In my email and phone calls to my Democratic representative, Blue Dog Specialist Jim Cooper (Both my TN Senators are Republicans, whom I've also contacted), after discussing the issues surrounding health care, I told him what my bottom line is. I will not vote for any Democrat who has anything to do with a health care reform bill that does not contain a vigorous, viable, strong public option. It's a deal breaker.

You can peddle all the other things in the bill you want, and they are all fine and necessary, but if you can't make it affordable to me, what's the use? If you mandate me to buy insurance and then leave it up to the insurance companies to price it so that I can afford it, what in the name of common sense makes you think they will? What's been keeping them from doing that already? I've gone without health insurance for 10 years because I can't afford it. At middle age, I have hypertension, the onset of osteo-arthritis, and a couple other, at this point, minor health situations that need attention. I don't smoke, drink, do drugs and I'm not obese. The least expensive health insurance I can find that's worth a squat requires that I pay, as a single person, $8,000+ a year. That's almost half of my income at this point.

Without a public option, there is no way to enforce any price discipline on the insurance companies, and any bill without a public option ends up being one of the biggest welfare hand outs to private industry in the history of the human race. If the Democrats pass a bill without a public option, they will loose the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. I'll never vote for another one and I've never voted for anyone but Democrats.

But..but...but..I can hear those who insist that that would be empowering the Republicans. So what? What's the difference? If the Democrats pass a bill that empowers the Insurance Cartels EVEN FURTHER, what's the difference?

Let the Republicans take over again. Let them, along with their evil Democratic twins, choke and exploit and squeeze the people even more. Let the streets run riot over it. I might even vote for them to speed the process along. The quicker it falls apart, the quicker we can start to put it back together in a way that makes sense for the common citizens.

Another wannabe Glenn Beck. Here's a tip to help you achieve your dream: You can't get there from here.

at Salon for running this story, why can't Olberman or Maddow use some of this on their shows? Why not expose his cruelty and arrogance? Why not go after him like he has Progressives?

I have enjoyed these comments more than I have most other comments on any article on Salon. I'm a big fan of Glenn Greenwald and most of his readers, but most of you have been supremely articulate and insightful in sharing your thoughts and corrections to Lind's historical dissembling and bauble headed assertions. The editors at Salon should be proud of its readers.

I forgot the attribution!

If we had any leaders at all, it was Lennon, Dylan (and ask him what he thought about that!), Warhol, Kesey, Brautigan, and a number of other artists, writers, musicians ... but certainly none of those self-proclaimed political fuckheads ...

Wow, Richard Brautigan, dayum, I was just thinking of him the other day for the first time in years and wondering what became of him! How odd that his name should suddenly show up in the Salon comment section. I read all his books 34 years ago when I was 22. And yes, the rest of the guys on the list. I would have to add Joni Mitchell to the musicians. If I thought of myself as having leaders (I'm not a follower, of anybody) they would have been mine as well. I never thought of Hoffman, Leary, et al, as "leaders" more like self-promoters, like Glenn Beck is today, but "smarter". I cast my first vote for McGovern, because he was such a decent, honest man. He was doomed to failure of course as a Presidential candidate. And the "Queen's Vernacular"..wow, I bought it the first minute it was published but haven't seen a copy of it for years.

Zorkna thinks he's Glenn Beck. Zorkna, you can't get there from here.

Now I know why I never listened to zooey, jock radio with all its loopy, silly noises, antics and stunts. It always struck me as utterly juvenile. It must be full of fart jokes, like Glenn Beck.

America is evil.

No, just you for all your lying tripe.

Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams? Oh please gawd, no, say it isn't so. Why not Gore Vidal, who already has a brilliant, loving essay about his friend in his collection United States. I assume there's an entry for Walt Whiman who is credited, along with Mark Twain, of creating the authentic and wholly American voice in literature.

They are all a disgusting part of the right wing fascist party masquerading as conservatives!

Sam Tanenhaus was on Bill Moyers the other night talking about his new book, The Death of Conservatism. His main thesis is that the kind of Conservatism that was championed by Goldwater and Buckley (among others) was a far cry from the kind of radicalism now found in the Republican Party. He says that the Republican Party went off the deep end with the appointment of George W. Bush to office. Now they're beholden to the voices of Palin, Limbaugh and Beck, a bunch of populist nutballs more akin to the old John Birch Society (whom Buckley denounced) than to anything resembling intellectually rooted conservatism.