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Joanie, just what you've been praying for.

Being a lady, I prefer to think of it as praying for a spine transplant for the Republican leadership. :) And that I have done daily for two years. It will be very interesting to see how Arlen Specter votes on Tuesday. And, if he votes against cloture, whether Bush and Santorum accept (at least unspoken) part of the responsibility for re-seating the traitor.

From the article: … unless a bipartisan group of moderate senators succeeds in negotiating a compromise to head it [a cloture vote] off.

Heck no! Compromise will invariably mean that at least two of the ten appointees will not be granted a floor vote. Not good enough! It’s got to be all or nothing! Compromise will signify that the spine transplant was not successful, and it will add one more item to the ever-growing list of evidence that Republicans do not comprehend the meaning of the title – or the responsibility incumbent in being – the majority party.

If the nuclear option is invoked, it might be wise for us conservatives to turn off our televisions, and throw away our newspapers, unread, for the following week or so, because they will no doubt be filled with virulent editorial comment (not labeled as such) declaring the results of the move to be a constitutional crisis of unprecedented proportions (the Civil War notwithstanding) ... accompanied by a barrage of relentless propaganda instilling in the minds of the average American the idea that the number of (manufactured) similarities between the Bush administration and the Third Reich has just increased exponentially.

By the way, what do you think of Tuesday's PA election results?

I was out of town, and pretty much out of contact with ‘civilization,' from early Wednesday through tonight (on a bicycling expedition with a friend – we covered over 180 semi-grueling miles in the three days, and were blessed with amazingly beautiful weather!), so didn’t know the results until I arrived home tonight.

Was sorry to see that the Grow Greener II bond issue passed. I guess you’re familiar with it? Rendell and his cronies deserve an A+ for carefully-crafted, cleverly-deceitful wording: ‘Do you favor authorizing the Commonwealth to borrow up to $625 million for the maintenance and protection of the environment, open space and farmland preservation, watershed protection, abandoned mine reclamation, acid mine drainage remediation and other environmental initiatives?’ And yet a big chunk of that borrowed (at gunpoint from the taxpayer – after all, who will be paying the interest on the bond?) money will be funneled into building a boat launch in south Pittsburgh, among other non-environmental pork projects.

Semantics aside, it’s just another needless, big-government spending program foisted on the taxpayers of the commonwealth. And the voters, as usual, were sucked in by superficial wording – and they proved themselves incapable, or unwilling, to do the research to discover the initiative's true intent (i.e., to pilfer from business/industry/individual success in the name of the environment, to repay political favors, and to buy sprecial interest votes).

Locally, one of our three township supervisors succumbed to cancer about a year ago, and a good friend of mine was appointed to fill his unexpired term. My friend did a superb job over the past year, spending many a late hour at his office (uncompensated, of course … our supervisors are ‘public servants’ in the true sense of the term) to do his part in solving township problems, and making difficult controversial decisions – each of his decisions rooted in conservative viewpoint and ethics.

He (and our other two supervisors) were extremely vocally supportive of me as well this year, when the state launched a determined effort to eliminate the position that I hold, so as to centralize more power at the county and state level. Many townships in our county caved in to the state pressure, but our supervisors stood staunchly behind me and succeeded in retaining my position for at least another four years (I, too, ran for re-election on Tuesday).

My friend, the interim supervisor, was incredibly supportive of me during this battle with the state -- not only because of our friendship, but also because of his firmly-held belief that as much power as possible must be retained at the local level.

He, too, was on the ballot on Tuesday … and lost his race. Why? Because the average voter is not aware of his superb and selfless leadership accomplishments of the past year (very few people pay attention to local politics unless it involves their own ox being gored) and because his opponent, a virtual unknown who hasn't so much as attended a township meeting, enjoyed first position on the ballot, by the luck of the draw.

I am sickened by this. An intelligent, conservative leader who devoted hundreds of hours of his own time for the betterment of the township – a man of impeccable integrity -- has been voted out of office, simply because he hadn’t yet gained sufficient name recognition, and his opponent’s name was more ‘visible’ on the ballot. Just serves to shore-up my negative opinion of the flimsy basis upon which the average voter generally casts his vote, if indeed he bothers to vote at all.

Sorry you asked? :(

An unrelated personal ‘aside’:

Have you been watching Jeopardy’s Ultimate Tournament of Champions? They have called back all of their highest money winners from the show’s twenty-plus year history, and these high winners have been competing against each other for the past several weeks in order to whittle them down to two finalists. Those two finalists will compete next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday against Ken Jennings (the all-time $2.5 million winner) for the title of all-time Jeopardy champion, and the winner will take home an additional $2 million.

One of those two finalists is Brad Rutter, the son of a friend of Rick’s, from Lancaster. He’s a great guy – brilliant, humble, and has a terrific sense of humor, too. I adore Ken Jennings, for the very same attributes, so will be thrilled if either one of them wins. You can bet we’re going to be glued to the show for those next three contests. :)

~ joanie