That post was a scream, truly funny. Also a long way from the vituperative, often agonizingly ignorant posts I read before the last presidential election when I was terrified that Sarah Palin had a chance of being our VIP, and I was taking the temperature of popular opinion via the Hot Topic forum. Truly amazing, and to think some of those people might be your neighbors. The peanut butter post on the other hand was pure entertainment. I understand Jon had inside information about the possible inclusion of peanut butter in the royal nuptials. I believe the dish was to be "peanut butter and iceberg salad americaine". It will be sadly missed. Ingrid

Hot Topics is definitely not the place for those who get their "feelings" hurt easily. The personalities and range of topics is quite stormy on occasion. There is no whining about name calling or boohooing about insults. No one there tells you to go post someplace else if they don't like what you are posting, they'll tell you what they think about what you've posted bang on. That is why it is called HOT TOPICS. They go to debate and argue their point of view on so many different topics. Who cares what you are having for dinner? No one. Ask about How many children are going to bed hungry each night (if they have a bed in a home) and there will be a roaring debate going on. Gun Control, politics, religions, racism, drugs, war nothing is off limits. HOT TOPICS IS NOT for inane babble-lings or the many just looking to chat about the mundane twitters of daily life like the leaky faucet, or why one leg on the table is always shorter than the others. ronm80 is right they have the best news links there. You can get many sides of the news stories. LIL

bumping this on down.

I should clarify my earlier post: Where I wrote that people have been successful shutting down controversial posts, I ought to have said "Hot Topics-type controversial posts." So far, since I've been coming here, there was only one posting that really did go into Hot Topics territory, and it was getting fierce. Most people recognized that and it just died off. Differences of opinion are frequent here, and that's not a concern to most of us -- yes, it livens things up! Most of us can handle it until it gets too personal, with individual attacks. (And "scrolling on by" are good words of advice sometimes; thinking the "light and fluffy" posters should go someplace else and start their own forum? Not so nice. Coexist.) --Pammyfay (who is very glad she had a busy several days and was off the forum when it blew up!)