Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), seen here with members of the Kiryas Joel polo team, prepares to perform a ritual circumcision as part of his campaign for Governor of New York."Spitzer had one," declared Souzzi, "and came up short. Faso won't disclose, but we have our suspicions about a guy who calls himself a 'physical' conservative."
The young boy in the right of the photograph, a yeshiva student from Brooklyn, "volunteered" as Suozzi's first-intended circumcisee. "I asked the County Executive to give my sister (seen at left) a 'kiss,'" said the startled youth, "not to try his hand at a bris."
In recent months, circumcisions have come under scrutiny in the U.S., with the medical profession and others questioning their efficacy.
Suozzi scoffed at such rubric, saying that circumcisions are a rite of passage, as American as using public tax dollars to fund kosher lunches at parochial schools.
In an unusual showing of bipartisan support, Town of Hempstead Councilman Anthony Santino, a Republican. offered Suozzi words of encouragement. "I can't speak for people anywhere else in New York State," said Santino, "but I can tell you that, here in Hempstead Town, young boys thoroughly enjoy being circumcised, and their parents would gladly pay twice the going rate to have Tom Suozzi do the cutting."
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Submitted by M. Gold, Oceanside, New York
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Beating The Tom Tom!
In recent weeks, there have been discouraging words for Tom Suozzi, with everyone from the politically astute to the Peanut Gallery, urging him to quit the Governor's race.
Badly behind in the polls, and unlikely, in the realm of electoral knowledge, to win his party's nomination, Suozzi labors on, crisscrossing the State, trying to get the message to voters that more than a few spokes on Albany's wheels are broken, and the taxpayers are getting soaked to the bone by the entrenched powers-that-be just to keep that rickety old wagon rolling through the mud.
With Suozzi down, should he bow out? We say, "NO SIR," not while there is still a single New Yorker who hasn't heard the message on property taxes, Medicaid fraud, school financing, and the mounting State debt.
Tom Suozzi has a tale to tell. A tale, while not as tall as those woven by the folks who make Albany, of all places, their winter home, that speaks of the need to fix a dysfunctional government, mired in stalemate, and moved only by the delusion that the elected are actually serving the best interests of their constituents.
John Faso, the self-proclaimed fiscal conservative ala the George Pataki fiscal conservatives, offers more of the same in Albany; another small-town power broker with small-time ideas, rehashed from the failures of a 12-year ride that took us from the grapevines of Peekskill through the tangled webs of Neverland-on-the-Hudson.
As for Eliot Spitzer, sure, he'll make a fine Governor, but it will be governance as much by the established status quo as it will be for those who are beholden to Albany's inner circle.
True, Eliot Spitzer has taken on Wall Street. Commendable. Tom Suozzi, on the other hand, speaks from the heart for Main Street -- and on the issues that impact on that Main Street (particularly here on Long Island), where the message must be heard, and should, by all rights, be heeded.
Not all messengers get their due, and not all messages reach the eyes and ears of those who have the power to turn mere words into decisive action.
Does that mean the messenger should remain silent, or the message should fall by the wayside, undelivered? Not a chance.
Keep on battling the way things are, Tom Suozzi, and show us the way things could be. Bring on the debates! You may not get the chance to fix Albany on this go 'round, but at least New Yorkers will have had the opportunity to hear your views, share in your vision, and to make a reasoned choice at the polls (perhaps sending a message of their own), and every one of us will be the better for it, win, lose or draw.
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