You want to know why American politics are so exhausting? Because everything is always a goddamn crisis with the Republicans. They win back the House in 1994, and the government shuts down in 1995. They lose the presidential election in 1996, and they try to overturn the election by impeaching the president over some seriously low crimes and misdemeanors in 1998. They lose the popular vote and (most likely) the Electoral College in the 2000 presidential election, and they have their majority on the Supreme Court shut down the Florida recount and hand the White House to two of the most incompetent and immoral individuals the country has ever seen wield power. We get attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and all of a sudden we’re invading countries that had nothing to do with the attacks while we’re being advised to wrap ourselves in protective plastic and duct tape. They lose the presidential election in 2008 and all of a sudden we can’t even confirm a judge or have an up or down vote on anything in the Senate. They win back power in the House in 2010, and they try to make us default on our debt and destroy our impeccable credit rating in 2011.
If this country had any memory or valued a decent night’s sleep and healthy blood pressure, we would never elect these bastards to any office. They’re too stressful. They may be more radical than ever before, but it’s not like we haven’t been dealing with this nonsense for decades at this point.
Amen. It’s been an endless emergency ever since Clinton took the White House. You graft the sense of racial entitlement Nixon brought into the GOP with the Southern Strategy to the traditional class privilege that the Republicans had forever and, and you wind up with a bunch of people who just can’t stop freaking the fuck out if they aren’t running the show the way God intended.
No, it’s exhausting because we’re stuck with utter crap like the electoral college, the two-party winner-take-all election system, the anti-representative Senate, a politically corrupt Supreme Court and the process by which they’re appointed, a culture of billionaire worship, and a campaign system that consists of legalized bribery.
All of which assures that Republicans and other crooks and idiots will be in positions to ruin us for the foreseeable future.
I don’t know. I just want some rest.
The Yankees are on almost every night.
I have a ton of stuff on DVR, mostly old movies and episodes of The Simpsons and Top Gear.
The History and Military Channels work for me.
The wife and I will occasionally do some HGTV or Food Network
I even do some 16 and Pregnant and Jersey Shore crap with Melissa just so I remember how normal I really am.
Come back to politics whenever you want. As you so clearly pointed out, the shit will not ever change. You won’t miss much.
I was definitely happier when I had the Yankees to watch on my teevee every night. But I’m not paying for that here in the Philly market. I have nothing against the Phillies, but I don’t like National League baseball. I don’t like the rules and I don’t like the teams. The Yanks are on tonight, however, on MLB.com. Unfortunately, by the time I realized that, they were losing 8-0 or something.
You can watch the Yankees on your computer.
BTW I went to the PCL/IL All Star game last night here in Salt Lake. Pretty cool.
Had a bunch of Masshole Red Sox fans in front of me though. That was OK. Yankee fans like Red Soc fans IMO. The hate is good. We need it. We need them.
And one was just back from Afghanistan and foot surgery to rebuild the damage from stepping on a mine.
And no, I hate NL ball. It is silly.
I want to like NL ball. The game has more strategy, which would normally appeal to me. I just got off to a bad start with the NL.
Nothing could have been worse than the Mets and Phillies announcers, especially compared to Bill White, Phil Rizzuto, and Frank Messer. And Yankee Stadium compared to the Vet or Shea or Riverfront or Three Rivers or that shithole Fulton down in Atlanta? The Astrodome? The old Busch? I mean, please. Who could watch that shit?
Seriously.
The NL owned the worst stadiums. And their really “storied” teams — Cards, Giants and Dodgers played in crap places and, with LA and SF, even the wrong city. The Reds should have been cool, but they played on plastic in a concrete mall.
Only the Cubs were “cool” and played in a cool place but they suck and are proud of it.
AL, even their crap stadiums were mostly cool. Memorial in Baltimore. Milwaukee County. Municipal in Cleveland. Even the old Texas Stadium started out as a cozy minor league field. Minnesota was cool before they moved to the Metrodome. That sucked.
Then add in Yankee Tiger, Fenway, Comisky.
I hate KC but at least it wasn’t a dump like the Vet.
Only Toronto Exhibition and Anaheim and Seattle really sucked. Oh Oakland too.
I had this conversation with you before about Dodger Stadium. I think it’s awesome. Weird fans who leave early, but really nice place to watch a game. It’s was the only cool stadium in the NL other than Wrigley until they started building the new stadiums.
Yes the AL was the no plastic league for the most part. I’m not sure that was a deliberate choice but OK.
Dodger Stadium is OK. But it has NO charm. And it is in the wrong city.
And you need to relax. You watch Louie on FX?
I am Louie. Trevor is Louie in 30 years. I don’t want to hump Joan Rivers though.
The main thing about the AL in the 1970’s was that they almost all played on grass. Other than the expansion teams (Seattle and Toronto) I think KC was the only turf stadium, and that was the nicest turf stadium that ever existed.
You don’t get the MLB Network? You are a Comcast customer, right? Basically, if you presently get KO and the Sundance Channel you are getting MLB(and NFL Network).
goes all the way back to Salem, Mass. The Puritans looked into the dark recesses of the New England forests, imagined evil, or at least saw the future atrocities they were about to commit on the indigenous populations of America, and went whacko only a few years into the American experience. The Republican Party still carries that sense of highly destructive self dread with them.
Ok, this is a pretty awesome rant. I will now spread it around like crazy –
-rms
Yeah… I often feel that way too. My best stress reduction technique is to just to do a cold turkey total news fast. My record is going 3 weeks without looking at a single piece of non-frivoulous news (i.e. other than sports or entertainment stuff). It really helps to keep me calm when we’re in one of those cycles of just endless bad news. Reminds you that there’s more to life than what goes on in Washington.
I recommend the technique to anyone, and feel sympathy for folks for whom it isn’t an option (e.g. politicians, journalists, bloggers, etc.).
All that, and they’re still able to convince a significant portion of the American electorate that it’s the Democrats’ fault.
I was sent this today by someone who doesn’t like my politics. They really believe this shit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020403698_pf.html
Gerard Alexander: Why are liberals so condescending?
By Gerard Alexander
Sunday, February 7, 2010; B01
Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.
It’s an odd time for liberals to feel smug.
And this http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/12/hurt-welcome-to-jimmy-carters-2nd-term/?page=all#pag
ebreak
“One of the most unpleasant things about Mr. Carter was the condescending disdain he could barely disguise for struggling Americans and their irritating malaise.
Increasingly, Jimmy Jr. is having difficulty concealing that very same disdain for us as the political winds around him turn hostile and all of his bright ideas lie fallow as nothing more than socialist hocus-pocus.”
Jimmy Carter may have been a lot of things but “condescending disdain he could barely disguise for struggling Americans”? This is the guy who with Habitat for Humanity has build something like 400,000 homes for the needy?
He’s not wrong. We really do think our ideas are correct, and supported by strong evidence. And we really do hold conservative ideas in contempt.
Look, I deal with intelligent, politically savvy and involved progressive-minded people all day, every day. And they have some serious blind spots. I have blind spots, too.
But the problem is that conservatism as it operates in our system isn’t a set of ideas that are put forth and argued according to the rules of debate. Their ideas are impervious to falsification. Krugman calls them Zombie Lies, because you can’t kill them through argument, experience, evidence, or anything else.
The most famous idea is that you can raise revenues by cutting taxes. You can “Grow” your way out of deficits. Sure, some targeted tax cuts can spur domestic demand and help grow the economy. Some tax incentives can spur investment that leads to jobs and revenues. But tax cuts for really rich people dwarf all that and cause massive deficits. We’re like Sisyphus, condemned to make the same argument over and over.
But everything is like that for Republicans. Restricting access to contraceptives and sex education creates more unwanted pregnancies, not less.
The difference between progressive thought and conservative thought is that we will modify our beliefs when presented with compelling evidence that we’re wrong. We’ll do that because scientific theory is part of our basic mindset. And when we argue with people who don’t care about logic or evidence, but only outcomes, we do have contempt for them.
Sounds exactly like the science-vs-religion or faith-vs-reason debate. Funny thing that there is such a general correlation between those hold between liberal political views and a respect for the scientific method. Not in every case, of course, but generally speaking.
Sure. But is shows up to them as “condescending” and Obama gets called a dick for it. It becomes trump.
I guess that’s all that’s left when you are wrong.
I do think you’re on to something here. I remember the Watergate era, when I first gained political consciousness. Then Carter, Reagan. I still remember Reagan’s address to the nation for his tax-cut-for-the-rich. Point being, none of those were oh-my-god-we’re-all-going-to-die crises created by one party. There were issues, there were people with different viewpoints and values, but we debated them out.
Then came 1995, as someone else pointed out, and the Gingrich strategies. Since then the GOP has been all about creating oh-my-god-we’re-all-going-to-die crises. Kind of like the “Fox news alert” — originally intended for earth-shattering news and now used a dozen times a day, often when a dark skinned person is blamed for rape somewhere.
This whole debt thing is a bullshit crisis. As others have pointed out it is a routine vote that was passed numerous times under GWB with no fanfare. But the same thing goes for the filibuster. Before Newt it was invoked on occasion, and even through 2006 it wasn’t routine, but starting in 2007 it immediately became conventional wisdom that 60 votes was needed to pass anything in the Senate.
Yes, the GOP does make politics stressful. But then look at their daily communications to their base. They never let their base rest. Even when Bush was riding 90+% approval and the entire league of wingnut pundits was doing victory laps about Iraq in April, 2003 (remember those misty-eyed days?) the Limbaughs and Hannitys were still stirring up their base about the evils of liberals who were obviously conspiring with Saddam and bin Laden.
So what do you expect? The ONLY way they can keep their base motivated is to drive them, like the movie Crank, at high adrenaline all the time. Add to that the fact that they really believe in pushing every situation as far as it possibly can be pushed, and the result is never-ending stress.
Yup. It’s just another high maintenance Republican.