Thursday, September 29, 2005

The High Ground Is Shrinking

Yes, I know Dubya got John Roberts sworn in as chief justice today (and Bob Casey, Jr. said he would've voted for him...Earth to Bob, hello?) and Ron Wyden caved also (and, like everyone else, I'm waiting to see who Judy Miller names as her source, though why do I have the feeling that all of this is just more theatrics to protect Bushco and give her a nice payoff?).

Update: I wonder how Rove got Libby to "fall on his sword"? And of course, ol' Judy, Judy, Judy is still her typical "self-promoting-oh-woe-is-I-the-supposedly-heroic-journalist" self as always.

Also, as Arianna points out here, the presidential campaign standard bearer last year still has a problem on Iraq (Kerry should bother to read the 9/27 post from The Bulldog Manifesto to see why it's OK for him to show a spine on this one).

Memo to the Democrats: Even though Bush apparently got some kind of a tiny bounce in the approval rating from his "handling" of Hurricane Rita (though I've always thought the numbers on those things were jimmied all over the place), he's still a wounded "lame duck." I say that knowing full well that, unfortunately, he and the Repug Congress (and Supreme Court) can still do a lot of damage.

All of this, as we know, has been authored by our red state brethren, and to commemorate me doing this for a year (I wish I'd thought of this on Tuesday), I'm going to bring back the person who I consider to be the unmitigated voice of red state intolerance for one more shot, and by that I mean someone who isn't a media hack collecting a paycheck or a right-wing blogger.

This person's name is Cynthia Sneed, and please allow me a minute or two while I set this up.

During the presidential election last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer had a feature running during the election called “Red State/Blue State” in which they ran opinion pieces on particular issues, and they asked two red staters (Joe Franklin, Cynthia Sneed) and two blue staters (Terri Falbo, Tim Horner…I had some communication with Tim, and he’s a cool guy) to write about a particular topic. The feature was sponsored jointly with The Inquirer and the Anniston (AL) Star.

I actually read a few of the red state pieces and tried to understand these people, but I realized that they were all horribly misinformed and/or hopelessly biased towards Bush and against Kerry and “the liberals”, so it wasn’t worth my time to keep at this futile exercise.

The link below will take you to Cynthia Sneed’s column in response to the question of, “What are your feelings, hopes, and fears after this election?” I should say that Joe Franklin’s response to that question was a bit more reflective and showed somewhat of a desire to unite the two groups of people who have been at each other’s throats in this election. Ms. Sneed’s response, however, was something else altogether.

Infuriating, isn’t it? Doesn’t the self-righteousness, intolerance and sarcasm of this woman just churn your guts? I particularly want to punch her in the mouth over her implication that, somehow, her sense of outrage over September 11th is somehow superior to my own or anyone else’s.

(Please note that the prior sentence qualifies as another exception to what I state elsewhere on this site; namely, that I don't advocate physical violence against anyone. As with the other exception, this is also related to September 11th.)

Every time I get down and feel like "throwing in the towel," I just read Cynthia Sneed's bilious nonsense, "pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again" just like Mr. S. says, and the outrage is all fresh and new again. It works wonders for me, and I hope it does for you also.

By the way, on a wholly other note, as a goodwill gesture, I should ask that you add Brandoland to your blogroll today. Brendan's a good dude and he helped me out, and all he's asking is the same treatment in return so he doesn't have to steal any more gas:-).

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