I agree that we probably bring up false eqivalency a lot...but that is because many people perpetuate that myth. And I would say you do as well, but with some differences. Where I see you do it is to claim that there is equivalent "rabid partisanship" on both sides. I disagree. The right has been routinely employing lies, advocacy of violence and even calls for terrorism in their partisan rhetoric. On the left, there is much more adherance to truth (compare Bill O'Reilly to Al Franken, for example) and, with very few exceptions, no calls for violence. What people seemed to miss was that my diary on assassination was, in fact, trying to get discussion going on just that difference...but no one bit. The right wing "pundits" and politicians never ASK when it is appropriate to advocate violence...they just do it. The left tends to reject it without asking when it just might be appropriate (if ever).

There is also the difference in how the right and left treat those who disagree with them. The right, personified by O'Reilly, hysterically yells "Shut up" and, figuratively or litterally, cuts off your mike. The left invite debate. Al Franken's favorite guests have included Pat Buchannan and G. Gordon Liddy...and he has never told them to shut up.

To equate what Michael and I do (which is, unabashedly partisan) with what the right wing does is a false equivalency. Now I am not sure that you really do that, except when "pulling our capes." But you do bring it up when we are being partisan and that invites a false equivalency.

Personally, I am partisan because I, by and large, find the Democratic Party representative of who I am. "I am not a member of any organized Party...I am a Democrat," to paraphrase. That rings true for both the party and for myself. By contrast, modern day Republicans have genuinely reached levels of intolerance, advocacy of violence and corruption that it is hard to discuss them without using perjoratives.

As to "obstructs reasoned analysis, rationality and collective wisdom . . .politics is the art of the possible, remember, not the science of self-serving propanganda . . ."

When has politics involved reasoned analysis, rationality and collective wisdom? In fact, how often is wisdom collective :-) ? Actually, I try to inject analysis and rationality and even wisdom into what I write. But personally, my rational analysis actually leads me to be a partisan Democrat. Not blindly so, of course, but partisan. And my reading of history right back to the earliest writings in Egypt and Sumeria and China indicate that politics has always been the science of self-serving propoganda ;-)