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

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.

OK, we get it. You hate liberals. You hate Obama and Nancy Pelosi. You hate Democrats. You hate everybody and everything that isn't you or George Bush or Ron Paul or whomever isn't a liberal. I might have the Ron Paul suck up confused with that other guy who comes here to post nothing but drivel and spew. Whatever and whomever it is that you think can govern in the interests of the People now that the Republicans have totally screwed everything up over the past 30 years, please make your case, or take your meds and STFU. Your posts have no facts, no argument, no narrative other than you hate liberals. Hurling insults and spewing hate is not a discussion. You contribute nothing whatever to the discussion here.

The protesters, god love 'em, at the G20 didn't get a permit to take to the streets. These kind of protests at G20 meetings and WTO meetings occur wherever they are held anywhere in the world. Fundamentally, I'm in agreement with the objective of the protesters. They're trying to bring attention to the arrogance and injustice of the representatives of the elite princes of the world gathering to carve up the land, resources and labor of the peoples of the world, and design monetary systems to give value to their schemes, without any input or agreement from those who will pay with their labor or their lives. That's why the Africans keep walking out of these meetings. The police enforcement problem that the authorities have with the protesters is the lack of a permit. I admire their civil disobedience, but if they don't have a permit, then they shouldn't be surprised that the police want to stop their protest.

Third parties probably need to start with representatives at the state level and the House of Representatives to even get started. Somehow they always seem to put all of their efforts into running someone for President. They seem to do that and blow whatever momentum they have.

Agreed. The Green Party was on track to do just that and then they got sidetracked into running Nader, which, as you point out, blew it. They were in over their heads with running Nader as a Presidential candidate and it has given them a black eye and put their movement in the doldrums. Pity.

'Belief' in global warming makes it sound like a faith or a religion... This is nonsense.

It's imprecise language indicative of lazy, sloppy thinking. Orwell wrote about it, pointed out some of its examples and warned against its results. Same thing applies to evolution. One does not "believe" or "disbelieve" in evolution. It's not a religion. One either accepts or rejects the evidence.