Howard Dean can stuff it

[viedma]

I'm using some of my old political t-shirts as stuffing. At last they're getting some real use.

The Unabashed Librarian really loved my idea for a article this month. I find that completely charming.

While I don't believe in running more than five miles at a stretch because I'm like, take the bus you showoff, but the feeling I had this weekend when I realized Bush is going to be in office for more than a year, it must be how a marathon runner feels at mile 20. I mean, I really freaked out a little like this is never. going. to end. I think Australia was the last straw. Spain, Ireland, Poland, now the Australians, they all threw the bums out-- WHY ISN'T IT OUR TURN??? And this awful Congress is so chicken to challenge him on anything. Because he's so popular and all. So I'm taking to crafting and cooking instead of despair. Rage, rage against the dying of my spirit!

So. How do you guys cope? Or are you one of the magic 24 percent? I want to hear from you too, if only to point and laugh at you.

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Hey, maybe he'll be in office for a lot MORE than a year! Because how can we have a presidential election when there are still terrorists lurking out there?

Srsly, I keep trying to use my legal training in some way involving system change, and all I get told is that I can a) send a check so the organization can send out more mailngs or b) stuff envelopes asking for more checks.

I get a cathartic feeling out of shredding those envelopes I get from the DNC

[viedma.livejournal.com]

I don't believe Bush will try and carry on after '08 for a couple of reasons:

1. Republicans don't care who they get into office as long as they've got them.

2. Bush is really, really drunk atm. He's just a complete pile o' mess. He'll be glad when January 2009 rolls around because then he won't have to pretend to hide it anymore.

Re: I get a cathartic feeling out of shredding those envelopes I get from the DNC

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

As I always say, even as Air Force One is departing from the White House lawn he'll be so drunk they'll have to prop up his arm for the final goodbye wave.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Every time I see his picture now, it reminds me of the DVD cover for Black Sheep.

Baah.

[viedma.livejournal.com]

::googles::

Oh yeah.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

:D

[averysmallthing.livejournal.com]

Seriously? When I just want to bang my head on the wall, I mention Bush to my mom. Her reaction is just so much more violent and uncontrolled than mine, I end up focusing all of my energy on calming her down.

Because sometimes I get so angry, and until the next general election I feel like there is very little I can do to change the situation. My feeling of complete inability to affect meaningful change sometimes sends me to the verge of a panic attack. (Especially since we just elected a Bush brown-noser as governor of Louisiana a couple of weeks ago. How does that happen??? How do we trust Bush lackeys in Louisiana when people are still living in FEMA trailers?)

Seeing my mom freak is actually very therapeutic. ;)

[viedma.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't know why Congress doesn't rip him to shreds. We want them to. We elected them to do it. Why won't they? It's completely befuddling.

I wish my mom was therapeutic in that respect. She'll go on about what a rotten president he is, then end it with "...but he's so good on the terrorism issue" and then I want to end my life.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

They are scared of him.

WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY SCARED OF HIM?

But they are.

Dianne Feinstein should be scared of me. No. She is scared of Karl Rove.

Coping

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I write apocalyptic science fiction as a direct line from this current past to the future, when I'm not writing to Congresscritters. Haven't thought of anything more constructive than those yet.

Re: Coping

[viedma.livejournal.com]

Maybe the next time I make another phone call to Congress I'll end it with you really don't care, do you, random 20 year old? Writing is always a good thing, though, keep it up. :D

Re: Coping

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is, living in a blue city in a blue state has its own kind of frustration when it comes to writing the Congressfolk. My Rep and one of my Senators are actually good eggs who usually do the right thing without my nagging (and my other Senator is running for President so will never see my letters anyway), so I can never get a good proper head of ranting, cursing steam up.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I go to protest marches. That's nice and cathartic even if it doesn't achieve anything.

I write letters to Congresscritters. Same deal.

And then I cringe in the fetal position in my apartment wondering how much more real earning power I'm going to lose and how much worse off I'm going to be without even the not-very-good insurance program I have now, and thinking about how thoroughly the last Bush regime (when I was a young college grad just entering a job market that didn't want me for anything other than service work) trashed the economy and how much worse it is this time around.

Three years ago, I was so politically engaged...now I feel like I don't even have the fortitude for the frustration any more.

How do I cope? Satire and escapism.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I read literature from the former East Germany and laugh and laugh, because wow, das ist uns. And when I'm feeling incredibly mean and petty, speculate on how badly so many Republican voters lower on the economic ladder than billionaire have merrily fucked up their own lives, sometimes irreversibly, in the service of their "non-reality-based" fantasies.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

i honestly think that the current... counter-reformation is a symptom of the growing pains of a relatively new nation. think about the bloody tyrants that every other country in the world has had throughout history -- we've had several inept and corrupt leaders, but really only one that was really scary. unless you count FDR, because there's an argument to be made there for defining his reign as dictatorship, but i'm not going to make it today. :) i guess i figure this too shall pass.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I like the cut of your philosophical jib. (And what, you don't think attempted Supreme Court packing was wholly democratic? You heretic, you!)

[traveller.livejournal.com]

there are democrats fainting all over the nation right now, and they have no idea why.

but seriously, when we take a minute and look past the end of our noses, which is to say, long island... what makes us so friggin' special that we shouldn't have some setbacks in our nation building? we've only been hammering at this democracy thang for two hundred years, and examining the social trends of the last hundred, frankly, this crap is right on schedule. we're cursed to live in interesting times. but again, the only way out is through. i have hope. huge unpoppable balloons of it.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Stop being sensible. You're interfering with my theatrical sense of despair.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

i do apologize. fainting couch for milady?

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

*yanks off corsets* Got a beer on you, too?

[traveller.livejournal.com]

alas! i do not. however, if you give me an hour to get home from the office, there's a full bar. what's yer poison?

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Barkeep's choice. I trust ya.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

last night the homo was doing something horrendous with peach schnapps, orange vodka, and cranberry juice. i. i just don't get it.

jack and cokes all around, my friends. there's also budweiser longnecks in the kelvinator.

[viedma.livejournal.com]

And when I'm not feeling really theatrical (like I was a few weeks ago) I would be 100% with you. It's just this feeling of, must we go through the next 13 months of stupid to even think about going forward again? But seeing you with so much hope gives me hope as well.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

not to sound like someone's mother pointing out that that tuna casserole would be really welcome to those kids in Ethiopia, dangit, but our stupid president, for all the damage his administration has done (and I do NOT mean to trivialize it, however because I am absolutely anti-partisan I feel I should also mention that '92 through '00 saw a fair amount of damage dealt, just in some different ways, some of them less immediately obvious and trickle-down effects of poor Clintonian decision making have been felt and blamed on the wrong parties, pun on parties not intended) has not done anything irreversible, and we still have it over the vast majority of the world. thirteen months before there is light at the end of the tunnel, like... that must sound like a cakewalk to someone who's been living in Cuba or China or Iran.

it's easy to be discouraged. it's easy to be cynical. I totally know. and you who've given so much must surely be tired -- I don't blame you for wanting to lay the banner down. but despair won't change our country or our world. my hope is necessary. I think that the more people who truly believe in a better tomorrow, really truly feel it and can see it when they close their eyes, no matter the odds, I think that that does make a difference, the waves of good feeling pass from one person to the next and with each small act of kindness and enlightenment, so does my balloon grow ever larger, brighter, and shinier.

[traveller.livejournal.com]

lord a'mighty, that first paragraph would put Dickens to shame. get the lawyer in to parse that, or just have a stiff drink and close one eye. :D

[dine.livejournal.com]

I have my moments when I rant & whine, but mostly I try to focus on other stuff - distracting shiny fandom stuff, (currently) holiday stuff, reading seriously fictional (i.e., no relationship to real life) books & histories. it may not improve daily life for anyone else, but it stops me from doing something drastic

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I turn off NPR in the morning; I don't listen in the evening. I skip past the front page of the morning NYTimes. I read only the Arts & Leisure, Styles, and bits of the Week in Review sections on Sunday.

And then I ruin it all by reading Pandagon, Pam's House Blend, Glenn Greenwald, and Talking Points Memo. Ah, well.

Other than that, there's marmalade. And fic.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I have a ready-made excuse to ignore Glenn Greenwald now that he's drunk the "Ron Paul is DREAMY!" Kool-Aid.

[viedma.livejournal.com]

Your comment reminded me that I hadn't checked Pam's House Blend in a while. I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling and then I realized, this is all for the same fucking day! Minks on speed doesn't even begin to cover it.

[arielblue.livejournal.com]

I figure I survived Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I -- I can survive this yutz too. Yeah, a lot of what's going on is probably worse than what went on during those guys' reigns -- but when I talk to my mom about the Cuban Missile Crisis and she tells me how they seriously didn't think they were going to be alive in a couple years after the world got all blowed up, I think we've lived through various apocalyptic threats before.

Besides, things have got to get better 'cause how can they get worse? (OMG I just tempted fate)

[viedma.livejournal.com]

Nope, I don't think you tempted fate. Things will get better in time. :D