If dealing with the deficit means cutting out programs, then this is a terrible idea. If, on the other hand, it means taxing the ultra-wealthy and restoring some kind of sanity to our tax system, then I'm all for it. We do have to deal with the deficit, but the answer can be found in looking at who all the benefits of our system have gone to for the past two generations and seeing revenues there.

It's not a style issue. It's cluttered and difficult to read. It's a design more suited to print than online viewing. If you must change and use the new color scheme, that's one thing. But please reconsider the cluttered design with far too many columns.

The new design is awful. It's extremely cluttered with far too much presented in far too many places and too many columns that vary in size and number from page to page. The result is confusion. It's the kind of thing that would make me stop coming to salon.com and see whether or not I could just read it in an rss feed or something like that.

It appears to be an emulation of a print newspaper and that type of presentation just doesn't work on the web.

I'm mixed on the red and black color scheme. It seems a little dull and more than a bit derived from the very popular British tech site The Register.

Having spent a few hours changing a single paragraph in an entry, I can make one guess. The interface for adding to wikipedia is as user hostile as reading it is user friendly. It's hostile in terms of technology and the contributor climate is geek dominance game in terms of nitpicking and complaining about people who don't get every nuance right.

Can he? Yes. Will he? Probably not while Rahm Emmanuel and the DLCers are running the show.

"now meaningful reform hangs in the balance"

Sorry, but meaningful reform--a real single payer health system--does not hang in the balance. It was ruled off limits before the debate started.

I've yet to here a proposal that goes beyond feeding more cash into the gaping maw of the beast.

Single payer, the system that the entire world has discovered works, was ruled out before the debate even started.

Here's the simple answer to your question: many states, municipalities, and the entire EU already have transgendered rights bills and the scenarios spun by anti-GLBT hate groups have never ever ever happened. In fact, the Mass Commission Against Discrimination has already decided that transgendered people are covered by existing gender rights, so the ultimate aims of the bill are already the defacto law of the land in Massachusetts and the pending bill simply codifies existing policy into law.

The only reported instance of a male entering a women's changing room on the false claim of being transgendered occurred in Maryland was revealed after a short investigation to be a publicity stunt in which the perpetrator was a member of the local fundamentalist Christian hate group.

Even entertaining this idiocy from the religious extremists is irresponsible and journalistic malpractice. This has real consequences for those of us who are GLBT.

Don't Ask Don't Tell has never been properly implemented by the military. When was the last time you heard of an officer getting kicked out of the military for Asking?

How if we are going to go ahead with Don't Ask, Don't Tell and we start to issue dishonorable discharges to homophobic officers and non-comms who witchhunt gays in their commands?

Let's see how soon the Pentagon Pinheads start pushing for it's repeal then.

Yes, he's completely right. The Obama administrations ignoring of GLBT issues is a disgrace.

However, I'm sure there are good reasons for Obama doing so or at least what Obama considers to be good reasons and I'd like to remind Mr. Aravosis of his words from a short time ago concerning a small constituency that was being left behind where he defended the action stating "Their main argument, which I support: practical politics"

It's just practical politics Mr. Aravosis. It's nothing against gays and lesbians. Nothing about bisexuals. And Mr. Aravosis I'm sure that it's certainly nothing against transgendered people. Heaven forfend that be the case. It's just that "You rarely get everything you want" after all we have health care and the economy and all kinds of other issues and "Someone is always left behind, at least temporarily. It stinks, but it's the way it's always worked, and it's the way you win."

So Mr. Aravosis, when Obama gets off his ass and actually gets around to letting you back on the bus, here's my question to you: are you going to walk up to the door of that bus and chuck me out?

No, the deficit hawks are not wrong. They're completely right. The deficit is out of control. What they're wrong about is why its out of control and how and more importantly when to solve it.

Our problem is not Obama's stimulus spending, it's the institutional debt that we start with before any stimulus. And the solution to that is not to spiral into depression by not stimulating the economy. The answer is to get the economy on track and then after we are back on our feet cut spending to reasonable levels and that can easily be accomplished through simply dealing with our addiction to insane military spending.

The boys with toys need a big haircut.

Yet more talking points that we could easily have gotten by reading the GOP's website. Imaginary Canadians who die while on imaginary waiting lists are really quite cross about their health care options.

Meanwhile real Canadians in the real world live longer than Americans and have lower infant mortality rates and pay a fraction of what we do for health care.