Hello DebDP ... I'll check it out, but I'm no liberal ... I'm no conservative, either. I'm independent and likely to stay that way. There's too much hypocrisy and self-interest saturating both the Libs and the Conserves to make me happy. Their respective and mutual bifurcation of the universe seems idiotic to me. Neither end of the spectrum uses reason much to take positions ... what reason/rationality both sides employ is used to support or advocate positions they've already decided upon, or condemn and castigate positions of the other side, rather than to establish decisions based on facts before they make them. Sometimes the extremes of both are closer to each other than they are to the middle ... likely because we're not really dealing with a linear continuum (as in Liberals on one end and Conservatives on the other), but rather a multidimensional dynamic. I suspect I'm not alone in that perspective.

I also suggest that political commentary (as with religion and other heavily values based discussion) would lend itself to polemics and is not really appropriate for TBD.

hello DebDP. i am definitely up for this challenge!! my writings are more social commentaries than hard political facts, but i am willing to engage in a little research if necessary. yes, i am left leaning - maybe far left. please let me know how to continue.

Invite peacenik from over at eons - if he got anymore liberal, he'd still be in H/A! *S* He isn't half bad as a writer, either.

Jon - Be still my heart! Another nonlinear person! I thought we were a dying breed!

Jon - no, you are really not alone in that perspective at all, as you rightly suspect.

However, we already have we have groups here devoted to religious or political discussion, and I find a few of these groups less civil tha I find comfortable - people making crude jokes or dismissive remarks just to make their point, and people just running off with it and arguing for the sake of arguing.

I have been dismissed and insulted on one of these groups, and bullied, quite frankly. But, those groups are here, and they are just "appropriate" enough to not get flagged. Some people must like them.

Just, heads up, I say going into that arena, because it's not always a fair or friendly place.

Ahhh... you make me laugh, my Perm-lady friend ... We're not dead ... there are many who quietly observe the shrill voices of unreason. Still waters run deep, you know. Silence is not acquiescence nor is it a sign of death. But there are also those vocal "others" who, if they cannot be accurate, are inaccurate at the tops of their voices heard uninvited through living room television sets. Both sides of the political spectrum are amply represented thereby.

Lineals right and left have arithmetic and decibel laden entres served on golden, shiny platters. The food is good: just ask them and they'll tell you. Multidimensionals have geometry and insight served buffet style: taste and take seconds as you wish. Decide for yourself if it's good or not.

From my perch at the intellectual cornucopia, the force-fed social and media driven meals from the right and left seem to me untempered with needed savory portions of breadth. Their deafening monotone salads of vocal righteousness are unquenched with the rich blue-cheese dressings of reason and rationality ... but that's me, and it seems, you too. We're outnumbered, you know ... not that that makes any difference. I prefer a diversified buffet to forced menu choices.

I am certainly not advocating forced menu choices. Don't you know me at all?