Election-Day

Tuesday, November 6, 2007.

Overheard yesterday in the Canandaigua YMCA men’s locker-room:
“I haven’t missed a vote since I left the Marines in 1963, I’ll tell ya!”
New York State’s Democrats, led by their governor Eliot Spitzer, have opened a pandora’s box.
It requires a higher level of thinking, greater that the average gun-toting NASCAR-dad is capable of.
.....the level of thinking Clintsky often did, prompting slavering blasts from the OxyContin®-King.
Spitzer has proposed driver’s licenses for “illegal” aliens (should be “undocumented”), allowing better tracking of their movements.
True to form, REPUBLICANS have gone ballistic.
So here we have beady-eyed little Monroe County Democratic chair Joe Morelle “debating” 287-pound slobbering Monroe County REPUBLICAN chair Steve Minarik, stoked with 29 cups of coffee, and perhaps a 55-gallon drum of Mountain-Dew.
Debate my foot! If this was a debate, one wonders what a full-out Mexican stand-off is? —It reminded me of FlagOut, with Minarik as the almighty Bluster-King.
There’s Morelle trying to be the voice-of-reason, and foaming, sputtering Minarik in highest dudgeon doing his best Karl Rove/Rush Limbaugh imitation.
The REPUBLICANS have floated an ad depicting gun-toting dishtowel-swathed al-Qaeda terrorists pictured on N.Y. state driver-licenses, which are photo licenses.
“Lemme finish,” bellows frenzied Minarik; mouthing the siren-song of tub-thumpers everywhere.
“Finish my foot!” the Democrats should say. “Since when is an unfinished steaming-pile any less putrid than a finished steaming-pile?”
I see presidential wannabee Fred Thompson has taken on “lemme finish;” perhaps explaining why tub-thumpers are gravitating toward his side.
It was “fun,” my wife said. Just like FlagOut — or Al Sharpton going on about “the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity.”

More overheard in the Canandaigua YMCA mens’ locker-room:
“I’ll tell ya what’s wrong with this country! It’s them liberials.”
“Now you take that Teddy Kennedy. That guy doesn’t know his ass from a hole-in-the-ground.”
“Them liberials have been leading us to hell-in-a-handbasket ever since I left the Marines!”
“Seems a lotta countries have been having revolutions. Maybe we should too. I say we go after ‘em.”
“Now you take the apologist view of what we should be doing in Iraq. You end a 10-round boxing-match at five rounds, and your opponent just toys with ya and wins after five rounds.”
“Okay,” I thought to myself. “So we have a full 10-round match. Wherein is the outcome gonna be any different?”
Thankfully I was three rows of lockers away from the tub-thumper.
But there’s no using sweet reason to challenge a loud tub-thumper — especially an ex-Marine.
(“I nearly sacrificed my life on Omaha Beach protecting your right to free speech, so you better shut up.”)

“Clintsky” is President Bill Clinton.

“OxyContin®-King” is Rush Limbaugh.

“FlagOut” is our family’s web-site, named that because I had a mentally-retarded kid-brother (Down Syndrome) who lived at home, and loudly insisted the flag be flown every day. “Flag-Out! Sun comes up, the flag goes up! Sun goes down, the flag comes down.” I fly the flag partly in his honor. (He died at 14 in 1968.)

“The almighty Bluster-King” is my macho, loudmouthed brother-from-Boston.

“Liberial” is how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insists “liberal” is spelled.