BooMan has graciously invited me – again – to post here at the Frog Pond. For reasons both relating to BT (particularly Steven D’s pulling back) and my own situation, it seems like a good time to take him up on his generous offer. So, at least for the time being, I’ll be offering some front page posts here, and we’ll see how it goes.

By way of introduction (though I’ve been a frequent commenter here for years), I’m a middle-aged white guy, living for the last 20 years in Seattle. As I’ve occasionally mentioned in comment threads, I have both serious health problems and a long history of progressive political punditry and activism. From 1997-2006 I was a political columnist for first The Stranger and then Seattle Weekly, Seattle’s two alternative weekly papers. At various times in those years I also had regular national gigs with MotherJones.com, AlterNet.org, In These Times, and, from 2001-07, wrote a more or less daily (depending on my health) column for Working Assets’ web site, workingforchange.com.

Since leaving Working Assets in 2007, I’ve pretty much confined myself to writing a regular column in local politics for a group of neighborhood papers in Seattle, sporadic blogging, and going back to my roots of nonprofit political organizing. I’ve also continued to do a weekly radio gig on the news of the week, Saturday mornings on KEXP, that I’ve been doing each week since 1996. Aside from those minimal commitments, though, after a decade of being immersed every day in the intricacies of watching the world get crammed into a hell-bound handbasket, I frankly needed a break from writing. I was tired of daily deadlines and the relentless bad news in our dysfunctional politics and our all-too-frequently consumerist, militarist, white supremacist (among other ills) society.

I’m still tired of the relentless bad news – I do try to find the counterweights! – and, well, we’ll see about the deadlines. This is something of an experiment, to see if I can get back into the swing of commenting on and researching the news in time for what ought to be a fascinating and critical year ahead of us. But I’m psyched to be writing at BT, both because of my respect for BooMan himself (though we do have our political differences, which will become evident) and the many wonderful, insightful folks I learn things from every day in the comment threads. This is a truly unique community, mercifully free of the flaming and knee-jerk responses that typify too much of the political blogosphere. I know I’ll draw a lot of energy from y’all, and I hope I can give something useful back in turn.

So…again, we’ll see how it goes. Thanks, Boo, for the opportunity. And if anyone has feedback or suggestions for topics at any time, leave them in the comment threads or e-mail me at geovlp(at)earthlink(dot)net.