Cecil you make several good points of why some things are banned here. An explanation may help others here understand why the rules are as they are.

Its a family atmosphere lake/land mgt. forum - not much family atmosphere or good mgt in politics.

Your family in Europe may well be able to rationally talk about politics but Europe as a whole does not (see riots in Greece , and others and extreme political violence by groups in many countries there). PB is a large open community with a wide variance on ideas and beliefs on non pond topics not a close nit family interacting face to face. We hope it becomes more family like and don't need wedge issues but rather binding ones. Wedge issues run people off

It is very hard in words to adequately or correctly convey certain emotion or feelings (see you comment "poor attempt at humor") and realize that words can easily be take wrongly or out of context. That can make for misunderstanding. I try very hard to avoid that in my writing but even cognoscente of that my writing above resulted in you misunderstanding my comment about "BS in Politics". The BS in in the way politicians often act not necessarily how "governance" (policy programs) work , although they certainly have issues as well.