In Which I Preach Wisdom To Ancient Republicans And Fail Miserably

So it's seven in the morning and I'm having coffee with my neighbors. We're enjoying the perfect weather, the cats gamboling across the grass, the blooms on the butterfly bush. I, of course, have been up all night, drinking.

But I'm neither swaying nor incoherent. Indeed, I'd barely begun my binge by 3 AM, at which time I caught a cab and went to Marty's for some sorely needed shots of Bushmills. Insomnia and available credit is a combinatorial bitch.

My 85-year-old neighbor asks me who I'm going to vote for. I know better. This woman is slightly to the right of Hitler and thinks the New Deal opened the door for a socialized America. I should ease off and slowly step away. But no, I'm wearing tattered jeans, a ponytail, a bushy beard, and a T-shirt that sez "I JOINED DAN SARTAIN" with a picture of dude blowing his head off. Rawk. So I respond, just to piss her off, "Ron Paul, of course!"

She shakes her head sadly.

"Who are you supporting?" I ask, not really wanting to know.

"Romney!"

"Really? Even though he's a member of a polygamous cult that believes we all become gods of our own personal planet if we heed to the rantings of a racist 19th-century illiterate?" I wish that were a paraphrase, but it ain't.

"No, he's going to be tough on terrorists. He wants to expand Guantanamo."

After collecting the shards that resulted from my head exploding, I responded.

"You know that habeus corpus has been suspended by edict under this administration, right?"

"No. What's that?"

I explain to her that prior to the Bush administration she had the right to an attorney and a trial by a jury of her peers, just like it sez in the FUCKING CONSTITUTION, YOU STUPID BITCH, AND NOW YOU DON'T.

OK, I left out that last bit, at least the cussing and capitalization part.

"Well, that just applies to terrorists."

No, that applies to anyone the US government SEZ is a terrorist, whether you're a bomb-strapped raghead or a bong-clasped pothead. We've ceded those distinctions to a government that is out of control, out of line, out of ideas, out of smarts.

"Well, I'm 85. They can just come arrest me whenever," she snickered.

So I choked her to death. OK, not really. But I wanted to.