Posts
October 14, 2010
Mayor/Commissioner Ken Keechl
612 NE 26th Street
Wilton Manors, FL 33305
RE: I have moved from the “undecided” column
M/C Keechl,
I am fairly certain that I have been voting longer than you have been breathing. I know that I have never missed an election be it local, county, state, or Federal.
I just got today’s mailing piece. It is the one with the alligator on the front. It is the one where you promise “to protect our county from bad developers”. How about a plan to develop the alligators into hand bags, boots, and golf bags?
Here’s an alternative plan.
Why not put the more aggressive alligators on the golf courses?
That way we can have an outreach program to get them to give up their man eating tendencies. If it doesn’t work we can have a new definition of water hazard.
Not only will I vote against you but I will try to convince as many as 7 others to do the same. The reasons, thanks to your flyer, are self evident.
Shall we count the ways?
#1 – “Bad developers”? – Please tell me the criteria used to decide who is a “bad” developer. Likewise, what makes a “good” developer good? Who gets to choose before the fact? You?
#2 – Your flyer says that you “fought to stop offshore drilling off our coast”. I always mucked up the difference between deduce and infer but does that mean that you are in favor of “onshore drilling off our coast”? Does it mean that you are in favor of “offshore drilling onshore”? Exactly what the Hell does it mean? I do know that 30% of the gasoline used in this country comes from “offshore” wells. Should we give up our cars for one week per month?
Why not mount solar panels on the roofs of County vehicles? Florida ain’t called the Sunshine State for nothing.
Why not capture some Moby Dicks and Shamus? Pen them in the port. Train them to have borborygymous eructations once an hour. I can imagine nothing more
organic than clouds of whale farts cooling the county. The bonus is that you get to save some polar bears plus there will be no carbon footprint.
#2A – What if Cuba and the Bahamas start to drill off their coasts? The Broward Sheriff’s Office has a few high speed cigarette boats. Will you dispatch them to stop the drilling? Are you in favor of the United States Navy taking out Cuban or Bahamian drilling rigs? What if the Chinese are doing the drilling?
The image of you lashed to the mast, saber in hand, yelling “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! Save the manatees!” needs the gentle hand of a Mel Brooks to bring it to movie theatres.
#3 – Why should you proclaim that you “saved the American Golf course”? If you have the power to “save” would that not mean that you have the power to “unsave” it? I don’t play golf. It is of no import to me whether it remains as a duffers’ paradise or
it becomes the main growing area should marijuana become legal.
What matters to me is that Broward County has interjected itself into a transaction between two law abiding citizens. If the government says it does not approve of conduct between two of its citizens because of aesthetic or environmental or political reasons are you in favor of government intervention in any other private transaction? “The wish of the Prince has the force of law” is still valid 5 centuries after it was written. Its gentle language does not mask the scent of thuggery.
It seems to me that the owners of golf courses do not need a “plan” to protect their interests. They all seem like big boys who can take care of themselves. If you “protect” them maybe you can dictate tee times. Maybe you can dictate one day a week for Section 8 Housing golfers. Maybe you can ban plaids and stripes. Maybe you can ban smoking on half of the holes. Maybe you should mind your own business and let free men decide what is best for them.
Besides, if you can think of anything more “shovel ready” than turning 18 holes into a marijuana field let me know.
The ongoing sin of modern American Liberals is that they so love mankind that they don’t mind riding roughshod over people.
#4 – You are proud of “help[ing] to kill the Calypso Gas Line off our coast”. Consider, please, the unintended consequences of so doing.
The overwhelming use of natural gas in Florida is to power electricity generating plants. At the present time 50% of the electricity generated comes from burning coal. By discouraging the use of gas you are encouraging the use of coal. When natural gas is burned there is almost no need for smoke stacks. Alas, that is not the case with coal. Full disclosure demands that I tell you that I was actively involved in the energy business, oil, gas, and coal for almost 20 years. I know whereof I speak. The alternative to oil, gas, and coal is nuclear power. I don’t think you want to go there.
Would not Logic dictate that, at the very least, Broward County should have an odd/even day moratorium on air conditioning? Isn’t that what was used during the last two gas crises? Let’s start with the all the county buildings in downtown Ft. Lauderdale.
For thinking I am an economic half wit I hereby name you
HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK
You have earned your title. Wear it proudly.
You are now in contention for the other two highly prized and greatly coveted awards.
POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH
SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR
My next note to you will be dated November 2.
Kevin Smith
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Margaret Carlson Bloomberg News
October 12, 2010
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, DC 20005
RE: If you don’t let them vote you won’t have to fake the count
You go girl!
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since you changed voting tactics in this country.
I grew up in Hudson County, NJ. There was a certain moral clarity to what the Democrats did there. They added as many votes as they needed to win an election. Whether it was my uncle who voted for 15 years after he died or my teacher who never missed getting his palm card and being first in line at the polls even though he was a missionary in Asia getting additional votes was never a problem.
You changed the dynamic of stealing elections.
Rather than scouring the obituaries to add votes you figured out a way to stop votes that the other guy would normally get.
It was a marvelous idea to label all overseas military personnel as “tax cheats”. That way there would be no great public outcry when the absentee ballots bound for Karifistan went instead to East Jabib or Mung Hollow. By the time they got back to the county from where they were mailed it would be halftime at the Rose Bowl. Having missed the statutory deadline for counting in the last election they were sent either to Gehenna or the landfill.
Such is the devotion of New Yorkers to guaranteeing everyone’s civil liberties by protecting the extreme use of them that a dozen naked men masturbating in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to demonstrate Gay Pride was OK. Cat shit flung at a picture of the Blessed Mother was actually subsidized by New York City when it was exhibited in the publicly funded Brooklyn Art Museum. [Can you think of any possible scenario that would allow a picture of Muhammad, let’s say one with him trying to get a leg over on Dolly the Lamb, to be hit with flung pig shit at any public institution? For that matter, any private institution? I can’t either.]
Justice Brennan gave us the Ghostbusters’ version of the Constitution when he told us of “penumbras” and “emanations” to be found in the Document. The operative words of the First Amendment are simple and straightforward: “Congress shall make no law…” Thus, speech, in all its forms has ample protection.
Voting is a different matter.
600,000 Americans died so that the 15th Amendment could become part of the Constitution.
You would think that the “right” of an American GI serving overseas to cast a ballot would be sacrosanct.
Taking its cue from your Florida performance of 10 years ago the New York voting czars, all of whom could be used as paradigmatic templates of modern American Liberal state paid androids, simply played the “lateral Arabesque” game of Ballot, Ballot, Who has the Ballot. By the time they had been printed by a company owned by single moms who are women of color with no traceable carbon footprint it was too late. Democrats believe that military people don’t like them and won’t vote for them. Their solution, one that would be recognized as sound by Fascists everywhere, was to prevent them from voting by saying “the ballots are in the mail”.
Having Senator Chuckie Schumer howl like a banshee about the unfairness of it all is brilliant. If it were up to him those ballots would never have been printed. He is rooting for the election of that woman from Delaware. As the Senate’s only openly practicing warlock he needs some company.
Petitioning the Justice Department to investigate the above is also brilliant. Attorney General Eric Holder, a man whose greatest accomplishment has been to make me miss Janet Reno, doesn’t seem to mind voter intimidation provide that the right guys get intimidated. His handling of the Philadelphia Black Panther case reminds me of Jimmy Durante stealing the elephant. There is a classic scene where he is tiptoeing out of the tent with a 10 foot tall elephant on a leash. A policeman stops him and says, “What are you doing with that elephant”? Durante looks around and says, “Elephant? What elephant”? The Justice Department will conclude its investigation by the time the NCAA tournament reaches 4 teams. So what if some ground pounder doesn’t get to vote. They probably would have voted the wrong way.
And to think that you started it all!
You are one Hell of an ink stained bruja!
Kevin Smith
Margaret Carlson
Bloomberg News
1399 New York Avenue
Washington, DC 20005
RE: If you don’t let them vote you won’t have to fake the count
You go girl!
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since you changed voting tactics in this country.
I grew up in Hudson County, NJ. There was a certain moral clarity to what the Democrats did there. They added as many votes as they needed to win an election. Whether it was my uncle who voted for 15 years after he died or my teacher who never missed getting his palm card and being first in line at the polls even though he was a missionary in Asia getting additional votes was never a problem.
You changed the dynamic of stealing elections.
Rather than scouring the obituaries to add votes you figured out a way to stop votes that the other guy would normally get.
It was a marvelous idea to label all overseas military personnel as “tax cheats”. That way there would be no great public outcry when the absentee ballots bound for Karifistan went instead to East Jabib or Mung Hollow. By the time they got back to the county from where they were mailed it would be halftime at the Rose Bowl. Having missed the statutory deadline for counting in the last election they were sent either to Gehenna or the landfill.
Such is the devotion of New Yorkers to guaranteeing everyone’s civil liberties by protecting the extreme use of them that a dozen naked men masturbating in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to demonstrate Gay Pride was OK. Cat shit flung at a picture of the Blessed Mother was actually subsidized by New York City when it was exhibited in the publicly funded Brooklyn Art Museum. [Can you think of any possible scenario that would allow a picture of Muhammad, let’s say one with him trying to get a leg over on Dolly the Lamb, to be hit with flung pig shit at any public institution? For that matter, any private institution? I can’t either.]
Justice Brennan gave us the Ghostbusters’ version of the Constitution when he told us of “penumbras” and “emanations” to be found in the Document. The operative words of the First Amendment are simple and straightforward: “Congress shall make no law…” Thus, speech, in all its forms has ample protection.
Voting is a different matter.
600,000 Americans died so that the 15th Amendment could become part of the Constitution.
You would think that the “right” of an American GI serving overseas to cast a ballot would be sacrosanct.
Taking its cue from your Florida performance of 10 years ago the New York voting czars, all of whom could be used as paradigmatic templates of modern American Liberal state paid androids, simply played the “lateral Arabesque” game of Ballot, Ballot, Who has the Ballot. By the time they had been printed by a company owned by single moms who are women of color with no traceable carbon footprint it was too late. Democrats believe that military people don’t like them and won’t vote for them. Their solution, one that would be recognized as sound by Fascists everywhere, was to prevent them from voting by saying “the ballots are in the mail”.
Having Senator Chuckie Schumer howl like a banshee about the unfairness of it all is brilliant. If it were up to him those ballots would never have been printed. He is rooting for the election of that woman from Delaware. As the Senate’s only openly practicing warlock he needs some company.
Petitioning the Justice Department to investigate the above is also brilliant. Attorney General Eric Holder, a man whose greatest accomplishment has been to make me miss Janet Reno, doesn’t seem to mind voter intimidation provide that the right guys get intimidated. His handling of the Philadelphia Black Panther case reminds me of Jimmy Durante stealing the elephant. There is a classic scene where he is tiptoeing out of the tent with a 10 foot tall elephant on a leash. A policeman stops him and says, “What are you doing with that elephant”? Durante looks around and says, “Elephant? What elephant”? The Justice Department will conclude its investigation by the time the NCAA tournament reaches 4 teams. So what if some ground pounder doesn’t get to vote. They probably would have voted the wrong way.
And to think that you started it all!
You are one Hell of an ink stained bruja!
Kevin Smith
Joy-Ann Reid The Miami Herald
October 14, 2010
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33136-1693
RE: What else do we deserve? Some comments on your column in today’s Heral.
Ms. Reid,
I am not now nor have I ever been a Twitterer. To the best of my knowledge I have never been Twittered. As both a nonTwitterer and a nonTwittee I know that I am several rungs down the revolutionary technical ladder. That may or may not qualify me as a Twit/
The rushing sound you hear is that of the other shoe dropping. Reading your article I know that there are many things that you don’t know. Worse, there are several things that you don’t want to know.
You say that you expect to see the Supreme Court “selling corporate naming rights on its judicial sleeve. I’ll bet a penny to a dollar that you don’t know what the Lutine Bell is or what it represents. Thank God for Google.
Justice Breyer’s wife is a “name” at Lloyd’s.
Four things:
#1 – Justice Breyer should have an image of the Lutine Bell on his back like Hell’s Angels display their colors.
#2 – On the extreme, it means that Justice Breyer should recuse himself every time a matter comes before the Supreme Court in which any insurance company is involved.
#3 – Google “conflict of interest” and “blood is thicker than water” and the “appearance of impropriety”.
#4 – See, I told you there were some things you didn’t know about.
Minimum Wage
Have you ever worked at the minimum wage?
Try to follow this.
It’s called Logic. You may wish to Google that also.
Would you rather be employed at $8 an hour or unemployed at $9 an hour?
Take your time.
[As an aside, but speaking of wages, you may wish to familiarize yourself with the Davis-Bacon Act. It was the most anti-Black law passed on the Federal level in the 20th century. It’s still on the books. Justice Marshall was vehemently opposed to it. Google is going to get quite a workout.]
Would not Logic dictate that if the minimum wage can get people out of the thralldom of poverty it should be at least $23.50 an hour? Would not Logic dictate that at some magic hourly wage there would be no more poverty?
If we can go to the moon and pass comprehensive health care surely we can do away with poverty.
Why should a single mom, a woman of color, a woman living in foetid Section 8 housing, a woman with children in need of a good Ritalin program, a woman with children denied the many benefits of “Midnight Basketball” because of a lack of public transit, a woman who is exploited by the low prices at WAL*MART, have to scrape by at under $8.00 an hour?
A case can be made for giving her $5 an hour more per child because it is cheaper to feed them now that it will be to imprison them later.
Coal Mines and the Death tax
You say that candidate Raese “got his coal mine fortune the old fashioned way – by inheriting it…”
If Congress does nothing the “death tax” goes back to 55% on January 1, 2011 at 12:01 AM. Do you think it should be 105%?
Incidentally, and speaking of the Lucky Sperm Club, Patrick Putz Kennedy, the Congressman from Providence will benefit greatly from the death of his father, Fatso Kennedy. He gets the Trust that his grandfather Joe, one of the 20th century’s greatest corsairs, set up for his father in 1936. What’s so “fair” about that? A lot of people could be helped by its dissolution and distribution of assets. I know of a single mom who would really be able to use the dough
I take gratuitous mention of the coal mining business very seriously. I ran coal mining operations in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. I had a hand in “creating” 255 jobs where none existed. I paid these men far in excess of the minimum wage not because I thought they deserved it but because I knew that they would earn it. I was, as Johnson said, seized by “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice”. An “unintended consequence” was as many as 255 paychecks every Friday at noon. I don’t know much about the dignity of labor but I do know it’s good to have some money in your pocket that you have earned rather than scammed.
The Johnson I mentioned was Samuel, the Original Dr. J. You may want to put him on your GOOGLE to do list.
A Delicate matter
Would you brand me with this century’s Scarlet Letter – “R” – for racist if I were to tell you that I thought the latest bumper sticker I saw about the President was funny?
I THINK THE WHITE HALF OF HIM SUCKS TOO
Let me begin by saying that I think he is the best President we have. His wife’s back must be bursting with pride because her husband can afford to pay almost $60,000 for their daughters’ grammar school tuition despite living in public housing. He plays enough golf to qualify for a PGA card. His crib is big enough that he can keep his mother-in-law close by but not under foot. And he did all this without once having a real job. God Bless America! That’s why you never see anybody swimming to Cuba.
18 months ago he borrowed $900,000,000,000 from the Chinese to fund “shovel ready” projects.
So what if he didn’t know what “shovel ready” meant. So what if he didn’t know that shovels had two ends. So what if there is no such as a “shovel ready” project.
Maybe we did get the politician we deserved.
Kevin Smith
PS – You may be on to something with regards to the 5th Amendment. I am sure OJ would have given it up if the cops had beaten the crap out of him. The 4th Amendment gives me some trouble also. There are times when the cops have to kick down the door. The 6th Amendment, the one that talks about the right to counsel has some drawbacks too. I mean how many times does a sharp lawyer beat the rap for his client. The 8th, the one that talks about no cruel or unusual punishment surely doesn’t count when little children are involved, does it? Doesn’t the 1st Amendment give me the right to pee on a Koran?
One final GOOGLE quest…
tu quoque
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33136-1693
RE: What else do we deserve? Some comments on your column in today’s Heral.
Ms. Reid,
I am not now nor have I ever been a Twitterer. To the best of my knowledge I have never been Twittered. As both a nonTwitterer and a nonTwittee I know that I am several rungs down the revolutionary technical ladder. That may or may not qualify me as a Twit/
The rushing sound you hear is that of the other shoe dropping. Reading your article I know that there are many things that you don’t know. Worse, there are several things that you don’t want to know.
You say that you expect to see the Supreme Court “selling corporate naming rights on its judicial sleeve. I’ll bet a penny to a dollar that you don’t know what the Lutine Bell is or what it represents. Thank God for Google.
Justice Breyer’s wife is a “name” at Lloyd’s.
Four things:
#1 – Justice Breyer should have an image of the Lutine Bell on his back like Hell’s Angels display their colors.
#2 – On the extreme, it means that Justice Breyer should recuse himself every time a matter comes before the Supreme Court in which any insurance company is involved.
#3 – Google “conflict of interest” and “blood is thicker than water” and the “appearance of impropriety”.
#4 – See, I told you there were some things you didn’t know about.
Minimum Wage
Have you ever worked at the minimum wage?
Try to follow this.
It’s called Logic. You may wish to Google that also.
Would you rather be employed at $8 an hour or unemployed at $9 an hour?
Take your time.
[As an aside, but speaking of wages, you may wish to familiarize yourself with the Davis-Bacon Act. It was the most anti-Black law passed on the Federal level in the 20th century. It’s still on the books. Justice Marshall was vehemently opposed to it. Google is going to get quite a workout.]
Would not Logic dictate that if the minimum wage can get people out of the thralldom of poverty it should be at least $23.50 an hour? Would not Logic dictate that at some magic hourly wage there would be no more poverty?
If we can go to the moon and pass comprehensive health care surely we can do away with poverty.
Why should a single mom, a woman of color, a woman living in foetid Section 8 housing, a woman with children in need of a good Ritalin program, a woman with children denied the many benefits of “Midnight Basketball” because of a lack of public transit, a woman who is exploited by the low prices at WAL*MART, have to scrape by at under $8.00 an hour?
A case can be made for giving her $5 an hour more per child because it is cheaper to feed them now that it will be to imprison them later.
Coal Mines and the Death tax
You say that candidate Raese “got his coal mine fortune the old fashioned way – by inheriting it…”
If Congress does nothing the “death tax” goes back to 55% on January 1, 2011 at 12:01 AM. Do you think it should be 105%?
Incidentally, and speaking of the Lucky Sperm Club, Patrick Putz Kennedy, the Congressman from Providence will benefit greatly from the death of his father, Fatso Kennedy. He gets the Trust that his grandfather Joe, one of the 20th century’s greatest corsairs, set up for his father in 1936. What’s so “fair” about that? A lot of people could be helped by its dissolution and distribution of assets. I know of a single mom who would really be able to use the dough
I take gratuitous mention of the coal mining business very seriously. I ran coal mining operations in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. I had a hand in “creating” 255 jobs where none existed. I paid these men far in excess of the minimum wage not because I thought they deserved it but because I knew that they would earn it. I was, as Johnson said, seized by “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice”. An “unintended consequence” was as many as 255 paychecks every Friday at noon. I don’t know much about the dignity of labor but I do know it’s good to have some money in your pocket that you have earned rather than scammed.
The Johnson I mentioned was Samuel, the Original Dr. J. You may want to put him on your GOOGLE to do list.
A Delicate matter
Would you brand me with this century’s Scarlet Letter – “R” – for racist if I were to tell you that I thought the latest bumper sticker I saw about the President was funny?
I THINK THE WHITE HALF OF HIM SUCKS TOO
Let me begin by saying that I think he is the best President we have. His wife’s back must be bursting with pride because her husband can afford to pay almost $60,000 for their daughters’ grammar school tuition despite living in public housing. He plays enough golf to qualify for a PGA card. His crib is big enough that he can keep his mother-in-law close by but not under foot. And he did all this without once having a real job. God Bless America! That’s why you never see anybody swimming to Cuba.
18 months ago he borrowed $900,000,000,000 from the Chinese to fund “shovel ready” projects.
So what if he didn’t know what “shovel ready” meant. So what if he didn’t know that shovels had two ends. So what if there is no such as a “shovel ready” project.
Maybe we did get the politician we deserved.
Kevin Smith
PS – You may be on to something with regards to the 5th Amendment. I am sure OJ would have given it up if the cops had beaten the crap out of him. The 4th Amendment gives me some trouble also. There are times when the cops have to kick down the door. The 6th Amendment, the one that talks about the right to counsel has some drawbacks too. I mean how many times does a sharp lawyer beat the rap for his client. The 8th, the one that talks about no cruel or unusual punishment surely doesn’t count when little children are involved, does it? Doesn’t the 1st Amendment give me the right to pee on a Koran?
One final GOOGLE quest…
tu quoque
Letter to the Editor The Sun-Sentinel
October 16, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: Free speech
Sirs,
Bottom Line:
Allow protests, with limitations
This is the codicil you put after your editorial on the coming Supreme Court decision on how free free speech can or should be.
The details of the particular case, picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, are particularly loathsome. Rights, like prices, are always struck on the edges. That these rights are ours “from beyond the stars”, a la Natural Law, does not lessen the need for man to set limits to what he can do.
Logic would dictate that using your guidelines you will soon be publishing the Mohammed cartoons.
While it is true that not all Muslims are terrorists it is equally true that all the terrorists in the 21st century have been Muslims.
Perhaps prudence may dictate that before they are in your Sunday edition you may want to exhibit them in your lobby.
After all, as you say, “the principle of free speech must be defended”.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316
RE: Free speech
Sirs,
Bottom Line:
Allow protests, with limitations
This is the codicil you put after your editorial on the coming Supreme Court decision on how free free speech can or should be.
The details of the particular case, picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, are particularly loathsome. Rights, like prices, are always struck on the edges. That these rights are ours “from beyond the stars”, a la Natural Law, does not lessen the need for man to set limits to what he can do.
Logic would dictate that using your guidelines you will soon be publishing the Mohammed cartoons.
While it is true that not all Muslims are terrorists it is equally true that all the terrorists in the 21st century have been Muslims.
Perhaps prudence may dictate that before they are in your Sunday edition you may want to exhibit them in your lobby.
After all, as you say, “the principle of free speech must be defended”.
Kevin Smith
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Superintendent James Nutter
October 11, 2010
Superintendent James Nutter
605 SE Third Avenue
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “A wine dark sea” of confusion is sweeping over me. Perhaps you can help.
Superintendent Nutter,
Last June you “fired” some 500 teachers using the “last hired/first fired” method.
Today is Columbus Day, a Federal holiday. The Post Office is closed.
Why are Broward Schools open?
If you wanted to cut back on the number of school holidays wouldn’t the Logic of firing teachers apply? If “last hired/first fired” worked with real live human beings why wouldn’t it work with a non-animate, non-sentient holiday?
The last day to be declared a Federal holiday was Martin Luther King’s birthday.
Why pick on Columbus? Why not cancel MLK? Wouldn’t that be in keeping with your policy for dealing with people?
Like I said, “a wine dark sea” is engulfing me.
The courtesy of a reply would be appreciated.
Kevin Smith
Superintendent James Nutter
605 SE Third Avenue
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: “A wine dark sea” of confusion is sweeping over me. Perhaps you can help.
Superintendent Nutter,
Last June you “fired” some 500 teachers using the “last hired/first fired” method.
Today is Columbus Day, a Federal holiday. The Post Office is closed.
Why are Broward Schools open?
If you wanted to cut back on the number of school holidays wouldn’t the Logic of firing teachers apply? If “last hired/first fired” worked with real live human beings why wouldn’t it work with a non-animate, non-sentient holiday?
The last day to be declared a Federal holiday was Martin Luther King’s birthday.
Why pick on Columbus? Why not cancel MLK? Wouldn’t that be in keeping with your policy for dealing with people?
Like I said, “a wine dark sea” is engulfing me.
The courtesy of a reply would be appreciated.
Kevin Smith
Carl Hiaasen The Miami Herald
October 10, 2010
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: In which answers for all social problems will be given if only we vote for Amendment 4. After all, “they” know better than we do.
Mr. Hiaasen,
I’ll say this for you. Your columns rekindle my sense of noblesse oblige.
Your columns show that it is possible to earn an AARP card without thinking. Don’t confuse feelings with thought. You have a wretched excess of feelings. “Under the Lion’s Paw” updated; Charles and Mary Beard were right; Jimmy Carter was really OK; Thank God for Gorbachev; Gore was oxed; Got a problem? Pass a law. Problem solved, right? “Why can’t we all get along”?
I believe that “while the light is left to burn the vilest sinner my yet return”. If you consider me an earthbound cultural and economic “Hound of Heaven” it will be like “a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down”.
#1 – “Floridians are fed up with lousy planning” – Limiting ourselves to the 20th century can you give me some examples of “good planning”? Lenin? Stalin? Huey Long? Mussolini? Pol Pot? Mugabe? Johnson?
It is not the adjective; it’s the noun.
If “lousy” is replaced with “good” where would Nehru or Castro go?
Nancy Pelosi, and can you picture her taking the FCATs, says that “we have to pass the law to see what’s in it”. Is that an example of “good planning”?
Would “good planning” have prevented the Marlins Stadium? The tunnel to the Azores? The Arts Center?
I’m sure you’ve heard of Hayek. Your assignment is to read “The Road to Serfdom”. There will be a test.
#2 – “It’s the reason so many Florida cities look like they were planned by chimpanzees on LSD” – Why pick on Timothy Leary? Don’t you believe in evolution? Would “good” planning have allowed the Seminole, the Miccosukee, and the Fugowi to be exempt from the rules that govern the rest of Florida?
#3 – “Much will depend of how the language is interpreted…”
Who gets to “interpret” the language? Justice Scalia or Justice Breyer? Justice Ginzberg or Justice Thomas? Why have referendums at all? Why not let everything be decided by Judges? Modern American Liberals believe that when somebody’s ass is wrapped in a black robe they become taller and smarter. Plus, they sing better. If “quis custodiet ipsos custodiet” means the same as it meant when I studied Latin we must fear the judiciary as much as we fear the legislative branch and the executive branch. Madison, the great role model for height challenged solons, and Jefferson warned us of that more than 200 years ago.
I enclose a definition of “The Rule of Law” that mALs regard the same as Dracula regards dawn, an assault rifle filled with silver bullets, and an elephant clove of garlic.
#4 – “…which is why taxes are so brutal in Florida’s most densely populated counties…” Gad dang it but that’s not only wrong it’s, it’s…stupid. Are you saying that densely populated political entities have high taxes because they are densely populated? New Jersey, my alma mater, is the most densely populated state in the Union. Its taxes are so high that an accountant has to be an astronaut to complete his certification. Hong Kong has more people per square mile than New Jersey. It has the lowest tax rate both on income and capital in the world. Which entity should be the template?
You should spend more time reading the Trivium, a gemstone component of which is Logic. One of the lessons you will learn is that correlation is not causation. You may want to take a peek at tautologies. They’re inimical to rational thought and reasoned discourse.
Here’s a thought that is anathema to people who never saw a tax hike that they didn’t like. Taxes are high not because condos are tall. Taxes are high not because some politicians are crooks. {Remember, I’m from New Jersey] Taxes are high not because interest on municipal bonds is tax free.
TAXES ARE HIGH BECAUSE SPENDING IS HIGH
If spending increases so must taxes. The cities and counties of Florida can’t use a Bank of Shanghai credit card. If we choose to have manatee suffrage we must pay for it.
“I won’t tax thee. You don’t tax me.
Let’s tax that fellow behind the tree.”
Who says that Florida is filled with poetry hating Tea Partiers?
#5 – “...$251 million in taxpayer funded relief” – While no one was looking the notion that tax cuts have to be “paid for” crept in. It that is the case could you tell me how much government revenue is “lost” through the deduction of mortgage interest from income taxes? Can it be said that renters, generally lower income citizens, are subsidizing home owners, generally higher income citizen? For people who regularly go hoarse condemning the “unfairness” of it all why does that get a pass?
#6 – Why do modern American Liberals still believe that despite 20 centuries of “lousy planning”, solutions that made every particular social ailment worse, “good planning” will make them better? Did not the nation join hands 46 years ago and declare war on poverty? Since we had no “exit strategy” for that fight are we at least winning it? Do you think a “surge” might be in order?
Perhaps there is an answer.
Every century gets to redefine the adages of the great Dr. Johnson.
When he mentioned “the triumph of hope over experience” he was speaking about second marriages.
Let us now add “planning” to the distinguished list.
Kevin Smith
PS – TARP, the Obama Stimulus, Obamacare. Planning? “Lousy” or “Good”?
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: In which answers for all social problems will be given if only we vote for Amendment 4. After all, “they” know better than we do.
Mr. Hiaasen,
I’ll say this for you. Your columns rekindle my sense of noblesse oblige.
Your columns show that it is possible to earn an AARP card without thinking. Don’t confuse feelings with thought. You have a wretched excess of feelings. “Under the Lion’s Paw” updated; Charles and Mary Beard were right; Jimmy Carter was really OK; Thank God for Gorbachev; Gore was oxed; Got a problem? Pass a law. Problem solved, right? “Why can’t we all get along”?
I believe that “while the light is left to burn the vilest sinner my yet return”. If you consider me an earthbound cultural and economic “Hound of Heaven” it will be like “a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down”.
#1 – “Floridians are fed up with lousy planning” – Limiting ourselves to the 20th century can you give me some examples of “good planning”? Lenin? Stalin? Huey Long? Mussolini? Pol Pot? Mugabe? Johnson?
It is not the adjective; it’s the noun.
If “lousy” is replaced with “good” where would Nehru or Castro go?
Nancy Pelosi, and can you picture her taking the FCATs, says that “we have to pass the law to see what’s in it”. Is that an example of “good planning”?
Would “good planning” have prevented the Marlins Stadium? The tunnel to the Azores? The Arts Center?
I’m sure you’ve heard of Hayek. Your assignment is to read “The Road to Serfdom”. There will be a test.
#2 – “It’s the reason so many Florida cities look like they were planned by chimpanzees on LSD” – Why pick on Timothy Leary? Don’t you believe in evolution? Would “good” planning have allowed the Seminole, the Miccosukee, and the Fugowi to be exempt from the rules that govern the rest of Florida?
#3 – “Much will depend of how the language is interpreted…”
Who gets to “interpret” the language? Justice Scalia or Justice Breyer? Justice Ginzberg or Justice Thomas? Why have referendums at all? Why not let everything be decided by Judges? Modern American Liberals believe that when somebody’s ass is wrapped in a black robe they become taller and smarter. Plus, they sing better. If “quis custodiet ipsos custodiet” means the same as it meant when I studied Latin we must fear the judiciary as much as we fear the legislative branch and the executive branch. Madison, the great role model for height challenged solons, and Jefferson warned us of that more than 200 years ago.
I enclose a definition of “The Rule of Law” that mALs regard the same as Dracula regards dawn, an assault rifle filled with silver bullets, and an elephant clove of garlic.
#4 – “…which is why taxes are so brutal in Florida’s most densely populated counties…” Gad dang it but that’s not only wrong it’s, it’s…stupid. Are you saying that densely populated political entities have high taxes because they are densely populated? New Jersey, my alma mater, is the most densely populated state in the Union. Its taxes are so high that an accountant has to be an astronaut to complete his certification. Hong Kong has more people per square mile than New Jersey. It has the lowest tax rate both on income and capital in the world. Which entity should be the template?
You should spend more time reading the Trivium, a gemstone component of which is Logic. One of the lessons you will learn is that correlation is not causation. You may want to take a peek at tautologies. They’re inimical to rational thought and reasoned discourse.
Here’s a thought that is anathema to people who never saw a tax hike that they didn’t like. Taxes are high not because condos are tall. Taxes are high not because some politicians are crooks. {Remember, I’m from New Jersey] Taxes are high not because interest on municipal bonds is tax free.
TAXES ARE HIGH BECAUSE SPENDING IS HIGH
If spending increases so must taxes. The cities and counties of Florida can’t use a Bank of Shanghai credit card. If we choose to have manatee suffrage we must pay for it.
“I won’t tax thee. You don’t tax me.
Let’s tax that fellow behind the tree.”
Who says that Florida is filled with poetry hating Tea Partiers?
#5 – “...$251 million in taxpayer funded relief” – While no one was looking the notion that tax cuts have to be “paid for” crept in. It that is the case could you tell me how much government revenue is “lost” through the deduction of mortgage interest from income taxes? Can it be said that renters, generally lower income citizens, are subsidizing home owners, generally higher income citizen? For people who regularly go hoarse condemning the “unfairness” of it all why does that get a pass?
#6 – Why do modern American Liberals still believe that despite 20 centuries of “lousy planning”, solutions that made every particular social ailment worse, “good planning” will make them better? Did not the nation join hands 46 years ago and declare war on poverty? Since we had no “exit strategy” for that fight are we at least winning it? Do you think a “surge” might be in order?
Perhaps there is an answer.
Every century gets to redefine the adages of the great Dr. Johnson.
When he mentioned “the triumph of hope over experience” he was speaking about second marriages.
Let us now add “planning” to the distinguished list.
Kevin Smith
PS – TARP, the Obama Stimulus, Obamacare. Planning? “Lousy” or “Good”?
Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald
October 3, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Cognitive Dissonance” – How the Miami Herald intends to survive and prosper – I don’t know if that is better than “enduring and prevailing” – in the Mother of all Battles to save trees.
Sirs,
From a mad cap mogul with millions to a novelist’s blind eye to gravity to yet more proof of the magnitude of the incompetence of Jimmy Carter to the need for a “shovel ready” stimulus program a la Cubana today’s Miami Herald shows why it will be there at the end! Don’t tell me about an itch unless you intend to scratch it.
Norman Braman wants to spend his own money – no borrowing from the Chinese, no dough from the BP shakedown fund, no money from TARP – to unemploy the Mayor of Miami. You oppose this because the Mayor ain’t a crook and because he is halfway through his term. Further, you are very upset that the underpaid County Commissioners cater to their districts’ parochial self interests [“crumbs for their districts” is how you describe it] rather than focusing on raising Miami to a “world class community”. The attachment to “world class communities” shows your eternal attachment to the ideas of the Great Society with its undying belief in perpetually blooming “rainbow stew” bushes.
Any political entity that indentures its citizens to build an undersize basketball arena, to build an arts center that has yet to feature the Mohammed cartoons with a background of Klezmer music, to dig a tunnel that will stretch to the Azores, to build a factory that will be used less than 90 times a year and to build it for a private entity without examining its books deserves to be flogged like a Muslim lady stepping out on Farouk. Mr. Braman is willing to spend his own money to tell us that not only is the Big Boss man naked but that he is mooning Miami. That Miami will soon be the model for mendicant metropolises is of no import.
Why do modern American Liberal media apostles always think that free speech only applies to them? If Mr. Braman wishes to enter the arena of public discourse, particularly if he asks no one else to pay for it, he should be encouraged by the Herald. The immediate argument for outlawing such expenditures is the Kennedy family. If it were Teddy Slojanowski would the people of Massachusetts have sent him to Washington for any reason other than getting him out of the state? Other than having the great good luck to pick the right grandfather would his son, the Putz from Providence, be doing anything in Rhode Island other than trying to figure which is the business end of the chum bucket?
If nothing more tangible than scaring the Bejeezus out of the whole cabal of hubristically challenged pols has happened Mr. Braman will have done well indeed.
Carl Hiaasen comments on the Cuban deep sea drilling program with his usual acute gimlet eye. Alas, he forgets the lessons learned from the BP spill.
If a Cuban well, drilled by the Chinese, blows out how will we know which neck to put our boot on or which ass to kick? Do you think the United States Navy will have a roll in administering the punishment? My memory is fading but wasn’t it Jimmy Carter who negotiated us into this anatomically impossible position? Do you think Dante could have a career as Secretary of State?
Absent the one element needed to bring Cuba totally into the modern world – a feral overclass of predatory plaintiffs’ attorneys – Cuba can only become Haiti with better recipes. Logic would dictate that Cuba either becomes North Korea with better weather or we’re going to need a Hellaciously larger amount of beans, rice, guayabaras, and mojito mix.
That’s why the scrapping of the Cuban safety net, a network of baseball, education, long distance swimmers, some Hemingway cats liberated from Key West, medical care, [Speaking of Cuban medical care why did some MDs from Spain have to treat the big guy? Is there anyone else in medical history who has had a belly ache for 4 years? Why is whatever he had a state secret?], Fidel’s excellent African adventure, a never ending love affair with any 1958 Chevrolet, some really cool green fatigues, a never ending list of American ninnies who think his miedra should be our helado, gives Miami a chance to become a really, really big “world class community”.
Jake Kite, the noted British Labor, used to swoon, priapristically, over the prospect of “all them corn fields and ballet at night”.
The History of the 20th century shows us that potatoes don’t grow on command. [Vide Lysenko] The lessons of Canute and the tides and Chairman Mao on using human excrement as fuel for backyard pig iron furnaces are being re-taught and relearned in Cuba in the 21st century.
500,000 Cubans are about to go from being underemployed and under fed to being unemployed. 500,000 is 4 times the number that Castro disposed of in the early days of Mariel and the glory days of the Carter administration.
[As confirmed by your article on Mariel and Carter, a “clod populist” of ginormous proportions, a man who was the definitive definition of a “horse’s ass”, a man who could bollix up both a wet dream and a two car funeral on the same day, a man who since he could not kick Teddy Kennedy’s almost steatyagonous ass was probably incapable of hitting the floor if he fell out of bed, he was the worst President of the 20th century. As long as John Adams and James Buchanan are around he can’t run the table.]
Let’s end the debate on immigration, legal or not, by sending every boat – a la Dunkirk – south of Savannah to Cuba. Fill them with Cubans and bring them to Florida.
Give each of them a shovel and a hod and the stadium will be finished by Thanksgiving. The tunnel will be done by Ash Wednesday. Everybody can have their own non-Mexican gardener.
If we can learn from Hudson County and Cook County they will be registered voters before their feet are dry.
Any people who can last 50 years with a bearded nit-wit thug running the show are capable of doing anything.
“The camel shits; the caravan moves on.”
Thank God for newspapers.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: “Cognitive Dissonance” – How the Miami Herald intends to survive and prosper – I don’t know if that is better than “enduring and prevailing” – in the Mother of all Battles to save trees.
Sirs,
From a mad cap mogul with millions to a novelist’s blind eye to gravity to yet more proof of the magnitude of the incompetence of Jimmy Carter to the need for a “shovel ready” stimulus program a la Cubana today’s Miami Herald shows why it will be there at the end! Don’t tell me about an itch unless you intend to scratch it.
Norman Braman wants to spend his own money – no borrowing from the Chinese, no dough from the BP shakedown fund, no money from TARP – to unemploy the Mayor of Miami. You oppose this because the Mayor ain’t a crook and because he is halfway through his term. Further, you are very upset that the underpaid County Commissioners cater to their districts’ parochial self interests [“crumbs for their districts” is how you describe it] rather than focusing on raising Miami to a “world class community”. The attachment to “world class communities” shows your eternal attachment to the ideas of the Great Society with its undying belief in perpetually blooming “rainbow stew” bushes.
Any political entity that indentures its citizens to build an undersize basketball arena, to build an arts center that has yet to feature the Mohammed cartoons with a background of Klezmer music, to dig a tunnel that will stretch to the Azores, to build a factory that will be used less than 90 times a year and to build it for a private entity without examining its books deserves to be flogged like a Muslim lady stepping out on Farouk. Mr. Braman is willing to spend his own money to tell us that not only is the Big Boss man naked but that he is mooning Miami. That Miami will soon be the model for mendicant metropolises is of no import.
Why do modern American Liberal media apostles always think that free speech only applies to them? If Mr. Braman wishes to enter the arena of public discourse, particularly if he asks no one else to pay for it, he should be encouraged by the Herald. The immediate argument for outlawing such expenditures is the Kennedy family. If it were Teddy Slojanowski would the people of Massachusetts have sent him to Washington for any reason other than getting him out of the state? Other than having the great good luck to pick the right grandfather would his son, the Putz from Providence, be doing anything in Rhode Island other than trying to figure which is the business end of the chum bucket?
If nothing more tangible than scaring the Bejeezus out of the whole cabal of hubristically challenged pols has happened Mr. Braman will have done well indeed.
Carl Hiaasen comments on the Cuban deep sea drilling program with his usual acute gimlet eye. Alas, he forgets the lessons learned from the BP spill.
If a Cuban well, drilled by the Chinese, blows out how will we know which neck to put our boot on or which ass to kick? Do you think the United States Navy will have a roll in administering the punishment? My memory is fading but wasn’t it Jimmy Carter who negotiated us into this anatomically impossible position? Do you think Dante could have a career as Secretary of State?
Absent the one element needed to bring Cuba totally into the modern world – a feral overclass of predatory plaintiffs’ attorneys – Cuba can only become Haiti with better recipes. Logic would dictate that Cuba either becomes North Korea with better weather or we’re going to need a Hellaciously larger amount of beans, rice, guayabaras, and mojito mix.
That’s why the scrapping of the Cuban safety net, a network of baseball, education, long distance swimmers, some Hemingway cats liberated from Key West, medical care, [Speaking of Cuban medical care why did some MDs from Spain have to treat the big guy? Is there anyone else in medical history who has had a belly ache for 4 years? Why is whatever he had a state secret?], Fidel’s excellent African adventure, a never ending love affair with any 1958 Chevrolet, some really cool green fatigues, a never ending list of American ninnies who think his miedra should be our helado, gives Miami a chance to become a really, really big “world class community”.
Jake Kite, the noted British Labor, used to swoon, priapristically, over the prospect of “all them corn fields and ballet at night”.
The History of the 20th century shows us that potatoes don’t grow on command. [Vide Lysenko] The lessons of Canute and the tides and Chairman Mao on using human excrement as fuel for backyard pig iron furnaces are being re-taught and relearned in Cuba in the 21st century.
500,000 Cubans are about to go from being underemployed and under fed to being unemployed. 500,000 is 4 times the number that Castro disposed of in the early days of Mariel and the glory days of the Carter administration.
[As confirmed by your article on Mariel and Carter, a “clod populist” of ginormous proportions, a man who was the definitive definition of a “horse’s ass”, a man who could bollix up both a wet dream and a two car funeral on the same day, a man who since he could not kick Teddy Kennedy’s almost steatyagonous ass was probably incapable of hitting the floor if he fell out of bed, he was the worst President of the 20th century. As long as John Adams and James Buchanan are around he can’t run the table.]
Let’s end the debate on immigration, legal or not, by sending every boat – a la Dunkirk – south of Savannah to Cuba. Fill them with Cubans and bring them to Florida.
Give each of them a shovel and a hod and the stadium will be finished by Thanksgiving. The tunnel will be done by Ash Wednesday. Everybody can have their own non-Mexican gardener.
If we can learn from Hudson County and Cook County they will be registered voters before their feet are dry.
Any people who can last 50 years with a bearded nit-wit thug running the show are capable of doing anything.
“The camel shits; the caravan moves on.”
Thank God for newspapers.
Kevin Smith
Representative Jim Waldman
October 7, 2010
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 W. Copans Road
Coconut Creek, FL 33063-3164
RE: Now I know who farted
Jimbo!
I went to your website to verify your address for my letter to you on 9/29/10.
Your website says that you are General Counsel to Keiser University, a for profit enterprise.
In this morning’s Sun-Sentinel you are listed as Keiser’s General Counsel in the story about their law suit against community colleges. The story does not mention that you are a member of the Florida legislature.
My limited knowledge of securities law suggests that you are tippy-toe up to the line of demarcation beyond which a charge of civil fraud could be made. That you get to vote on matters educational is a material fact that should have been disclosed.
Would it be fair for your constituents, fire breathing card carrying modern American Liberals all, to assume that you are now an enemy of public education?
Kevin Smith
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 W. Copans Road
Coconut Creek, FL 33063-3164
RE: Now I know who farted
Jimbo!
I went to your website to verify your address for my letter to you on 9/29/10.
Your website says that you are General Counsel to Keiser University, a for profit enterprise.
In this morning’s Sun-Sentinel you are listed as Keiser’s General Counsel in the story about their law suit against community colleges. The story does not mention that you are a member of the Florida legislature.
My limited knowledge of securities law suggests that you are tippy-toe up to the line of demarcation beyond which a charge of civil fraud could be made. That you get to vote on matters educational is a material fact that should have been disclosed.
Would it be fair for your constituents, fire breathing card carrying modern American Liberals all, to assume that you are now an enemy of public education?
Kevin Smith
David Axelrod – Senior Adviser The White House
October 11, 2010
David Axelrod – Senior Adviser
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
RE: Random thoughts on proofs that perhaps man is descended from bears. Apes, no.
To Whom It May Concern:
David Axelrod, senior adviser to the Obama White House, said that “the United States Chamber of Commerce has the burden of proving false the charges by Democrats that the business group is funneling foreign money to Republican campaigns”.
[The name of Nazi & Communist collaborator, George Soros, was never mentioned.]
For the sake of argument let us assume that it didn’t happen.
What proof would be sufficient to prove that it didn’t happen?
We know what a “smoking gun” is.
What is a “non-smoking gun”?
The sounds in the background, one of finger nails on the blackboard combined with the dentist’s drill making first contact with an enflamed molar, is what you hear when 25 centuries of Logic gets the boot. Critical enquiry and reasoned discourse have been benched in favor of Star Chambers and drum head courts martial.
David Axelrod reminds you of the kid in high school who never got picked for the dodge ball team. A kind gym teacher would put him on one side or the other or the dogs would come and piss on him.
If he went to an all boys school he never got to eat his lunch in the cafeteria. Mom’s water cress, tofu, arugula and organic mayonnaise sandwiches on whole wheat toast with the crust cut off would never have made it past the second period.
I have it on highest authority, from unimpeachable sources who must remain anonymous, that certain White House advisers are world class wankers. While style counts for some points it is distance and volume that count most in the spirited White House intramural contests. Bonus points are awarded for hitting Bo, the White House Wonder Dog. The senior wanker who is primus inter pares is known to have a droopy
mustache. He thinks that the Pillsbury Dough Boy has the ideal male body shape. [It used to be Bibendum but that was before a Buy America campaign became part of the Summer of Recovery.]
The burden of proof is on Mr. Axelrod, a man known to have the mystery word ONAN tattooed on both of his inner thighs, to prove that he doesn’t spend face time with Lord Barack the Beneficent spanking his monkey. His support group, Chicken Chokers of America, says that his left handed and backward technique has inspired millions of pre-pubescent boys, boys of confused sexuality, to aim for the stars.
It is known that the chances of getting AIDS, of getting any STD, are zero provided that wankers stay in the closet.
The group wants Axelrod to come out of the closet to say that it’s OK to stay in the closet.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has said that if one generation of teenage boys devote themselves to progressive and perpetual wankering it will result in a cost savings of several gazillions of dollars in Obama Health Care savings over ten years. If this 10 year projected savings had not appeared on this year’s Federal budget as an asset the Chinese were going to sell their markers to the Bank of Sal and Nunzio. Both are honors graduates of the Soprano School of Getting the Customer from No to Yes.
Provided the boys warm up properly, epicondylitis being the chief concern, being the chief injury to be wary of, wankering is good for the country.
It is organic. It leaves no carbon footprint. It could cause the sweat sock industry to go to three shifts.
World Wide Wankers, including both Sunni and Shia All Stars, are coming to Washington to shake their filled fists in support of White House wankering.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and can’t you just picture him under a TARP in a pile with Axelrod, Barbara Mikulski, Robert Reich, Donna Shalala, and soon to be unemployed Congressman Barney Frank, Bo, the White House Wonder Dog, and 20 gallons of industrial strength WD-40, has, for him, taken a wise course by saying he will treat this as a “hands off” subject.
If you were wearing your tin hat and had your decoder ring on you could hear Bo, the WHWD, saying, “If this is evolution stop the bus. I want to get off.” Janet Reno was there as Gatekeeper Emeritus. The rumor that Barney Frank would be touring as a one-man show with him as a combination of Oscar Wilde and Rock Hudson with the Village People as an opening act could not be confirmed. Using the precedent of David Axelrod concerning the burden of proof it must be assumed to be correct until Barney, the Wump Wangler from Bayonne, can prove otherwise.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that, if successful, it would adopt the Barney Frank defense of proving that something didn’t happen.
“FREE MEN SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES”
Kevin Smith
PS – To paraphrase Curley Biden, our moronic wet your pants what am I supposed to do with my thumbs are my teeth in backwards again Vice President, “It’s no big fucking deal”.
David Axelrod – Senior Adviser
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
RE: Random thoughts on proofs that perhaps man is descended from bears. Apes, no.
To Whom It May Concern:
David Axelrod, senior adviser to the Obama White House, said that “the United States Chamber of Commerce has the burden of proving false the charges by Democrats that the business group is funneling foreign money to Republican campaigns”.
[The name of Nazi & Communist collaborator, George Soros, was never mentioned.]
For the sake of argument let us assume that it didn’t happen.
What proof would be sufficient to prove that it didn’t happen?
We know what a “smoking gun” is.
What is a “non-smoking gun”?
The sounds in the background, one of finger nails on the blackboard combined with the dentist’s drill making first contact with an enflamed molar, is what you hear when 25 centuries of Logic gets the boot. Critical enquiry and reasoned discourse have been benched in favor of Star Chambers and drum head courts martial.
David Axelrod reminds you of the kid in high school who never got picked for the dodge ball team. A kind gym teacher would put him on one side or the other or the dogs would come and piss on him.
If he went to an all boys school he never got to eat his lunch in the cafeteria. Mom’s water cress, tofu, arugula and organic mayonnaise sandwiches on whole wheat toast with the crust cut off would never have made it past the second period.
I have it on highest authority, from unimpeachable sources who must remain anonymous, that certain White House advisers are world class wankers. While style counts for some points it is distance and volume that count most in the spirited White House intramural contests. Bonus points are awarded for hitting Bo, the White House Wonder Dog. The senior wanker who is primus inter pares is known to have a droopy
mustache. He thinks that the Pillsbury Dough Boy has the ideal male body shape. [It used to be Bibendum but that was before a Buy America campaign became part of the Summer of Recovery.]
The burden of proof is on Mr. Axelrod, a man known to have the mystery word ONAN tattooed on both of his inner thighs, to prove that he doesn’t spend face time with Lord Barack the Beneficent spanking his monkey. His support group, Chicken Chokers of America, says that his left handed and backward technique has inspired millions of pre-pubescent boys, boys of confused sexuality, to aim for the stars.
It is known that the chances of getting AIDS, of getting any STD, are zero provided that wankers stay in the closet.
The group wants Axelrod to come out of the closet to say that it’s OK to stay in the closet.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has said that if one generation of teenage boys devote themselves to progressive and perpetual wankering it will result in a cost savings of several gazillions of dollars in Obama Health Care savings over ten years. If this 10 year projected savings had not appeared on this year’s Federal budget as an asset the Chinese were going to sell their markers to the Bank of Sal and Nunzio. Both are honors graduates of the Soprano School of Getting the Customer from No to Yes.
Provided the boys warm up properly, epicondylitis being the chief concern, being the chief injury to be wary of, wankering is good for the country.
It is organic. It leaves no carbon footprint. It could cause the sweat sock industry to go to three shifts.
World Wide Wankers, including both Sunni and Shia All Stars, are coming to Washington to shake their filled fists in support of White House wankering.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and can’t you just picture him under a TARP in a pile with Axelrod, Barbara Mikulski, Robert Reich, Donna Shalala, and soon to be unemployed Congressman Barney Frank, Bo, the White House Wonder Dog, and 20 gallons of industrial strength WD-40, has, for him, taken a wise course by saying he will treat this as a “hands off” subject.
If you were wearing your tin hat and had your decoder ring on you could hear Bo, the WHWD, saying, “If this is evolution stop the bus. I want to get off.” Janet Reno was there as Gatekeeper Emeritus. The rumor that Barney Frank would be touring as a one-man show with him as a combination of Oscar Wilde and Rock Hudson with the Village People as an opening act could not be confirmed. Using the precedent of David Axelrod concerning the burden of proof it must be assumed to be correct until Barney, the Wump Wangler from Bayonne, can prove otherwise.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that, if successful, it would adopt the Barney Frank defense of proving that something didn’t happen.
“FREE MEN SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES”
Kevin Smith
PS – To paraphrase Curley Biden, our moronic wet your pants what am I supposed to do with my thumbs are my teeth in backwards again Vice President, “It’s no big fucking deal”.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Barrie & Viv
October 7, 2010
Barrie & Viv
You know that I like to swim in the Great Lake of words, of language.
I sent you a portion of my birthday menu that may need some clarification.
“French toast” was once known as “German toast”. “Rich man’s” and “Poor man’s” were the only variations. “French dressing” would never be used on either. “French fries” would be overkill if it were served with it. Up until the Great War it was a favorite dish of the British Army. It consists of having thick slices of stale bread dipped in an egg washed and fried a la flapjacks/pancakes. My quick study suggests that there is no connection between “French toast” and “French leave”. Possibly “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” may have been skilled in both. I don’t know.
And to think that this is from a country that changed the name of sauerkraut to Liberty Cabbage during the previous century’s first dustup with the Hun.
Jacques Barzun, as American as anyone has ever been despite having a Gallic sounding name, says that “to know America you must first know baseball”. I just heard an English business commentator use a baseball analogy that didn’t quite make it. He believes, as I do, that while “you may be in error but you may never be in doubt”. He plunged ahead. By the time his business bit was over he sounded like he was using a minor language from one of Jupiter’s smaller moons.
All of the above leads me back to our common language.
Your e-mail to me dated 10/6/10 – that’s October 6th, not June 6th – has left me in a dither.
You say that if you had written any of my notes and they found out about it you would have “either been fined or imprisoned for racial prejudice”.
It was a short 905 years ago that your forebears told a King to shut up, sit down, and sign the God Damn document.
It was a short 361 years ago that you cut the head off one of Amy’s forebears because, inter alia, he had a speech impediment. [For the sake of my children and their children I will not rest until their rightful place in the line of succession is restored. One of my favorite flicks is “Kind Hearts and Coronets”. Also, maybe their father/grandfather could get some rents and royalties or, at the very least, a free hour at the Burlington Arcade]
On my first trip to London my second stop was Speakers’ Corner. Since the main topic was the wonders of the Vegan life style and not how bad my country was/is/shall be I did not join the debate. My opening line would have been stolen from the well known American sage and pundit P.J. O’Rourke. He says, and rather convincingly, that “tofu is whale snot”.
You didn’t invent it and we didn’t perfect it.
26 centuries ago one of those famous DWEMs said, “Free men speak with free tongues”.
I looked back at all my scribblings about Muslims, either Sunni or Shia, Fuzzy Wuzzies, WOGs, and other “lesser breeds”. While I may have been guilty of some offenses to the Gods of Grammar and Syntax I would not have changed a single word.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the burning of an American flag is a political act and is protected speech under our First Amendment.
If that is our benchmark why do we, preceded by you, have our collective knickers in a knot over some silly ass cartoons about Mohammed shagging sheep or whether or not it is acceptable to piss on a burning Koran to save it? [I had an uncle who told me that piss was an acceptable way to unfreeze a frozen .50 caliber machine gun in WW2.]
I shall continue to push the edge the edge of the envelope as much as I can in my country. Please pass this on to any like minded friends. Be sure to include my address, both electronic and the old fashioned way.
Please don’t forget that “billingsgate” was once one of your great exports.
I intend to clutch both Johnson and Churchill to my heaving bosom immediately after lunch: Johnson for telling us of the danger of “hope triumphing over experience” and Churchill for admonishing us that if we choose shame over war we would get war as a bonus.
Why not start by chaining a dozen 12 volt batteries to the legs of some vexing EU weenie and throwing his sad sack ass into the Avon? Exactly how deep is it? I wouldn’t want you to make a muck of it.
Kevin Smith
Barrie & Viv
You know that I like to swim in the Great Lake of words, of language.
I sent you a portion of my birthday menu that may need some clarification.
“French toast” was once known as “German toast”. “Rich man’s” and “Poor man’s” were the only variations. “French dressing” would never be used on either. “French fries” would be overkill if it were served with it. Up until the Great War it was a favorite dish of the British Army. It consists of having thick slices of stale bread dipped in an egg washed and fried a la flapjacks/pancakes. My quick study suggests that there is no connection between “French toast” and “French leave”. Possibly “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” may have been skilled in both. I don’t know.
And to think that this is from a country that changed the name of sauerkraut to Liberty Cabbage during the previous century’s first dustup with the Hun.
Jacques Barzun, as American as anyone has ever been despite having a Gallic sounding name, says that “to know America you must first know baseball”. I just heard an English business commentator use a baseball analogy that didn’t quite make it. He believes, as I do, that while “you may be in error but you may never be in doubt”. He plunged ahead. By the time his business bit was over he sounded like he was using a minor language from one of Jupiter’s smaller moons.
All of the above leads me back to our common language.
Your e-mail to me dated 10/6/10 – that’s October 6th, not June 6th – has left me in a dither.
You say that if you had written any of my notes and they found out about it you would have “either been fined or imprisoned for racial prejudice”.
It was a short 905 years ago that your forebears told a King to shut up, sit down, and sign the God Damn document.
It was a short 361 years ago that you cut the head off one of Amy’s forebears because, inter alia, he had a speech impediment. [For the sake of my children and their children I will not rest until their rightful place in the line of succession is restored. One of my favorite flicks is “Kind Hearts and Coronets”. Also, maybe their father/grandfather could get some rents and royalties or, at the very least, a free hour at the Burlington Arcade]
On my first trip to London my second stop was Speakers’ Corner. Since the main topic was the wonders of the Vegan life style and not how bad my country was/is/shall be I did not join the debate. My opening line would have been stolen from the well known American sage and pundit P.J. O’Rourke. He says, and rather convincingly, that “tofu is whale snot”.
You didn’t invent it and we didn’t perfect it.
26 centuries ago one of those famous DWEMs said, “Free men speak with free tongues”.
I looked back at all my scribblings about Muslims, either Sunni or Shia, Fuzzy Wuzzies, WOGs, and other “lesser breeds”. While I may have been guilty of some offenses to the Gods of Grammar and Syntax I would not have changed a single word.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the burning of an American flag is a political act and is protected speech under our First Amendment.
If that is our benchmark why do we, preceded by you, have our collective knickers in a knot over some silly ass cartoons about Mohammed shagging sheep or whether or not it is acceptable to piss on a burning Koran to save it? [I had an uncle who told me that piss was an acceptable way to unfreeze a frozen .50 caliber machine gun in WW2.]
I shall continue to push the edge the edge of the envelope as much as I can in my country. Please pass this on to any like minded friends. Be sure to include my address, both electronic and the old fashioned way.
Please don’t forget that “billingsgate” was once one of your great exports.
I intend to clutch both Johnson and Churchill to my heaving bosom immediately after lunch: Johnson for telling us of the danger of “hope triumphing over experience” and Churchill for admonishing us that if we choose shame over war we would get war as a bonus.
Why not start by chaining a dozen 12 volt batteries to the legs of some vexing EU weenie and throwing his sad sack ass into the Avon? Exactly how deep is it? I wouldn’t want you to make a muck of it.
Kevin Smith
Earl Morgan The Jersey Journal
October 1, 2010
Earl Morgan
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ 07306-4101
RE: “Tinkering around” with Social Security – some comments on your column of August 25, 2010
Mr. Morgan,
As an émigré from Hudson County – I’m from the good end of the county, Bayonne – I reach out to the Jersey Journal to check out the Irish sports pages, to see who was indicted, and to revel in the buffoonery that made/makes/will make Hudson County great.
Since no one I knew had died, since no one I knew had gotten jammed up with the Prosecutor I sought out for that staple of Hudson County nitwittedness, “balloon juice” fiats from flat lined ink stained wretches.
As soon as I read your column on why Social Security should not be “tinkered” with I knew I had struck the Mother Lode.
It is both a simple and inconvenient truth but facts are hard things. Fudging or forgetting them makes any argument stronger until it is thrust into the light of day.
Your history of Social Security is, and I’m trying to be charitable, lacking in facts.
Whether they were forgotten or misstated is another subject. Your major premise, that Republicans are responsible for everything bad from Pearl Harbor to leisure suits to disintermediation to the Asian tsunamis to Obama’s recent discovery of 7, or was it 8, new states, is undisturbed by facts.
Let the record show that it was a Republican from New Jersey, Robert Kean, who shaped the final legislation in the House and then got it passed. He was nationally acclaimed as “Mr. Social Security”.
Look it up.
As to “tinkering” with Social Security I suggest that Rube Goldberg on crack and steroids could not have done a better job.
It is truly said that much more can be stolen with a pen than with a gun. Social Security is example #1.
In 1964, and if memory serves Earl Warren was the only Republican in Washington, a bit of financial legerdemain happened with every one watching.
The moneys deducted from your paycheck, the exact amount of which was matched by your employer went not sent to the legendary lockbox of Social Security but; rather, to the operating account of the United States Treasury.
The word that appears in Federal indictments in re ERISA crimes is “commingling”.
Lyndon Johnson, with the help of an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, decided to fight a two front war.
One front was in Asia. It ended 9 years later with 58,000 names on a wall in Washington. At least it ended.
[Do you remember the campaign of 1964? It was said that if Goldwater had been elected this country would have 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots. That was a long time ago. Who did win that election?]
The other was against poverty, a more insidious foe. It was fought in the Marion section of Jersey City. It was fought in Watts. It was fought in the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex [Are they still called “projects”?] in St. Louis. Parts of Detroit were, to borrow a phrase from Vietnam, destroyed in order to save it.
Having been fought for years longer than all the wars this country has been in, having surpassed the total time the Greek dustup called the Peloponnesian War lasted, it will take aim at the 100 Years War.
If 1964 is the base line year for statistics it can be safely said that none of the reasons for fighting the WOP has been made better. In fact, they are all worse. Billions and billions of dollars later and we find ourselves with a calendar that says it is 2010 but a reality that says it is 1963. The so called medicine that took a patient with a mild fever to critical condition to the ICU to a one way ticket to Lourdes to being fitted for a shroud appears not to be working. Any remedy that says we should double the dosage is offensive to Logic and ludicrous on its face.
It has been a war with no “exit strategy” save to quick step into the light from the oncoming train.
As to Social Security, once a year the really bright lads and lasses – and aren’t they always really bright? – the same type who say that we have to pass a bill to find out what’s in it, sit down and figure how much money they have clipped from Peter to give to an increasingly expectant Paul. A marker, a chit, an IOU is then issued from the Treasury to the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund. They put this marker, which is now called an asset, into the legendary lock box. The Pied Piper then takes the long route to put the lockbox into the theft proof vault of the Bank of Oz. Honest. Look it up.
If that ain’t “tinkering” I don’t know what is.
Your complaint, that the Brothers get the ca-ca end of the stick when they die early, has much merit.
My solution is simple.
If someone gets his ticket punched before getting on the good ship Social Security he should, at the very least, get back the moneys he put into it. A strong case can be made for getting back the moneys his employer put into it. Absent the Feds, men with badges and guns, the Boss would have paid him that money. Besides, the widow could use the dough.
One last thing.
If it weren’t for the Republicans in the Senate none, none as in zip, zilch, nada of the major civil rights’ legislation would have been passed in its final form. You can look that one up also.
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking of “tinkering”, how are the Jersey City schools doing? Specifically, how are the high schools doing? If Hudson County is still true to form Republicans have to get out of town by sundown. That means that the Democrats are in charge of everything. To Hell with National Merit Scholars! Dickinson High School and Snyder High School should be turning out Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Prize winners, right? Also, could you get me the newest edition of the Jackson Avenue Dream Book?
Earl Morgan
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ 07306-4101
RE: “Tinkering around” with Social Security – some comments on your column of August 25, 2010
Mr. Morgan,
As an émigré from Hudson County – I’m from the good end of the county, Bayonne – I reach out to the Jersey Journal to check out the Irish sports pages, to see who was indicted, and to revel in the buffoonery that made/makes/will make Hudson County great.
Since no one I knew had died, since no one I knew had gotten jammed up with the Prosecutor I sought out for that staple of Hudson County nitwittedness, “balloon juice” fiats from flat lined ink stained wretches.
As soon as I read your column on why Social Security should not be “tinkered” with I knew I had struck the Mother Lode.
It is both a simple and inconvenient truth but facts are hard things. Fudging or forgetting them makes any argument stronger until it is thrust into the light of day.
Your history of Social Security is, and I’m trying to be charitable, lacking in facts.
Whether they were forgotten or misstated is another subject. Your major premise, that Republicans are responsible for everything bad from Pearl Harbor to leisure suits to disintermediation to the Asian tsunamis to Obama’s recent discovery of 7, or was it 8, new states, is undisturbed by facts.
Let the record show that it was a Republican from New Jersey, Robert Kean, who shaped the final legislation in the House and then got it passed. He was nationally acclaimed as “Mr. Social Security”.
Look it up.
As to “tinkering” with Social Security I suggest that Rube Goldberg on crack and steroids could not have done a better job.
It is truly said that much more can be stolen with a pen than with a gun. Social Security is example #1.
In 1964, and if memory serves Earl Warren was the only Republican in Washington, a bit of financial legerdemain happened with every one watching.
The moneys deducted from your paycheck, the exact amount of which was matched by your employer went not sent to the legendary lockbox of Social Security but; rather, to the operating account of the United States Treasury.
The word that appears in Federal indictments in re ERISA crimes is “commingling”.
Lyndon Johnson, with the help of an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, decided to fight a two front war.
One front was in Asia. It ended 9 years later with 58,000 names on a wall in Washington. At least it ended.
[Do you remember the campaign of 1964? It was said that if Goldwater had been elected this country would have 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots. That was a long time ago. Who did win that election?]
The other was against poverty, a more insidious foe. It was fought in the Marion section of Jersey City. It was fought in Watts. It was fought in the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex [Are they still called “projects”?] in St. Louis. Parts of Detroit were, to borrow a phrase from Vietnam, destroyed in order to save it.
Having been fought for years longer than all the wars this country has been in, having surpassed the total time the Greek dustup called the Peloponnesian War lasted, it will take aim at the 100 Years War.
If 1964 is the base line year for statistics it can be safely said that none of the reasons for fighting the WOP has been made better. In fact, they are all worse. Billions and billions of dollars later and we find ourselves with a calendar that says it is 2010 but a reality that says it is 1963. The so called medicine that took a patient with a mild fever to critical condition to the ICU to a one way ticket to Lourdes to being fitted for a shroud appears not to be working. Any remedy that says we should double the dosage is offensive to Logic and ludicrous on its face.
It has been a war with no “exit strategy” save to quick step into the light from the oncoming train.
As to Social Security, once a year the really bright lads and lasses – and aren’t they always really bright? – the same type who say that we have to pass a bill to find out what’s in it, sit down and figure how much money they have clipped from Peter to give to an increasingly expectant Paul. A marker, a chit, an IOU is then issued from the Treasury to the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund. They put this marker, which is now called an asset, into the legendary lock box. The Pied Piper then takes the long route to put the lockbox into the theft proof vault of the Bank of Oz. Honest. Look it up.
If that ain’t “tinkering” I don’t know what is.
Your complaint, that the Brothers get the ca-ca end of the stick when they die early, has much merit.
My solution is simple.
If someone gets his ticket punched before getting on the good ship Social Security he should, at the very least, get back the moneys he put into it. A strong case can be made for getting back the moneys his employer put into it. Absent the Feds, men with badges and guns, the Boss would have paid him that money. Besides, the widow could use the dough.
One last thing.
If it weren’t for the Republicans in the Senate none, none as in zip, zilch, nada of the major civil rights’ legislation would have been passed in its final form. You can look that one up also.
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking of “tinkering”, how are the Jersey City schools doing? Specifically, how are the high schools doing? If Hudson County is still true to form Republicans have to get out of town by sundown. That means that the Democrats are in charge of everything. To Hell with National Merit Scholars! Dickinson High School and Snyder High School should be turning out Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Prize winners, right? Also, could you get me the newest edition of the Jackson Avenue Dream Book?
October 6, 2010
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’
Ah! The good old days!
Such was the level of theological debate 6 or 7 centuries ago.
While tonsured monks debated the point the cathedral at Chartres was built, Aristotle was brought back into the Western world, and Dante held up a mirror for the Christian world to see itself.
Today the great theological debate in the Muslim world is over the size of the rocks to be used when stoning a wife who “steps out” on her husband.
If they are too big the slut dies too quickly.
If they are too small the harlot suffers needlessly.
I am at a loss as to whether or not the above will lead to a Reformation a la Martin Luther. Somehow I don’t think there will be a Luther wanabee named Abdul nailing any theses to any door in Mecca.
I don’t know whether the issue of big stones versus little stones shakes out as a Sunni/Shia thing. “As far as I know” – a phrase made popular by then Senator Clinton about Senator Obama’s religious beliefs – “moderate” Muslims are mugwumping this issue. Our policy has been to let the “lesser breeds” work those things out by themselves.
My sense of the aesthete has DNA starting at the Parthenon. The roads, the aqueducts, the armies, the arches, LEX, the comedies, Plutarch. SUM ROMANUS.
A part of me was at Marathon and Salamis. I was at Tours, Runnymede, and Lepanto. One of my uncles helped build St. Peter’s Basilica. That’s the Christian church that Yusef and Farouk still say that they will stable their horses there.
Philadelphia, 1787. Gettysburg, 1863. Omdurman, 1898.
I was there.
It is a legacy that I intend to preserve and leave for my 3 granddaughters.
That’s why a croissant shaped man with an orange beard wearing a gray table cloth standing in front of the proposed mosque in NYC and snarling like a rabid badger in heat so bothered me.
It wasn’t what he said. It was what we didn’t say that bothered me in a most profound way.
Laying aside the self evident fact that it was a week, maybe 10 days, since he had interfaced with soap and hot water he did serve one useful purpose.
We in the West are still asleep.
Hillaire Belloc was right.
“We sit by and watch the Barbarian. His comic inversion
of our old certitudes and fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh.
but as we laugh we are watched by large and awful eyes from beyond;
and on those faces there is no smile.
Using the Noam Chomsky method of translation, the one that says those words mean exactly what you want them to mean, Imam Slobbo said, “Kill all Jewish pigs and apes! Behead all Christians! Uncircumsize all non-Muslim males!”
The official translation was “Why can’t we all get along?” You would think his middle name was Kumbaya.
Plus, if you have an orange beard how do you accessorize?
The call to arms is faint; its sound is from an uncertain trumpet.
We invite the beast in at our own peril.
KS
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’
Ah! The good old days!
Such was the level of theological debate 6 or 7 centuries ago.
While tonsured monks debated the point the cathedral at Chartres was built, Aristotle was brought back into the Western world, and Dante held up a mirror for the Christian world to see itself.
Today the great theological debate in the Muslim world is over the size of the rocks to be used when stoning a wife who “steps out” on her husband.
If they are too big the slut dies too quickly.
If they are too small the harlot suffers needlessly.
I am at a loss as to whether or not the above will lead to a Reformation a la Martin Luther. Somehow I don’t think there will be a Luther wanabee named Abdul nailing any theses to any door in Mecca.
I don’t know whether the issue of big stones versus little stones shakes out as a Sunni/Shia thing. “As far as I know” – a phrase made popular by then Senator Clinton about Senator Obama’s religious beliefs – “moderate” Muslims are mugwumping this issue. Our policy has been to let the “lesser breeds” work those things out by themselves.
My sense of the aesthete has DNA starting at the Parthenon. The roads, the aqueducts, the armies, the arches, LEX, the comedies, Plutarch. SUM ROMANUS.
A part of me was at Marathon and Salamis. I was at Tours, Runnymede, and Lepanto. One of my uncles helped build St. Peter’s Basilica. That’s the Christian church that Yusef and Farouk still say that they will stable their horses there.
Philadelphia, 1787. Gettysburg, 1863. Omdurman, 1898.
I was there.
It is a legacy that I intend to preserve and leave for my 3 granddaughters.
That’s why a croissant shaped man with an orange beard wearing a gray table cloth standing in front of the proposed mosque in NYC and snarling like a rabid badger in heat so bothered me.
It wasn’t what he said. It was what we didn’t say that bothered me in a most profound way.
Laying aside the self evident fact that it was a week, maybe 10 days, since he had interfaced with soap and hot water he did serve one useful purpose.
We in the West are still asleep.
Hillaire Belloc was right.
“We sit by and watch the Barbarian. His comic inversion
of our old certitudes and fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh.
but as we laugh we are watched by large and awful eyes from beyond;
and on those faces there is no smile.
Using the Noam Chomsky method of translation, the one that says those words mean exactly what you want them to mean, Imam Slobbo said, “Kill all Jewish pigs and apes! Behead all Christians! Uncircumsize all non-Muslim males!”
The official translation was “Why can’t we all get along?” You would think his middle name was Kumbaya.
Plus, if you have an orange beard how do you accessorize?
The call to arms is faint; its sound is from an uncertain trumpet.
We invite the beast in at our own peril.
KS
October 5, 2010
“Another Broward politician is booked”
The Miami Herald
Today
“Kraft and husband turn themselves in.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
The banality of corruption is revealed by headlines, the champion of which was printed in the Hudson Dispatch, a paper of late and happy memory, in 1977.
“U.S. Attorney says no new Hudson County indictments today.”
There is one very good thing to come out of this public affirmation of private concupiscence.
Diversity, the goal not the quota of Affirmative Action, works.
Since the most recent spate of “no stove is too hot to steal” arrests it is well to note that the perps, real or alleged, reflect the goal of modern American Liberals in Broward County. No one said that the big motley tent, a tent that excludes no one, shouldn’t include crooks, grifters, and poltroons. That it does and that it represents a true cross section of public figures now or soon to be wearing stripes is a serendipitous thing.
A quick look at some of the shining stars of Broward County who are either in jail or going to jail reveals some of the following:
#1 – A confessed sex offender
#2 – A calorically challenged woman
#3 – A Napoleonic sheriff
#4 – A commissioner waving a loot bag
#5 – A commissioner waving a gun
#6 – Some White people and some Black people
#7 – Some Christians and some Jews
#8 – Alas, no homosexuals. But wait! It’s still early.
I was born and raised in Hudson County, New Jersey.
One mile from where I lived a grammar school was built in 1958. It featured $900 waste baskets, $4600 desks, and $9500 storm windows. The Hudson County coroner doubled his profit and raised his internal rate of return to infinity by burying two indigents in the same pine box and billing the County for two funerals. A Federal Judge stopped my uncle from voting in 1971 when he discovered he died in 1956.
My wife has relatives in Chicago. Doesn’t Cook County have its own wing in local state and Federal prisons? The Governor of New York was playing hide the salami with some hookers. The Governor of Illinois was a hooker.
Even though I wasn’t raised on a farm the lesson of the rooster was learned early on.
When I got to South Florida three things happened that should have foretold all.
#1 – A Brinks armored truck filled with a day’s pickups overturned in Ft. Lauderdale. Bills and coins went ass went chockablock onto the street. In a show of unity that every urban activist proud the community scarfed up all the free money. Every day another police officer, a man who drew the short straw, would go on television and tell the street people to return the money. Everyday the street peopled laughed their collective asses off. A teenager returned 85 cents and got a weekend on Disney World for a reward. No other moneys were ever returned.
#2 – It took two days of first rate police work to find a 350 pound missing man in the Miami airport. He was changing planes in Miami en route from Haiti to the School of Medicine at Duke University. A growth was to be removed from the side of his face. It weighed 60 pounds. He spoke no English. He was as Black as an Ace of Spades. Let me repeat that description. A 350 pound Black man, a man who speaks no English, a man with two heads, went walkabout in the Miami airport. It took two days to find him. I know it’s a big airport but how many people could fit that description?
#3 – Broward County was determined to give a hotel to a Black man. That the donee, a man who gofered for Mayor Marion Barry, didn’t have the good sense to say “Yes” is a matter for a different discussion. A Black County commissioner tried to backdoor some money into the hotel project, a project on which she would vote. When the Commission counsel advised her that it was illegal she demanded, and got, a second opinion. When the new lawyer told her the same thing she backed off. The voters turned her out. A Florida Congressman, the only Congressman who was a felon before he went to Washington, put her in charge of half of Broward County for the 2000 Census.
This is not to suggest that Republicans are without fault.
Yesterday’s indictments in the Alabama gambling industry show that Black and White, male and female, Republican and Democratic and put aside their difference when it comes time to dip their wicks or their wickettes in the public honey pot.
It is generally known that Republicans lack the wit to be universal crooks. They will go for the big score but they lack the staying power to glom nickels and dimes from the mite box.
When bi-partisanship is the rule, Republicans and Democrats put aside their differences and steal quarters off the top of a hot stove before they steal the stove.
The last stage of cocaine addiction is when you believe you are ten feet tall and bulletproof, not to mention that you sing and dance very well too.
A collective loss of septums occurs when one party becomes the only party.
Hudson County, Cook County, Broward County.
No public dollar is safe in any of those places.
In 15 years in Broward County there has been one non-Democratic County Commissioner. He was appointed by the Republican Governor when the Democratic Commissioner pleaded guilty to stealing from himself. The voters promptly turned him out of office at the next election.
Speaking of conspiracies, there was a Republican elected to the post of Property Appraiser. When he announced that he was going to switch parties he died. Go figure.
Speaking of “figures”…
The most recent Broward County indictee has been accused of taken $10,000 from the Chaits, pere et fils. They were real estate developers of whom is could be said that they would have bribed their way into the oven contract at Auschwitz. The benefit for them for their $10,000 was a $500,000 reduction in “remediation fees”. Those fees show a role reversal in the usual chain of public/private boodling. Usually the for profit private guy bribes the public guy. Here the public guy charges the private guy fees for what may or may not happen.
Having some knowledge of the world of “white envelopes” I assure you that the going rate for saving $500,000 ain’t 10 grand. 10 grand is what the developer pays for your daughter’s rhinoplasty. In one case a Hudson County Mayor got his wife a greatly expanded chest. She didn’t have to testify against him. Some before and after bathing suit photos settled the issue.
Not only was the latest perp walker a crook but she was a dumb crook who sold herself short. If you are going to be hung better for it to be for 3 sheep than 1 goat.
The immediate solution is to re-create the tumbrel brigade. It proved to be the most efficient and cost effective way to keep Madam Guillotine busy.
A more drastic solution would be another successful French model.
During the military phase of fighting the pernicious Albijensian heresy the Cardinal ordered his military subordinate to raze the town and kill all the inhabitants.
“Some of those people work for us,” said the hesitant General.
“Kill them all. God will know his own”, said the righteous cleric.
God would not have made the task Herculean unless She intended to send us a Hercules.
“Throw all the bastards out.”
KS
“Another Broward politician is booked”
The Miami Herald
Today
“Kraft and husband turn themselves in.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today
The banality of corruption is revealed by headlines, the champion of which was printed in the Hudson Dispatch, a paper of late and happy memory, in 1977.
“U.S. Attorney says no new Hudson County indictments today.”
There is one very good thing to come out of this public affirmation of private concupiscence.
Diversity, the goal not the quota of Affirmative Action, works.
Since the most recent spate of “no stove is too hot to steal” arrests it is well to note that the perps, real or alleged, reflect the goal of modern American Liberals in Broward County. No one said that the big motley tent, a tent that excludes no one, shouldn’t include crooks, grifters, and poltroons. That it does and that it represents a true cross section of public figures now or soon to be wearing stripes is a serendipitous thing.
A quick look at some of the shining stars of Broward County who are either in jail or going to jail reveals some of the following:
#1 – A confessed sex offender
#2 – A calorically challenged woman
#3 – A Napoleonic sheriff
#4 – A commissioner waving a loot bag
#5 – A commissioner waving a gun
#6 – Some White people and some Black people
#7 – Some Christians and some Jews
#8 – Alas, no homosexuals. But wait! It’s still early.
I was born and raised in Hudson County, New Jersey.
One mile from where I lived a grammar school was built in 1958. It featured $900 waste baskets, $4600 desks, and $9500 storm windows. The Hudson County coroner doubled his profit and raised his internal rate of return to infinity by burying two indigents in the same pine box and billing the County for two funerals. A Federal Judge stopped my uncle from voting in 1971 when he discovered he died in 1956.
My wife has relatives in Chicago. Doesn’t Cook County have its own wing in local state and Federal prisons? The Governor of New York was playing hide the salami with some hookers. The Governor of Illinois was a hooker.
Even though I wasn’t raised on a farm the lesson of the rooster was learned early on.
When I got to South Florida three things happened that should have foretold all.
#1 – A Brinks armored truck filled with a day’s pickups overturned in Ft. Lauderdale. Bills and coins went ass went chockablock onto the street. In a show of unity that every urban activist proud the community scarfed up all the free money. Every day another police officer, a man who drew the short straw, would go on television and tell the street people to return the money. Everyday the street peopled laughed their collective asses off. A teenager returned 85 cents and got a weekend on Disney World for a reward. No other moneys were ever returned.
#2 – It took two days of first rate police work to find a 350 pound missing man in the Miami airport. He was changing planes in Miami en route from Haiti to the School of Medicine at Duke University. A growth was to be removed from the side of his face. It weighed 60 pounds. He spoke no English. He was as Black as an Ace of Spades. Let me repeat that description. A 350 pound Black man, a man who speaks no English, a man with two heads, went walkabout in the Miami airport. It took two days to find him. I know it’s a big airport but how many people could fit that description?
#3 – Broward County was determined to give a hotel to a Black man. That the donee, a man who gofered for Mayor Marion Barry, didn’t have the good sense to say “Yes” is a matter for a different discussion. A Black County commissioner tried to backdoor some money into the hotel project, a project on which she would vote. When the Commission counsel advised her that it was illegal she demanded, and got, a second opinion. When the new lawyer told her the same thing she backed off. The voters turned her out. A Florida Congressman, the only Congressman who was a felon before he went to Washington, put her in charge of half of Broward County for the 2000 Census.
This is not to suggest that Republicans are without fault.
Yesterday’s indictments in the Alabama gambling industry show that Black and White, male and female, Republican and Democratic and put aside their difference when it comes time to dip their wicks or their wickettes in the public honey pot.
It is generally known that Republicans lack the wit to be universal crooks. They will go for the big score but they lack the staying power to glom nickels and dimes from the mite box.
When bi-partisanship is the rule, Republicans and Democrats put aside their differences and steal quarters off the top of a hot stove before they steal the stove.
The last stage of cocaine addiction is when you believe you are ten feet tall and bulletproof, not to mention that you sing and dance very well too.
A collective loss of septums occurs when one party becomes the only party.
Hudson County, Cook County, Broward County.
No public dollar is safe in any of those places.
In 15 years in Broward County there has been one non-Democratic County Commissioner. He was appointed by the Republican Governor when the Democratic Commissioner pleaded guilty to stealing from himself. The voters promptly turned him out of office at the next election.
Speaking of conspiracies, there was a Republican elected to the post of Property Appraiser. When he announced that he was going to switch parties he died. Go figure.
Speaking of “figures”…
The most recent Broward County indictee has been accused of taken $10,000 from the Chaits, pere et fils. They were real estate developers of whom is could be said that they would have bribed their way into the oven contract at Auschwitz. The benefit for them for their $10,000 was a $500,000 reduction in “remediation fees”. Those fees show a role reversal in the usual chain of public/private boodling. Usually the for profit private guy bribes the public guy. Here the public guy charges the private guy fees for what may or may not happen.
Having some knowledge of the world of “white envelopes” I assure you that the going rate for saving $500,000 ain’t 10 grand. 10 grand is what the developer pays for your daughter’s rhinoplasty. In one case a Hudson County Mayor got his wife a greatly expanded chest. She didn’t have to testify against him. Some before and after bathing suit photos settled the issue.
Not only was the latest perp walker a crook but she was a dumb crook who sold herself short. If you are going to be hung better for it to be for 3 sheep than 1 goat.
The immediate solution is to re-create the tumbrel brigade. It proved to be the most efficient and cost effective way to keep Madam Guillotine busy.
A more drastic solution would be another successful French model.
During the military phase of fighting the pernicious Albijensian heresy the Cardinal ordered his military subordinate to raze the town and kill all the inhabitants.
“Some of those people work for us,” said the hesitant General.
“Kill them all. God will know his own”, said the righteous cleric.
God would not have made the task Herculean unless She intended to send us a Hercules.
“Throw all the bastards out.”
KS
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Joy-Ann Reid The Miami Herald
September 30, 2010
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: On choosing a candidate for public office – Some comments on your OP-ED on the choice between Meek and Crist, what with Rubio being beyond the pale, in today’s Miami Herald.
Ms. Reid,
Your picture, that of a smiling African-American woman, is usually sufficient to stave off serious criticism.
Fortunately for you, because of your age I think there may be time for you to learn. I am of an age and condition where the threat of a Scarlet “R” holds no fear for me.
You say, with a spot on comment, that should Meek win he would have power beyond the 1% given to each of the 99 other Senators. He would have a marker on the White House that could lead to him making a run at the ability of Senator Byrd, the recently deceased former Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, to turn “earmarks” into a 4 letter word.
Further, you say that he would “provide critical support for President Obama on issues like middle class tax cuts and immigration reform”. We both know that “middle class tax cuts” and “immigration reform” are buzz words for taxing the Bejeezus out of so called rich people and putting ads in foreign newspapers telling people to “Come on down. The gates are open.”
If he wins maybe he could get his Mom a Cadillac Escalade with a Prius power system.
All of the above are good reasons for electing him but they are secondary.
Heraclitus, one of those DWEMs – DWEM? Send a SASE – said “Character is destiny”.
James Madison, the giant of a divinely inspired group of men known as the Founding Fathers, when asked what was the most important characteristic to look for in an individual seeking public office, answered
“Character. Character is all.”
Suppose Meek, should he be elected, turns out to be a total turd? Worse, suppose he turns out to be lying turd?
Don’t focus on his vacillation on whether the minimum wage should be $12.50 or $13.50 an hour. Don’t focus on whether or not he thinks the price of a first class stamp should be predicated on the per capita income of the zip code from where it is mailed. Don’t focus on whether he thinks the 105% tax rate should be retroactive or whether he thinks it should be given a year to take effect. Don’t focus on whether he thinks immigrants – legal or not – should have the vote before they get a job, a license, or a fixed address. Focus on whether or not he is a man of his word. Focus on whether or not he has a base, a core of integrity.
Better to be governed by an honest man with imbecilic ideas than by someone with whom you agree whose favorite political philosophy is best described as plaid.
Perhaps a geography test could be the tie breaker.
President Obama is sure that there are at least 57 states, He thinks that there may be 58.
Has Congressman Meek settled on a number?
How would he say 57 or 58 in Austrian, the language of Mozart?
Kevin Smith
Joy-Ann Reid
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: On choosing a candidate for public office – Some comments on your OP-ED on the choice between Meek and Crist, what with Rubio being beyond the pale, in today’s Miami Herald.
Ms. Reid,
Your picture, that of a smiling African-American woman, is usually sufficient to stave off serious criticism.
Fortunately for you, because of your age I think there may be time for you to learn. I am of an age and condition where the threat of a Scarlet “R” holds no fear for me.
You say, with a spot on comment, that should Meek win he would have power beyond the 1% given to each of the 99 other Senators. He would have a marker on the White House that could lead to him making a run at the ability of Senator Byrd, the recently deceased former Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, to turn “earmarks” into a 4 letter word.
Further, you say that he would “provide critical support for President Obama on issues like middle class tax cuts and immigration reform”. We both know that “middle class tax cuts” and “immigration reform” are buzz words for taxing the Bejeezus out of so called rich people and putting ads in foreign newspapers telling people to “Come on down. The gates are open.”
If he wins maybe he could get his Mom a Cadillac Escalade with a Prius power system.
All of the above are good reasons for electing him but they are secondary.
Heraclitus, one of those DWEMs – DWEM? Send a SASE – said “Character is destiny”.
James Madison, the giant of a divinely inspired group of men known as the Founding Fathers, when asked what was the most important characteristic to look for in an individual seeking public office, answered
“Character. Character is all.”
Suppose Meek, should he be elected, turns out to be a total turd? Worse, suppose he turns out to be lying turd?
Don’t focus on his vacillation on whether the minimum wage should be $12.50 or $13.50 an hour. Don’t focus on whether or not he thinks the price of a first class stamp should be predicated on the per capita income of the zip code from where it is mailed. Don’t focus on whether he thinks the 105% tax rate should be retroactive or whether he thinks it should be given a year to take effect. Don’t focus on whether he thinks immigrants – legal or not – should have the vote before they get a job, a license, or a fixed address. Focus on whether or not he is a man of his word. Focus on whether or not he has a base, a core of integrity.
Better to be governed by an honest man with imbecilic ideas than by someone with whom you agree whose favorite political philosophy is best described as plaid.
Perhaps a geography test could be the tie breaker.
President Obama is sure that there are at least 57 states, He thinks that there may be 58.
Has Congressman Meek settled on a number?
How would he say 57 or 58 in Austrian, the language of Mozart?
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald
September 30, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Somebody’s got a lot of splainin’ to do. Some comments on your Page 1 story on Cuba drilling for oil 45 miles from Florida’s pristine shores.
Sirs,
Whatever else happens we’re going to need a new template.
When the BP well blew the first response from the Obama administration was from Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior. I am not sure which business model suggested that “I am going to put my foot on their neck” was the way to succeed but it surely caught their attention.
Then Lord Barack the Beneficent said, in a manner inspired by Zeus, “As soon as I find the right ass to kick I am going to kick it”.
Among the many talents of the Cuban people is the ability to prolong the use life of a 1955 Chevrolet into the next millennium. They can rebuild 55 year old carburetors like a skilled surgeon can rebuild a hip. Alas, the engineering skills that these things require are not transferable to deep sea drilling.
In more than 50 years of rule by los hermanos Castro, and if there ever were two more thieving thugs anywhere, anytime I’d like to hear about them, several things are empirically self evident.
#1 – In a place so fertile flowers have been known to break through cement coffee production has fallen by 90% since 1960. Plus, their tobacco tastes like it has been filtered through a horse.
#2 – On an island, a place surrounded by water with said water being filled with fish, the Cuban people are but a half step ahead of starvation. Sad to say but starvation is gaining on them. That is why, as the noted sportsman and restaurateur, the legendary Big Mike from Bayonne still says, “That’s why you never see anybody swimming to Cuba”.
#3 – If they were to focus their economic talents on las playas de Cuba they would be importing sand in 6 months.
#4 – Evil does not mean stupid.
#5 – Enter the Chinese.
Truthers? Birthers? Small potatoes.
How about spoilers?
Would it not be in the best interests of the Chinese to befoul the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Cuba, the East coast of the United States, and the Gulf Stream with as much raging crude oil as they could?
The resulting chaos would result in the United States defaulting on its debt obligations. China, the principal holder of government debt and, as such, the principal creditor would be primus inter pares at the reorganization. The next #1 hit would be “Sayonara Taiwan”.
They would offer their markers in exchange for title to the country.
What would the Obama administration do?
Whatever its faults Cuba is a sovereign nation.
Should Secretary Salazar attempt to put his foot on the neck of Cuba I rather imagine that the response would be quite different than the one he got from the corporate weenies at BP.
Make sure there is plenty of film in the camera when Obama decides which Chinese ass to kick. Whatever its faults China is a sovereign nation. Also, it is a nation with nuclear weapons.
The Obama administration proved the truth of the adage “The wish of the Prince has the force of law”. The shakedown of BP, a company with more than 50% American ownership, was a $20,000,000,000 no brainer.
Try to picture the wily Ambassador One Hung Low reaching for the keys to the lockbox when President Obama says “Show me the money”.
If the threat of a “boot on the neck” and a “kick in the ass” don’t work should we send in the United States Navy to see that the manatees aren’t harmed?
Will a Federal Court Judge be able to impose his will on the Cuban government?
If History repeats itself Mel Brooks should direct this coming farce.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Somebody’s got a lot of splainin’ to do. Some comments on your Page 1 story on Cuba drilling for oil 45 miles from Florida’s pristine shores.
Sirs,
Whatever else happens we’re going to need a new template.
When the BP well blew the first response from the Obama administration was from Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior. I am not sure which business model suggested that “I am going to put my foot on their neck” was the way to succeed but it surely caught their attention.
Then Lord Barack the Beneficent said, in a manner inspired by Zeus, “As soon as I find the right ass to kick I am going to kick it”.
Among the many talents of the Cuban people is the ability to prolong the use life of a 1955 Chevrolet into the next millennium. They can rebuild 55 year old carburetors like a skilled surgeon can rebuild a hip. Alas, the engineering skills that these things require are not transferable to deep sea drilling.
In more than 50 years of rule by los hermanos Castro, and if there ever were two more thieving thugs anywhere, anytime I’d like to hear about them, several things are empirically self evident.
#1 – In a place so fertile flowers have been known to break through cement coffee production has fallen by 90% since 1960. Plus, their tobacco tastes like it has been filtered through a horse.
#2 – On an island, a place surrounded by water with said water being filled with fish, the Cuban people are but a half step ahead of starvation. Sad to say but starvation is gaining on them. That is why, as the noted sportsman and restaurateur, the legendary Big Mike from Bayonne still says, “That’s why you never see anybody swimming to Cuba”.
#3 – If they were to focus their economic talents on las playas de Cuba they would be importing sand in 6 months.
#4 – Evil does not mean stupid.
#5 – Enter the Chinese.
Truthers? Birthers? Small potatoes.
How about spoilers?
Would it not be in the best interests of the Chinese to befoul the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Cuba, the East coast of the United States, and the Gulf Stream with as much raging crude oil as they could?
The resulting chaos would result in the United States defaulting on its debt obligations. China, the principal holder of government debt and, as such, the principal creditor would be primus inter pares at the reorganization. The next #1 hit would be “Sayonara Taiwan”.
They would offer their markers in exchange for title to the country.
What would the Obama administration do?
Whatever its faults Cuba is a sovereign nation.
Should Secretary Salazar attempt to put his foot on the neck of Cuba I rather imagine that the response would be quite different than the one he got from the corporate weenies at BP.
Make sure there is plenty of film in the camera when Obama decides which Chinese ass to kick. Whatever its faults China is a sovereign nation. Also, it is a nation with nuclear weapons.
The Obama administration proved the truth of the adage “The wish of the Prince has the force of law”. The shakedown of BP, a company with more than 50% American ownership, was a $20,000,000,000 no brainer.
Try to picture the wily Ambassador One Hung Low reaching for the keys to the lockbox when President Obama says “Show me the money”.
If the threat of a “boot on the neck” and a “kick in the ass” don’t work should we send in the United States Navy to see that the manatees aren’t harmed?
Will a Federal Court Judge be able to impose his will on the Cuban government?
If History repeats itself Mel Brooks should direct this coming farce.
Kevin Smith
Carl Hiaasen The Miami Herald
September 30, 2010
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Don’t you hate it when a plan doesn’t come together? Some comments on the Herald’s treatment [Today, Page 2B - Broward edition] on what the Court House grand jury didn’t do.
Mr. Hiaasen,
Could it be the Florida version of “the dog didn’t bark”?
The Leon County grand jury decided that no crime had been committed. After all, “it’s a courthouse”.
The one thing I objected to was the promiscuous use of the term “Taj Mahal”. When I was in Bayonne the “Taj Mahal” was the name given to the Hudson County Jail. It was run by Ali Baba who was ably attended to by his 40 thieves. You may think that I am getting a bit too close to Dave Barry and his famous phrase “I cannot make this up” but the warden was a dead ringer for Khrushchev. I think his name was McFarland so that would have been a truly cross cultural exchange.
There are two things to note
#1 – Hudson County, the home of America’s first judicial Taj Mahal, was so overwhelmingly Democratic that my father, the legendary Judge Smith, said that it would not be unusual for there to be no votes for Republicans before the dead showed up. That way there would always be a half a dozen GOP votes.
#2 – Based on the news story you and I appear to be the only two adults in Florida, Republican or Democratic, who did not get to OK this deal.
Do you think it was “shovel ready”?
Kevin Smith
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693
RE: Don’t you hate it when a plan doesn’t come together? Some comments on the Herald’s treatment [Today, Page 2B - Broward edition] on what the Court House grand jury didn’t do.
Mr. Hiaasen,
Could it be the Florida version of “the dog didn’t bark”?
The Leon County grand jury decided that no crime had been committed. After all, “it’s a courthouse”.
The one thing I objected to was the promiscuous use of the term “Taj Mahal”. When I was in Bayonne the “Taj Mahal” was the name given to the Hudson County Jail. It was run by Ali Baba who was ably attended to by his 40 thieves. You may think that I am getting a bit too close to Dave Barry and his famous phrase “I cannot make this up” but the warden was a dead ringer for Khrushchev. I think his name was McFarland so that would have been a truly cross cultural exchange.
There are two things to note
#1 – Hudson County, the home of America’s first judicial Taj Mahal, was so overwhelmingly Democratic that my father, the legendary Judge Smith, said that it would not be unusual for there to be no votes for Republicans before the dead showed up. That way there would always be a half a dozen GOP votes.
#2 – Based on the news story you and I appear to be the only two adults in Florida, Republican or Democratic, who did not get to OK this deal.
Do you think it was “shovel ready”?
Kevin Smith
Earl Morgan The Jersey Journal
October 1, 2010
Earl Morgan
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ 07306-4101
RE: “Tinkering around” with Social Security – some comments on your column of August 25, 2010
Mr. Morgan,
As an émigré from Hudson County – I’m from the good end of the county, Bayonne – I reach out to the Jersey Journal to check out the Irish sports pages, to see who was indicted, and to revel in the buffoonery that made/makes/will make Hudson County great.
Since no one I knew had died, since no one I knew had gotten jammed up with the Prosecutor I sought out for that staple of Hudson County nitwittedness, “balloon juice” fiats from flat lined ink stained wretches.
As soon as I read your column on why Social Security should not be “tinkered” with I knew I had struck the Mother Lode.
It is both a simple and inconvenient truth but facts are hard things. Fudging or forgetting them makes any argument stronger until it is thrust into the light of day.
Your history of Social Security is, and I’m trying to be charitable, lacking in facts.
Whether they were forgotten or misstated is another subject. Your major premise, that Republicans are responsible for everything bad from Pearl Harbor to leisure suits to disintermediation to the Asian tsunamis to Obama’s recent discovery of 7, or was it 8, new states, is undisturbed by facts.
Let the record show that it was a Republican from New Jersey, Robert Kean, who shaped the final legislation in the House and then got it passed. He was nationally acclaimed as “Mr. Social Security”.
Look it up.
As to “tinkering” with Social Security I suggest that Rube Goldberg on crack and steroids could not have done a better job.
It is truly said that much more can be stolen with a pen than with a gun. Social Security is example #1.
In 1964, and if memory serves Earl Warren was the only Republican in Washington, a bit of financial legerdemain happened with every one watching.
The moneys deducted from your paycheck, the exact amount of which was matched by your employer went not sent to the legendary lockbox of Social Security but; rather, to the operating account of the United States Treasury.
The word that appears in Federal indictments in re ERISA crimes is “commingling”.
Lyndon Johnson, with the help of an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, decided to fight a two front war.
One front was in Asia. It ended 9 years later with 58,000 names on a wall in Washington. At least it ended.
[Do you remember the campaign of 1964? It was said that if Goldwater had been elected this country would have 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots. That was a long time ago. Who did win that election?]
The other was against poverty, a more insidious foe. It was fought in the Marion section of Jersey City. It was fought in Watts. It was fought in the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex [Are they still called “projects”?] in St. Louis. Parts of Detroit were, to borrow a phrase from Vietnam, destroyed in order to save it.
Having been fought for years longer than all the wars this country has been in, having surpassed the total time the Greek dustup called the Peloponnesian War lasted, it will take aim at the 100 Years War.
If 1964 is the base line year for statistics it can be safely said that none of the reasons for fighting the WOP has been made better. In fact, they are all worse. Billions and billions of dollars later and we find ourselves with a calendar that says it is 2010 but a reality that says it is 1963. The so called medicine that took a patient with a mild fever to critical condition to the ICU to a one way ticket to Lourdes to being fitted for a shroud appears not to be working. Any remedy that says we should double the dosage is offensive to Logic and ludicrous on its face.
It has been a war with no “exit strategy” save to quick step into the light from the oncoming train.
As to Social Security, once a year the really bright lads and lasses – and aren’t they always really bright? – the same type who say that we have to pass a bill to find out what’s in it, sit down and figure how much money they have clipped from Peter to give to an increasingly expectant Paul. A marker, a chit, an IOU is then issued from the Treasury to the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund. They put this marker, which is now called an asset, into the legendary lock box. The Pied Piper then takes the long route to put the lockbox into the theft proof vault of the Bank of Oz. Honest. Look it up.
If that ain’t “tinkering” I don’t know what is.
Your complaint, that the Brothers get the ca-ca end of the stick when they die early, has much merit.
My solution is simple.
If someone gets his ticket punched before getting on the good ship Social Security he should, at the very least, get back the moneys he put into it. A strong case can be made for getting back the moneys his employer put into it. Absent the Feds, men with badges and guns, the Boss would have paid him that money. Besides, the widow could use the dough.
One last thing.
If it weren’t for the Republicans in the Senate none, none as in zip, zilch, nada of the major civil rights’ legislation would have been passed in its final form. You can look that one up also.
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking of “tinkering”, how are the Jersey City schools doing? Specifically, how are the high schools doing? If Hudson County is still true to form Republicans have to get out of town by sundown. That means that the Democrats are in charge of everything. To Hell with National Merit Scholars! Dickinson High School and Snyder High School should be turning out Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Prize winners, right? Also, could you get me the newest edition of the Jackson Avenue Dream Book?
Earl Morgan
The Jersey Journal
30 Journal Square
Jersey City, NJ 07306-4101
RE: “Tinkering around” with Social Security – some comments on your column of August 25, 2010
Mr. Morgan,
As an émigré from Hudson County – I’m from the good end of the county, Bayonne – I reach out to the Jersey Journal to check out the Irish sports pages, to see who was indicted, and to revel in the buffoonery that made/makes/will make Hudson County great.
Since no one I knew had died, since no one I knew had gotten jammed up with the Prosecutor I sought out for that staple of Hudson County nitwittedness, “balloon juice” fiats from flat lined ink stained wretches.
As soon as I read your column on why Social Security should not be “tinkered” with I knew I had struck the Mother Lode.
It is both a simple and inconvenient truth but facts are hard things. Fudging or forgetting them makes any argument stronger until it is thrust into the light of day.
Your history of Social Security is, and I’m trying to be charitable, lacking in facts.
Whether they were forgotten or misstated is another subject. Your major premise, that Republicans are responsible for everything bad from Pearl Harbor to leisure suits to disintermediation to the Asian tsunamis to Obama’s recent discovery of 7, or was it 8, new states, is undisturbed by facts.
Let the record show that it was a Republican from New Jersey, Robert Kean, who shaped the final legislation in the House and then got it passed. He was nationally acclaimed as “Mr. Social Security”.
Look it up.
As to “tinkering” with Social Security I suggest that Rube Goldberg on crack and steroids could not have done a better job.
It is truly said that much more can be stolen with a pen than with a gun. Social Security is example #1.
In 1964, and if memory serves Earl Warren was the only Republican in Washington, a bit of financial legerdemain happened with every one watching.
The moneys deducted from your paycheck, the exact amount of which was matched by your employer went not sent to the legendary lockbox of Social Security but; rather, to the operating account of the United States Treasury.
The word that appears in Federal indictments in re ERISA crimes is “commingling”.
Lyndon Johnson, with the help of an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, decided to fight a two front war.
One front was in Asia. It ended 9 years later with 58,000 names on a wall in Washington. At least it ended.
[Do you remember the campaign of 1964? It was said that if Goldwater had been elected this country would have 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots. That was a long time ago. Who did win that election?]
The other was against poverty, a more insidious foe. It was fought in the Marion section of Jersey City. It was fought in Watts. It was fought in the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex [Are they still called “projects”?] in St. Louis. Parts of Detroit were, to borrow a phrase from Vietnam, destroyed in order to save it.
Having been fought for years longer than all the wars this country has been in, having surpassed the total time the Greek dustup called the Peloponnesian War lasted, it will take aim at the 100 Years War.
If 1964 is the base line year for statistics it can be safely said that none of the reasons for fighting the WOP has been made better. In fact, they are all worse. Billions and billions of dollars later and we find ourselves with a calendar that says it is 2010 but a reality that says it is 1963. The so called medicine that took a patient with a mild fever to critical condition to the ICU to a one way ticket to Lourdes to being fitted for a shroud appears not to be working. Any remedy that says we should double the dosage is offensive to Logic and ludicrous on its face.
It has been a war with no “exit strategy” save to quick step into the light from the oncoming train.
As to Social Security, once a year the really bright lads and lasses – and aren’t they always really bright? – the same type who say that we have to pass a bill to find out what’s in it, sit down and figure how much money they have clipped from Peter to give to an increasingly expectant Paul. A marker, a chit, an IOU is then issued from the Treasury to the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund. They put this marker, which is now called an asset, into the legendary lock box. The Pied Piper then takes the long route to put the lockbox into the theft proof vault of the Bank of Oz. Honest. Look it up.
If that ain’t “tinkering” I don’t know what is.
Your complaint, that the Brothers get the ca-ca end of the stick when they die early, has much merit.
My solution is simple.
If someone gets his ticket punched before getting on the good ship Social Security he should, at the very least, get back the moneys he put into it. A strong case can be made for getting back the moneys his employer put into it. Absent the Feds, men with badges and guns, the Boss would have paid him that money. Besides, the widow could use the dough.
One last thing.
If it weren’t for the Republicans in the Senate none, none as in zip, zilch, nada of the major civil rights’ legislation would have been passed in its final form. You can look that one up also.
Kevin Smith
PS – Speaking of “tinkering”, how are the Jersey City schools doing? Specifically, how are the high schools doing? If Hudson County is still true to form Republicans have to get out of town by sundown. That means that the Democrats are in charge of everything. To Hell with National Merit Scholars! Dickinson High School and Snyder High School should be turning out Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Prize winners, right? Also, could you get me the newest edition of the Jackson Avenue Dream Book?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Representative Jim Waldman
September 29, 2010
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 W. Copans Rd.
Coconut Creek, FL 33063-3164
RE: Who farted?
Yo! Jimbo!
As someone on the back nine of life, as someone raised in the maelstrom of Hudson County, NJ politics, as someone who knows the difference between the buttered side and the dry I shouldn’t feel seduced and abandoned.
I do. I do.
In correspondence and conversation I thought I had found the head of the Mr. Rogers wing of the Broward County wing of the Democratic Party. Instead I found the friggin’ Cookie Monster.
It is a small thing, “no bigger than a man’s fist on the horizon”, but it gives you an automatic “F” on the Bag Test. Bag Test? Send a SASE.
You join the distinguished herd of modern American Liberal Democrats – Did I just repeat myself? – who don’t live in the district that they represent.
Bobby Kennedy, Senator Joe McCarthy’ first lawyer and Fatso Kennedy’s older brother, didn’t establish New York residence until he was elected to the United States Senate in 1964.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, a lady known to order pastrami on white toast with bacon, lettuce, and tomato plus plenty of mayonnaise, a lady who could have the Yankees logo tattooed on one of her not quite steatagynous buttocks and a schematic of the not yet finished 2nd Avenue subway tunnel on the other, is as much a New Yorker as I am the Mayor of Mecca.
You have leg up on Toad Wexler – and what a shit he was/is – in that at least you still live in Florida. That contemptible poltroon lived in Maryland. At least you still live in the same area code.
Is it chutzpah, is it cojones, or is it some strange multi-cultural cross polonization that enables you to say “It’s no big deal”? If it’s not such a big deal, if it’s “small potatoes” as the late Hyman Roth of Miami once said, why do you go to the bother of renting an apartment in the district that you represent? Next you’ll say that you get your shirts done [no starch, on hangars] a few blocks from the house you don’t live in and that your favorite Chinese take away is in the district.
It all comes down to honor, “a gift we give ourselves”.
An accounting of your stewardship finds you woefully short.
It is the thread most common to modern American Liberals.
Shame on me for thinking you were different.
Kevin Smith
Representative Jim Waldman
4800 W. Copans Rd.
Coconut Creek, FL 33063-3164
RE: Who farted?
Yo! Jimbo!
As someone on the back nine of life, as someone raised in the maelstrom of Hudson County, NJ politics, as someone who knows the difference between the buttered side and the dry I shouldn’t feel seduced and abandoned.
I do. I do.
In correspondence and conversation I thought I had found the head of the Mr. Rogers wing of the Broward County wing of the Democratic Party. Instead I found the friggin’ Cookie Monster.
It is a small thing, “no bigger than a man’s fist on the horizon”, but it gives you an automatic “F” on the Bag Test. Bag Test? Send a SASE.
You join the distinguished herd of modern American Liberal Democrats – Did I just repeat myself? – who don’t live in the district that they represent.
Bobby Kennedy, Senator Joe McCarthy’ first lawyer and Fatso Kennedy’s older brother, didn’t establish New York residence until he was elected to the United States Senate in 1964.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, a lady known to order pastrami on white toast with bacon, lettuce, and tomato plus plenty of mayonnaise, a lady who could have the Yankees logo tattooed on one of her not quite steatagynous buttocks and a schematic of the not yet finished 2nd Avenue subway tunnel on the other, is as much a New Yorker as I am the Mayor of Mecca.
You have leg up on Toad Wexler – and what a shit he was/is – in that at least you still live in Florida. That contemptible poltroon lived in Maryland. At least you still live in the same area code.
Is it chutzpah, is it cojones, or is it some strange multi-cultural cross polonization that enables you to say “It’s no big deal”? If it’s not such a big deal, if it’s “small potatoes” as the late Hyman Roth of Miami once said, why do you go to the bother of renting an apartment in the district that you represent? Next you’ll say that you get your shirts done [no starch, on hangars] a few blocks from the house you don’t live in and that your favorite Chinese take away is in the district.
It all comes down to honor, “a gift we give ourselves”.
An accounting of your stewardship finds you woefully short.
It is the thread most common to modern American Liberals.
Shame on me for thinking you were different.
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor The Sun-Sentinel
September 29, 2010
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: FDR myths updated. Would you be so kind as to forward this to Sidney Shapiro?
Sirs,
At the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” the reporter throws his notes into the stove and says “Print the legend”.
Thus it is with FDR and the New Deal.
It is an inconvenient truth but facts are hard things.
By any measurable standard – GNP [a term that later became GDP], employment, stock market indices, employment, bankruptcies, new businesses, construction permits, inter alia – the United States was worse off after almost 8 years of the New Deal. A strong case can be made for the Depression beginning to end when Boeing went to 3 shifts at their Wichita plant. It made B-17s.
This may surprise you but Herbert Hoover ran in 1932 on a platform promising more deficit financing. Roosevelt promised to balance the budget. You can look it up.
He didn’t like the way the Supreme Court scrambled his alphabet agencies so he tried to pack said Court.
He lied, as did one of his predecessors and one of his successors – Wilson & Johnson – about American involvement in foreign wars.
That Roosevelt was a superb war time leader there can be no doubt. He had no “exit strategy” when he sent Admiral Nimitz to Pearl Harbor in late December, 1941. His orders were simple and direct. Don’t come back until you have sailed into Tokyo harbor.
He hired George Marshall who hired Dwight Eisenhower.
Despite personal differences Eisenhower let Patton lead two very successful “surges” a la Sherman. 11 months and 2 days after D-Day Germany surrendered. Although he didn’t live to see it he sent 2 balls down the chute that ended the war against Japan. The United Sates and Great Britain were taking 1000 casualties a day up until August 6, 1945. His 1944 firing of Henry Wallace and his hiring of Harry Truman, a man who led other men in combat, guaranteed the greatly quickened conclusion of the war against Japan.
I say this because a distinction must be made between Mr. New Deal and Mr. Win the War, names that he gave to himself.
Mr. Shapiro says that “Republicans hated FDR and fiercely fought every one of his efforts to get things done”. The record says otherwise. Congressman Robert Kean, a Republican from New Jersey, shaped the final legislation covering Social Security and got it passed. FDR himself called him “Mr. Social Security”.
It is well to note that FDR was given to many private anti-Semitic comments and jokes. He let the St. Louis sail back to Germany. That gave its passengers a one way ticket to the ovens. He appointed Hitler loving Joseph Kennedy to become this country’s ambassador to Great Britain. Kennedy advised FDR to side with Germany against England.
In his tirade against Republicans Mr. Shapiro conveniently skips over the glory days of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
The mantra in 1964 was that if Goldwater had been elected this country would have had 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots all over America. Who did win that election? Jimmy Carter, a man attacked by a giant rabbit, a man who threatened to kick Teddy Kennedy’s ample ass, a man who couldn’t get 5 helicopters to work, was the worst President in the 20th century. He did one thing well. He made the country eager to elect Reagan.
Come to think of it if I were a Democrat I’d try to forget them too.
Mr. Shapiro’s view of the Clinton years suggests that he may be a leader in the fight to legalize marijuana. You have to be about 6 tokes over the line to believe in the Clinton “surpluses”.
First, the Federal budget has no recognition of capital items. Thus, the expenditures for food stamps and aircraft carriers are treated the same. Second, when responsible families come into a windfall the first thing they do is pay down debt. At no time during the Clinton Presidency did the Federal debt ever go down by as much a single penny. That is a matter of public record. He can look that up too,
Surprisingly he leaves out one of the great achievements of the Clinton years. Who can forget the many lasting benefits of “Midnight Basketball”? I can’t.
Mr. Shapiro anticipated “our next great miracle” with the election of Obama. What was the first one?
Kevin Smith
Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE: FDR myths updated. Would you be so kind as to forward this to Sidney Shapiro?
Sirs,
At the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” the reporter throws his notes into the stove and says “Print the legend”.
Thus it is with FDR and the New Deal.
It is an inconvenient truth but facts are hard things.
By any measurable standard – GNP [a term that later became GDP], employment, stock market indices, employment, bankruptcies, new businesses, construction permits, inter alia – the United States was worse off after almost 8 years of the New Deal. A strong case can be made for the Depression beginning to end when Boeing went to 3 shifts at their Wichita plant. It made B-17s.
This may surprise you but Herbert Hoover ran in 1932 on a platform promising more deficit financing. Roosevelt promised to balance the budget. You can look it up.
He didn’t like the way the Supreme Court scrambled his alphabet agencies so he tried to pack said Court.
He lied, as did one of his predecessors and one of his successors – Wilson & Johnson – about American involvement in foreign wars.
That Roosevelt was a superb war time leader there can be no doubt. He had no “exit strategy” when he sent Admiral Nimitz to Pearl Harbor in late December, 1941. His orders were simple and direct. Don’t come back until you have sailed into Tokyo harbor.
He hired George Marshall who hired Dwight Eisenhower.
Despite personal differences Eisenhower let Patton lead two very successful “surges” a la Sherman. 11 months and 2 days after D-Day Germany surrendered. Although he didn’t live to see it he sent 2 balls down the chute that ended the war against Japan. The United Sates and Great Britain were taking 1000 casualties a day up until August 6, 1945. His 1944 firing of Henry Wallace and his hiring of Harry Truman, a man who led other men in combat, guaranteed the greatly quickened conclusion of the war against Japan.
I say this because a distinction must be made between Mr. New Deal and Mr. Win the War, names that he gave to himself.
Mr. Shapiro says that “Republicans hated FDR and fiercely fought every one of his efforts to get things done”. The record says otherwise. Congressman Robert Kean, a Republican from New Jersey, shaped the final legislation covering Social Security and got it passed. FDR himself called him “Mr. Social Security”.
It is well to note that FDR was given to many private anti-Semitic comments and jokes. He let the St. Louis sail back to Germany. That gave its passengers a one way ticket to the ovens. He appointed Hitler loving Joseph Kennedy to become this country’s ambassador to Great Britain. Kennedy advised FDR to side with Germany against England.
In his tirade against Republicans Mr. Shapiro conveniently skips over the glory days of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
The mantra in 1964 was that if Goldwater had been elected this country would have had 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots all over America. Who did win that election? Jimmy Carter, a man attacked by a giant rabbit, a man who threatened to kick Teddy Kennedy’s ample ass, a man who couldn’t get 5 helicopters to work, was the worst President in the 20th century. He did one thing well. He made the country eager to elect Reagan.
Come to think of it if I were a Democrat I’d try to forget them too.
Mr. Shapiro’s view of the Clinton years suggests that he may be a leader in the fight to legalize marijuana. You have to be about 6 tokes over the line to believe in the Clinton “surpluses”.
First, the Federal budget has no recognition of capital items. Thus, the expenditures for food stamps and aircraft carriers are treated the same. Second, when responsible families come into a windfall the first thing they do is pay down debt. At no time during the Clinton Presidency did the Federal debt ever go down by as much a single penny. That is a matter of public record. He can look that up too,
Surprisingly he leaves out one of the great achievements of the Clinton years. Who can forget the many lasting benefits of “Midnight Basketball”? I can’t.
Mr. Shapiro anticipated “our next great miracle” with the election of Obama. What was the first one?
Kevin Smith
Carl Hiaasen The Miami Herald
September 28, 2010
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
RE: “Memory Pills”, “Thanks for the Memories”, “Who are those Guys”? – Some comments on the concupiscence of court house construction as pointed out by you in your column on Sunday last.
Mr. Hiaasen,
Here I am, “in the pleasant land of counterpane”, after tying the world record for hip replacements, said record being two, when my wife, my long suffering wife, brings me the Herald as her contribution to my rehab.
You tell me about the “Court House Boys” doing what they do best – being “Court House Boys – in the construction of – Can you believe it? – a new court house in Tallahassee.
People from Hudson County normally don’t need “memory pills” when it comes to the chicanery connected to the construction of public buildings. Since I am on so damn many drugs now I figured that one more couldn’t hurt so I took it.
BROWARD COUNTY BROWARD COUNTYBROWARDCOUNTY
Since your political comments show you to be most identified with the Mother Theresa and Saint Francis of Assisi wing of the Democratic party let us stipulate to the fact that, with the possible exception of Zabar’s on a cool Sunday morning, there is no more modern American Liberal place in America than Broward County.
We are but 2 or 3 election cycles away from manatee suffrage. Broward blazed the trail giving pregnant pigs more constitutional protection than pregnant bi-peds. Dr. Mengele would win in any election he ran in because of his progressive views on abortion. I don’t think I am overstating the point but 3 member minyans are the rule at the Broward Republican Jewish Bar Association.
I have sweaters that are older than the existing Broward County Courthouse. I hasten to add that I know of no more scurrilous group of scroyles and poltroons than the combined Broward County judiciary but that is a different story.
The current Court House, a symbol of the glorious days of the Carter administration – I have learned that Carter was just hospitalized. Let me say once more, before the rules of de morituis kick in, that he was the worst President of the 20th century. The only thing he did of not was that he made it easier for the great Reagan to save America and beat the Russkies – is falling down. It leaks, it stinks, it is filled with mold and is overrun by rats, both four legged and two. It is well to note that the Davis-Bacon law, surely the most anti-Black Federal law passed in the 20th century, was enforced with a vengeance in its construction. In other words, a Dem honey pot.
The replacement is so tumescently anticipated by the Broward Courthouse gang that the cement mixers, bond salesmen, lawyers, consultants, union thugs, facilitators, and assorted and various public construction bottom feeders keep an extra pair of pants nearby lest they be thought of as lunch time lap dance devotees.
Then the “memory pill”, not the “eclectically indignant” one so beloved of modern American Liberals, kicks in.
Forget about Boss Tweed. How about Justice Breyer?
He was the Chief Appellate Judge in Boston and, as such, the man in charge of the construction of the new Federal Xanadu.
Steam rooms [wet and dry], salmon streams, marble worthy of the Parthenon, hurricane proof, wine cellars, ski slopes, bowling alleys, basketball and racquet ball courts, alas no pistol ranges, it was the inspiration, like a dry run, for the legendary Boston “Big Dig”. Sometimes it pays to work for Fatso Kennedy.
Let the record show that it proved to be no hindrance to his ascension to the Supreme Court. Let the record further show that his wife’s family being a “name” at Lloyd’s proved to be no hindrance either. That fact should have caused him to recuse himself from every case concerning banking, investment firms, and insurance companies. That conflict would never have passed the Bag Test if he were a Republican.
The “memory pill” just hit passing gear.
A guy I knew from Bayonne got his father a job in the new County Courthouse in Jersey City. His employee job description was elevator operator. The fact that the elevators were all automatic in up to date Jersey City proved to be no deterrent. His father showed up and tried to run an automatic elevator. Things like that made this country great.
“I doubt that people in the Legislature had any idea what they were doing” is ascribed to one of the legislative architects of Ozymandius’s new home. At least now we know from where Nancy Pelosi [“We’ll have to pass Obamacare to see what’s in it”] gets all her great lines.
Kevin Smith
Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
RE: “Memory Pills”, “Thanks for the Memories”, “Who are those Guys”? – Some comments on the concupiscence of court house construction as pointed out by you in your column on Sunday last.
Mr. Hiaasen,
Here I am, “in the pleasant land of counterpane”, after tying the world record for hip replacements, said record being two, when my wife, my long suffering wife, brings me the Herald as her contribution to my rehab.
You tell me about the “Court House Boys” doing what they do best – being “Court House Boys – in the construction of – Can you believe it? – a new court house in Tallahassee.
People from Hudson County normally don’t need “memory pills” when it comes to the chicanery connected to the construction of public buildings. Since I am on so damn many drugs now I figured that one more couldn’t hurt so I took it.
BROWARD COUNTY BROWARD COUNTYBROWARDCOUNTY
Since your political comments show you to be most identified with the Mother Theresa and Saint Francis of Assisi wing of the Democratic party let us stipulate to the fact that, with the possible exception of Zabar’s on a cool Sunday morning, there is no more modern American Liberal place in America than Broward County.
We are but 2 or 3 election cycles away from manatee suffrage. Broward blazed the trail giving pregnant pigs more constitutional protection than pregnant bi-peds. Dr. Mengele would win in any election he ran in because of his progressive views on abortion. I don’t think I am overstating the point but 3 member minyans are the rule at the Broward Republican Jewish Bar Association.
I have sweaters that are older than the existing Broward County Courthouse. I hasten to add that I know of no more scurrilous group of scroyles and poltroons than the combined Broward County judiciary but that is a different story.
The current Court House, a symbol of the glorious days of the Carter administration – I have learned that Carter was just hospitalized. Let me say once more, before the rules of de morituis kick in, that he was the worst President of the 20th century. The only thing he did of not was that he made it easier for the great Reagan to save America and beat the Russkies – is falling down. It leaks, it stinks, it is filled with mold and is overrun by rats, both four legged and two. It is well to note that the Davis-Bacon law, surely the most anti-Black Federal law passed in the 20th century, was enforced with a vengeance in its construction. In other words, a Dem honey pot.
The replacement is so tumescently anticipated by the Broward Courthouse gang that the cement mixers, bond salesmen, lawyers, consultants, union thugs, facilitators, and assorted and various public construction bottom feeders keep an extra pair of pants nearby lest they be thought of as lunch time lap dance devotees.
Then the “memory pill”, not the “eclectically indignant” one so beloved of modern American Liberals, kicks in.
Forget about Boss Tweed. How about Justice Breyer?
He was the Chief Appellate Judge in Boston and, as such, the man in charge of the construction of the new Federal Xanadu.
Steam rooms [wet and dry], salmon streams, marble worthy of the Parthenon, hurricane proof, wine cellars, ski slopes, bowling alleys, basketball and racquet ball courts, alas no pistol ranges, it was the inspiration, like a dry run, for the legendary Boston “Big Dig”. Sometimes it pays to work for Fatso Kennedy.
Let the record show that it proved to be no hindrance to his ascension to the Supreme Court. Let the record further show that his wife’s family being a “name” at Lloyd’s proved to be no hindrance either. That fact should have caused him to recuse himself from every case concerning banking, investment firms, and insurance companies. That conflict would never have passed the Bag Test if he were a Republican.
The “memory pill” just hit passing gear.
A guy I knew from Bayonne got his father a job in the new County Courthouse in Jersey City. His employee job description was elevator operator. The fact that the elevators were all automatic in up to date Jersey City proved to be no deterrent. His father showed up and tried to run an automatic elevator. Things like that made this country great.
“I doubt that people in the Legislature had any idea what they were doing” is ascribed to one of the legislative architects of Ozymandius’s new home. At least now we know from where Nancy Pelosi [“We’ll have to pass Obamacare to see what’s in it”] gets all her great lines.
Kevin Smith
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