You're honest about your biases, Gary. That's refreshing, especially around here. And you seem to understand that your post is one of those "apple and oranges" things; in other words, comparing the efficacy of SETI at radio wavelengths to SETL in the optical spectrum.

Until the optical technology advanced far enough, radio was the only place to look with the tools available - that is, the only extraterrestrial life theoretically capable of detection was intelligent life, no matter what one might think of the theory. And I don't believe anyone involved in it represented potential results as anything more than a lucky break. You said, SETI schemes typically assume the extraterrestrials are beaming a signal of enormous power towards the Earth; a Monty Python analogy might be closer: "I fart in your general direction", and we just happen to catch a whiff. The thing is: there were sufficient numbers of scientists curious enough to want to look, and they did what they could to convince others to fund them.

Detection technology has evolved beyond Project Ozma, but that makes radio telescopy no less viable a technique... merely no longer the only one. In these times, where too many programs are forced to compete for too few dollars, it may be more "viable" to emphasize optical SETL. However...

If KEPLER hits paydirt and detects earthlike worlds orbiting F, G and K class stars then it becomes politically feasible to fund the very expensive instruments that could detect planetary disks and perform simple spectroscopy.

One way of looking at it - which, I caution readers, is not my personal view - SETL is no less a waste of money than SETI. If we find evidence of biological processes orbiting other stars, so what? It's not like we can get there to study them; even if we could, what good would that do on Earth? "Politically feasible" is an optimistic term to use, unless you're talking about the academic politics of research priorities, not the politics of Congress.

A potential downside concerning present day SETI and Martian exobiology is the strong possibility that legitimate astrobiology could be tarred through association as pseudoscience...

One would certainly get that impression reading some of the threads here... but I wouldn't be too concerned. Among the minds that count, a confirmation of extra-solar biological processes would rescue astrobiology for all time from the precipice of pseudoscience - and maybe give SETI a shot in the arm, too.