I spent 3 years in the US, back in the early 80’s. I was based in Tempe, AZ. but traveled in different places.

Right after “welcome”, the two most used words in public places were “danger” and “warning”.
Even when you washed your hands in a restaurant restrooms, you did find a sign telling you there is a risk of float and serious injury if you would forget to turn off the water…

A society which tries to remind you of EVERYTHING you can/cannot do deresponsibilize its citizen, and drives to a brainless, selfish society.

There is a test village somewhere in Germany where they simply removed the traffic lights and the sidewalks as a way to call the citizen attention to each others…
I am not saying this could work in NYC… I just think it is a positive way to look politic.

Somewhat similar to your situation, I live in a predominantly conservative (and beyond) area of Oregon, and too-often find myself leaning way to left attempting to bring some center to dialogue.

I think it’s important to note that definitions of categories (grammatical constructs) probably evolve at a slower pace that the whims of our beloved purple nation. Thus the “center” (of the oceanic bell curve) shifts and flows from side to side more readily than the defining issues of the polarities change. That is my experience.

Regarding broadening the political debate beyond two parties, I am encouraged by the gains being made by the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) movement (a.k.a. Preference Voting) where multiple candidates run and people can vote for their preferred candidate without a “spoiler” effect. It’s a truer democracy where not just your first choice, but also your second, third, etc count toward the ultimate winner. This encourages candidates to expand their reach to more consituencies.

Also, I think part of the issue boils down to our difficulties communicating with each other about matters of importance, without stimulating media-reinforced resistance.

By tailoring our communications so that they don’t “snag” on each others characteristic defensives styles (i.e., being aware of and sensitive to personality differences), and by adjusting our approach so that it appeals to the other person’s current world view, and by acknowledging and soothing the underlying existential angst that results from consideration of the substantial challenges we face as a society, this, I have found, gives us the best chance of communicating across the divides in our everyday lives as we reach for the purple middle ground.

Thanks for your good work!

I work for a loan officer, and I can say that the biggest problem is all of the above.
The person that does not know how to fish by now is just lazy, or thinks there will always be someone there to take care of them. I have often learned great things from bad teachers. It is up to you to learn.
Now people that do know how to fish can some times want to look better at fishing then the other Fishermen. Therefore, they go around borrowing other fish to add to the ones they have caught, so they look or feel better. Then the day comes when the fish just are not biting and they do not have enough fish to eat, or to pay back the ones they borrowed before.
As well, we have the person that loans the fish out, and he is thinking the more fish I loan out the more I will get back in return. Moreover, he over loans to people, so now he must sales the loans he has now, or borrows more fish himself.
Moving to the Government, we vote for people who think like us, and that will do thing that we want them to do. Then we get mad at them if they do it and it makes things worse. If they do thing we do not like, it just doesn’t matter if it is best we will turn on them.
I am saying that we must all fish, have a fish handy to give to someone that needs it, and teach people to fish. We need to stop wanting more fish then we can catch, and stop loaning more out then we can handle. We really need to look at our leaders and see to it that the job is done right, and not just them talking about it. We must hold on to what works, and always look for what does not.

The evidence that Obama was naturally born in America is strong enough that to believe otherwise you’d have to believe that at the time of his birth, Obama’s parents thought he might one day be running for president (because no other office requires the “natural born” thing and citizenship as an American would always be an option for Obama since his mother was American regardless of where he was born so there’d be no other reason to hide his location of birth if it were outside the US.) Which means that a mixed race couple would have had to believe their newborn son might one day be president… in the ’60s. The reason these lawsuits are being thrown out by the Supreme Court are because they’re baseless, or at best based on conjecture and speculation.

If you don’t like the newly elected president, that’s fine. You can spend the next 4-8 years bitching about it like the liberals did with Bush. It’s a long-held American tradition! But please keep the wild theories to a minimum. It makes you sound crazy.

Since the Supreme Court has now prevented itself from acknowledging the question of whether Barack H. Obama is or is not an Article II “natural born citizen” based on the Kenyan/British citizenship of Barack Obama’s father at the time of his birth (irrespective of whether Barack Obama is deemed a “citizen” born in Hawaii or otherwise) as a prerequisite to qualifying to serve as President of the United States under the Constitution — the Court having done so three times and counting, first before the Nov 4 general election and twice before the Dec 15 vote of the College of Electors — it would seem appropriate, if not necessary, for all Executive Branch departments and agencies to secure advance formal advice from the United States Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel as to how to respond to expected inquiries from federal employees who are pledged to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as to whether they are governed by laws, regulations, orders and directives issued under Mr. Obama during such periods that said employees, by the weight of existing legal authority and prior to a decision by the Supreme Court, believe in good faith that Mr. Obama is not an Article II “natural born citizen”.