullying, intimidating, influencing, coercing, blackmailing, or bribing legislators in Tallahassee? By the by, are you aware of any illegal activities by any lobbyist for any “special interest” group directed toward any legislators? Do you know of any legislators on the take? I was born and raised in Hudson County, New Jersey. Trust me when I tell you that such things happen. I need not remind you that as an officer of the court you are compelled to report any and all crimes by anyone, particularly those in public life.
But that’s not why I write.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf.
Will you join in my crusade to ban the use of private automobiles for a period of not less than one week per month in Florida?
The benefits will be incalculable.
25% fewer automobiles will mean 25% fewer deaths. Who could then say that Democrats aren’t Pro Life?
25% fewer automobiles will mean 25% fewer lawsuits. This may upset some of your lawyer lodge brothers but that will give them more time to sue the oil companies.
25% fewer automobiles will mean people will live longer. This means that the formation of the misunderstood but dreaded death panels can be delayed.
I write to you because, as Don Corleone said, “you are a serious man”.
One of the ways we can help the much needed medicine go down a bit more smoothly would be to mandate that all public employees must use public transportation when going to and from work. Public employees like you. No exceptions.
All good men know that this is the right thing to do. Sometimes we just need a little nudge.
This is big thing to down in one gulp. That’s why I’ll save my plan for turning off and dismantling all air conditioners in public buildings until next time. Provided Haiti has enough electricity we could send some there. Maybe some could be sent to the Arizona border to make the burdens of the émigrés – a neutral term – better. We could paint the Mexican flag on them so they would feel more at home.
Kevin Smith
PS – Whenever a politician, particularly a modern American Liberal politician, talks about lobbyists for the evil “special interests” I reach for my copy of the Constitution. The First Amendment specifically covers the right of “special interests’ to petition the legislature for a redress of grievances. If you don’t like that part how about the other parts, the ones covering religion, speech, or the press? As Attorney General will you lead the fight to undo the First Amendment?
Michael Mayo The Sun-Sentinel
May 9, 2010
Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “License to frustrate” – Some comments on your column about the travails of dealing with the dreaded DMV.
Mr. Mayo,
Before opining on whether bureaucrats are efficient or condescending or polite or just plain shits attention must be paid to the following:
“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent
hither swarms of officers, to harass our people
and eat out their substance.”
The Declaration of Independence
A good complaint in 1776.
Shall we stipulate that is still valid today?
Having said that I must add that my last trip to the DMV was handled quickly and efficiently. I would add that humor and manners were there but that might get the clerk in trouble with her union.
Did I say union?
I paid dues to a union that represented men doing hard physical labor. All the union bosses had names ending in vowels. I later negotiated with the UMW. These men would come out of the ground for lunch and put 20 or 30 rounds into the mountain for dessert. I marvel at how the word union has become so debased.
There is some humor in your column about clerks saying that they only follow orders. Wasn’t that what Everyman said just before he cut Thomas More’s head off? It seems that following orders was a common defense at Nuremberg, wasn’t it?
DMV clerks have the unchecked power to make life miserable for the supplicant, a person drowning in obsequiousness, standing before them. A rational system would take them off salary and put them on straight commission. It seems to work at the Broward County Commission save for the fact that those grifters still draw salaries. The lines would clear as if Moses commanded the Red Sea to part. People would leave the place smiling with the proper documents in hand. That’s a change I could hope for.
I suggested during the final days of the health care debate, that’s the one where Speaker Pelosi said “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”, that the most fertile recruiting ground for the soon to be mandated death panels would be the DMV. After that the Post Office. Finally, the IRS.
Churchill said, “Be of good cheer. All will come right in the end.” You can say that if you have other people standing in line for you.
When asked why an old license couldn’t be used to verify identity, the response was prompt and to the point.
“No, sir,” said the DMV worker.
“Not according to the
Department of Homeland Security.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
Having spoken of ancient documents, you may want to take a peek at the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution.
By default, that’s what Arizona did.
Kevin Smith
Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “License to frustrate” – Some comments on your column about the travails of dealing with the dreaded DMV.
Mr. Mayo,
Before opining on whether bureaucrats are efficient or condescending or polite or just plain shits attention must be paid to the following:
“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent
hither swarms of officers, to harass our people
and eat out their substance.”
The Declaration of Independence
A good complaint in 1776.
Shall we stipulate that is still valid today?
Having said that I must add that my last trip to the DMV was handled quickly and efficiently. I would add that humor and manners were there but that might get the clerk in trouble with her union.
Did I say union?
I paid dues to a union that represented men doing hard physical labor. All the union bosses had names ending in vowels. I later negotiated with the UMW. These men would come out of the ground for lunch and put 20 or 30 rounds into the mountain for dessert. I marvel at how the word union has become so debased.
There is some humor in your column about clerks saying that they only follow orders. Wasn’t that what Everyman said just before he cut Thomas More’s head off? It seems that following orders was a common defense at Nuremberg, wasn’t it?
DMV clerks have the unchecked power to make life miserable for the supplicant, a person drowning in obsequiousness, standing before them. A rational system would take them off salary and put them on straight commission. It seems to work at the Broward County Commission save for the fact that those grifters still draw salaries. The lines would clear as if Moses commanded the Red Sea to part. People would leave the place smiling with the proper documents in hand. That’s a change I could hope for.
I suggested during the final days of the health care debate, that’s the one where Speaker Pelosi said “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”, that the most fertile recruiting ground for the soon to be mandated death panels would be the DMV. After that the Post Office. Finally, the IRS.
Churchill said, “Be of good cheer. All will come right in the end.” You can say that if you have other people standing in line for you.
When asked why an old license couldn’t be used to verify identity, the response was prompt and to the point.
“No, sir,” said the DMV worker.
“Not according to the
Department of Homeland Security.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
Having spoken of ancient documents, you may want to take a peek at the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution.
By default, that’s what Arizona did.
Kevin Smith
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
May 7, 2010
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Let’s throw those rascals out so we can get our rascals in – a wry take on your column about those damn voters and why won’t they do what’s right.
My dear Professor,
Your column highlighting “with advantages” the good times of 32 years ago is so achingly modern American Liberal that, in addition to making my hair hurt, it makes my finger nails curl backwards. Welcome to the modern American Liberal memory hole!
1978 – 32 years ago – was the peak of the Carter years until 1979 became the peak. Then 1980 raised the bar so high that even Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be His Name will be hard put to top it. I think he’s up to it, don’t you?
Let it be said of Carter, hands down the worst President of the 20th century, that the only good thing he did was to make it easy for the great Reagan to come upon the scene and save the world.
Gas lines, 13% inflation, 16.5% prime rate, killer rabbits, 19% mortgages, stagflation…God’s Holy Trousers but I miss the good old days too!
Mea culpa.
I forgot the American hostages in Iran and the Rube Goldberg attempt to rescue them. It was obvious by then that despite a degree in engineering with a concentration in physics this dunce couldn’t find his ass using his hands, his mother’s, his daughter’s, and Billy’s also. You remember Billy, don’t you? He was the guy who sold beer and shilled for Kadafi. Forget about leading a country. This nit-wit couldn’t arrange a two car funeral. Hey Jimmy! What color is an orange?
Ah, the perils of universal suffrage.
Wasn’t that the time Janet Reno began her illustrious prosecutorial career?
Halcyon days indeed.
Which lead me to your views of Florida and a lesson in vocabulary.
“First, we have to elect a Democratic Governor”
Today
You
Alex Sink is the presumptive Democratic nominee.
She worked for the Bank of America. Presumably, I hope I hope, she had nothing to do with mortgages, CMOs, CCOs, credit cards, or stock transactions. That leaves Christmas Clubs, SBA, and the United Way
What did she do there?
Further, her immediate supervisor, the man she reported to, was “Hootie” Johnson. Hootie has one big item that will appear in his obit. He kept the chicks out of the Masters. If you had ovaries the only way you would get to handle a Green Jacket was if you ironed it.
Did Ms. Sink support this?
What did Ms. Sink do for Hootie? Did she get him coffee? Did she demand gender equity? Did she help him do pushups? I think the public’s Right to Know trumps all other considerations. Don’t you agree?
“Second, we need to pass Constitutional amendments 5 and 6,
mandating the fair drawing of districts so the state’s Democratic
majority can be proportionately represented in the legislature.”
Today
You
I believe that right up to the time you submitted your column your last sentence ended thusly: regardless of how the people voted. It’s hard to prove a negative. For that matter, it’s hard to disprove one either.
Faustian bargains are always two edged swords. The drive for Affirmative Action in the legislature called for a mutual disavowal of Baker v Carr. Everybody was happy, right?
Do you mean that we should undo the artfully constructed districts that would send a Jack the Ripper to the legislature provided he answered to the name Black Jack the Ripper?
Congressman Meek got his seat the old fashioned way. His mommy gave it to him. It is not known whether Mommy gave it to him because he cleaned his room, walked the dog, or finally stopped wetting his pants. Brer Bear would have won there.
One district sent a felon, Alcee Hastings, to Congress. There was some good to come from this. It cut back on the time lost on the slippery slope of the learning curve.
Finally, the vocabulary lesson
Your last sentence contains the word tea-bagger in the lower case.
We all know that the Red Queen said “Words mean exactly what I want them to mean”.
By Red Queen I mean the one by Lewis Carroll, not the one from the Stonewall.
I thought that tea-bagger was a synonym for faggot or queer.
Did you mean to say that tea baggers are faggots or queers?
I thought some words, words like Islamic terrorist, the dreaded “N” word, cartoons of Mohammed, and any word that offends homosexuals or lesbians, unless used by them, were verboten.
Did you intend to insult the trans-gendered, cross-gendered, bi-gendered, non-gendered, non-specific gendered, ungendered or overgendered readers of your column?
Tell me, please, if your guys get to pull the strings in November will we go straight to the soon to be envied Greek model or should we stop at the California template first?
Be careful what you hope for. The change you get may not be what you had in mind.
Kevin Smith
PS – I must tell you that your cries of the “only way…for all Floridians…to give the tea-baggers a civic lesson in how real revolutions are won…” has a stirring cadence to it. The Fatal Conceit of modern American Liberals, now calling themselves Progressives, is that knowing that they alone have the truth they have no problem in putting their foot on the necks of those who say no. Isn’t that what Hitler did? How many brown shirts do you have? Is the Horst Wessel song or Panzerleid your favorite Nazi tune?
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Let’s throw those rascals out so we can get our rascals in – a wry take on your column about those damn voters and why won’t they do what’s right.
My dear Professor,
Your column highlighting “with advantages” the good times of 32 years ago is so achingly modern American Liberal that, in addition to making my hair hurt, it makes my finger nails curl backwards. Welcome to the modern American Liberal memory hole!
1978 – 32 years ago – was the peak of the Carter years until 1979 became the peak. Then 1980 raised the bar so high that even Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be His Name will be hard put to top it. I think he’s up to it, don’t you?
Let it be said of Carter, hands down the worst President of the 20th century, that the only good thing he did was to make it easy for the great Reagan to come upon the scene and save the world.
Gas lines, 13% inflation, 16.5% prime rate, killer rabbits, 19% mortgages, stagflation…God’s Holy Trousers but I miss the good old days too!
Mea culpa.
I forgot the American hostages in Iran and the Rube Goldberg attempt to rescue them. It was obvious by then that despite a degree in engineering with a concentration in physics this dunce couldn’t find his ass using his hands, his mother’s, his daughter’s, and Billy’s also. You remember Billy, don’t you? He was the guy who sold beer and shilled for Kadafi. Forget about leading a country. This nit-wit couldn’t arrange a two car funeral. Hey Jimmy! What color is an orange?
Ah, the perils of universal suffrage.
Wasn’t that the time Janet Reno began her illustrious prosecutorial career?
Halcyon days indeed.
Which lead me to your views of Florida and a lesson in vocabulary.
“First, we have to elect a Democratic Governor”
Today
You
Alex Sink is the presumptive Democratic nominee.
She worked for the Bank of America. Presumably, I hope I hope, she had nothing to do with mortgages, CMOs, CCOs, credit cards, or stock transactions. That leaves Christmas Clubs, SBA, and the United Way
What did she do there?
Further, her immediate supervisor, the man she reported to, was “Hootie” Johnson. Hootie has one big item that will appear in his obit. He kept the chicks out of the Masters. If you had ovaries the only way you would get to handle a Green Jacket was if you ironed it.
Did Ms. Sink support this?
What did Ms. Sink do for Hootie? Did she get him coffee? Did she demand gender equity? Did she help him do pushups? I think the public’s Right to Know trumps all other considerations. Don’t you agree?
“Second, we need to pass Constitutional amendments 5 and 6,
mandating the fair drawing of districts so the state’s Democratic
majority can be proportionately represented in the legislature.”
Today
You
I believe that right up to the time you submitted your column your last sentence ended thusly: regardless of how the people voted. It’s hard to prove a negative. For that matter, it’s hard to disprove one either.
Faustian bargains are always two edged swords. The drive for Affirmative Action in the legislature called for a mutual disavowal of Baker v Carr. Everybody was happy, right?
Do you mean that we should undo the artfully constructed districts that would send a Jack the Ripper to the legislature provided he answered to the name Black Jack the Ripper?
Congressman Meek got his seat the old fashioned way. His mommy gave it to him. It is not known whether Mommy gave it to him because he cleaned his room, walked the dog, or finally stopped wetting his pants. Brer Bear would have won there.
One district sent a felon, Alcee Hastings, to Congress. There was some good to come from this. It cut back on the time lost on the slippery slope of the learning curve.
Finally, the vocabulary lesson
Your last sentence contains the word tea-bagger in the lower case.
We all know that the Red Queen said “Words mean exactly what I want them to mean”.
By Red Queen I mean the one by Lewis Carroll, not the one from the Stonewall.
I thought that tea-bagger was a synonym for faggot or queer.
Did you mean to say that tea baggers are faggots or queers?
I thought some words, words like Islamic terrorist, the dreaded “N” word, cartoons of Mohammed, and any word that offends homosexuals or lesbians, unless used by them, were verboten.
Did you intend to insult the trans-gendered, cross-gendered, bi-gendered, non-gendered, non-specific gendered, ungendered or overgendered readers of your column?
Tell me, please, if your guys get to pull the strings in November will we go straight to the soon to be envied Greek model or should we stop at the California template first?
Be careful what you hope for. The change you get may not be what you had in mind.
Kevin Smith
PS – I must tell you that your cries of the “only way…for all Floridians…to give the tea-baggers a civic lesson in how real revolutions are won…” has a stirring cadence to it. The Fatal Conceit of modern American Liberals, now calling themselves Progressives, is that knowing that they alone have the truth they have no problem in putting their foot on the necks of those who say no. Isn’t that what Hitler did? How many brown shirts do you have? Is the Horst Wessel song or Panzerleid your favorite Nazi tune?
Friday, May 7, 2010
Daniel Shoer Roth The Miami Herald
May 4, 2010
Daniel Shoer Roth
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Spill Reminds Us That Beaches Need Protection” – They sure do but not as much as the people sitting on them. Some comments on your Jeremiad about the selfishness of man in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Roth,
After we help the beaches, the bi-valves, the manatees, the polar bears, the pythons, the Key West deer, the peripatetic pterodactyls, the snail darter, and my personal favorite, the furbish lousewort do you think we’ll be able to help man, the most endangered species?
Logic, that cruel and unforgiving discipline, that brutal task master that knows not of parabolic curves, would dictate that we address the reasons why we drill in the Gulf.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf.
How important a first step it would be if you were to give up your car for one week each month? How important a second step it would be if you mandated that all your employees – no exceptions – use public transit getting to and from work? Finally, how important would it be if you were to turn off you’re A/C this summer?
I’ve been asking the Miami Herald to go cold turkey, so to speak, about A/C since 1997. Just turn it off. Shame the rest of us into following suit. We will. We will. Maybe.
The Age of Oil is only 151 years old. Colonel Drake saved the whales from extinction then but that’s a story for a different time. We can wean ourselves from this noxious beast.
We did well in the Age of Steam. We can do it again.
Show us the way to save ourselves. Lead. We will follow. Maybe.
Kevin Smith
Daniel Shoer Roth
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693
RE: “Spill Reminds Us That Beaches Need Protection” – They sure do but not as much as the people sitting on them. Some comments on your Jeremiad about the selfishness of man in today’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Roth,
After we help the beaches, the bi-valves, the manatees, the polar bears, the pythons, the Key West deer, the peripatetic pterodactyls, the snail darter, and my personal favorite, the furbish lousewort do you think we’ll be able to help man, the most endangered species?
Logic, that cruel and unforgiving discipline, that brutal task master that knows not of parabolic curves, would dictate that we address the reasons why we drill in the Gulf.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf.
How important a first step it would be if you were to give up your car for one week each month? How important a second step it would be if you mandated that all your employees – no exceptions – use public transit getting to and from work? Finally, how important would it be if you were to turn off you’re A/C this summer?
I’ve been asking the Miami Herald to go cold turkey, so to speak, about A/C since 1997. Just turn it off. Shame the rest of us into following suit. We will. We will. Maybe.
The Age of Oil is only 151 years old. Colonel Drake saved the whales from extinction then but that’s a story for a different time. We can wean ourselves from this noxious beast.
We did well in the Age of Steam. We can do it again.
Show us the way to save ourselves. Lead. We will follow. Maybe.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald
April 30, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Some silver bullets for the Federal Budget “crisis” – A few solutions not included in your editorial importuning us to action lest we have a need for the government to bail itself out like it did GM.
Sirs,
I thought “silver bullets” were for vampires. Budgets and the accompanying deficits are not visited upon us by some strange spirits. We are a free people. We send others to Congress to represent us. My Uncle Adam once said that “the wise running of the affairs of a household can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”. We elect them and we can unelect them.
Your silver bullet comment comes in your editorial about the deficit and how to combat it. Are we overspending or are we undertaxed? Alas, you say there are no “silver bullets”.
Herewith I present you with 4.
#1 – Shut down the Department of Agriculture.
They have yet to grow a single ear of corn or fill a bushel basket with wheat.
#2 – Shut down the Department of Energy.
Since it has been in business they have not added a single barrel of oil or one ton of coal to the energy marketplace. The gas they produce is of the interminable wind bag variety. Fire a rocket the first time they add one watt, even if it’s one lonely kilo, to the grid.
#3 – Shut down the Department of Education.
It has been in business for 31 years and Johnny still can’t read. Florida teachers got their knickers in a knot because the legislature wants to hold them to the same standards as the football coach. To further their bogus claims they encouraged their students to support them by breaking the law and cutting classes.
#4 – What is the United States army doing in Europe? We are coming up to the 65th anniversary of VE Day. Leave enough troops to provide an honor guard at the cemeteries that we filled in the last century. Bring the rest of them home.
If the stout Flems and the mighty Walloons want to invade France because of war crimes at Waterloo, so be it. If the Serbs and the Croats, having been at each other’s throats for 8 centuries, want a rematch, fine.
It may be time to smell the seductive breezes of xenophobia while counting the moneys not spent on kerfuffle producing, money eating clap trap by the first 3. Starve the Potomac ca-ca machines.
Ready
Aim
Fire
Be sure to put the sharp end up the breech first.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Some silver bullets for the Federal Budget “crisis” – A few solutions not included in your editorial importuning us to action lest we have a need for the government to bail itself out like it did GM.
Sirs,
I thought “silver bullets” were for vampires. Budgets and the accompanying deficits are not visited upon us by some strange spirits. We are a free people. We send others to Congress to represent us. My Uncle Adam once said that “the wise running of the affairs of a household can scarce be folly in running the affairs of an empire”. We elect them and we can unelect them.
Your silver bullet comment comes in your editorial about the deficit and how to combat it. Are we overspending or are we undertaxed? Alas, you say there are no “silver bullets”.
Herewith I present you with 4.
#1 – Shut down the Department of Agriculture.
They have yet to grow a single ear of corn or fill a bushel basket with wheat.
#2 – Shut down the Department of Energy.
Since it has been in business they have not added a single barrel of oil or one ton of coal to the energy marketplace. The gas they produce is of the interminable wind bag variety. Fire a rocket the first time they add one watt, even if it’s one lonely kilo, to the grid.
#3 – Shut down the Department of Education.
It has been in business for 31 years and Johnny still can’t read. Florida teachers got their knickers in a knot because the legislature wants to hold them to the same standards as the football coach. To further their bogus claims they encouraged their students to support them by breaking the law and cutting classes.
#4 – What is the United States army doing in Europe? We are coming up to the 65th anniversary of VE Day. Leave enough troops to provide an honor guard at the cemeteries that we filled in the last century. Bring the rest of them home.
If the stout Flems and the mighty Walloons want to invade France because of war crimes at Waterloo, so be it. If the Serbs and the Croats, having been at each other’s throats for 8 centuries, want a rematch, fine.
It may be time to smell the seductive breezes of xenophobia while counting the moneys not spent on kerfuffle producing, money eating clap trap by the first 3. Starve the Potomac ca-ca machines.
Ready
Aim
Fire
Be sure to put the sharp end up the breech first.
Kevin Smith
Bob Braun The Star Ledger
May 3, 2010
Bob Braun
The Star Ledger
One Star Ledger Plaza
Newark, NJ 07102
RE: “The folly of off shore drilling” - Some comments from the quintessential, I dare say the paradigmatic template of a transplanted Jersey Guy, about your column today
Mr. Braun,
I was reading your article about the friendships formed in Newfoundland - the one in Canada, not the one in New Jersey - on September 11, 2001.
I got to your comment on “the folly of off shore drilling”.
There is no sense being a wee bit trite. It is a profoundly teachable moment.
Pay attention. I’ll write slowly.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico. I bet that a mush brained modern American Liberal ink stained wretch, someone like you, has a car. The first thing you can do is give it up for 7 days. Do it for the oysters. Do it for the Panhandle red necks even though they all belong to the local Tea Party. I’ll bet they have lots and lots of guns.
The mantra, the siren call, of mass transit never sounded more inviting.
As we approach the summer months I suggest, expanding my “teachable moment”, that the world HQ of the Star Ledger give up A/C. Do it before the government makes you. A government that can force you to buy health insurance can force you to give up A/C. Get some of those hand held fans from the local undertaker.
Further, coal is the fuel that produces the most electricity in this country. Although I was Bayonne born and raised it’s been some time since I looked at the power make up of Public Service Gas & Electric. Thus, I don’t know the percentage of electricity that is consumed to air conditioning. I am certain of one thing.
It ain’t small.
Turn it off. Open the windows. Think of the 29 dead coal miners. Do it for them.
Speaking of windows, the last time I saw the Star Ledger HQ it had more barbed wire around it than Camp Gitmo. Does it still have as much? Did you ever put the proposed moat in? I was never sure whether those security measures were meant to keep people in a la the Berlin Wall or out a la Hadrian’s Wall. Did you have to produce documents, your papers, to get in or to get out or both?
I guess it’s OK in Newark but not in Arizona, right?
After a summer of no A/C, like the NFL training camps, the Star Ledger should ban the use of personal cars for employee commuting. Turn your parking lot into a home for displaced bi-valves and hydro-carboned red fish. They’ll be blackened red fish before they hit the grill. Maybe you can raise tofu bushes for your unicorns to graze on.
By Thanksgiving you’ll be editorializing in favor of each county in New Jersey having its own nuclear reactor.
Speaking of “folly”, France gets 2/3rds of its electricity from nuclear power and, mirabile dictu, Japan gets 3/4ths of its electricity from those wily neutrons. What do they know that we don’t? It rankles my backside a bit that these two countries, one of which we twice saved from the Hun and the other we turned the other one into goo, don’t have to worry about such “folly”. We took the advice of that noted nuclear engineer Jane Fonda on nuclear energy more than 30 years ago, years before she became a model for Bart Simpson. Res ipso loquitur.
The height of “folly” may soon be on us when Cuba begins its off shore drilling program. They have cleverly contracted with China to do the drilling. We have just finished Naval Fleet Week in Fort Lauderdale. Maybe some of those ships can monitor how well the drilling goes.
Kevin Smith
PS – It was lucky that the plane landed in Gander rather than Montreal. 15 years in Florida has convinced me that the word merde was invented for les Quebecois.
Bob Braun
The Star Ledger
One Star Ledger Plaza
Newark, NJ 07102
RE: “The folly of off shore drilling” - Some comments from the quintessential, I dare say the paradigmatic template of a transplanted Jersey Guy, about your column today
Mr. Braun,
I was reading your article about the friendships formed in Newfoundland - the one in Canada, not the one in New Jersey - on September 11, 2001.
I got to your comment on “the folly of off shore drilling”.
There is no sense being a wee bit trite. It is a profoundly teachable moment.
Pay attention. I’ll write slowly.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico. I bet that a mush brained modern American Liberal ink stained wretch, someone like you, has a car. The first thing you can do is give it up for 7 days. Do it for the oysters. Do it for the Panhandle red necks even though they all belong to the local Tea Party. I’ll bet they have lots and lots of guns.
The mantra, the siren call, of mass transit never sounded more inviting.
As we approach the summer months I suggest, expanding my “teachable moment”, that the world HQ of the Star Ledger give up A/C. Do it before the government makes you. A government that can force you to buy health insurance can force you to give up A/C. Get some of those hand held fans from the local undertaker.
Further, coal is the fuel that produces the most electricity in this country. Although I was Bayonne born and raised it’s been some time since I looked at the power make up of Public Service Gas & Electric. Thus, I don’t know the percentage of electricity that is consumed to air conditioning. I am certain of one thing.
It ain’t small.
Turn it off. Open the windows. Think of the 29 dead coal miners. Do it for them.
Speaking of windows, the last time I saw the Star Ledger HQ it had more barbed wire around it than Camp Gitmo. Does it still have as much? Did you ever put the proposed moat in? I was never sure whether those security measures were meant to keep people in a la the Berlin Wall or out a la Hadrian’s Wall. Did you have to produce documents, your papers, to get in or to get out or both?
I guess it’s OK in Newark but not in Arizona, right?
After a summer of no A/C, like the NFL training camps, the Star Ledger should ban the use of personal cars for employee commuting. Turn your parking lot into a home for displaced bi-valves and hydro-carboned red fish. They’ll be blackened red fish before they hit the grill. Maybe you can raise tofu bushes for your unicorns to graze on.
By Thanksgiving you’ll be editorializing in favor of each county in New Jersey having its own nuclear reactor.
Speaking of “folly”, France gets 2/3rds of its electricity from nuclear power and, mirabile dictu, Japan gets 3/4ths of its electricity from those wily neutrons. What do they know that we don’t? It rankles my backside a bit that these two countries, one of which we twice saved from the Hun and the other we turned the other one into goo, don’t have to worry about such “folly”. We took the advice of that noted nuclear engineer Jane Fonda on nuclear energy more than 30 years ago, years before she became a model for Bart Simpson. Res ipso loquitur.
The height of “folly” may soon be on us when Cuba begins its off shore drilling program. They have cleverly contracted with China to do the drilling. We have just finished Naval Fleet Week in Fort Lauderdale. Maybe some of those ships can monitor how well the drilling goes.
Kevin Smith
PS – It was lucky that the plane landed in Gander rather than Montreal. 15 years in Florida has convinced me that the word merde was invented for les Quebecois.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Fred Grimm The Miami Herald
April 27, 2010
Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Oil Spill in the Gulf – Another cross for Floridians to bear as you artfully explain in your column today.
Mr. Grimm,
When you’re right, you’re right. Like the Reverend Wright said, “Chickens coming home to roost”. In our selfish quest for comfort we may have doomed the planet. If it’s not Global Cooling it’s Global Warming. If it’s not those bogeymen it’s the even worse Climate Change. You may wish to become familiar with Tony Vivaldi, an obscure Italian climatologist. He explained all this, delightfully so, centuries ago.
After more than 60 years, with as many as 6500 producing wells, it was bound to happen. Add to this the 29 dead coal miners and perhaps we have reached a tipping point.
Florida’s time has come.
More than 25% of the gasoline used in Florida comes from oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico. Coal is the main fuel used by utilities to produce electricity in this country. 50% of the electricity used in Florida goes for air conditioning.
The first thing we can do is turn off the A/Cs. Sine 1997 I have been asking the Miami Herald to show us the way, to be the first to turn off the A/C in its HQ by the bay. Open the windows. Get some of the balmy and sultry breezes to circulate. It will be good for you. As a bonus think how many polar bears you will save.
We must have a Manhattan Project for transportation. If we can split the atom we can make organic skateboards zoom.
The internal combustion engine is, as former VP Alpha Gump tells us, “the worst invention of mankind”.
Just like China’s One Child policy has led them to being our biggest creditor, our One Car policy will lead us back to greatness. Not One Car per person but rather One Car per nuclear family. Unlike voting and immigration a photo id will be required for random stops. The hugely successful odd/even day program of the 1970s will serve as the paradigm. If you have a vanity plate, one without numbers, tough. You’re a fat cat and you must suffer. That will help. Besides, it’s only “fair”.
An immediate answer, but one that will take 12 to 15 years to implement, is nuclear power. Ever since those noted nuclear engineers, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, warned us of the dangers of a nuclear reactor turning into Hiroshima we have been reluctant, like Ned Ludd, to embrace technology. It was a good choice, wasn’t it?
As if things weren’t bad enough word comes from Havana that those ever popular ladrones grandes, los hermanos Castro, have signed a deal with the Chi-Coms to drill off their coast. In case you’ve forgotten your geography their coast is contiguous to our coast. We may have a problem there.
There are Florida students still suffering from FCATitis who will become lawyers. In time they will litigate the issues of this spill. Alas, the only party with standing in Havana over this issue would be the United States Navy. We once went to war to make the world safe for democracy. Think how much better the dead will rest knowing that they died so that fewer glaciers would melt.
That’s why you have to start jogging to work. That your work will be done in a no carbon footprint building, one that helps to heal the hole in the ozone layer, will doubtless be of great comfort. It ain’t easy being green.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
You first.
Kevin Smith
PS – The time has also come to say good-bye to plastic, don’t you think?
Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Oil Spill in the Gulf – Another cross for Floridians to bear as you artfully explain in your column today.
Mr. Grimm,
When you’re right, you’re right. Like the Reverend Wright said, “Chickens coming home to roost”. In our selfish quest for comfort we may have doomed the planet. If it’s not Global Cooling it’s Global Warming. If it’s not those bogeymen it’s the even worse Climate Change. You may wish to become familiar with Tony Vivaldi, an obscure Italian climatologist. He explained all this, delightfully so, centuries ago.
After more than 60 years, with as many as 6500 producing wells, it was bound to happen. Add to this the 29 dead coal miners and perhaps we have reached a tipping point.
Florida’s time has come.
More than 25% of the gasoline used in Florida comes from oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico. Coal is the main fuel used by utilities to produce electricity in this country. 50% of the electricity used in Florida goes for air conditioning.
The first thing we can do is turn off the A/Cs. Sine 1997 I have been asking the Miami Herald to show us the way, to be the first to turn off the A/C in its HQ by the bay. Open the windows. Get some of the balmy and sultry breezes to circulate. It will be good for you. As a bonus think how many polar bears you will save.
We must have a Manhattan Project for transportation. If we can split the atom we can make organic skateboards zoom.
The internal combustion engine is, as former VP Alpha Gump tells us, “the worst invention of mankind”.
Just like China’s One Child policy has led them to being our biggest creditor, our One Car policy will lead us back to greatness. Not One Car per person but rather One Car per nuclear family. Unlike voting and immigration a photo id will be required for random stops. The hugely successful odd/even day program of the 1970s will serve as the paradigm. If you have a vanity plate, one without numbers, tough. You’re a fat cat and you must suffer. That will help. Besides, it’s only “fair”.
An immediate answer, but one that will take 12 to 15 years to implement, is nuclear power. Ever since those noted nuclear engineers, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, warned us of the dangers of a nuclear reactor turning into Hiroshima we have been reluctant, like Ned Ludd, to embrace technology. It was a good choice, wasn’t it?
As if things weren’t bad enough word comes from Havana that those ever popular ladrones grandes, los hermanos Castro, have signed a deal with the Chi-Coms to drill off their coast. In case you’ve forgotten your geography their coast is contiguous to our coast. We may have a problem there.
There are Florida students still suffering from FCATitis who will become lawyers. In time they will litigate the issues of this spill. Alas, the only party with standing in Havana over this issue would be the United States Navy. We once went to war to make the world safe for democracy. Think how much better the dead will rest knowing that they died so that fewer glaciers would melt.
That’s why you have to start jogging to work. That your work will be done in a no carbon footprint building, one that helps to heal the hole in the ozone layer, will doubtless be of great comfort. It ain’t easy being green.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
You first.
Kevin Smith
PS – The time has also come to say good-bye to plastic, don’t you think?
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