the ususal activist practice of blurring the distinction

Um, what the hell are you talking about, dick? Can you provide some specific examples? Or are you just engaging in the usual Broadsheet troll practice of responding to the imaginary dialogue in your own head?

And tinwoman, you're being a disingenuous twit. Those who support legalized prostitution believe that it's a legitimate job for people of legal age to make that decision, not for kids who -- as another letter writer pointed out -- can't even legally make the decision to have sex without the exchange of cash involved. Enticing or coercing kids into prostitution is wrong for the same reason that "recruiting" kids into armies is wrong; like child soldiers, child prostitutes simply don't have the maturity to decide for themselves whether to accept the risks inherent in their line of work. I suspect you understand this perfectly well, but acknowledging this simple fact would have denied you the opportunity for your pathetic attempt at satire.

... and track how many users do so. I suspect you'll find an overwhelming preference for the current clean, elegant design, and that the number of people who like the new jumbled mess is a pretty small portion of the readership. I doubt I'm the only subscriber who may no longer be able to justify paying for Salon's still-excellent content if it's presented in such an unreadable way.

... stop trying to explain it. Everyone seems to have an explanation full of sociological meaning.

It's a fad. Zombies are fun. Pirates and ninjas were fun, too, for a few years, until everyone got sick of them. People will get sick of zombies too, and then it will be something else. In the meantime, play along and enjoy your nice serving of braaains.

... and, of course, given the size of our military, we can do more damage by starting a war than any other country on the planet. So even though we're still fighting two of them, apparently not starting any more is enough for the Nobel. Makes a weird kind of sense.

Yeah, "partisan" indeed. Thanks for pointing it out. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I bother arguing with these trolls; mainly I think it's that their smug chickenhawk-ness is one of my hot buttons.

Conistently, without exception, for decades, Democrats have done a better job than Republicans in taking care of veterans and active-duty personnel. Maybe in your slap-a-support-the-troops-magnet-on-your-SUV fantasy world, it's the other way around, but as a veteran who served under three Presidents (Reagan, Bush the elder, and Clinton) and who still has a lot of friends in the service or recently discharged after service in Iraq and Afghanistan, I can tell you that the reality is that conservatives don't give a good goddamn about the people they so loudly "support."

... your image is a bit too skinhead for mainstream America.

Oh, wait, do I get to discriminate against Nazis?

A majority of Americans oppose the version of health care reform that seems likely to emerge from Senate Finance, yes, because they see it correctly as a muddled mess. On the other other hand, poll after poll has shown strong majority support for a public option. For example, pollingreport.com gives the results of a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted September 19-23:

"Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?" The answers to this question are 65% in favor, 26% opposed, 9% unsure.

"What if changes to the health care system do not include the option of a government-administered health insurance plan? In that case, would you favor or oppose the changes under consideration?" Here we get 38% in favor, 40% opposed, 22% unsure -- which not coincidentally are almost a mirror image of the Rasmussen numbers.

In short, the American people support health care reform and do not support health care reform without a public option. There is of course a certain hard core that is always going to be opposed to any health care reform -- because it's "socialist," or because they see it as Obama's idea and they hate Obama, or whatever. But the majority who oppose the Senate Finance version, which unfortunately is the one getting all the press, oppose it because they know that without a public option it's worthless. There's no contradiction here.

... why should pharma oppose the public option? They'll get paid either way.

In a better world, we'd have cost controls (i.e., Medicare/Medicaid/public option bargaining over drug prices) and a public option; in a still better world, we'd have single payer (simply put, removing age restrictions on Medicare) and the only arguments would be about the details. But taking a divide and conquer approach to get pharma on board while cutting out insurance seems like a reasonable approach. And it's sure as hell one the American people have the political will for, if their elected "representatives" would just pay attention. At least pharma does something useful.

... in the "age of 'Goggle'" [sic] it's pretty easy to find charts of broad economic indicators like GDP and unemployment over specified periods -- say, twenty years -- and they all tell the same story. The economy improved under Clinton and collapsed under Bush. It's too early to know yet what effect Obama's policies will have and you damn well know it, but looking at fifty-year histories shows a remarkably consistent trend: about a year after a Democrat follows a Republican into the White House, the economy improves, and about a year after a Republican follows a Democrat, it deteriorates. So if you "seem to recall that ... Bush went on to lead the country through years of solid growth until 2007," sorry, your memory is faulty.

Here's a hint: try google.com instead of goggle.com, you'll get better results.