I feel just like this:
I am so tired of having the same debates over and over again. It’s just wearying. No, we shouldn’t have a death penalty. Yes abortion should be legal and regulated. No, marijuana should not be illegal. Yes, we should do everything to give everyone the opportunity to vote. No, we don’t do popularity contests before we bring home POW’s. Yes, gun control makes sense. No, it’s not cool to torture. And we’re talking about shit I believed when I was a Republican. Now that I am a pinko commie liberal, it’s just fucking maddening and I have more issues than I have fingers and toes.
And these people are seriously getting fucking dumber by the day. I can’t keep up. The wingnuts will say one thing one day, the next thing the next day, deny the prior statement, and god damnit I have to stop reading the news long enough to cook dinner and brush the dogs and vacuum, and I just can not keep up with the flip flops and the unending stream of bullshit.
Goat, generator, shotgun, machete, some Glenn Beck survival seeds, a radio, and Montana. It makes more sense every day. Fortunately, I have this to snap me out of it:
Ear ruffles, underchin skritches, and purring brings you back home every time.
Alison
Yup. And especially when some of these issues are personal for you but totally abstract to the assholes in government…it’s *really* maddening. Being a gay woman and listening to straight white dudes blather on about OH NOES GAY MARRIAGE AND ABORTIONS NO YOU CANNOT HAVE, I’m just like…go fucking fuck yourself and let me live my damn life that you know nothing about. Being on assistance for now and for the foreseeable future and listening to fucking millionaires whine about how cushy the hammock is makes me literally want to throttle them and then force them to live on what I get, with none of the thousands of perks and comforts they take for granted.
And so on an so forth. Just chill and be nice and let people be great :/
Fred Fnord
How did you survive as a Republican, even 20 years ago, if you didn’t believe in the death penalty? I mean, okay, there was room for abortion apostasy 20 years ago (not MUCH, mind you), and marijuana was always a minor infraction. And so on with the rest of it. But as far as I know, if you said you were against the death penalty you just got pitched out unceremoniously.
Suzanne
We all knew last night’s good mood wouldn’t last long. Cole, are you bipolar?
mtiffany
Watchu bitchin’ ’bout Cole? Critters loves ya.
And once you do it, you lose all moral authority and credibility. For example, when some idiot that used to be somewhat respectable say that Edward Snowden should come back to the US to face trial, a perfectly sound rebuttal to that demand is “Why, so he can be tortured?”
max
And we’re talking about shit I believed when I was a Republican.
And good on you. You ain’t dumb or evil. Congrats.
Now that I am a pinko commie liberal, it’s just fucking maddening and I have more issues than I have fingers and toes.
Cole, welcome to the club, glad you’re here, and get used to it, dude.
I can’t keep up. The wingnuts will say one thing one day, the next thing the next day, deny the prior statement,
That’s what they’re trying to do – it’s a tactic. Yell, and throw shit, and then as soon as the next thing comes up yell and throw more shit. The people following them become bonded by the constant repetition (see any cult ever) and the shared complicity binds their followers ever deeper (see late war Nazis, or various low echelon Communists – ‘we can’t be wrong because then we would be really really wrong’ or the German case of ‘if we lose the war, we’re all screwed because look at what we’ve done’). Meantime, it keeps their opponents off balance and distracted from attacking all the various big holes they’re leaving open. (The weakness of that approach is that you get steadily weaker by attrition without necessary inflicting fatal damage on your opponents.)
Ear ruffles, underchin skritches, and purring brings you back home every time.
There you go.
max
[‘Never think highly enough of them to value their opinions.’]
karen
I’ve just gotten used to believing the worst in GOP and media and realize that the worst thing I used to say facetiously is now true. I have no faith in goodness in any of the GOP. I saw Fox News’s Brett Baier was on the Today show with his wife and son because they wrote a book about the many heart issues of their son from when he was a baby he had problems with his heart. I am not proud of the following thoughts I had:
* If it had been Obama’s daughter, not only would they be wishing her dead, Fox News would leak the room she was in and Alex Jones, Breitbart.com and Rush Limbaugh send their people to harass and terrorize her. And claim free speech when they told her that if the heart problems didn’t kill her, they would.
* Sure they got their son the help he needed because they have MONEY and access.
* For just a moment, I found myself wishing he didn’t survive because I wanted his parents to be devastated.
That was when I turned off Today and all news because I realized that I was becoming just as hateful. I need to save my energy to fight my breast cancer when I get my mastectomy and all that hate won’t get me better. It’s not worth it.
? Martin
Cleek was wrong.
Alison
@? Martin: Could actually at this point replace “liberals” with “Obama”, since even when he does shit we don’t like, they’re still screaming and whining.
jl
Thanks for cute pet pix.
Cole’s problem is that underneath the cranky exterior, he is thoughtful and has a good and stable value system, which can cause problems in these great United States in this day and age.
My Truth Hurts
Boy those three animals sure have struck gold by finding their way to the Cole house.
Mustang Bobby
I get it. It’s like dealing with a room full of sugared-up eight-year-olds who bounce off the walls. You’re not supposed to keep up; you just hope they don’t break the furniture.
kdaug
Most of the time, in my experience, you have to create your moment of zen.
It ain’t a fucking gift. You have to make it. Do it, or don’t.
jl
Trigger warning for Cole: your mellow may be harshed!
TPM has some additional GOP flip flopping and attempted internet scrubbing. I cannot believe the attempts to scrub old internet pages. You don’t need to know one damn thing about how the series of tubes works. The history of Fail at doing that has been in so many news stories, a person has be truly clueless and dim to go out and try to do it. But, I guess in this case, they kind of have to. Maybe the internet scrub was part of GOP general orders for the day, who knows?
Republicans Frantically Scrub Their Praise Of Bowe Bergdahl
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/republicans-delete-praise-of-bergdahl
TG Chicago
John Cole @ top:
What did you believe about climate change? Taxing the rich?
Other than the Iraq War, what are the things you changed your mind on?
Elizabelle
Lara Logan is back at work at CBS. 60 Minutes pretty much on hiatus for summer, but she’ll be popping up on their morning and evening news segments.
I’m disappointed. She should have been fired.
And Jonathan Karl should not be White House correspondent for ABC News.
So what else is new?
Mike in NC
We recently took a 12 day cruise to the Baltic Sea, where there were visits to London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Saint Petersburg, and Tallinn (plus a couple of other minor ports). I’d guess the median age of our tour group of 40 people was 70-75, and everywhere we went these decrepit Ugly Americans were obsessed with asking how much money people earned and how much they paid in taxes. It was almost as if the tour was sponsored by Glenn Fucking Beck. They probably cried that the stateroom TV on board our ship didn’t carry FOX News. I was truly embarrassed to be among these stupid old geezers.
Arclite
And West Virginia is different how exactly?
Arclite
@Elizabelle:
Grifters gonna grift.
Also, too: If she’d been black, she would have been fired.
Elizabelle
@Mike in NC:
My condolences. Any chance whatsoever some of these Rascal generation travelers were asking about taxes/earnings because they could see Europeans had a better standard of living than they expected — even the young ‘uns, and might be coming out ahead on the deal, even in higher tax countries?
Bill E Pilgrim
Your recipe intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your cooking magazine.
John (MCCARTHY) Cole
@Suzanne:
No. I’m German.
? Martin
@John (MCCARTHY) Cole: Isn’t that the same thing?
SectionH
@max: What you said to Cole. Some of us (well, ME) lifelong Democrats kind of feel the same way often enough.
@Suzanne: Come on, you’re better than an Armchair Freudy thing.
It’s far from bipolar to write about a happy personal evening one night and then angst about the incredible fuckedupness that is outside reality today.
Chris
@Fred Fnord:
The absolute, enforced uniformity of thought in the GOP is an ongoing process. It got steadily worse from Nixon to Reagan to Gingrich to Bush to the teabaggers, and as the uniformity straight-jacket tightened, it became harder and harder for people to have any dissenting opinions at all. I can see conservative 10 years ago tolerating a couple eccentricities from Cole ,especially if he hated on liberals loud and proud, that they wouldn’t have later on as the movement became radicalized.
mdblanche
@John (MCCARTHY) Cole: Oh, German. I’m sorry, I thought there was something wrong with you.
John Revolta
@mdblanche: Just don’t mention the war.
mdblanche
@John Revolta: I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.
David Koch
Bergdahl’s fellow home town residences (innocent civilians), in deep red Idaho, are being besieged and crucified:
And the right wing lynch mob are always the first ones to spout about jebus and the bible.
raven
RIP Gerbil Don Zimmer.
NotMax
Been saying it for nigh unto half a century:
Life is a four-letter word.
BillinGlendaleCA
Gawd, Joe seems to think the President should have spit on Bob Bergdahl.
Anya
If News Max headlines are any indication, then Bergdahl is the wingnuts new Benghazi.
Hill Dweller
@Anya: They have no policy accomplishments to run on, so it’s nothing but fear and lies remaining.
BillinGlendaleCA
I turned off Joe, geek stuff with my phone and tablet seems a much better use of my time. I think the strawberries I had for dessert may have fermented a little, I kinda feel like I have a slight buzz.
Schlemizel
@John Revolta:
“We are going on a little . . . hike(?) . . . Ya, a hike”
Love Fawlty Towers.
Schlemizel
@NotMax:
Life is a sexualy transmitted condition that is always fatal.
BruceFromOhio
Skip the radio, and try this at home: you get to stay close to the fraternity, and the pets don’t have to travel.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Life is also completely abnormal. The normal state of things being, as the universe has shown us time and time again, not living. A day comes for us all when we return to the more normal state. Just not quite soon enough for some.
Patricia Kayden
@karen: All the best with your fight against cancer. Sending you warm thoughts and good wishes. Sometimes it’s good to just turn off the news. I’m catching up on the first four seasons of GLEE. The Republicans are awful and unfortunately the media seems to be playing along with their foolishness. I was surprised that even Katty Kay of the BBC was following the GOP transcript on the Bergdahl “scandal”. Oh well.
Patricia Kayden
@Anya: So they’re still going after the Black woman. Why am I not surprised? Rice isn’t going anywhere.
brantl
Cole, you never were really a Republican, you think too much, and knee-jerk too little.
Lurking Canadian
@Elizabelle: I suspect that’s exactly what was going on. Many years ago, I was in Stockholm with some Republican-leaning young people. They literally could not believe their eyes. I guess they were expecting some run-down, Soviet-looking hell scape full of dead-eyed CHUDs. They couldn’t understand how this beautiful, prosperous city full of happy, friendly, law-abiding people could possibly be socialist.
Suzanne
@SectionH: You know I’m being facetious, right? Apparently not.
bago
Racked out? Racks are generally sculpted in a fashion to minimize the expenditure of labor and materials in their production, while maximizing the places that things can be put. Steve appears to have not suffered for a lack of labor and materials, much less the places to be put.
:)
Lurker
“Ear ruffles, underchin skritches, and purring brings you back home every time.”
That’s what brings me home every night.
Trinity
Purring is my pacifier. FSM bless cats.
SectionH
@Suzanne: Um, guilty as charged. I blame Obama.
WaynersT
You’re the Terry Richardson of Pet Photography
gvg
Was reading a LGF thread last night on Bergdahl and noticed it ended up having an unusualy high number of cute cat kitten pictures. there are always some, but last night it seemed around 10%. Also many were posters own cats not just found cute pictures though there were some of those too. I think a lot of people are feeling stressed about this.
The GOP has been sliding for years but it seemed to get much worse around 2006. I think it may have to do with the number of former republican voters who decided the war was going bad and the corruption of the GOP in congress needed punishment and left the party, leaving a thinned out more extreamist group of people with no more moderating influences.
J R in WV
The cat purring on my stomach at 4am frequently helps me overcome my insomnia and go back to sleep. She’s a big girl, and if I scritch her chin she purrs very loudly. Sweet!
People accusing Bergdahl of various nonsense are giving me a pain. He may have been unpopular with his unit, big deal. If so, and he had a ration of grog (or good scotch) he may have looked for a little solitude to enjoy it. Busted by the Taliban at that point, who would call it desertion?
He may have needed some privacy, many of us do from day to day, without being in a war zone. Busted by the Taliban, desertion? No.
He may have had a brain fart and done something stupid while under more stress than most of us will ever face. Desertion? Sure, that’s why he got two promotions in captivity.
The right wing is so evil it baffles me how so many people bite on their hates of the day.
Chris
@gvg:
I was following a rightie blog faithfully at the time and thought I detected a huge spike in crazy in 2005… right when the Iraq War was at its worse and approval for it dipped below 50%.
I don’t think they got madder because people left, I think it was the other way around if anything. People like me saw the Iraq fuckups as a sign that it was time to leave the cult, which couldn’t be trusted. People like them… just got angrier at a world that stubbornly refused to give them the glorious Second Second World War outcome they’d hoped for. Rest = history.
Paul in KY
@Alison: Very righteous rant, Alison! Hope your situation improves as soon as possible.
Paul in KY
@Mike in NC: I’ll bet liquor came in handy there. Hope your trip was cool. Sounded cool (the places you saw).
Jado
Republican leaders are the Captain, and the rank and file are Tom – no matter how badly treated by the Captain, Tom knows he needs to support the Captain because the Captain knows who the REAL enemy is – a whale that doesn’t even know the Cpatian is there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flVePKLvke0
Just substitute the latest GOP freakout word into this cartoon, and it ‘s a realistic representation of any true GOP on any given day
VFX Lurker
@Chris:
Any idea if Katrina may have also influenced the crazy?
Chris
@VFX Lurker:
Hmm, dunno. It’s possible. I remember the blogger wrote a long essay soon thereafter noting that if HIS “Tribe” had been in trapped in New Orleans, they would’ve acted like responsible and civilized people as opposed to, you know, savages, like, you know, These People, so they definitely noticed. I just don’t remember the kind of furious, frustrated, short-fused rage that Iraq provoked.
Mnemosyne
@VFX Lurker:
I think Katrina influenced the crazy in that it caused quite a few otherwise conservative people to start ignoring the right wing. At the time, I was working with several conservatives and one of them came in absolutely LIVID about New Orleans being left to drown. And I mean he was literally red-purple in the face with rage that the US government had left US citizens to drown, regardless of their color.
That and Schiavo were probably two of the biggest wake-up calls for otherwise conservative folks that the Bushies in charge did not give one fuck about reality.
Sondra
There is always this to fall back on for a smile when you’re tired.
I hope one of these links works.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=madeline+kahn+i'm+tired
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uai7M4RpoLU
I’m Tired Madeline Kahn Blazing Saddles – YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uai7M4RpoLU
Similar
Drowned Rat
@John (MCCARTHY) Cole:
You’ve mentioned this a lot lately. My advice: don’t worry about it. This is what it’s like on our side. Everybody gets tired and just about everybody has to take a lengthy break sometimes. I worked like a dog on the Obama campaign in 08, somewhat less in 12, now I’m lying fallow. There are other things in life and at some point you just get tired of spending all your energy fighting against people who always keep yelling no matter what.
I used to worry because it seems like the other side doesn’t get as tired. Two reasons, I think: (1) For the rank & file: they’ve lost (not on everything, but on things that matter a lot to them) and they know it, The resentment never stops flowing. (2) There are a LOT of folks on their side who make a good living at this. I get tired of my job sometimes, but I keep doing it because they keep sending me a paycheck. Same deal.
On our side, we all get tired and have to rest sometimes. Then at some point we’re OK and get back on our feet. It works OK because there are other folks in the fight with us, We didn’t all collectively get tired & have to retreat at the same time. It’s a little like an army: you don’t have to keep the same troops in the front line for the whole war. Let the other divisions carry the load for a while. We’ve got your back. Chill with the critters until it feels right. You’ll know when.