Your superior correspondents were somewhat amused by comments made last week by Carlo Pisaturo in the Warwick Beacon. Carlo is the independent sore loser in the special election for the District 22 House spot that opened up when Peter Ginaitt resigned the seat.
 
The winner in last week’s election was Frank Ferri, who worked very hard in putting together a large team of volunteers, rolling over Pisaturo and Republican Jonathan Wheeler in the process.
 
Pisaturo whined that Ferri is a “go along to get along guy” and that “It’s going to be tax-and-spend, ignore the illegal aliens and go along with whatever the unions want — because that’s who supported him you know, the unions and the gay-rights lobby.”
 
Yes, Carlo boy, you can bet your swinging buttocks that the gay-rights lobby supported Ferri, as did anyone who believes in civil rights for all (we’d like to think that this is a healthy majority of all voters, but who knows?).
 
As for the “go along to get along” part, that would more closely resemble the guy defeated by Ferri in the Democratic primary, Mr. Ladouceur, who was endorsed by House Speaker Murphy (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and the Warwick City Democratic Committee, and who is a former president of the RI Builders Association and took money from the NRA. In other words, just the type of reactionary good old boy Democrat that we’d like to see go bye-bye.
 
It’s the reactionary good old boy Democrats — people who have far more in common philosophically with national Republi¬cans on social issues — that are the problem in Halitosis Hall.
 
Frank Ferri, however, is a mensch — a real progressive and not a “go along to get along guy.” Carlo will see this the first time that Speaker Murphy swats down an intelligent progressive piece of legislation from Ferri.
 
Of course, if Carlo wants to run for office successfully, he’s got to get more than 230 of his friends to vote for him. A couple of walks around the neighborhood should have netted him more votes than that.

Kick them when they’re down
C’mon, governor, if you’re going to lash out at welfare mothers, you better damn sure put in both boots on absent fathers, who are essentially allowed by the state to take a pass on paying child support.
 
This shows how the recent debate hereabouts surrounding help for the needy cries out, once again, for a look at the vast disparity between the rich and the poor in America. CEOs making millions in salaries (multiply that by 10 when you hit Wall Street), while people can’t afford food or heat, is flat-out obscene. Anatole France, in La Rue Rouge, got modern America’s attitude right when he wrote:
 
“The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
 
Anyone for Meals on Wheels? Sorry, you’ll need a reservation.

Tortured logic
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Or should they? If they are dealing with the American government these days, they most certainly must expect to be treated as nicely as Torquemada’s troops used to favor the supposed heretics of his time. What’s a little dismemberment and burning with hot irons among amigos, after all?
 
Instead of a simple declaration that water-boarding constitutes torture, we have left a glaring affront to common human decency and the world’s citizens as a whole, courtesy of Dubya Bush and “Big Time” Cheney, with new boy AG Michael Mukasey obviously ready to sit up and bark at the sound of his master’s voice.
 
As our brave, draft-dodging, Top Gun-costume-wearing, chicken hawk president continues to condone horrifying treatment of America’s prisoners, here’s a quick verbatim primer from the Geneva Conventions, courtesy of an Anthony Piel op-ed, via truthout.org, on November 15:
 
“The term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining information or a confession . . . inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or any other person acting in an official capacity . . . No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
 
And on shipping off our prisoners to be sadistically abused elsewhere, aka, “rendition”: “No State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”