Merc, your advantage in political threads is that you're more of a real person in non-political threads. You're a real person, compared to Redux, because none of us get a sense of who he is in real life.

assuming he is a he, and not a she

I will fully accept a temp ban until after the Nov elections if Redux is also banned for the same period of time.

It is June 19th. If you all want to be rid of me, make it equal. And ban us both until Jan 1. 2011

UT....I dont feel it is necessary to share my personal life, nor should it be, in order to contribute to discussions...If I do want to share, it will most likely be in a PM....but its your house.

I'll be happy share a bit about my professional life if that would be helpful. :)

I support this ban if we still get to kick Shawnee's butt when she pops her head into any of the political threads. ;)

I, for one, refuse to place any merit on your professional experience BECAUSE you are so adamant about remaining anon. you can't have your cake and eat it too.

This made me think. I started this thread as a way of resolving a conflict.

So, what do I want the outcome to be? specifically, and generally.

Generally first:

1. I want the cellar to have a politics forum that facilitates the rational and respectful discussion of 'How humans control the powers that control them'

2. I want a Current Events forum that allows us all to 'Help understand the world by talking about things happening in it'

3. I want to be proud of my friends.

and then, Specifically:

1. I don't want to ban anyone....not even temporarily. I think that the ban hammer is a failure of the community to enfold and encourage the acceptance of all of our unique and individual brothers and sisters to this family.

2. I want TheMercenary, Redux, Classic, Spex, UG, Radar, UT, Shawnee, jinx, griff, Pie, and all y'all sisterfuckers to be more careful to respect each other's political beliefs. Treat it like a religion if it helps you to keep it in context. If you think about it, politics and religion are quite similar. As religions fall away, and Gods lose their power, they are incrementally replaced by political parties, and idealogies. So show the same respect you would if you were discussing religion with a Jew, or a Christian, or a Muslim, Hindu, Budhist, etc.

3. (someone take it from here....I've got to get to bed....

I participate on another board (that one with the horrifying avatar and signature problem) that has two politics forae. One regular one, and one where people don't have to pretend to be civil in their discussions. You have to request an admin to invite you to the gloves-off politics forum.

The converse of your example was suggested before in the "Let's Get Rid of the Politics Forum" thread.. There were no takers among either the general membership or the administration. That's why we're back here with this issue now; unless, the issue was never about effective communication in the first place and was actually about control by some people over behaviors by others [in the name of the general welfare]. "Patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel."

If someone's going to create a separate gloves off forum here, why limit it to politics? If it's worth while doing, it's worth while doing well and you've been given an option that would make it so.

I suggest we now let this issue lie for a while. Let's see if having aired the problem and discussed it as a group, the main protagonists change their behaviour.

That's what we did last time: it lasted less than four months. History has already repeated itself with your approach. Lead, follow; or, get out of the way. :eyebrow:

Granted, I do have to sometimes wade through a lot of crap (or carp) to get to any real information on some threads. That is, however, a consequence of this being a BBS. If I want true who/what/where journalism, I'll go to a news site.

Sometimes reading/listening to how people tell a story is almost as important as the story itself. And sometimes I am surprised by a position held by some of the people mentioned here or by their animosity towards an opposing opinion.

If someone wants to be the next Glenn Beck or Rachel Maddow and have a rant, that's their choice. I can apply my filter and skim or ignore without any electronic aids. I do sometimes wish we had a temporary ignore filter on threads so that I could exclude people just during a single view. Still, if I have to chose freedom over aggravation, freedom will always win.

Right here is you missing the whole point of the Cellar.


Unfortunately, your style makes that conclusion almost as logical as it is paranoid. You do stick to the talking points which is why the lefties stick with you. Because we don't know you, those of us on the center/right just assume you're recycling the info from the administration emails rather than digesting information and drawing your own conclusions.

To me personally, the complete loss of the politics forum has been a bummer. I need to read real peoples reactions to events to sort out where we're headed. Right now we're getting a sliver of the story from two highly partisan folks who give no indication that they care about this community or the people in it. I have not helped the situation by popping off on each of you when my annoyance over the nonsense gets too intense. I consider Shawnee and Classic to be casualties of this war. They each want to come in on the "right" side but because it isn't actually a discussion nuance is despised.

I'd like to see a separate Politics for Asshats forum that everyone can post in and our two offenders are limited to.

Interesting. I didn't realize I was part of the problem. I will try to keep that in mind.

i knew very well that the politics forum would not be removed, sexo. That thread was a dramady.

that is a list of people that are oft involved in the politics forum. I didn't want to keep harping on the same 3 or 4 people.