by Andy Bain
I informed her that you were reputedly the most famous Rabbi in America, had penned a best-seller called, ‘Kosher Sex’, been Michael Jackson’s Rabbi for two years and had written a book with Uri Geller (the spoon-bending phenomenon). To which she retorted, “And he calls Donald Trump a shallow braggart who can’t stop promoting himself.”
Shmuley, could you drop me a line in the SAE saying if you agree with my position on the posters and what I should do about my scold of a wife? Rabbi, is divorce from a disobedient wife ever acceptable?
Support Mr Bush and Mr Cheney
Sincerely
Andy Bain
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This World
The Jewish Values Network
June 12, 2008
Hi Andy,
Thanks for your very interesting and humorously written letter. Look, we have to always parent as a team. Our wives’ opinions matter. So, if your wife’s objecting to putting posters of political figures in the bedroom maybe it’s because she wants the children to have timeless heroes.
I would suggest that first you try to compromise with her and suggest to her that since Dick Cheney is the Vice President there’s nothing wrong with having pictures of elected officials in the room, so that your children can aspire to perhaps a life of service. But let her balance it with posters of people whom she thinks are a good influence on your children.
As far as your wife’s criticism of me, I take them in my stride I’m not perfect and that’s the way it is. I try my best, but I am quite proud that most of the advice that I give is from the eternal values contained in the Torah. Wishing you all the best. G-d Bless.
Sincerely
(Signed) Shmuley Boteach
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Founder: This World: The Jewish Values Network
Host “Oprah & Friends” XM Satellite Radio, Ch. 156
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T R U M P - THE TRUMP ORGANISATION
June 4, 2008
Mr. Andy Bain
139 Elm Park Mansions.
Charlotte, NC 28269
Dear Mr. Bain:
I want to thank you for the letter you sent me on April 30, 2008. As I was already aware of the situation, I truly appreciate your concern --- it is always nice to hear from someone who cares.
Once again, thank you for your thoughtful letter.
With best wishes,
Sincerely
(Signed) Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump
725 FIFTH AVENUE – NEW YORK
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139 Elm Park Mansions.
Charlotte, NC 28269
July 9, 2008
Donald J. Trump
725 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Dear Donald,
Many thanks for your letter of June 4th and the return of my twenty bucks.
As I mentioned in my previous letter I am Scottish and have noted from the BBC website that you have been having some problems with my countrymen re your attempts to build a golf course in the Highlands.
Donald, if I can be of any assistance do not hesitate to contact me. I can translate from the Scottish into comprehensible English.
A word of warning. Alex Salmond the First Minister is a notoriously slippery character. Don’t trust the podgy little rascal further than you can throw him.
Beware of an MSP called Roseanna Cunningham, she is a stone mad, foul-mouthed Australian (often inebriated) and physical violence is not out of the question with her.
You probably won’t come across Dorothy Grace Elder, an eccentric journalist with the dress sense of scarecrow, but she is another one to avoid if at all possible.
If you ever meet Frank McAveety MSP always check your wallet afterwards!
Once again, ta much for the dosh. (Translation: Thanks for the money)
Andy Bain
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139 Elm Park Mansions
Charlotte, NC 28262
USA
08 May 2006
Professor J. Michael Waller
The Institute of World Politics
1521 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036-1464
Dear Professor Waller,
I read the piece in the New York Times on Saturday May 6 about our new strategy of ‘ridiculing’ the enemy in Iraq.
I visited your blog, ‘Fourth World War’ and I was fascinated to learn that officers on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and others in Iraq, said your paper, ‘Ridicule: An instrument in the war on terrorism’ inspired the recent release of the raw video of al-Zarqawi. The video, with Major General Rick Lynch’s briefing, showed al-Zarqawi in American sneakers and “bobbling” an US-made machine gun.
The crux of your paper, after a careful reading, seems to be that ridiculing the enemy
1. raises morale at home
2. strips the adversary of his mystique and prestige
3. eliminates the enemy’s image of invincibility
What then do you make of the bizarre pantomime of last weeks ‘White House Correspondent’s Dinner’? It was bad enough Stephen Colbert ridiculing and lampooning President Bush to his face. But when the Commander in chief, himself - in the middle of a war - stands up with an impersonator and accepts that he is universally regarded as a nincompoop, I think we have lost the plot.
Doesn’t Mr Bush’s buffoonish antics lower morale at home; doesn’t his moronic clowning strip him of mystique and prestige; doesn’t his absurd malapropisms eliminate any image of invincibility?
Professor, you obviously have some gravitas on these questions and some influence in the Department of Defence. Can’t you take George W. Bush aside and tell him he projects the image of a Pickwickian nitwit.
Professor my question to you is this: Isn’t the President’s cretinism a gift to our enemies?
I have enclosed a stamped addressed envelope and $20 towards your costs.
Sincerely yours
Andy Bain
PS. I loved the Screen shot, on your essay, of bin Laden saying, “I love you Cindy Sheehan. Will you marry me Baby doll?” Deftly ridiculing two of America’s most dangerous enemies in one cartoon.
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139 Elm Park Mansions
Charlotte, NC 28262
January 16, 2007
Mr Larry Schweikart
Professor of History
University of Dayton
300 College Park
Dayton, OH 45469
Dear Professor Schweikart,
I have just completed my second reading of your excellent, alliteratively titled, book, ‘America’s Victories – Why the US Wins Wars and Will Win the War on Terror’. As Rush Limbaugh predicted on the blurb, I was “mesmerized”.
After much hectoring, I persuaded my (quasi-liberal) wife to peruse the book.
Larry, the poor woman only got to page 16 before she rather baulked at the following comments: -
“It is common for Western analysts…to misread the situation and claim that the Abu Graib “scandal blew a gaping hole in the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq…[showing] American soldiers not as liberators but as tormentors, not as professionals but sadists getting cheap thrills.” …But in most Arabic Islamic societies, and certainly in those frequented by the loopiest of suicide bombers, women have no standing…What do you think was the response among these types of men when they saw pictures of American women holding Iraqi terrorist prisoners by dog chains? To some, undoubtedly, anger. But to others, respect.”
My good lady wife opined, “Even this twisted nutjob, Schweikart, can’t really believe the raving, outlandish, gibberish he has penned!”
“On the contrary,” I indignantly replied, “I am certain that Professor Schweikart stands by every syllable.”
Larry, the upshot is that I have bet my dopey spouse $40 that you continue to believe that sadistic treatment of detainees in primitive societies can often be efficacious.
I enclose $20, which is your
share of our winnings, and a SAE so that you can drop me a line confirming that you still endorse firm treatment of prisoners of war.
Support Mr Cheney and Mr Bush
Sincerely yours,
Andy Bain
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Professor Schweikart replied:
Dear Andy,
You (and I) are right and your wife wrong, though I’m sure she’ll never admit it. Thanks for “my” share of the winnings. One good deed deserves another: I have sent you a copy of my novel, ‘September Day’, a 9/11 thriller featuring (naturally) a professor as one of the heros (sic).
Coincidentally, this book retails at…$20.
The comment, if your wife will bother to look, is supported by extensive documentation, not only from actual people in the field, but from Arab experts on Arab behavior (and note, I qualify that it only applies to “shame/honor” societies such as Bedouin Arab, and not necessarily Persian or, say, non-Arab Muslims who are not immersed in “shame/honor’ codes. Again, though, the endnotes will show that many psychologists who study Arab/Bedouin behavior agree that the respect that is generated by such activities as the humiliation of Arab men is quite valuable for us.
Moreover, if you speak to our soldiers, most of them will tell you that if not for the “rules of engagement,” they would adopt more of these types of measures. In our war with Filipino “insurrectos” and the Muslim Moros in the Philippines from 1899-1912, our generals let it be known that all our bullets were coated in pig fat, and that any “insurrecto” bodies that were recovered would be buried with a pig. That had a chilling effect on the insurrection, which we won.
Enjoy ‘September Day’, and the paperback edition of ‘America’s Victories’, with much new material (including research on the numbers of enemies we’ve killed – which no one mentions) will be out in May.
Larry Schweikart
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139 Elm Park Mansions
Charlotte, NC 28262
05 June 2006
Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
Dear Mr Rumsfeld,
Are you aware that, on the 20th April, the well-known anarchist Noam Chomsky addressed the 500 Cadets of the Class of 2008 at West Point and that a video of the pantomime is now ubiquitous on the Internet?
Donald, what kind of lunatic would invite the world’s most prominent, articulate and incisive opponent of the Iraq war to lecture to 500 intellectually defenseless cadets? Answer: Professor Robert Tully, who teaches philosophy there!
Using the cover of naïve questions from the gullible teenage soldiers, Chomsky maligned you and denounced the war in Iraq as criminal aggression while our juvenile warriors sat dumbstruck.
He said, “Ronald Reagan dropped Iraq from the list of states supporting terrorism in 1982 so that the US could start providing (Saddam) with extensive aid; including military aid; including means to develop biological and chemical weapons and missiles and nuclear weapons…and Donald Rumsfeld, shortly after went to (Baghdad to) firm up the agreement.”
Speaking about the massacres in Hilabja, where Saddam gassed thousands of Kurds, Chomsky said, “the US didn’t object…in fact the Reagan administration blocked efforts in Congress even to protest against it. Furthermore the (US) support for Saddam increased and continued…right through the worst atrocities.”
At this point the feckless Professor Tully staggered on to the stage and abruptly brought the unpatriotic fiasco to an end by bodily dragging Chomsky away from the microphone.
Secretary of Defense, what kind of idiot would tolerate West Point inviting the main opponent of our war to incite mutiny among the next cohort of our junior officers? Surely either you or the head of the US Military Academy must go?
I await your reply.
Support the President
Andy Bain
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139 Elm Park Mansions
Charlotte, NC 28262
07 June 2006
Professor Robert Tully
Room 406
Department of English
United States Military Academy
West Point
New York, NY 10996
Dear Professor Tully,
Can I commend your iconoclastic decision to invite Professor Noam Chomsky to address the Cadet Class of 2008 on the ‘Theory of Just War’?
On watching the video, I sensed that the teenage soldiers were slightly shell-shocked as Chomsky described our 40 year terrorist campaign against Cuba; denounced Reagan and Rumsfeld as tacit supporters of Saddam’s atrocities and active suppliers of military aid to his diabolical regime, “including means to develop biological and chemical weapons and missiles”; characterised the Iraq war as a criminal aggression and ridiculed the idea of ‘preventive war’.
With no WMD being found in Iraq, the 9/11 Commission finding no links between Saddam and al Qaeda and the rather undemocratic activities of our troops in places like Haditha it was heroic of West Point to allow the most articulate opponent of the war to demolish the last remnants of the notion that this war was, in any degree, just.
That you and your colleagues at West Point still strive to form these innocent young people as warriors, knowing that the carnage and slaughter in the futile quagmire that is Iraq is a criminal aggression, makes one proud to be an American.
Support the President
Sincerely yours,
Andy Bain
PS Please find enclosed $20 towards your invaluable work.
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139 Elm Park Mansions.
Charlotte, NC 28269
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
John R. Bolton
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, DC, 20036
Dear Ambassador Bolton,
I have just laid down your scintillating and beautifully written new book, ‘Surrender Is Not An Option’. Bravo!
One paragraph has haunted me since I read it in the first chapter. Talking about joining the Maryland National Guard you wrote,
“I had concluded that the Vietnam War was lost, and I made the cold calculation that I wasn’t going to waste time on a futile struggle. Dying for your country was one thing, but dying to gain territory that antiwar forces in Congress would simply return to the enemy seemed ludicrous to me. Looking back, I am not terribly proud of this calculation…”
John, you have nothing with which to reproach yourself. Who could express disapproval of any young person who said, as you famously did, “"I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.”
When I told my daughter, who also read your book, that I intended to write to you in the above terms she said, “Yes but the hypocrisy would be if Bolton continued to support the war after he dodged the draft. He was a thrusting and ambitious young conservative and it is inconceivable that he would have spoken out against the war in Republican circles in 1970, five years before the war ended.”
John, I admit, those comments led to a protracted and lively dispute between my daughter and I.
The upshot is that I have bet my daughter $40 that you did not continue to support the war after joining the National Guard and did not support sending any more young men to be cannon fodder.
Ambassador, could you drop me a line in the SAE saying what your attitude was at that time so that I can collect my winnings? I enclose $20 as your share!
Support Mr Cheney and Mr Bush
Sincerely
Andy Bain
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139 Elm Park Mansions.
Charlotte, NC 28269
Friday, 09 May, 2008
John R. Bolton
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Ambassador Bolton,
Thanks for returning my $20, which I have duly p
aid to cover the wager.
Ambassador, have you seen Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee’s new book called, ‘Against the Tide’?
Chafee gleefully recounts [page 155] how Republican Senator Voinovich declined to vote for you for the UN Ambassadorship because you failed, “the kitchen test.” Namely, “The commonsense test the senator’s mother would apply when sizing up a person’s character…Is this someone you would like to have at your kitchen table?”
John, the whole of chapter 13 it is a crude hatchet job. You are described as, “sour, mean-spirited, vindictive, a quintessentially kiss-up, kick down sort of guy and the most undiplomatic man…in Washington”!
On page 149 the Ex-Senator reports, without comment, the puerile epithets of the North Koreans who called you, “rude human scum” and “a beastly man bereft of reason”.
I intend to write to Senator Chafee and object, in the strongest terms, to him quoting the North Koreans gratuitously describing you as ‘humanoid’.
Sincerely
Andy Bain
PS. It suddenly occurs to me that you may not have been shown my original letter. Perhaps one of the morons who work at the American Enterprise Institute took umbrage at my innocent inquiry?!? If so, please ignore the above.
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139 Elm Park Mansions
Charlotte, NC 28262
08 May 2006
Al Franken
The Al Franken Show
40 S 7th Street
Suite 212 #311
Minneapolis, MN 55402
Dear Mr Franken,
I know that you were, like many of us, hoodwinked into supporting the war in Iraq by General Colin Powell’s Machiavellian performance at the UN. Most intelligent people weren’t taken in and one certainly feels like a gullible simpleton now.
But you have repeatedly toured in the Middle East to entertain our troops, so I assume that you still wish to avoid another Vietnam style debacle in Iraq.
Al, could I draw your attention to a paper by Professor J. Michael Waller entitled, ‘Ridicule: An instrument in the war on terrorism’. This paper inspired the recent briefing by Major General Rick Lynch on the raw video of al- Zarqawi wearing New Balance tennis shoes and ‘bobbling’ an US made machine gun.
The unanswerable conclusions of Professor Waller’s piece are that ridicule of an enemy:
a) raises morale at home
b) strips the adversary of his mystique and prestige
c) eliminates the enemy’s image of invincibility
You will have seen Stephen Colbert’s ribald insults to the President’s face at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. More bizarrely George W. Bush, himself - in the middle of a war - stood up with an impersonator and accepted that he is universally regarded as an imbecile.
