Why do I live in a red state?????

I think I do this to torture myself. I stay in the this crazy fundamentalist christian state with these religious wack jobs as some sort of deranged masochistic fetish. Maybe I actually like swimming up stream and struggling for air through my tightly clenched teeth.

Today, for example, I went to the local library systems used book sale. Great opportunity to pick up some cheap books for a good cause. Basically people donate books and the library sells them to raise funds. I got there about 15 minutes after it opened and it was packed. They hold the sale in an abandoned mall and different empty stores serve as the various genre of books. I grabbed a map and ran straight for the children's section. Jacob has been dying for some more Magic School Bus books so I wanted to get the first pick. I scored 8 MSB for him and some other misc scholastic readers and such that looked appealing as I pawed through for the tales of Ms. Frizzle and the gang.

Having paid $22.50 in the children's section and weighted down by a large bag of books I searched the map for the sections that appealed to me. There was a large area for "political" books in section 4. I hustled over as fast as my MSB laden leg could carry me. I was then baffled that 90% of the entire section was written by Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter. Those not written by members of the FOX news family held titles like "the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton" and other relics of political fires long sense extinguished. Here we are in a time when the current president's approval rating is below 30% and not a single person in my county had donated a book investigating the misconduct of the current president. The closest thing I saw to it was a few copies of the 9/11 commission report.

I did pick up Thinking Out Loud by Anna Quindlen. She is one of my favorite writers. It is an old book and likely I have already read much of the subject matter in it as I read her columns but it is nice to have them in hardback for a mere $1. I also grabbed Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation. I meant to read it awhile ago but never got around to it. I figure since it is about WWII it isn't like the history will have changed on me.

I reported my frustration with the lack of liberal political books to my husband. He said perhaps everyone was hanging on to their liberal books since the Dems are back in power. I can only hope. I watched a bit of the Republican Debate on CNN from Tuesday night back on my Tivo last night. How depressing that one of those clowns would be the next president. All of them are pro-war. Not really one of them is for getting us out of Iraq. Not one of them is willing to call the whole mess a mistake. Rudy actually scared me the worst. I thought he was some what moderate but he came across like a crazed militant who was out for blood.

I read earlier this week Vermont has a group of citizens who are actively trying to build support for succession from the union. Maybe if I go back to the book sale later this weekend, I will look for a book about Vermont. Maybe it is a nice place to raise kids.

~TBM