The Government Shutdown Countdown Lowdown MEGATHREAD

[merithyn]

Okay, sweetheart. 

I thought calling people with whom you have no emotional relationship "sweetheart" was a Bad Thing.  Or is it only a Bad Thing when guys do it, and women can be dismissive at will?

No, it was intended as a Bad Thing.

[lustindarkness]

Down here in the south, just about everyone is "sweetheart".

In other news, seems Utah will pay to have their 5 National Parks open back up.

[grumbler]

No, it was intended as a Bad Thing.

So it is permissible to guys, as well, so long as they intend it as a Bad Thing?  Good.  Maybe that'll shut up some of the whiners.

[grumbler]

Down here in the south, just about everyone is "sweetheart".

Yep.  So long as it is intended as a Bad Thing, though, I don't mind.

[merithyn]

No, it was intended as a Bad Thing.

So it is permissible to guys, as well, so long as they intend it as a Bad Thing?  Good.  Maybe that'll shut up some of the whiners.

You can do what you want. I'm not your mom.

[derspiess]

I took it as a Good Thing

[DGuller]

I took it as a Good Thing

That Meri is not grumbler's mom?

[derspiess]

Sure.

[grumbler]

You can do what you want. I'm not your mom.

Thank you, Captain Obvious!

[Darth Wagtaros]

grumbler's mother was a tragic victim of the supervocano eruption at Toba some years ago. low blow Meri.

[Ideologue]

So was the human population bottleneck, like, awesome?  I bet you had your pick of the fillies.

[Berkut]

They are all about small government.

You might think that means that their values are not always consistent, but that is true for every single politician everywhere who holds any kind of values at all.

All issues are ones of competing interests. I agree with you on most of these social issues, but that doesn't mean I do not perfectly understand how a Tea Party ideologue can be all about small government while at the exact same time wanting to restrict gay marriage.

You don't have to understand this yourself, but you would have a much better understanding of politics if you were more willing to at least make an effort to understand what the "other guy" actually thinks, rather than just assume they are some monsters who do not even make internal sense.

However, that is not nearly as emotionally satisfying as just comparing them to Nazi's of course. Or whatever.

Given that I've never compared them to Nazis, I'm not really sure where that emotional dig comes from.

The Tea Partiers aren't monsters, nor have I ever claimed otherwise. That doesn't mean that I'm comfortable with them being in charge of me or my country. I disagree with ~80% of what they claim to be for, starting with the social issues. But I also disagree with their desire to create some mythical "small government" that doesn't include cutting spending for the military, but shockingly takes away all funding for helping those in need.

But you've decided what I know and don't know, think and don't think, and apparently feel. So, what was that phrase you used? Tilting at windmills?

Indeed.

Of course their view of small government includes funding the military, but not "helping people" or at least not as much. That is a perfectly logical position to take. Not agreeing with them is perfectly logical as well.

But when you say bullshit like "They are not about small government!" it means you are either stating something you know not to be true (for hyperbole sake?) or you very much do not understand what motivates them and what they are about.

You don't have to agree with it, but at least understand it.

[Malthus]

No, it was intended as a Bad Thing.

So it is permissible to guys, as well, so long as they intend it as a Bad Thing?  Good.  Maybe that'll shut up some of the whiners.

You can do what you want. I'm not your mom.

We better use Carbon Dating, just to make sure. 

...

Grumbles, she was responding in kind.

[Ideologue]

I understand that they are traitors and evil.  Nazis?  I don't guess they have to be Nazis, but they should certainly be hanged from the neck until dead.

In a more serious vein, it's hard to understand a political movement that is so detached from reality.  But I think Berkut has a point that they are for a smaller central government; but Meri et al are more substantially correct when they say the Tea Party is hypocritical, because they are absolutely proponents of more intrusive state governments (but still not better-funded, because, again, utterly detached from reality), as well as proponents of private actors accruing more governing powers over people.  They are absolutely authoritarian, they just think there's a free market solution for that.

[Berkut]

I think they are pretty easy to understand, even though they are largely detached from reality.

Someone posted an article about the Tea Party and how they fundamentally are opposed to not just the size of the projected government, but the size of the current government.

Given that the reality of US political discourse since...oh, WW2? The Civil War? Has been pretty universally about HOW MUCH to grow the government, I can understand the frustration with someone who feels that the government shouldn't be doing these things at all. It's not like that position is in and of itself unreasonable or irrational. But as I've said as well, it seems pretty foregone that modern western society is fundamentally a socialist one, where we spend some appreciable portion of the increases in productivity on what are basically socialist endeavors. I've long since accepted that reality, and my personl little-l libertarian view is more about recognzing what government is good at and what they are not, and how to make it better, since there is apparently no actual way to stop it from growing.

But it isn't hard to understand at all the view that US political history has been a continuous and never ceasing set of "compromises" that *always* result in exactly what they don't want.

If I think the current government is size 10, and I think it should be size 5, and you think it should be size 15, it isn't really a great compromise on my part to agree to it only be size 12.