Pepper sprayed for public safety.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Gattigap

Why the US Senate rejected a UN treaty that was based on America's own laws.

This seems like a pretty good time to call it: we're going over the fiscal cliff, fellas. Sebby, take my hand. Sidd, you too. Here we go.

Good. Restart this negotiation next year with a new baseline and the debate being how much are we doing to cut taxes, not whether we can raise them.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Hippies? They aren't??

They're more like Ron Paul supporters. They're all about libertine freedoms. Not so much interested in redistribution, or fairness, or any policy save the ones that potentially impact their interests. In many instances, they're off the grid, so tax policy doesn't mean much to them.

Hippies more than anything else just want to be left alone. The only quibble they have with Uncle Sam, or Corporations, or any other power structure, is when those things interfere with how they live. Because hippies rarely have any money, this rarely happens. The only point of friction remains the govt's interest in prosecuting drug crime, and even that is waning. In many ways, hippies are quite conventional, boring sorts. The characterization of them as radicals sticks as a vestige of history - when merely living outside rigid cultural norms made one an outlaw. The bar's been set a lot higher since then.

Most of them I know like the sorts of people who blather in favor of liberal policy changes about as much as they like conservatives. The impression I get is hippies are pretty much apolitical, and would view the sorts of arguments we have here as incredibly annoying.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Oliver_Wendell_Ramone

Craziness.

This thing read like some of the stuff you might see in the comments section of a Yahoo story on some divisive political topic.

My wife isn't terribly internet savvy. In her cups recently, she was ready to respond to a comment on Yahoo. I had to explain, "No. Never. It's worse than Facebook. This is the shit bin of humanity - the dead branch extending from a split in the evolutionary tree."

I had no idea so many of these near-humans lived in one county. My sympathies.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

They're more like Ron Paul supporters. They're all about libertine freedoms. Not so much interested in redistribution, or fairness, or any policy save the ones that potentially impact their interests. In many instances, they're off the grid, so tax policy doesn't mean much to them.

Hippies more than anything else just want to be left alone. The only quibble they have with Uncle Sam, or Corporations, or any other power structure, is when those things interfere with how they live. Because hippies rarely have any money, this rarely happens. The only point of friction remains the govt's interest in prosecuting drug crime, and even that is waning. In many ways, hippies are quite conventional, boring sorts. The characterization of them as radicals sticks as a vestige of history - when merely living outside rigid cultural norms made one an outlaw. The bar's been set a lot higher since then.

Most of them I know like the sorts of people who blather in favor of liberal policy changes about as much as they like conservatives. The impression I get is hippies are pretty much apolitical, and would view the sorts of arguments we have here as incredibly annoying.

Man, back when you were a hippy, I'll bet the hippy chicks just passed you by. Hippy chicks care about stuff. Whales, puppies, children, nukes, peace, FGM, occupying someplace, accupuncture and organic vegetables. And these are all a few of my favorite things (well, other than the nukes and FGM).

Ollie's email is probably a ron paul supporter.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Man, back when you were a hippy, I'll bet the hippy chicks just passed you by. Hippy chicks care about stuff. Whales, puppies, children, nukes, peace, FGM, occupying someplace, accupuncture and organic vegetables. And these are all a few of my favorite things (well, other than the nukes and FGM).

Ollie's email is probably a ron paul supporter.

You're talking about chicks who like to dress like hippies. Hippie chicks like to get high, dance badly, listen to live music, and drink really bad wine.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You're talking about chicks who like to dress like hippies. Hippie chicks like to get high, dance badly, listen to live music, and drink really bad wine.

That's what we used to call "trust fund babes slummin", but, whatever.

You hang with your hippy chicks, and I'll hang with mine.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You too? How on Earth can you conclude I'm a hippie basher? Am I that misunderstood? Or do people consider "hippie" to mean "economically liberal"? Because if they do, they don't know hippies very well. Hippies are actually all across the political spectrum. I've known some who are wildly conservative on many issues. And most are, I'm sure to the dismay of liberals who'd like to pigeonhole them, more libertarian than anything else. Sure, they're anti-war/pro-peace. But they're not pro-"fairness." They don't give a shit about those liberal fantasies. They just want to be left alone to do what they want to do -- "lifestyle entrepreneurs" of a sort.

Re the other thing, the Democrats are playing their hand well. But that has nothing to do with me calling you silly for stating the obviously technically correct, yet absurd and pointless fact that yes, we could balance the budget with tax increases alone.

I called you a hippie-basher because you were calling lefties "delusional" for saying things that are true, if unpopular with conservatives.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You're talking about chicks who like to dress like hippies. Hippie chicks like to get high, dance badly, listen to live music, and drink really bad wine.

OK, I call bullshit. No one *likes* to drink rally bad wine.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I called you a hippie-basher because you were calling lefties "delusional" for saying things that are true, if unpopular with conservatives.

I am a naive liberal basher. Or, perhaps, an economic liberal basher. Both groups being worthy of bashing, for endless reasons.

Social liberals, otoh, in which group I count myself (pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, anti-drug war, anti-tough-on-crime measures, pro-immigration, etc.) should not be bashed, but celebrated. And encouraged to assert the notion one can and should be a small govt liberal (which I believe under Burke's definition would be a conservative).

Suggesting the idea of balancing the budget entirely with tax increases is unpopular with conservatives is 6th grade rhetorical sleight of hand. It's below you, me, and everyone here to use "unpopular." From any reasonable person, the correct response to such a plan would be laughter, as the proposition is all but theoretically, in an absurd world, frivolous.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

OK, I call bullshit. No one *likes* to drink rally bad wine.

Boon's Farm. They drink like Bukowski. (And they probably smell like he did, as well.)

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

That's what we used to call "trust fund babes slummin", but, whatever.

You hang with your hippy chicks, and I'll hang with mine.

Trustafarian chicks I wish. I'd have knocked one up.

"Sorry, Honey Bear... Apparently the wedding band doesn't know 'Franklin's Tower.'"

And inevitably you know she'd become a Phish fan as well, at which point divorce is the only dignified course.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I am a naive liberal basher. Or, perhaps, an economic liberal basher. Both groups being worthy of bashing, for endless reasons.

Social liberals, otoh, in which group I count myself (pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, anti-drug war, anti-tough-on-crime measures, pro-immigration, etc.) should not be bashed, but celebrated. And encouraged to assert the notion one can and should be a small govt liberal (which I believe under Burke's definition would be a conservative).

Suggesting the idea of balancing the budget entirely with tax increases is unpopular with conservatives is 6th grade rhetorical sleight of hand. It's below you, me, and everyone here to use "unpopular." From any reasonable person, the correct response to such a plan would be laughter, as the proposition is all but theoretically, in an absurd world, frivolous.

Whether you use the word "naive" or "delusional," the trope of the out-of-touch leftie that you keep invoking is stale and wrong. You keep saying it, but it's bullshit.

The lefties are all much more worried that Obama will sell them out by going too far to meet the Republicans, that he'll give up too much to get a deal, like he was prepared to do last year. It's patently obvious why they're worried about this, but you have your head stuck so far up the 1970s that you can't see it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Boon's Farm. They drink like Bukowski. (And they probably smell like he did, as well.)

OK. But they don't like it. No one likes it. Was Bukowski a happy guy? As Hank is my witness, it's not about liking it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Sure, they're anti-war/pro-peace.

You mean besides Charles Manson?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

OK, I call bullshit. No one *likes* to drink rally bad wine.

so the boxes are not a free choice? budgetary limits?