Posts
February 20, 2011
Andres Oppenheimer
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: The Missing Link – Some comments on your column this morning about why some law breaking is simpatico.
Snr. Oppenheimer,
“At the very least, they should have a serious discussion on
whether it makes sense to spend $4.5 billion in deporting
people who have not committed serious crimes and do jobs
that Americans don’t want to do, while slashing funds for
the FBI and other law enforcement agencies whose job
is to put serious criminals behind bars.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
[As an aside before I get to main point don’t you think your choice of pronouns is a bit off? Wouldn’t they, as in they should have a serious discussion, be better replaced by we? If we have a serious discussion they won’t have to tell us what to do, right? One of the reasons why abortion is still a contentious issue is because we didn’t have a national discussion about it. We woke up one morning and learned that they had decided what was best for us.]
This could be a light bulb moment.
It certainly is a teachable moment.
One of the reasons why people walk from Punte del Este, why they swim from Cuba, why they risk all to get out of Mexico before it changes from one of the world’s worst countries to the worst country, one of the reasons why, to cite Lenin, that famous community organizer, they “vote with their feet”, is that they know instinctively that the Rule of Law prevails here. I will enclose as good a definition of the Rule of Law as I know.
It is not to be found south of the Rio Grande or south of Key West.
The last time I looked it was not too popular in Bolivia or Paraguay either.
What you are saying is that it is OK to break the law by entering this country illegally so long as you don’t break the law when you are here. Should illegal aliens be allowed 2 misdemeanors a year or one felony every other year before they are sent packing? If they go into bankruptcy should we hold them as indentured servants before deporting them, particularly if their bankruptcy disproportionately impacts other illegal aliens?
Let me conclude this morning’s tutorial with a brief primer on walls.
History tells us that they work.
The one in Berlin worked for 29 years keeping people in.
The other two, the one that the Chinese built and the one that Hadrian built, worked for centuries keeping people out.
The one that the French built worked also. Hitler wouldn’t have dreamed of going through it. He went around it.
One of the hallmarks of a sovereign nation is the ability to control its borders. Concomitant with that is the country decides who gets let in and who doesn’t.
Also, there is one language that is official. It is the language that is used when citizens enter into contracts. Yugoslovakia had 4 languages. Yugoslovenia is no longer a country. Yugo something or the other, right?
Absent that and we are like Venezuela.
Kevin Smith
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tim Rutten The Lost Angeles Times
February 20, 2011
Tim Rutten
The Lost Angeles Times
202 W 1st Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
RE: “Known and Unknown” – A comment on your review of the biography of Donald Rumsfeld in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Rutten,
I suppose he could have tugged at his forelock, bit through his lip, and gotten choked up when he left the Executive branch. He could have spent the rest of his life giving away other peoples’ money while airbrushing a la Politburo prom pictures his life. He then could have gone tiptoeing through the tulips with his neighbor’s wife – Stop the presses! – That was Robert Strange McNamara, not Donald Rumsfeld.
I have one question.
We now know that he used his wife’s [alleged] ruptured appendix as the perfect cover, as the paradigmatic template of plausible deniability, to shield himself from the consequences of the American Army looting, looting like they were in South Central Los Angeles, and engaging in what Congresswoman Maxine Waters calls “alternative shopping”.
How did he manage to loot the museums in Cairo?
Kevin Smith
Tim Rutten
The Lost Angeles Times
202 W 1st Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
RE: “Known and Unknown” – A comment on your review of the biography of Donald Rumsfeld in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Mr. Rutten,
I suppose he could have tugged at his forelock, bit through his lip, and gotten choked up when he left the Executive branch. He could have spent the rest of his life giving away other peoples’ money while airbrushing a la Politburo prom pictures his life. He then could have gone tiptoeing through the tulips with his neighbor’s wife – Stop the presses! – That was Robert Strange McNamara, not Donald Rumsfeld.
I have one question.
We now know that he used his wife’s [alleged] ruptured appendix as the perfect cover, as the paradigmatic template of plausible deniability, to shield himself from the consequences of the American Army looting, looting like they were in South Central Los Angeles, and engaging in what Congresswoman Maxine Waters calls “alternative shopping”.
How did he manage to loot the museums in Cairo?
Kevin Smith
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
February 19, 2011
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
RE: A modern American Liberal explains it all
Dear Darling Debbie, Debbie,
It is so predictable. It repeats itself over and over and over. In the end you all put on your brown shirts and your hob nail boots. In the end all speech is free except that some speech is more free than other speech. In the end you make Nat Hentoff’s book titled “Free Speech for Me but not for Thee” seem like a road map to all the “slippery slopes” and “chilling effects” that mALs constantly caterwaul about. In the end you seek to ban speech that isn’t totally in line with the truth as revealed by the secular gods of modern American Liberalism. In the end you all become Nazis.
Yesterday you went to the floor of the House to ask the Speaker to stop the “disparaging” term of “ObamaCare” from being used, it being “disparaging” to President Obama.
Those pesky Death Panels notwithstanding, I am at a loss to understand why the President and you would not be bursting with pride as a result of passing such far reaching legislation. Even though Speaker cum Hecate Pelosi said that “it had to be passed so we could read it” it was a monumental tribute to the legislative process. That it was the result of free men choosing to send people to DC to enact legislation there can be no doubt. That there also can be no doubt that the people, realizing what a FUBAR mistake they made, began deciding November last, as free men do, to undo it.
This will come as a shock to you but “Free men speak with free tongues”.
It is a simple statement. It is a simple statement that you regard in the same way that a vampire regards holy water. Which of the words “Congress shall make no law…” don’t you understand? I can see where a member, a member like you, reading verbatim “The Vagina Monologues” from the floor probably wouldn’t make C-Span. Why does the term “ObamaCare” upset you? It makes the social legislation passed in the 1960s look like small potatoes Why not engrave “ObamaCare” on the soon to be issued $3 dollar bill? Why not put “ObamaCare” over the front door of every to be constructed Federal building? Why not put it on the soon to be issued $1.46 first class stamp, that being next year’s price for first class mail? I would think that the term “ObamaCare” should be tattooed on every newly born infant, just like the Nazis, your intellectual forebears, did.
I suppose it could be called “Wasserman-Schultzcare” but that’s not as euphonic as “ObamaCare”.
Are there any other “disparaging” terms you want to ban from usage in Congress? Please send me the list.
In the meantime, here’s to ObamaCare!
Keep saying it. It’s a LTD. A Liberal Transmitted Disease.
Kevin Smith
PS – If the Wisconsin Democrats can shut down their state government will it be OK for the Washington Republicans to copy them?
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
RE: A modern American Liberal explains it all
Dear Darling Debbie, Debbie,
It is so predictable. It repeats itself over and over and over. In the end you all put on your brown shirts and your hob nail boots. In the end all speech is free except that some speech is more free than other speech. In the end you make Nat Hentoff’s book titled “Free Speech for Me but not for Thee” seem like a road map to all the “slippery slopes” and “chilling effects” that mALs constantly caterwaul about. In the end you seek to ban speech that isn’t totally in line with the truth as revealed by the secular gods of modern American Liberalism. In the end you all become Nazis.
Yesterday you went to the floor of the House to ask the Speaker to stop the “disparaging” term of “ObamaCare” from being used, it being “disparaging” to President Obama.
Those pesky Death Panels notwithstanding, I am at a loss to understand why the President and you would not be bursting with pride as a result of passing such far reaching legislation. Even though Speaker cum Hecate Pelosi said that “it had to be passed so we could read it” it was a monumental tribute to the legislative process. That it was the result of free men choosing to send people to DC to enact legislation there can be no doubt. That there also can be no doubt that the people, realizing what a FUBAR mistake they made, began deciding November last, as free men do, to undo it.
This will come as a shock to you but “Free men speak with free tongues”.
It is a simple statement. It is a simple statement that you regard in the same way that a vampire regards holy water. Which of the words “Congress shall make no law…” don’t you understand? I can see where a member, a member like you, reading verbatim “The Vagina Monologues” from the floor probably wouldn’t make C-Span. Why does the term “ObamaCare” upset you? It makes the social legislation passed in the 1960s look like small potatoes Why not engrave “ObamaCare” on the soon to be issued $3 dollar bill? Why not put “ObamaCare” over the front door of every to be constructed Federal building? Why not put it on the soon to be issued $1.46 first class stamp, that being next year’s price for first class mail? I would think that the term “ObamaCare” should be tattooed on every newly born infant, just like the Nazis, your intellectual forebears, did.
I suppose it could be called “Wasserman-Schultzcare” but that’s not as euphonic as “ObamaCare”.
Are there any other “disparaging” terms you want to ban from usage in Congress? Please send me the list.
In the meantime, here’s to ObamaCare!
Keep saying it. It’s a LTD. A Liberal Transmitted Disease.
Kevin Smith
PS – If the Wisconsin Democrats can shut down their state government will it be OK for the Washington Republicans to copy them?
Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren Broward Mental Health Court
February 17, 2011
Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren
Broward Mental Health Court
600 South Andrews Avenue
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” or “Support Mental Health or I’ll Kill You” – Some comments on your op-ed on Public Health Cuts
Judge Lerner-Wren,
You say
“One out of every four adults in the United States
suffers from some sort of mental health illness.”
Then you say
“A majority of those with mental illness also
suffer[s] from substance abuse addictions.”
Would it be a sign of my mental health if I were to carry your thoughts to their Logical conclusion?
There are 90 Judges in Broward County.
While some of their shenanigans and peccadilloes would suggest either dementia, a perpetual teen age wild ass wild oat sowing, de minimis thievery, or just some old fashioned ethically challenged activities, none of these falls under the category of mental illness as you define it. Using your math 22 Judges are a full bubble off plumb. Further, at least 12 of these are life members of the Peruvian Powder Marching Society or they subscribe to the dictum “there is no such thing as a large whisky”.
Maybe we could have an afternoon of competency hearings with the Judges judging themselves. That would be a new chapter in the proud and glorious history of the Broward Judiciary.
Your plea for more money or we will all perish is the perpetual mantra of modern American Liberalism. Every morning these very bright people get up and say today is the day that I will catch the horizon. I must tell you absolutely, positively that you will never get there. Step 2 in this process is to find someone to blame. Lately it’s been a President or a Governor whose names rhyme with Bush. It is painfully self evident that they have written your name down in their books and then drew a line through it.
Normally your lachrymose wailing- how could wailing be otherwise? – would get you some consideration in my weekly contest to find the
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
[JUDICIAL SECTION]
But wait. There’s more.
I found a letter that I wrote to you on September 1, 2001.
You made Page 1 of the Miami Herald in the matter of Darren Cooper. He had been living in his mother’s yard for 5 years. For this you blamed, certainly not him, certainly not his mother, but the poor “flack catching” weenies who run the hatch. NB that I did not say “boobies” who run the hatch.
As an aside, I rather think Mr. Cooper would be an improvement of anybody running a government facility. He went “green” before it became popular. He left no carbon footprint. He became the ultimate recycler what with 5 years of ca-ca to do something with. Organic fertilizer for organic vegetables. A win/win. No drowning polar bears.
Anyway, it’s 10 years later and you’re still at it.
I am reminded of the man in the rubber room, the room with the door with no handle on the inside, for 35 years. All he ever does is clap his hands. Finally a shrink is able to get through to him. “Why are you doing it for 35 years?” he is asked. “If I stop clapping poison snakes will fall from the sky and bite us.” The questioner looks out the window and tells him that there are no poison snakes to be seen. “See. That’s why I have to keep clapping.”
Anyway, it’s 10 years later and you’re still at it.
Somewhere the tune “Still Crazy After All These Years” is playing and I just can’t get it out of my head.
The inconvenient truth is that the state is running out of money. Unlike the Feds we can’t print it. We don’t have an Uncle Wong who will send us tons of Benjamins every Thursday afternoon. To say otherwise would be, in the words of Gary Larson, noted artist and pundit, “Just plain nuts”.
Kevin Smith
Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren
Broward Mental Health Court
600 South Andrews Avenue
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” or “Support Mental Health or I’ll Kill You” – Some comments on your op-ed on Public Health Cuts
Judge Lerner-Wren,
You say
“One out of every four adults in the United States
suffers from some sort of mental health illness.”
Then you say
“A majority of those with mental illness also
suffer[s] from substance abuse addictions.”
Would it be a sign of my mental health if I were to carry your thoughts to their Logical conclusion?
There are 90 Judges in Broward County.
While some of their shenanigans and peccadilloes would suggest either dementia, a perpetual teen age wild ass wild oat sowing, de minimis thievery, or just some old fashioned ethically challenged activities, none of these falls under the category of mental illness as you define it. Using your math 22 Judges are a full bubble off plumb. Further, at least 12 of these are life members of the Peruvian Powder Marching Society or they subscribe to the dictum “there is no such thing as a large whisky”.
Maybe we could have an afternoon of competency hearings with the Judges judging themselves. That would be a new chapter in the proud and glorious history of the Broward Judiciary.
Your plea for more money or we will all perish is the perpetual mantra of modern American Liberalism. Every morning these very bright people get up and say today is the day that I will catch the horizon. I must tell you absolutely, positively that you will never get there. Step 2 in this process is to find someone to blame. Lately it’s been a President or a Governor whose names rhyme with Bush. It is painfully self evident that they have written your name down in their books and then drew a line through it.
Normally your lachrymose wailing- how could wailing be otherwise? – would get you some consideration in my weekly contest to find the
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
[JUDICIAL SECTION]
But wait. There’s more.
I found a letter that I wrote to you on September 1, 2001.
You made Page 1 of the Miami Herald in the matter of Darren Cooper. He had been living in his mother’s yard for 5 years. For this you blamed, certainly not him, certainly not his mother, but the poor “flack catching” weenies who run the hatch. NB that I did not say “boobies” who run the hatch.
As an aside, I rather think Mr. Cooper would be an improvement of anybody running a government facility. He went “green” before it became popular. He left no carbon footprint. He became the ultimate recycler what with 5 years of ca-ca to do something with. Organic fertilizer for organic vegetables. A win/win. No drowning polar bears.
Anyway, it’s 10 years later and you’re still at it.
I am reminded of the man in the rubber room, the room with the door with no handle on the inside, for 35 years. All he ever does is clap his hands. Finally a shrink is able to get through to him. “Why are you doing it for 35 years?” he is asked. “If I stop clapping poison snakes will fall from the sky and bite us.” The questioner looks out the window and tells him that there are no poison snakes to be seen. “See. That’s why I have to keep clapping.”
Anyway, it’s 10 years later and you’re still at it.
Somewhere the tune “Still Crazy After All These Years” is playing and I just can’t get it out of my head.
The inconvenient truth is that the state is running out of money. Unlike the Feds we can’t print it. We don’t have an Uncle Wong who will send us tons of Benjamins every Thursday afternoon. To say otherwise would be, in the words of Gary Larson, noted artist and pundit, “Just plain nuts”.
Kevin Smith
WarriorBard Classic: Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren Broward County Mental Health Court
November 8, 2001
Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren
Broward County Mental Health Court
600 South Andrews Street
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: The Beat Goes On - Judicial temperament, terminal PMS, and Justice....shaken
Judge Lerner-Wren:
“Treat him. I am ordering you to treat this man.”
The Herald
page 26A
You
“I am livid.’ She said it ten times....”
The Sun-Sentinel
page 2B
You
Are you the only member of the fabulously successful raree known as the Broward County Judiciary to have a medical degree? Mountebanks and grifters abound but are you an honest to goodness Medicine Woman also?
In the real world, the world where adults work, judgments are made and decisions are taken based on same. Medical professionals, presumably competent and assuredly certified and licensed by the state, made a medical evaluation of Mr. Steinsmith. You made a political/judicial - in this instance the two terms are interchangeable - decision. By the way, where did you do your psychiatric residency? At the world famed Rangoon School of Proctology or the equally acclaimed University of Haiti Dead Snake and Screaming Heeby-Jeeby Dispensary?
Here is my diagnosis of you. Also, I have outlined a course of treatment. You must do all the steps. Listen carefully.
If you are “livid” resign from the Bench. One serendipitous benefit of your leaving will be to vault Broward County past the judiciary of Kandahar with whom you are currently tied in the Jerry Springer “God! What Nitwits We Have Wearing Robes” poll. The next hurdle is the Burundi Bench where, if you lose an appeal, the Judges cook and eat you.
Run for the Legislature. Get elected.
Once you are there pass a bill that makes Judges primary health care providers for whomsoever enters their courtroom. You may want to consider certifying anyone who passes the Florida Bar Examination a nurse-practitioner or, at the very least, an EMT/CPR teacher. All non-Judicial court personnel will have the ability to “lay on hands”. Also, they will be able to change water into wine should a jury be sequestered and/or deadlocked.
Make sure that the Governor signs it. Enforce it. Vigorously.
In the meantime take the ailing Mr. Steinsmith - AIDS “victim” and because he’s about 6 degrees off plumb soon to be touring the country as Napoleon - home with you. I am sure it will take but a few Thorazine enemas, a trip to Lourdes, and some of your well known TLC and he’ll be doing 10ks by Thanksgiving.
“Ginger”? Where you ever a Spice Girl?
“Such an excess of stupidity is not found in Nature.”
Dr. Johnson never met you.
KEVIN SMITH
Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren
Broward County Mental Health Court
600 South Andrews Street
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33301
RE: The Beat Goes On - Judicial temperament, terminal PMS, and Justice....shaken
Judge Lerner-Wren:
“Treat him. I am ordering you to treat this man.”
The Herald
page 26A
You
“I am livid.’ She said it ten times....”
The Sun-Sentinel
page 2B
You
Are you the only member of the fabulously successful raree known as the Broward County Judiciary to have a medical degree? Mountebanks and grifters abound but are you an honest to goodness Medicine Woman also?
In the real world, the world where adults work, judgments are made and decisions are taken based on same. Medical professionals, presumably competent and assuredly certified and licensed by the state, made a medical evaluation of Mr. Steinsmith. You made a political/judicial - in this instance the two terms are interchangeable - decision. By the way, where did you do your psychiatric residency? At the world famed Rangoon School of Proctology or the equally acclaimed University of Haiti Dead Snake and Screaming Heeby-Jeeby Dispensary?
Here is my diagnosis of you. Also, I have outlined a course of treatment. You must do all the steps. Listen carefully.
If you are “livid” resign from the Bench. One serendipitous benefit of your leaving will be to vault Broward County past the judiciary of Kandahar with whom you are currently tied in the Jerry Springer “God! What Nitwits We Have Wearing Robes” poll. The next hurdle is the Burundi Bench where, if you lose an appeal, the Judges cook and eat you.
Run for the Legislature. Get elected.
Once you are there pass a bill that makes Judges primary health care providers for whomsoever enters their courtroom. You may want to consider certifying anyone who passes the Florida Bar Examination a nurse-practitioner or, at the very least, an EMT/CPR teacher. All non-Judicial court personnel will have the ability to “lay on hands”. Also, they will be able to change water into wine should a jury be sequestered and/or deadlocked.
Make sure that the Governor signs it. Enforce it. Vigorously.
In the meantime take the ailing Mr. Steinsmith - AIDS “victim” and because he’s about 6 degrees off plumb soon to be touring the country as Napoleon - home with you. I am sure it will take but a few Thorazine enemas, a trip to Lourdes, and some of your well known TLC and he’ll be doing 10ks by Thanksgiving.
“Ginger”? Where you ever a Spice Girl?
“Such an excess of stupidity is not found in Nature.”
Dr. Johnson never met you.
KEVIN SMITH
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Jimmy Cefalo WIOD – 610, Part 2
February 16, 2011
Jimmy Cefalo
WIOD – 610
7601 Riviera Drive
Miramar, FL 33022
RE: Two tutorials in one day – Aren’t you the lucky one?
Jimmy,
What the Hell is so difficult in cutting the Federal budget?
Herewith some suggestions.
#1 – We have 50,000 troops in Germany. Why? We beat the Krauts, remember? i Bring our soldiers home. Now.
#2 – NATO. Trust me. The Russians will not be pouring through the Fulda Gap in a race to the coast. Shut it down. Now.
#3 – Crop prices are at all time high. If the farmers aren’t farting through silk now they never will. Shut down the Department of Agriculture. Now.
#4 – Send up a flare the next time, strike that, the first time the Department of Energy produces one barrel of oil, one ton of coal, or one kilowatt of electricity. Shut it down. Now.
#5 – Johnny couldn’t read in 1978. The Department of Education was “created” to help him read. Johnny still can’t read. Whatever they are doing isn’t working. Shut it down. Now.
#6 – If you can find out what the Department of Commerce does let me know. Speaker Pelosi – Don’t you miss her? One more face lift and she’d be peeing through her navel – said, “Pass Obamacare so we could find out what’s in it”. Shut the joint down. See if anybody notices.
#6 – The Post Office is the paradigmatic template for both SNAFU and FUBAR. Give half of it to UPS. Give the other half to FED-EX. Now. How much worse can it be?
#7 – I think “Corpus Cristi” is a terrible play. I love “Elmo”. Why should tax money be used to subsidize them? Stop Federal funding. Now.
Lest you think I am not aware of the revenue side of the equation here are my suggestions for “enhancement”.
#1 – Why should the country have to share the burden of owning a home? Cancel the tax deduction for local real estate taxes. Now
#2 – If Broward County residents want to build manatee rehab centers let them. Don’t ask the people of Winona, MN or Allen, TX to pay for part of it. Make the interest paid on municipal bonds taxable. Now.
#3 – Let’s see how charitable people are. Stop the Federal deduction for charitable contributions. Now.
#4 – Why should unlimited procreation be subsidized by the Federal taxpayer? Limit the tax deduction for children to 2.8 children per couple. Now.
#5 – The Death Tax, the Estate Tax, whatever it’s called, must be strengthened. In the case of the Kennedy family it should be 105%. It should be retroactive. Why should the swag stolen by an anti-Semitic bootlegger be allowed to influence America after 3 generations? Justice Holmes said “Three generations of idiots are enough” in voting in favor of involuntary sterilization. 3 generations of toss pot philandering Boob McNutts are enough. Shut it down. Now.
#6 – In 2007 Senator Reid said, “The war is lost”. Alas, he was talking about the wrong war. “Surges” work. Ask Sherman. Ask Pershing. Ask Patton. The war he should have been talking about is the “war” on drugs. Let’s have an immediate cease fire followed by a complete stand down. Whisky is taxed. Why not drugs?
#7 – Lyndon Johnson declared “war” on poverty in 1964. It was like the British Army attacking 5 miles of machine guns on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The guns win. The guns always win. 47 years later poverty has “won”. Stop fighting. Now.
Less money out; more money in.
Result?
Happiness.
Uncle Wong would approve.
Kevin Smith
Jimmy Cefalo
WIOD – 610
7601 Riviera Drive
Miramar, FL 33022
RE: Two tutorials in one day – Aren’t you the lucky one?
Jimmy,
What the Hell is so difficult in cutting the Federal budget?
Herewith some suggestions.
#1 – We have 50,000 troops in Germany. Why? We beat the Krauts, remember? i Bring our soldiers home. Now.
#2 – NATO. Trust me. The Russians will not be pouring through the Fulda Gap in a race to the coast. Shut it down. Now.
#3 – Crop prices are at all time high. If the farmers aren’t farting through silk now they never will. Shut down the Department of Agriculture. Now.
#4 – Send up a flare the next time, strike that, the first time the Department of Energy produces one barrel of oil, one ton of coal, or one kilowatt of electricity. Shut it down. Now.
#5 – Johnny couldn’t read in 1978. The Department of Education was “created” to help him read. Johnny still can’t read. Whatever they are doing isn’t working. Shut it down. Now.
#6 – If you can find out what the Department of Commerce does let me know. Speaker Pelosi – Don’t you miss her? One more face lift and she’d be peeing through her navel – said, “Pass Obamacare so we could find out what’s in it”. Shut the joint down. See if anybody notices.
#6 – The Post Office is the paradigmatic template for both SNAFU and FUBAR. Give half of it to UPS. Give the other half to FED-EX. Now. How much worse can it be?
#7 – I think “Corpus Cristi” is a terrible play. I love “Elmo”. Why should tax money be used to subsidize them? Stop Federal funding. Now.
Lest you think I am not aware of the revenue side of the equation here are my suggestions for “enhancement”.
#1 – Why should the country have to share the burden of owning a home? Cancel the tax deduction for local real estate taxes. Now
#2 – If Broward County residents want to build manatee rehab centers let them. Don’t ask the people of Winona, MN or Allen, TX to pay for part of it. Make the interest paid on municipal bonds taxable. Now.
#3 – Let’s see how charitable people are. Stop the Federal deduction for charitable contributions. Now.
#4 – Why should unlimited procreation be subsidized by the Federal taxpayer? Limit the tax deduction for children to 2.8 children per couple. Now.
#5 – The Death Tax, the Estate Tax, whatever it’s called, must be strengthened. In the case of the Kennedy family it should be 105%. It should be retroactive. Why should the swag stolen by an anti-Semitic bootlegger be allowed to influence America after 3 generations? Justice Holmes said “Three generations of idiots are enough” in voting in favor of involuntary sterilization. 3 generations of toss pot philandering Boob McNutts are enough. Shut it down. Now.
#6 – In 2007 Senator Reid said, “The war is lost”. Alas, he was talking about the wrong war. “Surges” work. Ask Sherman. Ask Pershing. Ask Patton. The war he should have been talking about is the “war” on drugs. Let’s have an immediate cease fire followed by a complete stand down. Whisky is taxed. Why not drugs?
#7 – Lyndon Johnson declared “war” on poverty in 1964. It was like the British Army attacking 5 miles of machine guns on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The guns win. The guns always win. 47 years later poverty has “won”. Stop fighting. Now.
Less money out; more money in.
Result?
Happiness.
Uncle Wong would approve.
Kevin Smith
Jimmy Cefalo WIOD – 610
February 16, 2011
Jimmy Cefalo
WIOD – 610
7601 Riviera Blvd.
Miramar, FL 33022
RE: Unanimous votes in the Senate and insurance rates
Jimmy,
Experts agree that whenever any statement of any kind begins with “experts agree” it is usually wise to bet the other side.
This morning at ca. 6:15, I caught the tag end of you saying, “How often do they do that?”, “that” being a unanimous vote in the Senate.
The Founders, particularly Madison, would have frowned on unanimous votes. It would have suggested a too close fraternization with Democracy rather than a Republic which was what they intended. Not for nothing does the name “Peoples Democratic Republic of Kafiristan” or some such nonsense always seems to be used for a government that can’t feed its people and then blames and oppresses them for the drought, the monsoon, the snow, the wind, the locusts, inter alia.
I can’t share in the euphoria about Egypt. Mubarak is gone, the constitution [sic] is suspended, and the army has taken over. How does that make anyone freer?
One of the definitions of Rhetoric [note the capital R] is the ability to argue a point to its midpoint and then turn around and argue the opposite.
Two correct unanimous votes in the Senate were the 97 to 0 vote for Antonin Scalia, one of your “people”, and the 95 to 0 “Sense of the Senate” vote against the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol, the brainchild of former Vice President Alpha Gump, would have prevented the economic meltdown of the past 4 years by virtue of having wiped out the economy before the turn of the century.
As to “consensus” being a good thing, how many times did Coach Paterno or Coach Shula get a consensus on a game plan or a particular play?
I was about to sign off on this when I heard you and your amigo vent a bit about insurance rates in general and sink holes in particular. I have no financial interest in any insurance company either by employment or stock ownership.
You may want to think about insurance companies being akin to Social Security, state pension plans, or the Florida Pre-Paid Tuition Plan.
Money comes into today to pay for something that may never happen tomorrow. Would it make taxpayers feel better to have a fire every other year just to see if the equipment works?
I had a friend who died 2 months shy of his 65th birthday. He had paid the maximum Social Security premium for at least 30 years. Did the government give his estate a refund check because he never made a claim on that which he had paid for? Do I have to answer that question?
As a former CFO of a public company I have some knowledge of financial statements. Insurance companies have the luxury of filing 3 separate financials. One goes to the IRS; one goes to the state in which they do business; one goes to their shareholders.
In the case of State Farm, a mutual company, a company theoretically owned by its policyholders, it gets to pay “dividends” to their overcharged policy holders. The IRS, an institution that would tax balmy afternoons and good intentions if no one was looking, says these “dividends” are not taxable.
Citizens Insurance, Florida’s insurer of last resort, is in worse financial shape than Social Security. As few as 3 years ago the Florida Pre-Paid Tuition Plan was a tremendous deal. Reality, in the form of greatly increased payments to cover greatly increased and greatly increasing future costs – Has anyone ever asked why Education alone is exempt from all the economic rules governing everything else? – has set in.
As to sink hole increases, if the underwriting pool were bigger, that is to say if insurance companies could use a national census, the premium required would be less. The hard fact is that a strongly capitalized private insurance industry is a necessity. Capitalized just doesn’t mean cash flow. If that were the only criterion the Post Office would be in better shape than Switzerland.
Thus ends today’s tutorial.
Kevin Smith
Jimmy Cefalo
WIOD – 610
7601 Riviera Blvd.
Miramar, FL 33022
RE: Unanimous votes in the Senate and insurance rates
Jimmy,
Experts agree that whenever any statement of any kind begins with “experts agree” it is usually wise to bet the other side.
This morning at ca. 6:15, I caught the tag end of you saying, “How often do they do that?”, “that” being a unanimous vote in the Senate.
The Founders, particularly Madison, would have frowned on unanimous votes. It would have suggested a too close fraternization with Democracy rather than a Republic which was what they intended. Not for nothing does the name “Peoples Democratic Republic of Kafiristan” or some such nonsense always seems to be used for a government that can’t feed its people and then blames and oppresses them for the drought, the monsoon, the snow, the wind, the locusts, inter alia.
I can’t share in the euphoria about Egypt. Mubarak is gone, the constitution [sic] is suspended, and the army has taken over. How does that make anyone freer?
One of the definitions of Rhetoric [note the capital R] is the ability to argue a point to its midpoint and then turn around and argue the opposite.
Two correct unanimous votes in the Senate were the 97 to 0 vote for Antonin Scalia, one of your “people”, and the 95 to 0 “Sense of the Senate” vote against the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol, the brainchild of former Vice President Alpha Gump, would have prevented the economic meltdown of the past 4 years by virtue of having wiped out the economy before the turn of the century.
As to “consensus” being a good thing, how many times did Coach Paterno or Coach Shula get a consensus on a game plan or a particular play?
I was about to sign off on this when I heard you and your amigo vent a bit about insurance rates in general and sink holes in particular. I have no financial interest in any insurance company either by employment or stock ownership.
You may want to think about insurance companies being akin to Social Security, state pension plans, or the Florida Pre-Paid Tuition Plan.
Money comes into today to pay for something that may never happen tomorrow. Would it make taxpayers feel better to have a fire every other year just to see if the equipment works?
I had a friend who died 2 months shy of his 65th birthday. He had paid the maximum Social Security premium for at least 30 years. Did the government give his estate a refund check because he never made a claim on that which he had paid for? Do I have to answer that question?
As a former CFO of a public company I have some knowledge of financial statements. Insurance companies have the luxury of filing 3 separate financials. One goes to the IRS; one goes to the state in which they do business; one goes to their shareholders.
In the case of State Farm, a mutual company, a company theoretically owned by its policyholders, it gets to pay “dividends” to their overcharged policy holders. The IRS, an institution that would tax balmy afternoons and good intentions if no one was looking, says these “dividends” are not taxable.
Citizens Insurance, Florida’s insurer of last resort, is in worse financial shape than Social Security. As few as 3 years ago the Florida Pre-Paid Tuition Plan was a tremendous deal. Reality, in the form of greatly increased payments to cover greatly increased and greatly increasing future costs – Has anyone ever asked why Education alone is exempt from all the economic rules governing everything else? – has set in.
As to sink hole increases, if the underwriting pool were bigger, that is to say if insurance companies could use a national census, the premium required would be less. The hard fact is that a strongly capitalized private insurance industry is a necessity. Capitalized just doesn’t mean cash flow. If that were the only criterion the Post Office would be in better shape than Switzerland.
Thus ends today’s tutorial.
Kevin Smith
Monday, February 14, 2011
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
February 11, 2011
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
City Hall
Broadway
New York, New York 10007
RE: What were you thinking, you shmuck?
Mr. Mayor,
You said that you were
“used to seeing inebriated Irish hanging out the
windows during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.”
I am so Irish on both sides that if you were to scratch my double helix somebody who worked for Caesar would pop up. Nothing less that a Tribune, I’m certain. Maybe an aedile on mother’s side. Hibernia? Winter camp? “Beyond the pale”. Remember?
I have hung out some windows during the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. When I was a member of the Metropolitan Club I liked to watch the help march. When I was younger hanging out the windows on St. Patrick’s Day was preceded by furniture being tossed from same. If you drew the long straw you could get to see how high a TV would bounce. I was never “inebriated”, you putz. I was drunk.
A filthy WOG tries to blow up Times Square and you, well in advance of the arrival of those damn pesky critters, the ones that are called facts, tell the world that it was the work of some schlub who doesn’t like Obamacare.
The one absolutely perpetual “shovel ready” job creating machine, the one that is the Summer of Recovery in addition to being the Fall of Recovery, the Winter of Recovery, and the glorious spring of Recovery, is the abortion business in Harlem. Why no comments on that? Is it possible that you regard it as money well spent? Isn’t that what Margaret Sanger said?
After you find a way to ban tobacco but not the tax money you hypocritically raise from its sale and continued consumption you can move on to salt. The idea of refusing admittance to any transient who has high blood pressure, such pressure being tested before emptying any AMTRAK train, will catch on. I hope you have a George O’Jessell moment. It’s similar to Paul, my favorite reform Rabbi, getting knocked off his horse.
Georgie, a famous New Yorker and Uncle GaGa to his many Irish relatives, used to tell someone who couldn’t find his tuchis using both hands or, in the old days, “a Jew in the Bronx”, someone like you, to “look in the mirror, put your teeth in upside down and backwards, and chew yourself to death”.
Relax.
Other than destroying some Cohibas, and in a bow to diversity and multicultural diversity, some DeNobilis and a hookah, I pose no threat.
However, should I be hanging out a window on 5th Avenue on St. Patrick’s Day and see you, I will, in my finest Irish tenor voice, star yelling “Shylock, where’s my pound of flesh”?
Kevin Smith
PS – What’s this I hear about a stoning pit at the WTC mosque? Will it be a first, that is to say, will it be used for both sexes? The Village People will lead the S&M cheering section and Mt. Sinai hospital will have first crack at the salvageable organs. That’s one way to save on Medicare costs. Obamacare outreach death panels will be needed but that’s what makes this the greatest city in the world, right? I can’t wait for you to march in the Eyetie Parade to honor Columbus. Will your favors include ice picks?
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
City Hall
Broadway
New York, New York 10007
RE: What were you thinking, you shmuck?
Mr. Mayor,
You said that you were
“used to seeing inebriated Irish hanging out the
windows during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.”
I am so Irish on both sides that if you were to scratch my double helix somebody who worked for Caesar would pop up. Nothing less that a Tribune, I’m certain. Maybe an aedile on mother’s side. Hibernia? Winter camp? “Beyond the pale”. Remember?
I have hung out some windows during the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. When I was a member of the Metropolitan Club I liked to watch the help march. When I was younger hanging out the windows on St. Patrick’s Day was preceded by furniture being tossed from same. If you drew the long straw you could get to see how high a TV would bounce. I was never “inebriated”, you putz. I was drunk.
A filthy WOG tries to blow up Times Square and you, well in advance of the arrival of those damn pesky critters, the ones that are called facts, tell the world that it was the work of some schlub who doesn’t like Obamacare.
The one absolutely perpetual “shovel ready” job creating machine, the one that is the Summer of Recovery in addition to being the Fall of Recovery, the Winter of Recovery, and the glorious spring of Recovery, is the abortion business in Harlem. Why no comments on that? Is it possible that you regard it as money well spent? Isn’t that what Margaret Sanger said?
After you find a way to ban tobacco but not the tax money you hypocritically raise from its sale and continued consumption you can move on to salt. The idea of refusing admittance to any transient who has high blood pressure, such pressure being tested before emptying any AMTRAK train, will catch on. I hope you have a George O’Jessell moment. It’s similar to Paul, my favorite reform Rabbi, getting knocked off his horse.
Georgie, a famous New Yorker and Uncle GaGa to his many Irish relatives, used to tell someone who couldn’t find his tuchis using both hands or, in the old days, “a Jew in the Bronx”, someone like you, to “look in the mirror, put your teeth in upside down and backwards, and chew yourself to death”.
Relax.
Other than destroying some Cohibas, and in a bow to diversity and multicultural diversity, some DeNobilis and a hookah, I pose no threat.
However, should I be hanging out a window on 5th Avenue on St. Patrick’s Day and see you, I will, in my finest Irish tenor voice, star yelling “Shylock, where’s my pound of flesh”?
Kevin Smith
PS – What’s this I hear about a stoning pit at the WTC mosque? Will it be a first, that is to say, will it be used for both sexes? The Village People will lead the S&M cheering section and Mt. Sinai hospital will have first crack at the salvageable organs. That’s one way to save on Medicare costs. Obamacare outreach death panels will be needed but that’s what makes this the greatest city in the world, right? I can’t wait for you to march in the Eyetie Parade to honor Columbus. Will your favors include ice picks?
Andres Oppenheimer The Miami Herald
February 13, 2011
Andres Oppenheimer
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Aid Cuts Could Be Diplomatic Suicide” – Some comments on why xenophobia is making a much needed come back thanks to your article in today’s Miami Herald.
Snr. Oppenheimer,
You say
“My opinion: While the United States is the world’s
largest donor in dollar terms, it is already one of the
stingiest of the world’s richest countries in terms of
the size of its economy: it gives out only 0.2 per cent
of its gross domestic product in foreign assistance
compared with one percent for Sweden.”
The Miami Herald
Page 7A
Today
You
Lies. Damn lies. Statistics.
I am reminded of the restaurant in Paris with a sign advertising rabbit/horse stew. The waiter said it was 50/50. One horse and one rabbit.
If the United States were to increase its aid to the same percentage that the altruistic Swedes give how much would that be in absolute dollar terms?
If the Swedes were to double their amount, that is to say 1% to 2%, how many kroners would that be?
Could it not be argued that if my right foot is in a bucket of ice and my left foot is in a blazing fire place I would, on balance, be comfortable?
Constructing universals from particulars is akin to fingernails on the blackboard for anyone familiar with Logic and Rhetoric. Since it is empirically self evident that you have no knowledge of either I can continue apace.
You quote Congressman Eliot Engel [D-NY], as prototypical a modern American Liberal who ever preached the virtues and blessings of “Rainbow Stew” in Congress, as saying that cutting foreign aid is “penny wise and pound foolish”.
History, that cruel mistress of the inconvenient truth that facts are hard things, suggests otherwise.
How much money, weigh it or count it, has this country put down the rat hole that is Africa in the last 50 years?
10 Presidents from both parties and what do we have to show for it?
Zimbabwe? How about the at least 5 countries that have slavery? How about the charnel house that the Tutsis and the Hutus killed each other in? They did it such numbers that the UN had to fly in foreign crocodiles, the domestic ones having, for once, been sated. How many “success” stories are there in Africa? Why is it my fault? How can more of my money make poor Africans rich?
I search in vain for a Madison, a Franklin, or a Jefferson. I look for the fine hand of an Edmund Burke or the restraining hand of a George Mason. Instead, I find Idi Amin, Emperor Bokassa, Omar Bongo, Samuel Doe, inter alia. Special note should be made of Robert Mugabe. He turned a breadbasket of Southern Africa into the dark side of the moon in less than 10 years. Now you want me to give him more money?
The inmates are running the asylum. The boobies are now in charge of the hatch.
As an alumnus of the Peace Corps, as one actively involved in the original Alliance for Progress, I ask what has changed in Latin America in the last 50 years.
Other than the continuing problems of breakfast, lunch, and dinner it looks like the Castro Brothers, deo volente, have finally got their prison on the path to prosperity. That’s a joke. Is it not passing strange that on an island, surrounded by water, said water being overflowing with fish, this country is a mendicant on the world stage? When was the last time you saw a fat Cuban? In Havana?
Argentina is almost 200 years old. It is a country blessed by God with resources that makes other countries drool with envy. Their national heroine was a hooker. The only permanent contribution they have made to the Western Canon is the tango. I speak too quickly. They stole that from the Eyeties.
You can’t imagine the shame I feel when you wrote that Hugo Chavez is outspending this country in the reconstruction of Haiti.
Perhaps you can tell me why Haiti makes the Dominican Republic – they are on the same island, remember? – look like Switzerland.
Is it because the United States has not been “fair” to them?
I began my note to you with a horse reference.
I’ll end it in a similar fashion.
Your contributions to reasoned discourse are both Homeric and Herculean.
I hereby name you
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
Kevin Smith
PS – I no longer care what the man in the street – assuming they have streets – in Paraguay or Chad thinks of America. One suggestion we can all get behind, one suggestion that is specifically authorized in our Constitution would be to authorize letters of marque and reprisal and rid the seas of pirates. Shoot most of them. Take the rest of them into what passes for a port in those Hellhole countries that shelter them and hang them from what passes for a yardarm. What better form of foreign aid than that which allows the free flow of commerce?
Andres Oppenheimer
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Aid Cuts Could Be Diplomatic Suicide” – Some comments on why xenophobia is making a much needed come back thanks to your article in today’s Miami Herald.
Snr. Oppenheimer,
You say
“My opinion: While the United States is the world’s
largest donor in dollar terms, it is already one of the
stingiest of the world’s richest countries in terms of
the size of its economy: it gives out only 0.2 per cent
of its gross domestic product in foreign assistance
compared with one percent for Sweden.”
The Miami Herald
Page 7A
Today
You
Lies. Damn lies. Statistics.
I am reminded of the restaurant in Paris with a sign advertising rabbit/horse stew. The waiter said it was 50/50. One horse and one rabbit.
If the United States were to increase its aid to the same percentage that the altruistic Swedes give how much would that be in absolute dollar terms?
If the Swedes were to double their amount, that is to say 1% to 2%, how many kroners would that be?
Could it not be argued that if my right foot is in a bucket of ice and my left foot is in a blazing fire place I would, on balance, be comfortable?
Constructing universals from particulars is akin to fingernails on the blackboard for anyone familiar with Logic and Rhetoric. Since it is empirically self evident that you have no knowledge of either I can continue apace.
You quote Congressman Eliot Engel [D-NY], as prototypical a modern American Liberal who ever preached the virtues and blessings of “Rainbow Stew” in Congress, as saying that cutting foreign aid is “penny wise and pound foolish”.
History, that cruel mistress of the inconvenient truth that facts are hard things, suggests otherwise.
How much money, weigh it or count it, has this country put down the rat hole that is Africa in the last 50 years?
10 Presidents from both parties and what do we have to show for it?
Zimbabwe? How about the at least 5 countries that have slavery? How about the charnel house that the Tutsis and the Hutus killed each other in? They did it such numbers that the UN had to fly in foreign crocodiles, the domestic ones having, for once, been sated. How many “success” stories are there in Africa? Why is it my fault? How can more of my money make poor Africans rich?
I search in vain for a Madison, a Franklin, or a Jefferson. I look for the fine hand of an Edmund Burke or the restraining hand of a George Mason. Instead, I find Idi Amin, Emperor Bokassa, Omar Bongo, Samuel Doe, inter alia. Special note should be made of Robert Mugabe. He turned a breadbasket of Southern Africa into the dark side of the moon in less than 10 years. Now you want me to give him more money?
The inmates are running the asylum. The boobies are now in charge of the hatch.
As an alumnus of the Peace Corps, as one actively involved in the original Alliance for Progress, I ask what has changed in Latin America in the last 50 years.
Other than the continuing problems of breakfast, lunch, and dinner it looks like the Castro Brothers, deo volente, have finally got their prison on the path to prosperity. That’s a joke. Is it not passing strange that on an island, surrounded by water, said water being overflowing with fish, this country is a mendicant on the world stage? When was the last time you saw a fat Cuban? In Havana?
Argentina is almost 200 years old. It is a country blessed by God with resources that makes other countries drool with envy. Their national heroine was a hooker. The only permanent contribution they have made to the Western Canon is the tango. I speak too quickly. They stole that from the Eyeties.
You can’t imagine the shame I feel when you wrote that Hugo Chavez is outspending this country in the reconstruction of Haiti.
Perhaps you can tell me why Haiti makes the Dominican Republic – they are on the same island, remember? – look like Switzerland.
Is it because the United States has not been “fair” to them?
I began my note to you with a horse reference.
I’ll end it in a similar fashion.
Your contributions to reasoned discourse are both Homeric and Herculean.
I hereby name you
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
Kevin Smith
PS – I no longer care what the man in the street – assuming they have streets – in Paraguay or Chad thinks of America. One suggestion we can all get behind, one suggestion that is specifically authorized in our Constitution would be to authorize letters of marque and reprisal and rid the seas of pirates. Shoot most of them. Take the rest of them into what passes for a port in those Hellhole countries that shelter them and hang them from what passes for a yardarm. What better form of foreign aid than that which allows the free flow of commerce?
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun-Sentinel
February 12, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Why are you chastising Governor Scott for trying to keep his campaign promises? Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel
Mr. Lyons,
I remember when Senator Obama met the American Everyman, Joe the Plumber. He told Joe that his basic economic plan was to “spread the wealth around”. Giving the Devil his due that appears to be what he is trying to do. The only caveat here is that if all his “balloon juice” schemes are done there may not be any wealth left to spread around. As sure as “stones are hard and water is wet” you can’t make poor people rich by making rich people poor. Of course, as the great Dr. Johnson says, “Any public policy that involves robbing Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support”
Speaking of campaign promises, I remember Candidate Obama saying that his election would calm the savage seas. Page 15A of your paper says that despite his siren call the oceans are not dancing to his tune. Pity. After making the tides behave I wanted him to get to work on gravity. Still, one out of two is pretty good unless you’re an airplane pilot.
I recall with warm and fuzzy feelings when Lord Barack the Beneficent told some Congressmen who dared to question his policies that there was an election and, further, that he “won”.
This was before he threatened to find some poor schlub from BP and “kick his ass”. It was after he told his more zealous fans “never bring a knife to a gun fight”. I really shouldn’t pick on him. He’s probably very tired what with his never ending quest to find those missing 7, or was it 8, states. Doubtless, one of them has that elusive dictionary, the Austrian/English one.
The people of Florida went to the polls last November and elected Rick Scott Governor.
He made promises before he was elected. He appears to be trying to keep them.
Education, for instance.
Every year I hear how bad the schools are. I never hear how bad the teachers are. I never hear how bad the administrators are. How the schools can be “bad” without the teachers and the administrators escaping collateral damage is one of those questions that assumes the laws governing gravity are only enforceable during leap years.
Every year I hear that the answer is more money. Every year they get more money. Every year they get worse.
Does anyone else see a pattern developing here?
If it ain’t broken don’t fix it. If it’s broken, and by every objective standard it is, try to fix it.
Every 2 years the voters get to correct their mistakes. Last November the voters of America began to correct the humongous, ginormous mistake made in 2008.
If the voters of Florida begin to elect more Democrats to the state legislature, if the voters of Florida turn Governor Scott out of office, perhaps the modern American Liberal karma of “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” will be restored. Until that happens your role as a “concerned columnist” will be that of a carping caterwauler.
Sincerely,
Kevin Smith – A “concerned citizen”
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: Why are you chastising Governor Scott for trying to keep his campaign promises? Some comments on your column in today’s Sun-Sentinel
Mr. Lyons,
I remember when Senator Obama met the American Everyman, Joe the Plumber. He told Joe that his basic economic plan was to “spread the wealth around”. Giving the Devil his due that appears to be what he is trying to do. The only caveat here is that if all his “balloon juice” schemes are done there may not be any wealth left to spread around. As sure as “stones are hard and water is wet” you can’t make poor people rich by making rich people poor. Of course, as the great Dr. Johnson says, “Any public policy that involves robbing Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul’s support”
Speaking of campaign promises, I remember Candidate Obama saying that his election would calm the savage seas. Page 15A of your paper says that despite his siren call the oceans are not dancing to his tune. Pity. After making the tides behave I wanted him to get to work on gravity. Still, one out of two is pretty good unless you’re an airplane pilot.
I recall with warm and fuzzy feelings when Lord Barack the Beneficent told some Congressmen who dared to question his policies that there was an election and, further, that he “won”.
This was before he threatened to find some poor schlub from BP and “kick his ass”. It was after he told his more zealous fans “never bring a knife to a gun fight”. I really shouldn’t pick on him. He’s probably very tired what with his never ending quest to find those missing 7, or was it 8, states. Doubtless, one of them has that elusive dictionary, the Austrian/English one.
The people of Florida went to the polls last November and elected Rick Scott Governor.
He made promises before he was elected. He appears to be trying to keep them.
Education, for instance.
Every year I hear how bad the schools are. I never hear how bad the teachers are. I never hear how bad the administrators are. How the schools can be “bad” without the teachers and the administrators escaping collateral damage is one of those questions that assumes the laws governing gravity are only enforceable during leap years.
Every year I hear that the answer is more money. Every year they get more money. Every year they get worse.
Does anyone else see a pattern developing here?
If it ain’t broken don’t fix it. If it’s broken, and by every objective standard it is, try to fix it.
Every 2 years the voters get to correct their mistakes. Last November the voters of America began to correct the humongous, ginormous mistake made in 2008.
If the voters of Florida begin to elect more Democrats to the state legislature, if the voters of Florida turn Governor Scott out of office, perhaps the modern American Liberal karma of “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” will be restored. Until that happens your role as a “concerned columnist” will be that of a carping caterwauler.
Sincerely,
Kevin Smith – A “concerned citizen”
Christine Dolen The Miami Herald
February 12, 2011
Christine Dolen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “The Laramie Project” – Your review this day and the questions never asked.
Ms. Dolen,
“Though the impulse behind revisiting
‘The Laramie Project’ and following
performances with talkback sessions is
admirable the result in this case is not.
The memory of Matthew Shepherd and
the audiences deserve much better.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
[Italics yours]
Matthew Shepherd was a 19 year old homosexual who went to bar frequented by homosexuals. He was picked up by 2 barbaric non-homosexuals. He was beaten in a most savage manner and left to die hanging on a barbed wire fence.
Jesse Dirkhising was a 12 year old boy who was kidnapped by 2 feral homosexuals. Over 2 days he was repeatedly raped and sodomized with objects both organic and inorganic. He died by strangulation. The method chosen was gasoline soaked rag that was shoved down his throat.
Why one was deemed worthy of being compared to the Oedipus trilogy while the other is still waiting to be written is a both a testament and a condemnation to and of modern culture. Alas. but “Trousered Apes” now rule.
Your review concentrates completely on the production rather than on the play.
No would remember “My American Cousin” save for the fact that it was the play that Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated.
Is it possible to say the “The Laramie Project” is a bad play without having the dreaded Word Police asking you, while the chorus throws flaming bags of cat scat at you, “Are you now or have you ever been a homophobe”?
Into the Gehenna of Kumbaya plays let me include “Corpus Cristi”, “The Vagina Monologues”, and “Angels in America”.
It is bad enough that they are “bad” plays but they are oft times government funded “bad” plays. Let me rephrase that. They are taxpayer funded “bad” plays. Let me clarify that. The cry of “No Taxation without Representation” would apply to these “bad” plays with but a simple adjustment.
The fact is that no one has yet topped the Greeks when it comes to theatrical production of murder[s] most foul. I must add that the last scenes of “King Lear” and “Hamlet” are up and coming contenders.
If, as you say, the “talkback session” after the play ends is something to be admired how about a Q & A talback session on Antigone? What does one say about Goneril and Regan?
And why does no one mourn Jesse Dirkhising?
Kevin Smith
Christine Dolen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “The Laramie Project” – Your review this day and the questions never asked.
Ms. Dolen,
“Though the impulse behind revisiting
‘The Laramie Project’ and following
performances with talkback sessions is
admirable the result in this case is not.
The memory of Matthew Shepherd and
the audiences deserve much better.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
[Italics yours]
Matthew Shepherd was a 19 year old homosexual who went to bar frequented by homosexuals. He was picked up by 2 barbaric non-homosexuals. He was beaten in a most savage manner and left to die hanging on a barbed wire fence.
Jesse Dirkhising was a 12 year old boy who was kidnapped by 2 feral homosexuals. Over 2 days he was repeatedly raped and sodomized with objects both organic and inorganic. He died by strangulation. The method chosen was gasoline soaked rag that was shoved down his throat.
Why one was deemed worthy of being compared to the Oedipus trilogy while the other is still waiting to be written is a both a testament and a condemnation to and of modern culture. Alas. but “Trousered Apes” now rule.
Your review concentrates completely on the production rather than on the play.
No would remember “My American Cousin” save for the fact that it was the play that Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated.
Is it possible to say the “The Laramie Project” is a bad play without having the dreaded Word Police asking you, while the chorus throws flaming bags of cat scat at you, “Are you now or have you ever been a homophobe”?
Into the Gehenna of Kumbaya plays let me include “Corpus Cristi”, “The Vagina Monologues”, and “Angels in America”.
It is bad enough that they are “bad” plays but they are oft times government funded “bad” plays. Let me rephrase that. They are taxpayer funded “bad” plays. Let me clarify that. The cry of “No Taxation without Representation” would apply to these “bad” plays with but a simple adjustment.
The fact is that no one has yet topped the Greeks when it comes to theatrical production of murder[s] most foul. I must add that the last scenes of “King Lear” and “Hamlet” are up and coming contenders.
If, as you say, the “talkback session” after the play ends is something to be admired how about a Q & A talback session on Antigone? What does one say about Goneril and Regan?
And why does no one mourn Jesse Dirkhising?
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel
February 11, 2011
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale FL 33301
RE: Here comes the Judge – Some comments on your column about the inequities of elections, particularly when “they”, those serpents, elect people who vote for “activist right-wing judges”. If only “they” would listen to Guru Goldstein.
My dear Professor,
“For 20 years, they [the Democrats] have let Republicans
pack the federal courts at all levels with
activist right-wing fanatics.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
One of the blessings of being a card carrying modern American Liberal, yea, verily a fire breathing volcano of Jeremiads, a condition that permits, indeed encourages the cognitive dissonance required to juggle flexible facts, the result of which always makes truth a casualty, is that you can say the above flapdoodle claptrap hoping and believing that there is no one in your audience who “remembers”.
It is 2011. 20 years ago was 1991.
How many “activist right-wing fanatics” did Bib Bill Clinton “pack” the federal courts with?
“Fairness”, one of those mAL objectives that is best compared to the horizon [no matter how fast you run you will never get there], demands that I tell you that I led a demonstration in 1999 in front of the White House. Wearing my “Vast Right-Wing Conspirator” cap, holding my newly born granddaughter in one arm, I shook my fist and shouted “Come out with your hands up, you son of a bitch, we have the place surrounded”.
Perhaps one of us was kidnapped and held hostage the past two years by the Florida branch of the Somali Pirates. How many “right-wing fanatics” has Lord Barack the Beneficent nominated to any federal court?
Are you telling me that Justice Sotomayor, a self described “wise Latina”, is a “right-wing fanatic”? Are you telling me that she and Justice Kagan worship at the shrine of Darth Cheney or, worse, his evil twin Vlad Cheney?
Do these ladies carry bazookas in their fanny packs? Are they underground members of the Federalist Society? Do they have a secret dance routine in honor of the right to bear arms? Do they have the Rule of Law tattooed where the sun never reaches?
Your call to block judicial appointments through filibuster is yet more proof of the lunacy of the thought processes demanded of mush brained mALs. This President will nominate Judge Roy Bean or Judge Dredd before he nominates a “right-wing fanatic”.
Speaking of filibusters, we have a pop quiz.
What 3 things did Senator Byrd and Justice Black have in common?
#1- They were both champions of the filibuster.
#2 – They were both members of the KuKluxKlan.
#3 – They were both Democrats.
I am positive that Justice Breyer, AKA “right-wing fanatic”, will be overjoyed when he learns that you have “outed” him a staunch supporter of the 9th and 10th Amendments. How did Big Bill slip him past Hillary, the head Hecate?
It is always an inconvenient truth but facts are hard, stubborn things. Permit me to call the roll of “activist right-wing judges”, people who because their asses are wrapped in black, people who have a gavel large enough to command the leaves to stay on the trees, who were Republican nominees.
Chief Justice Warren, Justice Brennan, Justice Blackmun, Justice Stevens, Justice O’Conner, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter.
It is easy to camouflage those nasty “activist right-wing judges”.
Did I miss anyone?
Have someone check your meds. The “white rabbits” are winning.
Kevin Smith
Steven L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd
Ft. Lauderdale FL 33301
RE: Here comes the Judge – Some comments on your column about the inequities of elections, particularly when “they”, those serpents, elect people who vote for “activist right-wing judges”. If only “they” would listen to Guru Goldstein.
My dear Professor,
“For 20 years, they [the Democrats] have let Republicans
pack the federal courts at all levels with
activist right-wing fanatics.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
You
One of the blessings of being a card carrying modern American Liberal, yea, verily a fire breathing volcano of Jeremiads, a condition that permits, indeed encourages the cognitive dissonance required to juggle flexible facts, the result of which always makes truth a casualty, is that you can say the above flapdoodle claptrap hoping and believing that there is no one in your audience who “remembers”.
It is 2011. 20 years ago was 1991.
How many “activist right-wing fanatics” did Bib Bill Clinton “pack” the federal courts with?
“Fairness”, one of those mAL objectives that is best compared to the horizon [no matter how fast you run you will never get there], demands that I tell you that I led a demonstration in 1999 in front of the White House. Wearing my “Vast Right-Wing Conspirator” cap, holding my newly born granddaughter in one arm, I shook my fist and shouted “Come out with your hands up, you son of a bitch, we have the place surrounded”.
Perhaps one of us was kidnapped and held hostage the past two years by the Florida branch of the Somali Pirates. How many “right-wing fanatics” has Lord Barack the Beneficent nominated to any federal court?
Are you telling me that Justice Sotomayor, a self described “wise Latina”, is a “right-wing fanatic”? Are you telling me that she and Justice Kagan worship at the shrine of Darth Cheney or, worse, his evil twin Vlad Cheney?
Do these ladies carry bazookas in their fanny packs? Are they underground members of the Federalist Society? Do they have a secret dance routine in honor of the right to bear arms? Do they have the Rule of Law tattooed where the sun never reaches?
Your call to block judicial appointments through filibuster is yet more proof of the lunacy of the thought processes demanded of mush brained mALs. This President will nominate Judge Roy Bean or Judge Dredd before he nominates a “right-wing fanatic”.
Speaking of filibusters, we have a pop quiz.
What 3 things did Senator Byrd and Justice Black have in common?
#1- They were both champions of the filibuster.
#2 – They were both members of the KuKluxKlan.
#3 – They were both Democrats.
I am positive that Justice Breyer, AKA “right-wing fanatic”, will be overjoyed when he learns that you have “outed” him a staunch supporter of the 9th and 10th Amendments. How did Big Bill slip him past Hillary, the head Hecate?
It is always an inconvenient truth but facts are hard, stubborn things. Permit me to call the roll of “activist right-wing judges”, people who because their asses are wrapped in black, people who have a gavel large enough to command the leaves to stay on the trees, who were Republican nominees.
Chief Justice Warren, Justice Brennan, Justice Blackmun, Justice Stevens, Justice O’Conner, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter.
It is easy to camouflage those nasty “activist right-wing judges”.
Did I miss anyone?
Have someone check your meds. The “white rabbits” are winning.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The Honorable Akramul Qadar
February 5, 2011
The Honorable Akramul Qadar
Embassy of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
3510 International Drive, NW
Washington, DC 20008
RE: Is justice delayed justice denied? God willing.
Mr. Ambassador,
If the news accounts are correct, a 40 year old male raped his 14 year old female cousin in your country. For this crime she – repeat – she was sentenced to 100 lashes, absolutely “well laid on”. After the 80th lash she went into a coma. Despite being attended to by the world famous cat-n-nine tail EMT squad she died.
The opening scene of the 1936 version of “Mutiny on the Bounty” shows an unlucky Jack Tar being “flogged through the fleet”. When he gets to the Bounty he is dead. Captain Bligh orders that the flogging be continued, there being nothing in the orders saying to stop because he is dead.
Many people in my country are confused by the differences between the Sunni and the Shia. Many people in my country are bewildered by fatwas. Many people in my country think it passing strange for someone to shout “Allah Akbar” before blowing himself up and killing as many others as he can to advance his religion. Many people in my country are amazed when cartoons cause people to be filleted like fish. Many people in my country wonder why your religious army had raped and pillaged its way halfway across Europe less than 100 years after Mohammed died. Many people in my country wonder if Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven would have been allowed to write their music had the Islamist thugs prevailed at Vienna in 1685. Many people in my country wonder why your religion has been sterile for 1000 years. Many people in my country want to know why, in this day and age, your religion countenances slavery.
I humbly suggest that you do not have the dead 14 year old girl disinterred to complete her punishment. Since she is going to be dead for a very long time does she really need 20 more lashes?
I would say that not whipping her post mortem would be a sign of Christian charity but that might be taken as sign of incivility. Mecca delenda est!
Kevin Smith
The Honorable Akramul Qadar
Embassy of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
3510 International Drive, NW
Washington, DC 20008
RE: Is justice delayed justice denied? God willing.
Mr. Ambassador,
If the news accounts are correct, a 40 year old male raped his 14 year old female cousin in your country. For this crime she – repeat – she was sentenced to 100 lashes, absolutely “well laid on”. After the 80th lash she went into a coma. Despite being attended to by the world famous cat-n-nine tail EMT squad she died.
The opening scene of the 1936 version of “Mutiny on the Bounty” shows an unlucky Jack Tar being “flogged through the fleet”. When he gets to the Bounty he is dead. Captain Bligh orders that the flogging be continued, there being nothing in the orders saying to stop because he is dead.
Many people in my country are confused by the differences between the Sunni and the Shia. Many people in my country are bewildered by fatwas. Many people in my country think it passing strange for someone to shout “Allah Akbar” before blowing himself up and killing as many others as he can to advance his religion. Many people in my country are amazed when cartoons cause people to be filleted like fish. Many people in my country wonder why your religious army had raped and pillaged its way halfway across Europe less than 100 years after Mohammed died. Many people in my country wonder if Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven would have been allowed to write their music had the Islamist thugs prevailed at Vienna in 1685. Many people in my country wonder why your religion has been sterile for 1000 years. Many people in my country want to know why, in this day and age, your religion countenances slavery.
I humbly suggest that you do not have the dead 14 year old girl disinterred to complete her punishment. Since she is going to be dead for a very long time does she really need 20 more lashes?
I would say that not whipping her post mortem would be a sign of Christian charity but that might be taken as sign of incivility. Mecca delenda est!
Kevin Smith
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Senator Nan Rich
February 3, 2011
Senator Nan Rich
777 Sawgrass Corporate Parkway
Sunrise, FL 33325-6256
RE: Promises, Politics, and Pensions – Some comments on your astonishing statement on the parameters of public policy as recorded in the Sun-Sentinel
Senator Rich,
“I understand that we need to do some reform, but a pension is a promise,”
said Senate minority leader Nan Rich. “Maybe the pension wasn’t well thought
out along the way, but it is a promise to people who have worked long and
hard and who have not gotten raises on a regular basis from the state.”
So seldom does as true-blue, card-carrying modern American Liberal pol, particularly one from Broward County, slip up and speak the truth that I was taken aback. I was actually plussed.
I can dispose of the “promise” part post-haste.
A lot of little old ladies, many of whom are widows who are single moms, believed the “promises” made by General Motors and Chrysler. Many of them took their widows’ mite and lent money to those two companies. In return, the companies”promised” to pay them interest on the principal. Further, the companies “promised” to pay them back all the money lent to them. They wrote this down in the form of an instrument of indenture commonly known as a bond.
Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be His name said, “Even though I am a constitutional scholar and the statute [Article 1, Section 10] and the case law [Fletcher v Peck, Dartmouth v Woodward, inter alia] are well known to me I have decided that these contracts are only binding at parties. Not all parties but, rather, only at those parties that I decide to be “good” parties. Thus, the “promise” made by Florida to its workers is hereby rendered null and void. If you don’t like it…too bad. If you complain I’ll send my Brown Shirts – this year the thugs wear purple supplied to them by the fun loving SEIU – to explain the new paradigmatic template to you.”
The first time the government, any government, acquiesces in breaking a”promise” makes breaking the next one easier.
I am reminded of the scene in “A Man for all Seasons” where Thomas More says, “And after you have cut down all the laws to get at the Devil, and he turns on you, were would you hide, the laws all being flat?” Alas, although it was timeless it is not timely.
It is a characteristic common to all modern American Liberals that the Constitution is looked on as big Chinese menu. Pick this one but not that one. Ignore the broccoli and feast on the Crème Brule. After all, it is a living, breathing document, isn’t it? Besides, the people who wrote it were all White males, weren’t they?
As to absence of raises after working “long and hard” there are several solutions.
Lenin, the noted European community activist, said “People vote with their feet”. If the workers feel that they are overworked and underpaid they can, and here’s a new idea, quit. Slavery and indentured servants have long been outlawed in this country. Although Czars and their attendant ukases are becoming popular serfdom never took hold here.
Move on. Start a business. Help Haiti. Fight teenage obesity. Try to improve your condition. Try to teach les merdes de Quebec some manners. One of my favorite Texas saloon songs is “There’s a $5 Fine for Whining”. Cast off your chains!
As to working “hard” I think it is fundamentally unfair that I will not be playing Sunday’s Super Bowl. I can play as “hard” as any of them. Just because I can’t play as well should be no impediment to my suiting up. That’s “fair”, isn’t it? As victim of life’s circumstances I think some provision should be made for old, slow White guys.
On the other hand, a place where you usually find the other glove, a lot of football players say they would play for free. Do you know anybody in the Affirmative Action Outreach Program or the much maligned, under appreciated Department of Motor Vehicles who would work for free?
Neither do I.
Kevin Smith
Senator Nan Rich
777 Sawgrass Corporate Parkway
Sunrise, FL 33325-6256
RE: Promises, Politics, and Pensions – Some comments on your astonishing statement on the parameters of public policy as recorded in the Sun-Sentinel
Senator Rich,
“I understand that we need to do some reform, but a pension is a promise,”
said Senate minority leader Nan Rich. “Maybe the pension wasn’t well thought
out along the way, but it is a promise to people who have worked long and
hard and who have not gotten raises on a regular basis from the state.”
So seldom does as true-blue, card-carrying modern American Liberal pol, particularly one from Broward County, slip up and speak the truth that I was taken aback. I was actually plussed.
I can dispose of the “promise” part post-haste.
A lot of little old ladies, many of whom are widows who are single moms, believed the “promises” made by General Motors and Chrysler. Many of them took their widows’ mite and lent money to those two companies. In return, the companies”promised” to pay them interest on the principal. Further, the companies “promised” to pay them back all the money lent to them. They wrote this down in the form of an instrument of indenture commonly known as a bond.
Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be His name said, “Even though I am a constitutional scholar and the statute [Article 1, Section 10] and the case law [Fletcher v Peck, Dartmouth v Woodward, inter alia] are well known to me I have decided that these contracts are only binding at parties. Not all parties but, rather, only at those parties that I decide to be “good” parties. Thus, the “promise” made by Florida to its workers is hereby rendered null and void. If you don’t like it…too bad. If you complain I’ll send my Brown Shirts – this year the thugs wear purple supplied to them by the fun loving SEIU – to explain the new paradigmatic template to you.”
The first time the government, any government, acquiesces in breaking a”promise” makes breaking the next one easier.
I am reminded of the scene in “A Man for all Seasons” where Thomas More says, “And after you have cut down all the laws to get at the Devil, and he turns on you, were would you hide, the laws all being flat?” Alas, although it was timeless it is not timely.
It is a characteristic common to all modern American Liberals that the Constitution is looked on as big Chinese menu. Pick this one but not that one. Ignore the broccoli and feast on the Crème Brule. After all, it is a living, breathing document, isn’t it? Besides, the people who wrote it were all White males, weren’t they?
As to absence of raises after working “long and hard” there are several solutions.
Lenin, the noted European community activist, said “People vote with their feet”. If the workers feel that they are overworked and underpaid they can, and here’s a new idea, quit. Slavery and indentured servants have long been outlawed in this country. Although Czars and their attendant ukases are becoming popular serfdom never took hold here.
Move on. Start a business. Help Haiti. Fight teenage obesity. Try to improve your condition. Try to teach les merdes de Quebec some manners. One of my favorite Texas saloon songs is “There’s a $5 Fine for Whining”. Cast off your chains!
As to working “hard” I think it is fundamentally unfair that I will not be playing Sunday’s Super Bowl. I can play as “hard” as any of them. Just because I can’t play as well should be no impediment to my suiting up. That’s “fair”, isn’t it? As victim of life’s circumstances I think some provision should be made for old, slow White guys.
On the other hand, a place where you usually find the other glove, a lot of football players say they would play for free. Do you know anybody in the Affirmative Action Outreach Program or the much maligned, under appreciated Department of Motor Vehicles who would work for free?
Neither do I.
Kevin Smith
Joy-Ann Reid The Miami Herald
February 3, 2011
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Experiments in Democracy” – What the world looks like when your telescope is perched on Pluto
Ms. Reid,
I looooove movie lines. Don’t you?
I put up 2 pictures of you in my man cave. That way I can stand in the middle and say “Morons! I’m surrounded by morons!”
My wife made me take them down. She said they were scaring the cat.
First, a style point.
The New Yorker used to send up a warning flare whenever they saw one dripping with wretched excess.
BLOCK THAT METAPHOR!
“Vouchers, apparently, are the feathers in the pillow of Democracy.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
If we parse that a bit some problems appear.
If the feathers are from geese or ducks then we have a PETA problem. I am sure you’re aware that most down feathers come from China. How is that “experiment in democracy” working out? It was passing strange that Lord Barack, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from 2 years ago hosted Uncle Wong, his Chinese banker, at a big White House dinner. Meanwhile last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner is locked up in China. The rumor that he is being forced to eat Jewish food can’t be confirmed.
If the feathers are polyester the carbon footprint problem is Herculean. Petro chemicals, fossil fuels, pollution in the Gulf, green house gases, drowning polar bears. How easy is it to connect the dots?
There are no easy answers for modern American Liberals. Try substituting a cinder block for a pillow. Your neck will hurt but you’ll feel really good about yourself. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it.
My suggestion is that you keep a large blue marker handy. Surely someone at the Herald remembers grammar and composition. Find him. Give him carte-blanche.
You congratulate Egypt “on their pending democracy”. I saw a man on a camel shouting Hi Ho Silver while he whipped the peasants. The main whipper looked like Omar Sharif, coincidentally, an Egyptian. Could T.E. Lawrence, one the 20th century’s great whippees, be far behind?
Speaking of “democracy” will Egypt use the hugely successful paradigmatic template created by Zimbabwe? It may be time to bring back the wonders worked by Idi Amin in Uganda. I can see a reprise of the Tutsi-Hutu dustup as a reality show shot by the Aswan Dam. It would be a marvelous tourist attraction.
You mention slavery and the failure of the Founding Fathers to end it in 1787. By 1865 there were graves holding the remains of more than 600,000 Americans. Thus was the Dred Scott decision overturned.
Speaking of slavery, would think me a cad or a bounder if I were to point out that at least 5 African countries – Nigeria, Sudan, Mali, Chad, and Mauretania – acquiesce in allowing slavery to flourish in their countries. Would it be impolitic of me to ask how did all those people get from the middle of Africa to the coast? Is it possible that Whites weren’t the only ones to profit from this “peculiar institution”?
As far as I can tell the only White people in those countries are the bag men from the UN bringing sacks of swag to the Big Boss Man du jour.
Your column has so many gems I will have to place a daily limit on myself.
You say that the “American right wing…favors the election of Egypt’s right wing”. Does that mean that Egypt’s left wing only allows fingers to be amputated rather than hands? How about flogging women who are “too quick to blush”? Does the left wing favor sensitivity training for Fatimas who step out on cuckolded Farouks, the alternative being stoning?
You say that the irenic Egyptians “achieved regime change without being invaded by the United States or Great Britain”.
It’s not that you are wrong. As the great Reagan used to say, “There is just so much that you don’t know”
Clio, the guardian of History, can be a cruel mistress. It may be an inconvenient truth but if you had to be “invaded” your best hope would be to have Great Britain do it. Those “invaded” countries – America, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – are success stories without equal in the world.
It is owed to the ledger that we include Germany and Japan as countries that were “invaded” by the United States and Great Britain. Are you saying that we shouldn’t have done so?
On the question of democracy, however it is defined, shall we list the democracies in Africa? How many countries have had one man, one vote, one time? When was the last time Qadafi stood for election? How about Omar Bongo? Why should Egypt be different? Absent the collective memory of the agora, of the Roman Senate, of Runnymede, of 1688, of 1776 and 1787, of the Rule of Law, of the peaceful transfer of power after an election, of the unfettered transfer of property guaranteed by the government, of the codification of Natural Law, “gifts from beyond the stars” that are ours at birth and are not given to us by any government, in a written document why should Egypt be different?
Speaking of Egypt, do you know where and how WOG came about?
Meanwhile, after I finish my morning reading of the Federalist Papers, I must clean my BAR.
You can’t be too prepared for the upcoming voucher campaign.
Kevin Smith
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Experiments in Democracy” – What the world looks like when your telescope is perched on Pluto
Ms. Reid,
I looooove movie lines. Don’t you?
I put up 2 pictures of you in my man cave. That way I can stand in the middle and say “Morons! I’m surrounded by morons!”
My wife made me take them down. She said they were scaring the cat.
First, a style point.
The New Yorker used to send up a warning flare whenever they saw one dripping with wretched excess.
BLOCK THAT METAPHOR!
“Vouchers, apparently, are the feathers in the pillow of Democracy.”
The Miami Herald
Today
You
If we parse that a bit some problems appear.
If the feathers are from geese or ducks then we have a PETA problem. I am sure you’re aware that most down feathers come from China. How is that “experiment in democracy” working out? It was passing strange that Lord Barack, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from 2 years ago hosted Uncle Wong, his Chinese banker, at a big White House dinner. Meanwhile last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner is locked up in China. The rumor that he is being forced to eat Jewish food can’t be confirmed.
If the feathers are polyester the carbon footprint problem is Herculean. Petro chemicals, fossil fuels, pollution in the Gulf, green house gases, drowning polar bears. How easy is it to connect the dots?
There are no easy answers for modern American Liberals. Try substituting a cinder block for a pillow. Your neck will hurt but you’ll feel really good about yourself. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it.
My suggestion is that you keep a large blue marker handy. Surely someone at the Herald remembers grammar and composition. Find him. Give him carte-blanche.
You congratulate Egypt “on their pending democracy”. I saw a man on a camel shouting Hi Ho Silver while he whipped the peasants. The main whipper looked like Omar Sharif, coincidentally, an Egyptian. Could T.E. Lawrence, one the 20th century’s great whippees, be far behind?
Speaking of “democracy” will Egypt use the hugely successful paradigmatic template created by Zimbabwe? It may be time to bring back the wonders worked by Idi Amin in Uganda. I can see a reprise of the Tutsi-Hutu dustup as a reality show shot by the Aswan Dam. It would be a marvelous tourist attraction.
You mention slavery and the failure of the Founding Fathers to end it in 1787. By 1865 there were graves holding the remains of more than 600,000 Americans. Thus was the Dred Scott decision overturned.
Speaking of slavery, would think me a cad or a bounder if I were to point out that at least 5 African countries – Nigeria, Sudan, Mali, Chad, and Mauretania – acquiesce in allowing slavery to flourish in their countries. Would it be impolitic of me to ask how did all those people get from the middle of Africa to the coast? Is it possible that Whites weren’t the only ones to profit from this “peculiar institution”?
As far as I can tell the only White people in those countries are the bag men from the UN bringing sacks of swag to the Big Boss Man du jour.
Your column has so many gems I will have to place a daily limit on myself.
You say that the “American right wing…favors the election of Egypt’s right wing”. Does that mean that Egypt’s left wing only allows fingers to be amputated rather than hands? How about flogging women who are “too quick to blush”? Does the left wing favor sensitivity training for Fatimas who step out on cuckolded Farouks, the alternative being stoning?
You say that the irenic Egyptians “achieved regime change without being invaded by the United States or Great Britain”.
It’s not that you are wrong. As the great Reagan used to say, “There is just so much that you don’t know”
Clio, the guardian of History, can be a cruel mistress. It may be an inconvenient truth but if you had to be “invaded” your best hope would be to have Great Britain do it. Those “invaded” countries – America, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – are success stories without equal in the world.
It is owed to the ledger that we include Germany and Japan as countries that were “invaded” by the United States and Great Britain. Are you saying that we shouldn’t have done so?
On the question of democracy, however it is defined, shall we list the democracies in Africa? How many countries have had one man, one vote, one time? When was the last time Qadafi stood for election? How about Omar Bongo? Why should Egypt be different? Absent the collective memory of the agora, of the Roman Senate, of Runnymede, of 1688, of 1776 and 1787, of the Rule of Law, of the peaceful transfer of power after an election, of the unfettered transfer of property guaranteed by the government, of the codification of Natural Law, “gifts from beyond the stars” that are ours at birth and are not given to us by any government, in a written document why should Egypt be different?
Speaking of Egypt, do you know where and how WOG came about?
Meanwhile, after I finish my morning reading of the Federalist Papers, I must clean my BAR.
You can’t be too prepared for the upcoming voucher campaign.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts, Jr. The Miami Herald
February 2, 2011
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Losing the Intelligence Race” – Your column in today’s Miami Herald about how “Trousered Apes” seem to be ascendant and why it is my duty to point out – how to say it gracefully? – some fallacies in your presentation.
Mr. Pitts,
Do you remember when the sun revolved around the earth?
Do you remember when tomatoes were thought to be poisonous?
Do you remember when the edge of maps said “Terra Incognita”?
Do you remember all the journalistic brouhaha about Global Cooling? [Actually there were two of them. The first was in the early 1920s. The big one, the one perpetuated by that fraud Paul Ehrlich was in 1970. He was/is/shall be to science what Bernie Madoff was to investing. You’ll doubtless be surprised to know that, both times, The New York Times was the most prominent drum beater for the “we will all freeze to death school” of reasoned discourse]
Experts agree that when a scientific claim begins with “Experts agree” it would be prudent to bet the other side.
My father was born before man flew. He lived to see men walking on the moon, picking up some souvenirs, and flying home. That didn’t come about because everyone agreed on everything. It came about because many men didn’t agree. It came about because someone said “What if” or “I don’t believe that” or “I’ll try this” or, best of all, “What do you mean I can’t do that?”
Incidentally, I know why Oedipus went to Colonus. I know the difference between Chiaroscuro and Caravaggio. I know what Hamlet meant when he told Ophelia to “get thee to a nunnery”. I know a lot about the 5 Emperors. I am conversant with the Burke/Fox debates, the Webster/Calhoun debates, and the Lincoln/Douglas debates. I still read the works written by people who had Pound as an editor. Although I have never seen “The Jersey Shore” I looove the Jersey Shore. If you live north of the Raritan River you don’t go “to the Jersey Shore”. You go “down the Jersey Shore”.
Don’t you think that “The Jersey Shore” with its Guidos and Guidettes is the poor White trash equivalent of feral urban Black youths screaming incomprehensible lyrics about “hos” and “pigs”?
And I know of no other theory, said theory being more than 150 years old that is treated as it came fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. Of course, I speak of evolution. I have a particular animus against evolution as posited by the followers of Darwin. I would prefer to be descended from bears as opposed to apes.
The facts, at least the ones that I believe in and until proved otherwise, would support that interpretation. Wasn’t that last sentence a pistol? For last 12 years the “Don’t vaccinate your children because they’ll get Autism” school of Lud/Lysenko used it.
As to the teaching of “creationism” – wink, wink – I am reminded of the eminently qualified scholar who couldn’t get a teaching job. After two futile years he finally gets an interview. When asked his opinion on whether the world is round or flat he says he is open minded on the question but is prepared to teach it either way.
The New York State Regents 11th year American History exam in 1989 was partially predicated on a newly discovered “fact”. Claims were made that the 5 Nations influenced the writing of the American Constitution. I did some pre-Google investigation. I could find no evidence of any meeting of Madison, Magua, and Mason. Since the Mohawk culture is light on the written word I know that there was no communication. Further, there is no contemporaneous record of any rain dances. I mention that because it was a brutally hot and humid summer in Philadelphia in 1787. In a quest for a surcease of that century’s Global Warming moment – Wait a minute! There were no internal combustion engines. There could be no carbon footprints. The only carbon dioxide was from photosynthesis and respiration. Where the Hell did that come from? - delegates would have gladly invoked any handy deity. Had I been an exam taker then I would have said that the document was dedicated to Manitou. Further, my essay would tell of vengeful White men excising the part specifically permitting scalping.
My original Sputnik moment was when – Surprise! – Sputnik was launched. It took about 3 days, Sputnik being launched on a Friday, for the chorus of Jeremiads to begin bewailing the lack of math skills, the lack of engineering skills, the lack of chemical skills, and the lack of a national purpose to overcome same. 12 years later, before the onset of micro-processors, before the age of calculators not requiring wheels to move them let alone personal computers, this country bitch slapped gravity, went to the moon, walked around, picked up some tsatchkes, and came home.
If there are bad biology teachers fire them.
Don’t blame Snookie and Nunzio.
Kevin Smith
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Losing the Intelligence Race” – Your column in today’s Miami Herald about how “Trousered Apes” seem to be ascendant and why it is my duty to point out – how to say it gracefully? – some fallacies in your presentation.
Mr. Pitts,
Do you remember when the sun revolved around the earth?
Do you remember when tomatoes were thought to be poisonous?
Do you remember when the edge of maps said “Terra Incognita”?
Do you remember all the journalistic brouhaha about Global Cooling? [Actually there were two of them. The first was in the early 1920s. The big one, the one perpetuated by that fraud Paul Ehrlich was in 1970. He was/is/shall be to science what Bernie Madoff was to investing. You’ll doubtless be surprised to know that, both times, The New York Times was the most prominent drum beater for the “we will all freeze to death school” of reasoned discourse]
Experts agree that when a scientific claim begins with “Experts agree” it would be prudent to bet the other side.
My father was born before man flew. He lived to see men walking on the moon, picking up some souvenirs, and flying home. That didn’t come about because everyone agreed on everything. It came about because many men didn’t agree. It came about because someone said “What if” or “I don’t believe that” or “I’ll try this” or, best of all, “What do you mean I can’t do that?”
Incidentally, I know why Oedipus went to Colonus. I know the difference between Chiaroscuro and Caravaggio. I know what Hamlet meant when he told Ophelia to “get thee to a nunnery”. I know a lot about the 5 Emperors. I am conversant with the Burke/Fox debates, the Webster/Calhoun debates, and the Lincoln/Douglas debates. I still read the works written by people who had Pound as an editor. Although I have never seen “The Jersey Shore” I looove the Jersey Shore. If you live north of the Raritan River you don’t go “to the Jersey Shore”. You go “down the Jersey Shore”.
Don’t you think that “The Jersey Shore” with its Guidos and Guidettes is the poor White trash equivalent of feral urban Black youths screaming incomprehensible lyrics about “hos” and “pigs”?
And I know of no other theory, said theory being more than 150 years old that is treated as it came fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. Of course, I speak of evolution. I have a particular animus against evolution as posited by the followers of Darwin. I would prefer to be descended from bears as opposed to apes.
The facts, at least the ones that I believe in and until proved otherwise, would support that interpretation. Wasn’t that last sentence a pistol? For last 12 years the “Don’t vaccinate your children because they’ll get Autism” school of Lud/Lysenko used it.
As to the teaching of “creationism” – wink, wink – I am reminded of the eminently qualified scholar who couldn’t get a teaching job. After two futile years he finally gets an interview. When asked his opinion on whether the world is round or flat he says he is open minded on the question but is prepared to teach it either way.
The New York State Regents 11th year American History exam in 1989 was partially predicated on a newly discovered “fact”. Claims were made that the 5 Nations influenced the writing of the American Constitution. I did some pre-Google investigation. I could find no evidence of any meeting of Madison, Magua, and Mason. Since the Mohawk culture is light on the written word I know that there was no communication. Further, there is no contemporaneous record of any rain dances. I mention that because it was a brutally hot and humid summer in Philadelphia in 1787. In a quest for a surcease of that century’s Global Warming moment – Wait a minute! There were no internal combustion engines. There could be no carbon footprints. The only carbon dioxide was from photosynthesis and respiration. Where the Hell did that come from? - delegates would have gladly invoked any handy deity. Had I been an exam taker then I would have said that the document was dedicated to Manitou. Further, my essay would tell of vengeful White men excising the part specifically permitting scalping.
My original Sputnik moment was when – Surprise! – Sputnik was launched. It took about 3 days, Sputnik being launched on a Friday, for the chorus of Jeremiads to begin bewailing the lack of math skills, the lack of engineering skills, the lack of chemical skills, and the lack of a national purpose to overcome same. 12 years later, before the onset of micro-processors, before the age of calculators not requiring wheels to move them let alone personal computers, this country bitch slapped gravity, went to the moon, walked around, picked up some tsatchkes, and came home.
If there are bad biology teachers fire them.
Don’t blame Snookie and Nunzio.
Kevin Smith
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Michael Mayo The Sun-Sentinel
January 30, 2011
Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: All those deaths - Some comments about your column about the deaths caused by guns – legal or not – in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Mayo,
Any chance I get to cite the second greatest quote from Mayor Marion Barry – the first being “The bitch set me up” – I jump on.
“Except for the murder rate Washington is a very safe city.”
He said it. Honest. As another Queens resident, the Old Perfessor, used to say, “You could look it up”.
Having been up close and personal in a gun fight, having seen the damage a large caliber bullet can do, having testified against the killer in a first degree murder trial I know the immediate and lasting long term effects of guns.
I am told that there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics.
I saw an infant die from malaria. Its stomach was so distended that its gender was not easily determined. The thermometer only went to 106. I don’t what its temperature was when he died.
Malaria [literally bad air] is easily controlled. DDT kills the mosquito larvae before they become Cruise Missiles. In 1971, in a fit of affluent White people wanting to feel warm and fuzzy, this country banned the manufacture of DDT. This was primarily in response to the phony science posited by one of the 20th century’s biggest frauds, Rachel Carson. Her book, “Silent Spring”, along with the successful opposition to Storm King, set this country on a path of pseudo-science and intellectual quackery unmatched since the world was flat, alchemists ruled, and tomatoes were poison.
It was bad enough that we banned its manufacture here but we banned its overseas licensing manufacturing by prohibiting its foreign licensing. Global Cooling became Global Warming which became Climate Change. Swamps made glorious, furbish louse worts and snail darters becoming God-like, manatee suffrage and benefits for drowning polar bears – the world is turned upside down. Where facts, truths that are always inconvenient, are not allowed to interfere or even intrude on an argument the end result is always the same.
People die.
2,000,000 [that’s 2 million] sub-Saharan Black African babies die each year from malaria.
Notwithstanding the caterwauling of buffoons masquerading as celebrities, rock stars and movie stars who couldn’t find their ass using both hands while standing in a shower, bed nets don’t work. The academics who command the tides to turn should be flogged. They are murderers just as much as a kid with a Saturday night special and Stop and Shop target of opportunity.
DDT works. There is no proof that Peregrine falcons are diminished in their capacity to gorge themselves on peripatetic Budgies. How many Black African babies have to die before cries of “Genocide” fill the land? The only Logical conclusion is, that in keeping with a basic tenet of modern American Liberalism of collective guilt, it is proof positive of negligent homicide.
Speaking of killing, this country has permitted some 57,000,000 [that’s 57 million] abortion in the past 38 years.
Since no political act can be free of the broad brush of racism, intended or not, what do you make of the fact that 6% of the population has been responsible for more than 17,000,000 [that’s 17 million] of them? African-Americans make up 12% of our population. Since we are not yet China I can say that half of them are women. Res ipso loquitur.
All things being equal – which they never are – I would rather be a White guy in Broward County, gun toting or not, that an African-American in utero or a new born baby on the Equator.
I’ll save the deaths caused by automobile and by salt for a later time.
Mrs. Obama’s time will be well spent if she saves us from the ravages of sodium.
Kevin Smith
Michael Mayo
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: All those deaths - Some comments about your column about the deaths caused by guns – legal or not – in this morning’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Mayo,
Any chance I get to cite the second greatest quote from Mayor Marion Barry – the first being “The bitch set me up” – I jump on.
“Except for the murder rate Washington is a very safe city.”
He said it. Honest. As another Queens resident, the Old Perfessor, used to say, “You could look it up”.
Having been up close and personal in a gun fight, having seen the damage a large caliber bullet can do, having testified against the killer in a first degree murder trial I know the immediate and lasting long term effects of guns.
I am told that there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics.
I saw an infant die from malaria. Its stomach was so distended that its gender was not easily determined. The thermometer only went to 106. I don’t what its temperature was when he died.
Malaria [literally bad air] is easily controlled. DDT kills the mosquito larvae before they become Cruise Missiles. In 1971, in a fit of affluent White people wanting to feel warm and fuzzy, this country banned the manufacture of DDT. This was primarily in response to the phony science posited by one of the 20th century’s biggest frauds, Rachel Carson. Her book, “Silent Spring”, along with the successful opposition to Storm King, set this country on a path of pseudo-science and intellectual quackery unmatched since the world was flat, alchemists ruled, and tomatoes were poison.
It was bad enough that we banned its manufacture here but we banned its overseas licensing manufacturing by prohibiting its foreign licensing. Global Cooling became Global Warming which became Climate Change. Swamps made glorious, furbish louse worts and snail darters becoming God-like, manatee suffrage and benefits for drowning polar bears – the world is turned upside down. Where facts, truths that are always inconvenient, are not allowed to interfere or even intrude on an argument the end result is always the same.
People die.
2,000,000 [that’s 2 million] sub-Saharan Black African babies die each year from malaria.
Notwithstanding the caterwauling of buffoons masquerading as celebrities, rock stars and movie stars who couldn’t find their ass using both hands while standing in a shower, bed nets don’t work. The academics who command the tides to turn should be flogged. They are murderers just as much as a kid with a Saturday night special and Stop and Shop target of opportunity.
DDT works. There is no proof that Peregrine falcons are diminished in their capacity to gorge themselves on peripatetic Budgies. How many Black African babies have to die before cries of “Genocide” fill the land? The only Logical conclusion is, that in keeping with a basic tenet of modern American Liberalism of collective guilt, it is proof positive of negligent homicide.
Speaking of killing, this country has permitted some 57,000,000 [that’s 57 million] abortion in the past 38 years.
Since no political act can be free of the broad brush of racism, intended or not, what do you make of the fact that 6% of the population has been responsible for more than 17,000,000 [that’s 17 million] of them? African-Americans make up 12% of our population. Since we are not yet China I can say that half of them are women. Res ipso loquitur.
All things being equal – which they never are – I would rather be a White guy in Broward County, gun toting or not, that an African-American in utero or a new born baby on the Equator.
I’ll save the deaths caused by automobile and by salt for a later time.
Mrs. Obama’s time will be well spent if she saves us from the ravages of sodium.
Kevin Smith
James H. Burnett, 111 The Miami Herald
January 30, 2011
James H. Burnett, 111
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “America’s Battle Scars” – A comment, or three, on your article in this morning’s Miami Herald about the American Civil War.
Mr. Burnett,
My father’s father had 2 uncles who fought at Gettysburg. One of them is still there “wrapped in his faded coat of Blue”.
July 2, 1863. The Irish Brigade. The Wheat Field. Perhaps “Garryowen” was being played. Two stepped off; one died. I hope it was “quick and clean”.
Usually a Civil War article mentions, however tangentially, the question of reparations for slavery. I mention this because I feel that I would be entitled to a carry forward tax credit to offset any tax liability for something I did not do. That this benefit would be earned for something I also didn’t do is irrelevant. Ah, but the fortunes of war are strange indeed. Should I find myself in truly reduced circumstances do you think I would be able to sell it to someone with a larger tax liability? A likely prospect would be the Secretary of the Treasury, don’t you think?
I also believe that no mention of the Civil War should be made without mentioning General Sherman.
Simply put, he shortened the war by at least 18 months. That he freed the slaves more quickly and saved countless lives on both sides there can be no doubt. Not bad for a man who called himself “crazy”.
He did this by bringing the war and all its attendant horrors to South Carolina, the place where the war began. They, borrowing a page from those “sunshine soldiers” of Massachusetts and their post Bunker Hill military participation in the American Revolution, sat out all but one month of it.
Despite the Democratic Party and the New York Times’ implicit endorsement of slavery by their demands for a negotiated settlement with the South what Sherman did was worth a year of Emancipation Proclamations and never ending productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
His decision to “make them howl” was our first successful “surge”. It has since worked for Pershing. Patton, and Petraeus.
Perhaps it’s a case of “Homer nods” or, in a burst of multi-culturalism, “Only Allah can weave a perfect rug” but what the Hell did you mean when you said “the North’s motivation is not as manganous as previously thought”?
My dog-eared Webster’s suggests a meaning as far from a war as possible.
Is it time to dig up Granny’s Confederate currency?
Kevin Smith
James H. Burnett, 111
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “America’s Battle Scars” – A comment, or three, on your article in this morning’s Miami Herald about the American Civil War.
Mr. Burnett,
My father’s father had 2 uncles who fought at Gettysburg. One of them is still there “wrapped in his faded coat of Blue”.
July 2, 1863. The Irish Brigade. The Wheat Field. Perhaps “Garryowen” was being played. Two stepped off; one died. I hope it was “quick and clean”.
Usually a Civil War article mentions, however tangentially, the question of reparations for slavery. I mention this because I feel that I would be entitled to a carry forward tax credit to offset any tax liability for something I did not do. That this benefit would be earned for something I also didn’t do is irrelevant. Ah, but the fortunes of war are strange indeed. Should I find myself in truly reduced circumstances do you think I would be able to sell it to someone with a larger tax liability? A likely prospect would be the Secretary of the Treasury, don’t you think?
I also believe that no mention of the Civil War should be made without mentioning General Sherman.
Simply put, he shortened the war by at least 18 months. That he freed the slaves more quickly and saved countless lives on both sides there can be no doubt. Not bad for a man who called himself “crazy”.
He did this by bringing the war and all its attendant horrors to South Carolina, the place where the war began. They, borrowing a page from those “sunshine soldiers” of Massachusetts and their post Bunker Hill military participation in the American Revolution, sat out all but one month of it.
Despite the Democratic Party and the New York Times’ implicit endorsement of slavery by their demands for a negotiated settlement with the South what Sherman did was worth a year of Emancipation Proclamations and never ending productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
His decision to “make them howl” was our first successful “surge”. It has since worked for Pershing. Patton, and Petraeus.
Perhaps it’s a case of “Homer nods” or, in a burst of multi-culturalism, “Only Allah can weave a perfect rug” but what the Hell did you mean when you said “the North’s motivation is not as manganous as previously thought”?
My dog-eared Webster’s suggests a meaning as far from a war as possible.
Is it time to dig up Granny’s Confederate currency?
Kevin Smith
Thoughts on Nancy Pelosi
January 28, 2011
It used to be good to be the Queen
“Are you serious? Are you serious?”
She was 7 League Boots past a steroid fueled Banshee as she bellowed into the intercom. She was using her patented Congressional opening line, a line that was used whenever a racist, homophobic, snake handling, gun nut rat Republican bastard asked her about something called the “enumerated powers’ part of the Constitution. She said she didn’t care if this would be the second emergency landing on her way back to the Elysian Fields of San Francisco.
“I know we stopped at St. Louis for ice.” She had no choice; she had guests. Why should they suffer because a half-assed Air Force wingwiper had gone past SNAFU and into FUBAR territory by forgetting to plug in the ice machine? Somebody would be flogged for that.
This was “personal”, she told the pilot. The pilot, a double crossgendered one time woman of color who was a single mom, responding to both Major and Majorette thereby making “cognitive dissonance” something to be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, also was told by the Lucrezia wanabee in the back not to forget who got her/him/her/it the Goddamn job.
“Stop at Denver. My Botoxed brow just dropped. My nose is where my neck was this morning. My mouth is by my sternum. If this keeps up I’ll have to sit down to pee. It’s like riding a horse, isn’t it? You never forget, right? Do I sit side saddle?”
San Fran Nan, the peoples’ pal, the voice of America’s “wretched of the earth”, the implacable foe of privilege, of pomp, averaged a trip every 7 days from Washington to her estates by the Bay. Forget about the Friendly Skies. No fretting over baggage fees. Don’t worry about TSA dudes grabbing anybody’s Yoo-Hah. Skip the crap about seat belts. Those planes you see on either side of the plane are F-15s. Welcome to Air Pelosi!
Compliments of the United States Air Force.
She traveled well. No MREs for her. No sandwiches from the Stop & Shop. No microwaved mac and cheese for her. “The wish of the Princess has the force of law” was never truer then when her request for dark chocolate covered strawberries was filled while her plane was in the air. Only 2 commandos were lost during the transfer. The after action report thought it was s small price to pay to keep her happy. Oprah’s decorator did the interior with the tab being picked up as a “shovel ready” out reach program.
She had enough whiskey on her pastel colored C5-A to drown a platoon of Charley Sheens. All top shelf save for the E&J Brandy. [I think her husband Benito has a second mortgage on the operation.]
Live entertainment featuring the Village People, the Dance Theater of Harlem. Aida, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the College of Cardinals, the Great Wall of China, Old Faithful, Stonehenge, and the entire cast of “West Wing” tap dancing to “Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow”, was the norm.
“Angels in America”, because of its length, required the pilot to circle Gitmo 4 times just above stall speed before he headed west. The costs for it and “The Vagina Monologues” matinees were picked up by the NEA and the NEH.
Barbecue, both beef and pork with vegan on request. Tofu, mung, and ca-ca had to be requested pre-flight. Live salmon with onboard bears chasing them. Wor shiu op. Nick’s Bayonne Italian Ice served by Nick of Bayonne with Big Red providing running commentary. Zabaglione and tiramisu for the more formal Eyeties on the plane.
Her husband, Benito the Beneficent, a man whose ass was meant to be wrapped in purple, would present himself so the guests could touch his robe. Nothing has been confirmed but 2 sets of crutches, one oxygen tank, and one wheel chair are still unclaimed in the baggage area.
God damn that election!
She’s come a long way from the days of stuffed white envelopes in the parking lot at the Baltimore City Hall.
The people have spoken.
“Those rotten rat bastards.”
KS
It used to be good to be the Queen
“Are you serious? Are you serious?”
She was 7 League Boots past a steroid fueled Banshee as she bellowed into the intercom. She was using her patented Congressional opening line, a line that was used whenever a racist, homophobic, snake handling, gun nut rat Republican bastard asked her about something called the “enumerated powers’ part of the Constitution. She said she didn’t care if this would be the second emergency landing on her way back to the Elysian Fields of San Francisco.
“I know we stopped at St. Louis for ice.” She had no choice; she had guests. Why should they suffer because a half-assed Air Force wingwiper had gone past SNAFU and into FUBAR territory by forgetting to plug in the ice machine? Somebody would be flogged for that.
This was “personal”, she told the pilot. The pilot, a double crossgendered one time woman of color who was a single mom, responding to both Major and Majorette thereby making “cognitive dissonance” something to be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, also was told by the Lucrezia wanabee in the back not to forget who got her/him/her/it the Goddamn job.
“Stop at Denver. My Botoxed brow just dropped. My nose is where my neck was this morning. My mouth is by my sternum. If this keeps up I’ll have to sit down to pee. It’s like riding a horse, isn’t it? You never forget, right? Do I sit side saddle?”
San Fran Nan, the peoples’ pal, the voice of America’s “wretched of the earth”, the implacable foe of privilege, of pomp, averaged a trip every 7 days from Washington to her estates by the Bay. Forget about the Friendly Skies. No fretting over baggage fees. Don’t worry about TSA dudes grabbing anybody’s Yoo-Hah. Skip the crap about seat belts. Those planes you see on either side of the plane are F-15s. Welcome to Air Pelosi!
Compliments of the United States Air Force.
She traveled well. No MREs for her. No sandwiches from the Stop & Shop. No microwaved mac and cheese for her. “The wish of the Princess has the force of law” was never truer then when her request for dark chocolate covered strawberries was filled while her plane was in the air. Only 2 commandos were lost during the transfer. The after action report thought it was s small price to pay to keep her happy. Oprah’s decorator did the interior with the tab being picked up as a “shovel ready” out reach program.
She had enough whiskey on her pastel colored C5-A to drown a platoon of Charley Sheens. All top shelf save for the E&J Brandy. [I think her husband Benito has a second mortgage on the operation.]
Live entertainment featuring the Village People, the Dance Theater of Harlem. Aida, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the College of Cardinals, the Great Wall of China, Old Faithful, Stonehenge, and the entire cast of “West Wing” tap dancing to “Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow”, was the norm.
“Angels in America”, because of its length, required the pilot to circle Gitmo 4 times just above stall speed before he headed west. The costs for it and “The Vagina Monologues” matinees were picked up by the NEA and the NEH.
Barbecue, both beef and pork with vegan on request. Tofu, mung, and ca-ca had to be requested pre-flight. Live salmon with onboard bears chasing them. Wor shiu op. Nick’s Bayonne Italian Ice served by Nick of Bayonne with Big Red providing running commentary. Zabaglione and tiramisu for the more formal Eyeties on the plane.
Her husband, Benito the Beneficent, a man whose ass was meant to be wrapped in purple, would present himself so the guests could touch his robe. Nothing has been confirmed but 2 sets of crutches, one oxygen tank, and one wheel chair are still unclaimed in the baggage area.
God damn that election!
She’s come a long way from the days of stuffed white envelopes in the parking lot at the Baltimore City Hall.
The people have spoken.
“Those rotten rat bastards.”
KS
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Joy-Ann Reid The Miami Herald
January 20, 2011
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Welcome to the Big Leagues – Some comments on your column in the Herald about how the wich, wascally, Wepublicans are so mean they should be horsewhipped, metaphorically speaking. That could be an example of “violent rhetoric on the Right” but since it’s directed at the Right it can’t be, right?
Ms Reid,
Congratulations!
I hereby name you to be this year’s first Board Certified modern American Liberal ink stained wench.
All it took was perseverance and a fully developed genetic ability to believe that feelings and ideas are the same; that History is a myth; that human nature is politically perfectible; that words and deeds are the same; that profit is evil; and that, finally, all we need is love.
Before else I would like you to use your new media status to find out if Richard Gere had dinner at the White House last night. Lord Barack had Uncle Wong, the head Chi-Com, in for a big chow down. Gere has been chanting “Free Tibet” for years. Wong and his predecessors have held Tibet under their lion’s paw since 1959. Maybe Gere would have thrown a butter sculpture of the Dalai Lama at him. Who knows? Get back to me on that, please. I do know that Jackie Chan was there as a guest of his famous uncle, noted sleuth and gum shoe, Charlie.
The Republican Right is, to paraphrase Johnson, [Samuel. Not Michael, not Lyndon] evil and the source of evil in others.
Who knew that Jesse Jackson was an acolyte in the church of Rush Limbaugh? I can think of no other reason why he would say, and on national TV, that he wanted to “cut Obama’s nuts off”.
It’s easy to see why Glenn Beck would have helped in the production of the movie version of “The Assassination of George W. Bush”. When he produces “The Assassination of Barack H. Obama” he can say that “turnabout is fair play”. He can, can’t he?
It’s easy to highlight the Simian qualities of Lord Barack the Beneficent. After all, the Democratic Party and the New York Times acquiesced in calling Lincoln a “baboon”.
The supporters of John Adams said that if Thomas Jefferson won the election his supporters would rape the women and butcher the babies.
You decry the “violent rhetoric on the Right”.
3 years ago Senator Durbin [D-IL] AKA “Little Dick”, said that GIs were acting like Nazis.
Yesterday, Congressman Cohen [D-TN] AKA “What a Putz”, said that Republicans were Nazis.
.How would you characterize the above quotes? Interestingly, both men said those things on the floors of Congress. You know, of course, that no member can be held accountable for what is said on the floor. Wouldn’t it have been nice if some full time professional Kumbaya keeners had denounced the statements?
How about “violent rhetoric on the Left”?
Julianne Malveaux, an erstwhile modern American Liberal ink stained wench, now a full time college loan promoter, once wrote that the wife of Clarence Thomas should feed him ice cream for breakfast, crème Brule for mind-morning snacks, double bacon cheeseburgers for lunch, pizza in lieu of high tea, and lard, both fried and broiled, for dinner. If he had a tummy ache she hoped that Mrs. Thomas would IV him with egg nog, beer, and Crisco. Black men have a tendency to hypertension. This leads to a statistically disproportionate number of myocardial infarctions and cerebral hemorrhages in Black men. [That this is doubtless caused by the Republicans, and who says we don’t have death panels, there can be no doubt] Could this be a fuzzy paradigm of “violent rhetoric on the left”?
Fame and fortune await.
Once you get over the truth, and a damned inconvenient truth at that, that “stones are hard and water is wet” you’ll go far. I smell Pulitzer. Somebody has to fill the void left by Janet Cook’s career change.
You go, girl!
Speaking of Janet Cook, could it not be defined as inherent institutional racism that she was made to give back her Pulitzer Prize and made a pariah by her employer, the Washington Post, while Walter Duranty remains undiminished?
Cook made up a story of a drug addict’s child. I am told that while it was completely false it was a fascinating tale. In many ways it was the predecessor to the Dan Rather report on President Bush. “False, but accurate” was his clever retort. In the end, no one was hurt.
Duranty lied about what Stalin was doing in Ukraine in 1931 and 1932. As many as 8,000,000 people died because of his lie. Further, Hitler noticed that the West did nothing. Duranty took the first step that ended with 12,000,000 going into the oven. The New York Times refuses to acknowledge his perfidy. Need I tell you that Duranty was a White man?
Double standard? “You betcha”, as Sarah Palin would say.
Before you are on the View maybe you could tell me what happened to the “Summer of Recovery”. Did I miss it? Was it a victim of Climate Change?
I’ve been trying for 2 years to find, either in Broward or Miami-Dade, a “shovel ready” project. Any ideas?
Kevin Smith
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Welcome to the Big Leagues – Some comments on your column in the Herald about how the wich, wascally, Wepublicans are so mean they should be horsewhipped, metaphorically speaking. That could be an example of “violent rhetoric on the Right” but since it’s directed at the Right it can’t be, right?
Ms Reid,
Congratulations!
I hereby name you to be this year’s first Board Certified modern American Liberal ink stained wench.
All it took was perseverance and a fully developed genetic ability to believe that feelings and ideas are the same; that History is a myth; that human nature is politically perfectible; that words and deeds are the same; that profit is evil; and that, finally, all we need is love.
Before else I would like you to use your new media status to find out if Richard Gere had dinner at the White House last night. Lord Barack had Uncle Wong, the head Chi-Com, in for a big chow down. Gere has been chanting “Free Tibet” for years. Wong and his predecessors have held Tibet under their lion’s paw since 1959. Maybe Gere would have thrown a butter sculpture of the Dalai Lama at him. Who knows? Get back to me on that, please. I do know that Jackie Chan was there as a guest of his famous uncle, noted sleuth and gum shoe, Charlie.
The Republican Right is, to paraphrase Johnson, [Samuel. Not Michael, not Lyndon] evil and the source of evil in others.
Who knew that Jesse Jackson was an acolyte in the church of Rush Limbaugh? I can think of no other reason why he would say, and on national TV, that he wanted to “cut Obama’s nuts off”.
It’s easy to see why Glenn Beck would have helped in the production of the movie version of “The Assassination of George W. Bush”. When he produces “The Assassination of Barack H. Obama” he can say that “turnabout is fair play”. He can, can’t he?
It’s easy to highlight the Simian qualities of Lord Barack the Beneficent. After all, the Democratic Party and the New York Times acquiesced in calling Lincoln a “baboon”.
The supporters of John Adams said that if Thomas Jefferson won the election his supporters would rape the women and butcher the babies.
You decry the “violent rhetoric on the Right”.
3 years ago Senator Durbin [D-IL] AKA “Little Dick”, said that GIs were acting like Nazis.
Yesterday, Congressman Cohen [D-TN] AKA “What a Putz”, said that Republicans were Nazis.
.How would you characterize the above quotes? Interestingly, both men said those things on the floors of Congress. You know, of course, that no member can be held accountable for what is said on the floor. Wouldn’t it have been nice if some full time professional Kumbaya keeners had denounced the statements?
How about “violent rhetoric on the Left”?
Julianne Malveaux, an erstwhile modern American Liberal ink stained wench, now a full time college loan promoter, once wrote that the wife of Clarence Thomas should feed him ice cream for breakfast, crème Brule for mind-morning snacks, double bacon cheeseburgers for lunch, pizza in lieu of high tea, and lard, both fried and broiled, for dinner. If he had a tummy ache she hoped that Mrs. Thomas would IV him with egg nog, beer, and Crisco. Black men have a tendency to hypertension. This leads to a statistically disproportionate number of myocardial infarctions and cerebral hemorrhages in Black men. [That this is doubtless caused by the Republicans, and who says we don’t have death panels, there can be no doubt] Could this be a fuzzy paradigm of “violent rhetoric on the left”?
Fame and fortune await.
Once you get over the truth, and a damned inconvenient truth at that, that “stones are hard and water is wet” you’ll go far. I smell Pulitzer. Somebody has to fill the void left by Janet Cook’s career change.
You go, girl!
Speaking of Janet Cook, could it not be defined as inherent institutional racism that she was made to give back her Pulitzer Prize and made a pariah by her employer, the Washington Post, while Walter Duranty remains undiminished?
Cook made up a story of a drug addict’s child. I am told that while it was completely false it was a fascinating tale. In many ways it was the predecessor to the Dan Rather report on President Bush. “False, but accurate” was his clever retort. In the end, no one was hurt.
Duranty lied about what Stalin was doing in Ukraine in 1931 and 1932. As many as 8,000,000 people died because of his lie. Further, Hitler noticed that the West did nothing. Duranty took the first step that ended with 12,000,000 going into the oven. The New York Times refuses to acknowledge his perfidy. Need I tell you that Duranty was a White man?
Double standard? “You betcha”, as Sarah Palin would say.
Before you are on the View maybe you could tell me what happened to the “Summer of Recovery”. Did I miss it? Was it a victim of Climate Change?
I’ve been trying for 2 years to find, either in Broward or Miami-Dade, a “shovel ready” project. Any ideas?
Kevin Smith
Michael Putney The Miami Herald
January 14, 2010
Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “that’s you and me, bunky” – Some comments on your column about the governance of Florida with a covert air of what have those damned voters done now.
Mr. Putney,
The Great Nechemie, CPA to the big time Democratic pols of New Jersey [plus me], and the only man I knew who voted for Henry Wallace, oft times called me “Bunky”. Since he has gone to that great counting house in the sky, Green Eye Shade Heaven if you will, I consider it my duty to keep his name alive.
Your reference to the $33,000,000 mortgage that the people of Florida took out to build a court house, hereinafter referred to as Taj Mahal 2, misses, in typical modern American Liberal fashion, the point.
I began to vote against all bond issues – no exceptions – in 1984. The reason was simple. The language in the referendum was in violation of Federal law. The particular law is called the Truth in Lending Act.
I bought a new car that year. The dealer wanted to finance the purchase. He explained how much the loan would cost me right down to the last penny. He even told me how the Rule of 78 would apply should I, in a burst of husbandry disguised as a memorial to the doomed Polonius, decide to prepay the loan.
Thus, the people of Florida did not pay $33,000,000 for TM2. We will pay $82,000,000 for it. That figure consists of the original amount, $33,000,000, plus $49,000,000 in interest. If a Suede Shoe Sam, a used car salesman wearing electric blue slacks with a knock off Versace shirt, did not tell me how much the loan would cost me I would wind up owning his lot. Shouldn’t voters have the same right?
From that day to this every referendum about indebtedness gets an automatic “NO” from me. Whether it’s for manatee charter schools, bovine eructation internal combustion engine plants, highways, bigger highways, Save the Swamp, the one most treacley, the lachrymose laden, perpetual plaint “For the children”, and the latest pilfery, underfunded public pension plans it gets an automatic “NO”.
You may want to take a peek at the MOATC – the Mother of All Taj Mahal Courthouses.
It’s in Boston.
The people of the United States began to build a Court House in Boston in the late ‘80s. After getting the people of this fair land to spend $15,000,000,000 [that’s 15 billion dollars] to build a tunnel under Boston a new Federal building was a mere bagatelle.
Little did the sap citizens know that it had both beginner and advanced ski slopes in the basement. In addition to waterfalls and an East Cost version of purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain there were salmon runs, parquet basketball courts with the voice of Johnny Most in perpetual rasp, mosh pits, alas, no pistol ranges, a rubber room for anybody named Kennedy, and a mirror lined smoke filled room so that the Judges could better decipher the penumbras and emanations that the Founders had hidden in the Constitution.
No one knows how much it cost. If it were built as well as the Boston Tunnel, known affectionately as the Big Ditch, no one will ever know how much it will cost. The tunnel ceiling, in continuous repair mode, doesn’t leak that much anymore. Miles of Duck Tape and tankers filled with Gorilla Glue seem to have stanched the surge. Global Warming, the reason why the water in Boston harbor has risen 26 feet, might yet overcome it.
Dillard High School, one of the crowns in Broward County education, has incurred rebuilding and renovation costs of almost 5 times the original construction cost. As the legal community likes to say, “Stare decisis”.
The man in charge of the Boston Court House was Chief Judge David Breyer. It was like putting Dracula in charge of the Blood Bank. Spending the public’s money like a thirsty sailor on leave did not prove to be a career impediment for him.
I’ll say this for modern American Liberals. They take care of their own.
I am not sure there is a declarative sentence definition of “snarkiness” but your comments on Governor Scott’s familiarity with the words of “God Bless the U.S.A” is surely a supreme specimen of “snarky”. I am sorry that “at least”, as in “at least I know I’m free”, rankles you. Would you have preferred that he accompanied some long haired transgendered tattooed hippy zither maestro playing “Kumbaya”? How about “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”. Would that have given you hope for the future? To quote Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his Name, Scott “won” the election. He can pick any song he wants.
You know what rankles me? The ability of an ink stained wretch to have his olfactory senses so trained that he is unaware of the foetid bouquet of his “Nonmalodorous Fecal Matter Syndrome. ?? Send a SASE.
At the memorial service/pep rally in Tucson there were tee-shirts which said “Together We Thrive”, a slogan destined to be forgotten in record time, a man from the other side of the mirror babbling on about Father Sky and Mother Earth, cheerleaders, and yet one more rendition of “Theme for the Common Man”. The estate of Aaron Copeland has surely benefited handsomely from it being played at every public function that has a Democrat holding the microphone. The only thing missing was Oprah, her couch, and Dr.Phil.
Am I the last man standing who thinks that Mozart’s “Requiem” may have been a tad more appropriate? Surely someone in the White House has heard of Beethoven.
Perhaps Scott will turn out to be a helpless naïf in the Tallahassee Knocking Shoppe called the legislature and controlled by hated special interests, particularly those that advocate things that you oppose. Perhaps he will turn out to have some Mary Magdalene qualities. Perhaps is, like money, the Mother’s Milk of Politics. It’s why we have elections.
In either event the people, those ungrateful lizards, have spoken.
Kevin Smith
PS – I am from Hudson County, New Jersey. Bayonne to be precise. The first Taj Mahal we learned about was not the one in Agra but the one in Jersey City. It was the Hudson County jail. The Sheriff was known as Ali Baba. Guess what his deputies were called.
Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “that’s you and me, bunky” – Some comments on your column about the governance of Florida with a covert air of what have those damned voters done now.
Mr. Putney,
The Great Nechemie, CPA to the big time Democratic pols of New Jersey [plus me], and the only man I knew who voted for Henry Wallace, oft times called me “Bunky”. Since he has gone to that great counting house in the sky, Green Eye Shade Heaven if you will, I consider it my duty to keep his name alive.
Your reference to the $33,000,000 mortgage that the people of Florida took out to build a court house, hereinafter referred to as Taj Mahal 2, misses, in typical modern American Liberal fashion, the point.
I began to vote against all bond issues – no exceptions – in 1984. The reason was simple. The language in the referendum was in violation of Federal law. The particular law is called the Truth in Lending Act.
I bought a new car that year. The dealer wanted to finance the purchase. He explained how much the loan would cost me right down to the last penny. He even told me how the Rule of 78 would apply should I, in a burst of husbandry disguised as a memorial to the doomed Polonius, decide to prepay the loan.
Thus, the people of Florida did not pay $33,000,000 for TM2. We will pay $82,000,000 for it. That figure consists of the original amount, $33,000,000, plus $49,000,000 in interest. If a Suede Shoe Sam, a used car salesman wearing electric blue slacks with a knock off Versace shirt, did not tell me how much the loan would cost me I would wind up owning his lot. Shouldn’t voters have the same right?
From that day to this every referendum about indebtedness gets an automatic “NO” from me. Whether it’s for manatee charter schools, bovine eructation internal combustion engine plants, highways, bigger highways, Save the Swamp, the one most treacley, the lachrymose laden, perpetual plaint “For the children”, and the latest pilfery, underfunded public pension plans it gets an automatic “NO”.
You may want to take a peek at the MOATC – the Mother of All Taj Mahal Courthouses.
It’s in Boston.
The people of the United States began to build a Court House in Boston in the late ‘80s. After getting the people of this fair land to spend $15,000,000,000 [that’s 15 billion dollars] to build a tunnel under Boston a new Federal building was a mere bagatelle.
Little did the sap citizens know that it had both beginner and advanced ski slopes in the basement. In addition to waterfalls and an East Cost version of purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain there were salmon runs, parquet basketball courts with the voice of Johnny Most in perpetual rasp, mosh pits, alas, no pistol ranges, a rubber room for anybody named Kennedy, and a mirror lined smoke filled room so that the Judges could better decipher the penumbras and emanations that the Founders had hidden in the Constitution.
No one knows how much it cost. If it were built as well as the Boston Tunnel, known affectionately as the Big Ditch, no one will ever know how much it will cost. The tunnel ceiling, in continuous repair mode, doesn’t leak that much anymore. Miles of Duck Tape and tankers filled with Gorilla Glue seem to have stanched the surge. Global Warming, the reason why the water in Boston harbor has risen 26 feet, might yet overcome it.
Dillard High School, one of the crowns in Broward County education, has incurred rebuilding and renovation costs of almost 5 times the original construction cost. As the legal community likes to say, “Stare decisis”.
The man in charge of the Boston Court House was Chief Judge David Breyer. It was like putting Dracula in charge of the Blood Bank. Spending the public’s money like a thirsty sailor on leave did not prove to be a career impediment for him.
I’ll say this for modern American Liberals. They take care of their own.
I am not sure there is a declarative sentence definition of “snarkiness” but your comments on Governor Scott’s familiarity with the words of “God Bless the U.S.A” is surely a supreme specimen of “snarky”. I am sorry that “at least”, as in “at least I know I’m free”, rankles you. Would you have preferred that he accompanied some long haired transgendered tattooed hippy zither maestro playing “Kumbaya”? How about “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”. Would that have given you hope for the future? To quote Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his Name, Scott “won” the election. He can pick any song he wants.
You know what rankles me? The ability of an ink stained wretch to have his olfactory senses so trained that he is unaware of the foetid bouquet of his “Nonmalodorous Fecal Matter Syndrome. ?? Send a SASE.
At the memorial service/pep rally in Tucson there were tee-shirts which said “Together We Thrive”, a slogan destined to be forgotten in record time, a man from the other side of the mirror babbling on about Father Sky and Mother Earth, cheerleaders, and yet one more rendition of “Theme for the Common Man”. The estate of Aaron Copeland has surely benefited handsomely from it being played at every public function that has a Democrat holding the microphone. The only thing missing was Oprah, her couch, and Dr.Phil.
Am I the last man standing who thinks that Mozart’s “Requiem” may have been a tad more appropriate? Surely someone in the White House has heard of Beethoven.
Perhaps Scott will turn out to be a helpless naïf in the Tallahassee Knocking Shoppe called the legislature and controlled by hated special interests, particularly those that advocate things that you oppose. Perhaps he will turn out to have some Mary Magdalene qualities. Perhaps is, like money, the Mother’s Milk of Politics. It’s why we have elections.
In either event the people, those ungrateful lizards, have spoken.
Kevin Smith
PS – I am from Hudson County, New Jersey. Bayonne to be precise. The first Taj Mahal we learned about was not the one in Agra but the one in Jersey City. It was the Hudson County jail. The Sheriff was known as Ali Baba. Guess what his deputies were called.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
January 16, 2011
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Pembroke Pines, FL
RE: Rhetoric, heated or otherwise; discourses, reasoned or otherwise; free speech or not; “slippery slopes” and/or “chilling effects”. Some comments on your essay in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Debbie, Debbie,
First, a style point.
Your CV says that you have two degrees in Political Science. That should mean that you would be familiar, if not necessarily conversant, with all things Greek: Ideas, History, literature, culture, and its lasting effect on Western Civilization.
The Trivium, the capstone of Western Man’s development and a monument to reasoned discourse, consists of three parts: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Grammar is the glue allows Rhetoric to present an argument in, forgive me, Logical order.
Your piece in this morning’s Herald contains a glaringly egregious error. You say “…for none of us are immune”. That is akin to having 6 hecates debating 6 harridans, said debate being refereed by Lillian Hellman with Bella Abzug being the time keeper, by using their finger nails on a blackboard to make their arguments.
None is a collective noun. The correct verb in this instance is “is”. Gosh! I sound positively Clintonesque, don’t I?
It is a small point, no bigger than a man’s fist against the horizon, but it is a vital part of making an argument. Was it Alice or the Red Queen who said, “Those words mean exactly what I want them to mean”.
It is possible that you did not write this. I have fond memories of you being on TV when your flack catcher, doubtless an employee on a public payroll, said that you could only take a few questions because “Debbie’s time is so precious”.
You may want to spend some of that “precious time” snuggling up to Strunk & White. If you can’t why not have some of your amanuenses do it.
You write movingly of Congresswoman Giffords because a man with snakes for brains shot her.
My last gun fight was 18 years ago.
The first police officer was dead before he hit the ground.
The second one took a .357 slug from 10 feet. It went into his right quadrant about one inch from his sternum. The hole was about the size of a quarter, a 25 cent piece.
I rendered immediate first aid for 17 minutes before the paramedics arrived.
He danced at my daughter’s wedding 2 ½ years later.
I know what damage a mad man with a gun can do.
I use that knowledge as a starting point
In your examples of the “bile and vitriol that have been tearing us apart at the seems” you use as examples the vandalizing of Congressman Grisalva’s office, Congresswoman Giffords’s windows being shot out, and Congressman Perrielo’s gas lines being cut.
I tell you that the Greeks would have told you that correlation is not causation. Further, if you know any prosecutors, ask them what kind of a case could be made with such evidence as you present.
Speaking of “slippery slopes” and “chilling effects” we are coming up to the 10th anniversary of you sending Agent Thomas and Agent Mineva of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to my house because of something I wrote to and about you. These men had badges and guns.
Thomas Jefferson, noted oenophile and revolutionary, said that when people fear the government we have tyranny. When the government fears the people we have liberty.
Your examples of “bile and vitriol” lacked one thing. You neglected to mention that the victims were all Democrats.
Speaking of Democrats, don’t you think you should have mentioned Democratic Senator Manchin of West Virginia? In the election to fill former KuKluxKlan member Robert Byrd’s seat – He was Deputy Grand Kleagle, wasn’t he? – he shot an ad using a scoped high powered rifle to shoot a hole in the proposed Tax and Cup Bill. I was in the coal business in West Virginia. That’s how I know that the rifle was high powered.
Why didn’t you include Julianne Malveaux? She said that she hoped that Justice Thomas’s wife fed him a high fat diet so that he would have a heart attack and a stroke.
How about Nina Totenberg? As the equine visaged hit lady of NPR she said that she hoped that one of Senator Helms’s grandchildren got AIDS.
Do you remember when Alec Baldwin said that “Congressman Henry Hyde should be stoned to death”?
How about Michael Moore wishing that more Republicans had died on 9/11?
Sean Penn, the special friend of Castro and Chavez, suggested terminal rectal cancer as a policy towards anyone in opposition to him.
Why wasn’t the movie “The Assassination of George W. Bush” denounced as being filled with “bile and vitriol”?
Even a knowledge not past cursory would show that my examples have one common thread.
They are all modern American Liberals.
Apparently none of them makes the cut when you call the roll of “bile and vitriol” spewers.
Could it be that you have “no enemies on the Left”? Could it be another syndrome common to mALs everywhere? Arnold Lunn, in the middle of a “low dishonest decade”, named it “eclectic indignation”.
Speaking of contemporary Sophists, whatever happened to Mrs. Clinton’s crusade to find the big money roots of the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy”? It’s been 15 years since she asked her fawning friends and sycophants in the media to find out who was after her husband. It’s about the same time that OJ has been trying to find his wife’s killers. Any updates on either of them? [Vlad Cheney, the evil twin of former VP Darth Cheney, gets my vote.] Didn’t Senator Clinton say, in voice that made banshees sound like a Glee Club of Suzan Boyles, that she was “sick and tired” of being told that she was unpatriotic because she was opposed to President Bush? Didn’t she say that General Petraeus was a liar? Was there any “bile and vitriol” there?
Senator Durbin [D- Il] compared American military personnel to Nazis. Beyond “bile and vitriol” shouldn’t that have entered the realm of “blood libel”?
When “bile and vitriol”, particularly in American politics, are mentioned it is good to have some knowledge of the campaigns of 1800 and 1876. They make last year’s campaigns look like a garden party. And they did it without electricity!
The incumbent in 1800 actually had a law passed that made it illegal to criticize the government. He was not returned to office.
Silly me, but I assume you know that the Democratic Party and the New York Times wanted a negotiated settlement with the South in the Civil War. Does that mean that they both favored slavery? Since both acquiesced in calling Abraham Lincoln a “baboon” does that mean that they were complicit in his assassination?
Did “bile and vitriol” cooked in a “climate of hate” cause dedicated Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald, to shoot John Kennedy?
Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy because he thought it would help his countrymen. What “bile and vitriol”, other than that of any anti-Semite, caused him to so act?
Should any blame be given to Jodie Foster for the shooting of the Great Reagan? [Can you imagine Walter Mondale playing poker with Gorbachev at Reykjavik? I can’t either.]
Edmund Burke, another descendant of those pesky Greeks, said the never ending conflict in any society is between freedom and order. What happened in Tucson was the work of a drug crazed mad man. It is anathema for a modern American Liberal even to entertain the idea that evil, evil as real as your boot, exists. The group instinct is to control, to stifle, to limit freedom in the name of the common good.
Tread lightly on curbing anyone’s speech.
“Free men speak with free tongues”
Kevin Smith
PS – Has your 11 year old daughter, the one who is worried about Florida enforcing Federal laws about immigration, studied the life of Amy Carter? Who can forget her father, the worst President of the 20th century, using his daughter’s supposed fear of nuclear proliferation in his debate with Governor Reagan. Perhaps you could assign your civic minded daughter to find out if the words “aid and comfort to the enemy”, words found in the Constitution, apply to Senator Reid [D-NV] when he said “the war is lost”?
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Pembroke Pines, FL
RE: Rhetoric, heated or otherwise; discourses, reasoned or otherwise; free speech or not; “slippery slopes” and/or “chilling effects”. Some comments on your essay in this morning’s Miami Herald.
Debbie, Debbie,
First, a style point.
Your CV says that you have two degrees in Political Science. That should mean that you would be familiar, if not necessarily conversant, with all things Greek: Ideas, History, literature, culture, and its lasting effect on Western Civilization.
The Trivium, the capstone of Western Man’s development and a monument to reasoned discourse, consists of three parts: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Grammar is the glue allows Rhetoric to present an argument in, forgive me, Logical order.
Your piece in this morning’s Herald contains a glaringly egregious error. You say “…for none of us are immune”. That is akin to having 6 hecates debating 6 harridans, said debate being refereed by Lillian Hellman with Bella Abzug being the time keeper, by using their finger nails on a blackboard to make their arguments.
None is a collective noun. The correct verb in this instance is “is”. Gosh! I sound positively Clintonesque, don’t I?
It is a small point, no bigger than a man’s fist against the horizon, but it is a vital part of making an argument. Was it Alice or the Red Queen who said, “Those words mean exactly what I want them to mean”.
It is possible that you did not write this. I have fond memories of you being on TV when your flack catcher, doubtless an employee on a public payroll, said that you could only take a few questions because “Debbie’s time is so precious”.
You may want to spend some of that “precious time” snuggling up to Strunk & White. If you can’t why not have some of your amanuenses do it.
You write movingly of Congresswoman Giffords because a man with snakes for brains shot her.
My last gun fight was 18 years ago.
The first police officer was dead before he hit the ground.
The second one took a .357 slug from 10 feet. It went into his right quadrant about one inch from his sternum. The hole was about the size of a quarter, a 25 cent piece.
I rendered immediate first aid for 17 minutes before the paramedics arrived.
He danced at my daughter’s wedding 2 ½ years later.
I know what damage a mad man with a gun can do.
I use that knowledge as a starting point
In your examples of the “bile and vitriol that have been tearing us apart at the seems” you use as examples the vandalizing of Congressman Grisalva’s office, Congresswoman Giffords’s windows being shot out, and Congressman Perrielo’s gas lines being cut.
I tell you that the Greeks would have told you that correlation is not causation. Further, if you know any prosecutors, ask them what kind of a case could be made with such evidence as you present.
Speaking of “slippery slopes” and “chilling effects” we are coming up to the 10th anniversary of you sending Agent Thomas and Agent Mineva of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to my house because of something I wrote to and about you. These men had badges and guns.
Thomas Jefferson, noted oenophile and revolutionary, said that when people fear the government we have tyranny. When the government fears the people we have liberty.
Your examples of “bile and vitriol” lacked one thing. You neglected to mention that the victims were all Democrats.
Speaking of Democrats, don’t you think you should have mentioned Democratic Senator Manchin of West Virginia? In the election to fill former KuKluxKlan member Robert Byrd’s seat – He was Deputy Grand Kleagle, wasn’t he? – he shot an ad using a scoped high powered rifle to shoot a hole in the proposed Tax and Cup Bill. I was in the coal business in West Virginia. That’s how I know that the rifle was high powered.
Why didn’t you include Julianne Malveaux? She said that she hoped that Justice Thomas’s wife fed him a high fat diet so that he would have a heart attack and a stroke.
How about Nina Totenberg? As the equine visaged hit lady of NPR she said that she hoped that one of Senator Helms’s grandchildren got AIDS.
Do you remember when Alec Baldwin said that “Congressman Henry Hyde should be stoned to death”?
How about Michael Moore wishing that more Republicans had died on 9/11?
Sean Penn, the special friend of Castro and Chavez, suggested terminal rectal cancer as a policy towards anyone in opposition to him.
Why wasn’t the movie “The Assassination of George W. Bush” denounced as being filled with “bile and vitriol”?
Even a knowledge not past cursory would show that my examples have one common thread.
They are all modern American Liberals.
Apparently none of them makes the cut when you call the roll of “bile and vitriol” spewers.
Could it be that you have “no enemies on the Left”? Could it be another syndrome common to mALs everywhere? Arnold Lunn, in the middle of a “low dishonest decade”, named it “eclectic indignation”.
Speaking of contemporary Sophists, whatever happened to Mrs. Clinton’s crusade to find the big money roots of the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy”? It’s been 15 years since she asked her fawning friends and sycophants in the media to find out who was after her husband. It’s about the same time that OJ has been trying to find his wife’s killers. Any updates on either of them? [Vlad Cheney, the evil twin of former VP Darth Cheney, gets my vote.] Didn’t Senator Clinton say, in voice that made banshees sound like a Glee Club of Suzan Boyles, that she was “sick and tired” of being told that she was unpatriotic because she was opposed to President Bush? Didn’t she say that General Petraeus was a liar? Was there any “bile and vitriol” there?
Senator Durbin [D- Il] compared American military personnel to Nazis. Beyond “bile and vitriol” shouldn’t that have entered the realm of “blood libel”?
When “bile and vitriol”, particularly in American politics, are mentioned it is good to have some knowledge of the campaigns of 1800 and 1876. They make last year’s campaigns look like a garden party. And they did it without electricity!
The incumbent in 1800 actually had a law passed that made it illegal to criticize the government. He was not returned to office.
Silly me, but I assume you know that the Democratic Party and the New York Times wanted a negotiated settlement with the South in the Civil War. Does that mean that they both favored slavery? Since both acquiesced in calling Abraham Lincoln a “baboon” does that mean that they were complicit in his assassination?
Did “bile and vitriol” cooked in a “climate of hate” cause dedicated Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald, to shoot John Kennedy?
Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy because he thought it would help his countrymen. What “bile and vitriol”, other than that of any anti-Semite, caused him to so act?
Should any blame be given to Jodie Foster for the shooting of the Great Reagan? [Can you imagine Walter Mondale playing poker with Gorbachev at Reykjavik? I can’t either.]
Edmund Burke, another descendant of those pesky Greeks, said the never ending conflict in any society is between freedom and order. What happened in Tucson was the work of a drug crazed mad man. It is anathema for a modern American Liberal even to entertain the idea that evil, evil as real as your boot, exists. The group instinct is to control, to stifle, to limit freedom in the name of the common good.
Tread lightly on curbing anyone’s speech.
“Free men speak with free tongues”
Kevin Smith
PS – Has your 11 year old daughter, the one who is worried about Florida enforcing Federal laws about immigration, studied the life of Amy Carter? Who can forget her father, the worst President of the 20th century, using his daughter’s supposed fear of nuclear proliferation in his debate with Governor Reagan. Perhaps you could assign your civic minded daughter to find out if the words “aid and comfort to the enemy”, words found in the Constitution, apply to Senator Reid [D-NV] when he said “the war is lost”?
William V. Gibson The Sun-Sentinel
January 12, 2011
William V. Gibson
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Los Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: To drill or not to drill in the Gulf? That is the question raised in article about same. And will there be a follow up article on whether or not we can depend on Hugo Chavez to help us in our time of need?
Mr. Gibson,
Senator Graham, Co-Chairman of the Woe is Us ‘Cuz We Still Burn Fossil Fuels and Let’s Bring Ned Lud Back Committee, said
“We’ve been wise enough not to drill in our own
property and politically able to maintain a
buffer in terms of federal water.”
Would not Logic dictate that as soon as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama discover this they will demand the same protections for their tourist and fishing industries?
It is always an inconvenient truth but facts are hard things.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from the Gulf of Mexico. Florida is getting a free ride. We share in the harvest without having to worry about the planting and tending. Until bovine eructations, manatee musk, or excess Sheep Dip become a fuel that is an economically viable way of getting people from Point A to Point B we are going to have live with gasoline and the consequences thereof.
Perhaps Floridians will be made so mad by an excess of “Rainbow Stew” that they will give up their cars for one week a month. Perhaps a fifth Gospel will appear. Perhaps men will become angels.
Senator Graham, in a stirring tribute to the empirically self evident, said, “I don’t believe that anybody can say categorically that any set of recommendations, if totally adopted, would give us zero risk that this would occur again”.
Harland & Wolf, the company that built the R.M.S. Titanic, would agree with that statement. Ditto for the people who built the Challenger.
Tell me. Do they still put erasers on pencils?
“Man was not made for safe havens.”
Senator Graham proudly proclaimed in his long weekend run for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency that he was a product of the public schools of Florida. Res ipso loquitur. They were bad then too. It’s good to know that it didn’t start with Governor Bush.
Your article does not mention whether or not Senator Graham addressed the problems of Cuba drilling off its coast. Would I be thought a cad if I were to mention that the United States affirmed the right of a sovereign nation, in this case the fun loving Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Cuba, to drill in international waters contiguous to the United States? Further, this treaty was signed by Democrat Jimmy Carter and ratified by a Democratic Senate.
BP is an entity subject to the Secretary of the Interior putting his “boot on its neck”. The President of the United States, a man whose thin CV lists him as a former teacher of Constitutional Law, came down squarely for the Rule of Law by saying as soon as he found the proper ass to kick by God he was going to kick it.
Does that border on retroactive corporate hate speech?
Absent the forcible entry of the United States Navy how does this administration, or any administration, intend to keep Florida oysters, sword fish, stone crabs, and various sun lovers free from the perils of petroleum and its bastard spawn, petrochemicals, spewing from Cuba? Que paso if the Chinese are doing the drilling? It is true that there is no limit to the madness and lunacies that modern American Liberals can bring forth given an unlimited budget, a word processor, and no one saying “Liar, liar pants on fire”.
Shouldn’t the Sun-Sentinel show us the way to energy independence or energy altruism by promising not to use any air conditioning in its World Headquarters this summer? Think of how those saved polar bears will be able to protect the fragile Arctic environment by eating more of those pesky baby seals.
Deo gratias for mush brained modern American Liberals. Who else can make us feel warm and fuzzy about our inner selves?
Kevin Smith
William V. Gibson
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Los Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: To drill or not to drill in the Gulf? That is the question raised in article about same. And will there be a follow up article on whether or not we can depend on Hugo Chavez to help us in our time of need?
Mr. Gibson,
Senator Graham, Co-Chairman of the Woe is Us ‘Cuz We Still Burn Fossil Fuels and Let’s Bring Ned Lud Back Committee, said
“We’ve been wise enough not to drill in our own
property and politically able to maintain a
buffer in terms of federal water.”
Would not Logic dictate that as soon as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama discover this they will demand the same protections for their tourist and fishing industries?
It is always an inconvenient truth but facts are hard things.
25% of the gasoline used in this country comes from the Gulf of Mexico. Florida is getting a free ride. We share in the harvest without having to worry about the planting and tending. Until bovine eructations, manatee musk, or excess Sheep Dip become a fuel that is an economically viable way of getting people from Point A to Point B we are going to have live with gasoline and the consequences thereof.
Perhaps Floridians will be made so mad by an excess of “Rainbow Stew” that they will give up their cars for one week a month. Perhaps a fifth Gospel will appear. Perhaps men will become angels.
Senator Graham, in a stirring tribute to the empirically self evident, said, “I don’t believe that anybody can say categorically that any set of recommendations, if totally adopted, would give us zero risk that this would occur again”.
Harland & Wolf, the company that built the R.M.S. Titanic, would agree with that statement. Ditto for the people who built the Challenger.
Tell me. Do they still put erasers on pencils?
“Man was not made for safe havens.”
Senator Graham proudly proclaimed in his long weekend run for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency that he was a product of the public schools of Florida. Res ipso loquitur. They were bad then too. It’s good to know that it didn’t start with Governor Bush.
Your article does not mention whether or not Senator Graham addressed the problems of Cuba drilling off its coast. Would I be thought a cad if I were to mention that the United States affirmed the right of a sovereign nation, in this case the fun loving Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Cuba, to drill in international waters contiguous to the United States? Further, this treaty was signed by Democrat Jimmy Carter and ratified by a Democratic Senate.
BP is an entity subject to the Secretary of the Interior putting his “boot on its neck”. The President of the United States, a man whose thin CV lists him as a former teacher of Constitutional Law, came down squarely for the Rule of Law by saying as soon as he found the proper ass to kick by God he was going to kick it.
Does that border on retroactive corporate hate speech?
Absent the forcible entry of the United States Navy how does this administration, or any administration, intend to keep Florida oysters, sword fish, stone crabs, and various sun lovers free from the perils of petroleum and its bastard spawn, petrochemicals, spewing from Cuba? Que paso if the Chinese are doing the drilling? It is true that there is no limit to the madness and lunacies that modern American Liberals can bring forth given an unlimited budget, a word processor, and no one saying “Liar, liar pants on fire”.
Shouldn’t the Sun-Sentinel show us the way to energy independence or energy altruism by promising not to use any air conditioning in its World Headquarters this summer? Think of how those saved polar bears will be able to protect the fragile Arctic environment by eating more of those pesky baby seals.
Deo gratias for mush brained modern American Liberals. Who else can make us feel warm and fuzzy about our inner selves?
Kevin Smith
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Gary Stein The Sun-Sentinel
January 12, 2011
Gary Stein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Right Wing whining is out of control” – Some comments on you not quite over the top snarky column on political discourse in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Stein,
“There’s a $5 Dollar Fine for Whining” is one of my favorite Texas saloon songs.
When you’re right you’re right. Modern American Liberals, an inbred motley collection of curs who can look through a keyhole with both eyes at the same time, are known for their civility, their restraint, and their manners.
Thus, when Michael Moore, he of triple cholesterol numbers, a man who has killed at least 3 cats by stepping on their tails, said “more Republicans should have died on 9/11/01” he really meant that anyone who thought that Bush 41 was a good guy and that Bush 43 was a chip off the old block should have a major league Time Out.
Thus, when Alec Baldwin said that “Henry Hyde should be stoned to death”, he really meant that it was OK to hit him with a water balloon or a cream pie.
Taken out of context, some foolish people, people easily lead by demagogues, “mind numbed robots” who think that Wal*Mart exploits single moms who are women of color with children in need of a good Ritalin program, might think that it was OK to go and kill a Congressman. Luckily we have our vaunted social safety net to intervene and prevent a tragedy. [Did you ever wonder why “tragedy” is modified by “senseless”? Wouldn’t that mean that there is a “sensible tragedy” out there?]
When Lord Barack the Beneficent, and Blessed be his Name, said that he “wanted to kick somebody’s ass” what he really meant was that there is no such thing as a bad boy and that a steady diet of Midnight Basketball would have prevented the BP blowout.
When you become familiar with “tu quoque” get back to me. Meanwhile, “Congress shall make no law…” is still in force.
Kevin Smith
Gary Stein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “Right Wing whining is out of control” – Some comments on you not quite over the top snarky column on political discourse in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
Mr. Stein,
“There’s a $5 Dollar Fine for Whining” is one of my favorite Texas saloon songs.
When you’re right you’re right. Modern American Liberals, an inbred motley collection of curs who can look through a keyhole with both eyes at the same time, are known for their civility, their restraint, and their manners.
Thus, when Michael Moore, he of triple cholesterol numbers, a man who has killed at least 3 cats by stepping on their tails, said “more Republicans should have died on 9/11/01” he really meant that anyone who thought that Bush 41 was a good guy and that Bush 43 was a chip off the old block should have a major league Time Out.
Thus, when Alec Baldwin said that “Henry Hyde should be stoned to death”, he really meant that it was OK to hit him with a water balloon or a cream pie.
Taken out of context, some foolish people, people easily lead by demagogues, “mind numbed robots” who think that Wal*Mart exploits single moms who are women of color with children in need of a good Ritalin program, might think that it was OK to go and kill a Congressman. Luckily we have our vaunted social safety net to intervene and prevent a tragedy. [Did you ever wonder why “tragedy” is modified by “senseless”? Wouldn’t that mean that there is a “sensible tragedy” out there?]
When Lord Barack the Beneficent, and Blessed be his Name, said that he “wanted to kick somebody’s ass” what he really meant was that there is no such thing as a bad boy and that a steady diet of Midnight Basketball would have prevented the BP blowout.
When you become familiar with “tu quoque” get back to me. Meanwhile, “Congress shall make no law…” is still in force.
Kevin Smith
Professor Greenville Draper
January 10, 2011
Professor Greenville Draper
Department of Earth & Environment
Florida International University
Miami, Florida
RER: What do you have against Dante? – Some comments on your not quite snarky blurb on the Yahoos who don’t genuflect at the altar of Climate Change, nee Global Warming, nee Global Cooling, nee the “Of course the world is flat” school, as proclaimed by you in this morning’s Miami Herald.
My dear Professor,
Since Professor Paul Ehrlich, and by Crikey if there is a smarter guy anywhere I want to meet him, told the world in 1970 – 40 years ago – that the race was between starving to death and freezing to death with the finish line ending at the year 2000 I feel like I have been on borrowed time for the last 11 years.
Full disclosure requires me to tell you that I am “calorically challenged”. That 3rd Worlders are starving because of my insatiable desire for Blue Fin sushi, Kobe beef, Crème Brule, farm raised peccary, Big Macs, brown whisky and red meat, there can be no doubt. Alas, my need for inorganic endive and rugala, flavored pop corn, and hot house truffles [both black and white], all of which require inordinate amounts of fossil fuel to raise, will be on my conscience until my cholesterol levels cause my liver to explode.
You say, as only someone totally unfamiliar with the Trivium, that it, it being defined as someone who thinks the Wizard behind the curtain is full of ca-ca, “defied logic”.
#1 – As one of the capstones of Western Civilization logic should be Logic.
#2 – It can’t be “defied”; it can only be offended.
You say “skeptic” as if it were a four letter word. In case you haven’t noticed “skepticism” is what makes the dog hunt.
All scientific discovery is based on “skepticism”.
I know that in the Ptolemaic and/or Copernican universe the sun either revolves around the earth or it doesn’t because it does both but only in Age comfortable with Aquarius, and I still haven’t figured out which is witch and then Galileo came along and really queered the pitch [N.B. the play on words.] I do know that Columbus didn’t fall off the edge of the earth as the universally accepted science of the time said he would. The only thing I am sure of is that skepticism did not begin with the sudden realization that former Vice President Alpha Gump was/is/ and shall be a horse’s ass of Homeric proportions.
The History of Science, beginning with Aristotle, shows that someone saying “What if”, or “I don’t believe it”, or “Prove it”, is when palpable progress is made. Further, “correlation is not causation” is a lesson that must be learned over and over and over, and over again.
The supposedly unimpeachable science of the Autism and Measles vaccine connection is now in the same category as the Bermuda Triangle or tomatoes are poison. Children died because an alchemist in a white lab coat lied. What makes that worse is that the scientific world gulped and said nothing. Meryl Steep, noted chemist, biologist, and boob warned us of the dangers of Alar. Erin Brockovich made a fortune warning us of a danger that didn’t exist. Malaria, literally bad air, was essentially wiped out until Rachel Carson, one of the 20th century’s greatest quacks, doctored the books and got DDT banned. 2,000,000 sub-Saharan Black children die each year because fairly affluent White First Worlders feel warm and fuzzy about themselves. Donna Shalala, when she was a Clinton cabinet officer in 1996, told us that we would all be dead from AIDS in 10 years. At least she gave us 6 more years than Professor Ehrlich. Go Canes!
Cranberries, Phisohex, Saccharine, salt, incandescent light bulbs, diapers, Mark Twain, DWEMs, cigars, plastic versus paper, asbestos, leaded gasoline, waxing and waning ozone layers, drowning polar bears, Lysenko, Margaret Sanger and “culling the herd”. Who says Ned Lud is dead?
Weren’t scientific theses subject to independent replication and verification? At the very least wasn’t the discovery of a perpetual motion machine on the East Coast subject to some testing by neutral scientists on the West Coast?
Whatever happened to what was once called the scientific method?
The story may be apocryphal but Einstein was said to have posted all his work into the early 20th century universe of physicists. He knew he only had to be proved wrong once. If he were, or so he was supposed to have said, he “could get on to something new”.
A Senator from a profoundly crooked city, county, and state, a place where the pennies on a dead man’s eyes would not survive the first round of mourners, a place where no stove could be hot enough to keep a quarter on it when the “boys” are in the kitchen, told us that if we voted for him the oceans would stop rising and that the temperature would cool.. Your CV lists you as a Professor of Earth and Environment. If you had a first year survey student say that what grade would he earn?
I await the annual Jeremiad about the snows once again receding from Mt. Kilimanjaro. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the snows have been receding since 1888. Can anything be made of the fact that 1888 was the first year that they were measured? One uptick here is that we may yet find out how those damned leopards got up there.
You say that you are “not a little annoyed with the Miami Herald publishing letters” preaching heresy. Although I am positive your litotes was unintentional I applaud you for the first totally honest thing you said.
The modern scientific community is made up of naked Emperors who twice a day commands the tide to bend to accepted truths. At least Canute knew his sycophants were full of “it”. In this instance “it” needs no definition.
Kevin Smith
PS – As to my throwaway line asking you what do you have against Dante I am sure you know that there was an upward spike in temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere 1100 years ago. Several things happened because of this. More land became arable. More protein was grown and consumed. Man got smarter. We had the Renaissance. Dante’s opening line was “Halfway through my journey I found myself in the dark wood of error”. Sound advice then. Sound advice now.
Professor Greenville Draper
Department of Earth & Environment
Florida International University
Miami, Florida
RER: What do you have against Dante? – Some comments on your not quite snarky blurb on the Yahoos who don’t genuflect at the altar of Climate Change, nee Global Warming, nee Global Cooling, nee the “Of course the world is flat” school, as proclaimed by you in this morning’s Miami Herald.
My dear Professor,
Since Professor Paul Ehrlich, and by Crikey if there is a smarter guy anywhere I want to meet him, told the world in 1970 – 40 years ago – that the race was between starving to death and freezing to death with the finish line ending at the year 2000 I feel like I have been on borrowed time for the last 11 years.
Full disclosure requires me to tell you that I am “calorically challenged”. That 3rd Worlders are starving because of my insatiable desire for Blue Fin sushi, Kobe beef, Crème Brule, farm raised peccary, Big Macs, brown whisky and red meat, there can be no doubt. Alas, my need for inorganic endive and rugala, flavored pop corn, and hot house truffles [both black and white], all of which require inordinate amounts of fossil fuel to raise, will be on my conscience until my cholesterol levels cause my liver to explode.
You say, as only someone totally unfamiliar with the Trivium, that it, it being defined as someone who thinks the Wizard behind the curtain is full of ca-ca, “defied logic”.
#1 – As one of the capstones of Western Civilization logic should be Logic.
#2 – It can’t be “defied”; it can only be offended.
You say “skeptic” as if it were a four letter word. In case you haven’t noticed “skepticism” is what makes the dog hunt.
All scientific discovery is based on “skepticism”.
I know that in the Ptolemaic and/or Copernican universe the sun either revolves around the earth or it doesn’t because it does both but only in Age comfortable with Aquarius, and I still haven’t figured out which is witch and then Galileo came along and really queered the pitch [N.B. the play on words.] I do know that Columbus didn’t fall off the edge of the earth as the universally accepted science of the time said he would. The only thing I am sure of is that skepticism did not begin with the sudden realization that former Vice President Alpha Gump was/is/ and shall be a horse’s ass of Homeric proportions.
The History of Science, beginning with Aristotle, shows that someone saying “What if”, or “I don’t believe it”, or “Prove it”, is when palpable progress is made. Further, “correlation is not causation” is a lesson that must be learned over and over and over, and over again.
The supposedly unimpeachable science of the Autism and Measles vaccine connection is now in the same category as the Bermuda Triangle or tomatoes are poison. Children died because an alchemist in a white lab coat lied. What makes that worse is that the scientific world gulped and said nothing. Meryl Steep, noted chemist, biologist, and boob warned us of the dangers of Alar. Erin Brockovich made a fortune warning us of a danger that didn’t exist. Malaria, literally bad air, was essentially wiped out until Rachel Carson, one of the 20th century’s greatest quacks, doctored the books and got DDT banned. 2,000,000 sub-Saharan Black children die each year because fairly affluent White First Worlders feel warm and fuzzy about themselves. Donna Shalala, when she was a Clinton cabinet officer in 1996, told us that we would all be dead from AIDS in 10 years. At least she gave us 6 more years than Professor Ehrlich. Go Canes!
Cranberries, Phisohex, Saccharine, salt, incandescent light bulbs, diapers, Mark Twain, DWEMs, cigars, plastic versus paper, asbestos, leaded gasoline, waxing and waning ozone layers, drowning polar bears, Lysenko, Margaret Sanger and “culling the herd”. Who says Ned Lud is dead?
Weren’t scientific theses subject to independent replication and verification? At the very least wasn’t the discovery of a perpetual motion machine on the East Coast subject to some testing by neutral scientists on the West Coast?
Whatever happened to what was once called the scientific method?
The story may be apocryphal but Einstein was said to have posted all his work into the early 20th century universe of physicists. He knew he only had to be proved wrong once. If he were, or so he was supposed to have said, he “could get on to something new”.
A Senator from a profoundly crooked city, county, and state, a place where the pennies on a dead man’s eyes would not survive the first round of mourners, a place where no stove could be hot enough to keep a quarter on it when the “boys” are in the kitchen, told us that if we voted for him the oceans would stop rising and that the temperature would cool.. Your CV lists you as a Professor of Earth and Environment. If you had a first year survey student say that what grade would he earn?
I await the annual Jeremiad about the snows once again receding from Mt. Kilimanjaro. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the snows have been receding since 1888. Can anything be made of the fact that 1888 was the first year that they were measured? One uptick here is that we may yet find out how those damned leopards got up there.
You say that you are “not a little annoyed with the Miami Herald publishing letters” preaching heresy. Although I am positive your litotes was unintentional I applaud you for the first totally honest thing you said.
The modern scientific community is made up of naked Emperors who twice a day commands the tide to bend to accepted truths. At least Canute knew his sycophants were full of “it”. In this instance “it” needs no definition.
Kevin Smith
PS – As to my throwaway line asking you what do you have against Dante I am sure you know that there was an upward spike in temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere 1100 years ago. Several things happened because of this. More land became arable. More protein was grown and consumed. Man got smarter. We had the Renaissance. Dante’s opening line was “Halfway through my journey I found myself in the dark wood of error”. Sound advice then. Sound advice now.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Victor Davis Hanson
Interesting article by Victor Davis Hanson on the importance of Liberal Arts can be found here.
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