I started well away from the political blogosphere at a bellydance discussion site called bhuz back in 2000/1. Amongst all of the general discussion about dance history, what's good dancing, what's bad (BIG issue in BD) there were occasional threads about politics (it was around 9/11) and I found myself finding out about the diverse opinions available in the US and butting heads with a lot of it. After all, even republicans and libertarians bellydance.

Sometime in early 2004 one of them mentions she reads dKos so I go over to see what's what and I was hooked immediately. It was so positive and energised at a time when politics looked pretty awful with the Bush- Blair-Berlu axis of weevils.

After a while I started punting around for a european version, initially finding a rival to ET started by some guy called "Welshman" and I posted there a few times, but it never generated any traffic. I despaired of the insular pettiness fo the UK blogs and then discovered ET. Started reading in Dec 2005 and joined in March-ish 2006, in time for the first Paris meetup.

One day I aspire to knowing what I'm talking about, but I've yet to really begin charting the immensity of my ignorance.

keep to the Fen Causeway