Cut the shit. Your healthcare is rationed now. Now.

And many of us - tens of millions - have no access to any system whatsoever.

You can argue against healthcare reform all you want, and you can claim Palin is an oracle. But come up with a real reason.

What a fabulous post. You have captured the Comparative Camille. Bloated rock band / bloviating writer.

Yes, Oasis. Eww.

You can create hypothetical health situations till the cows come home. But I don't have ANY access, as do tens of millions, which won't change one whit unless we get healthcare reform. And you don't have a clue about that. You are just another self-satisfied, cheerfully careless, inhumane ass-sitter. Period.

Your party is proposing nothing - NOTHING - just tearing down. Yours is the party of zero help to people who need it. You broke the bank, you poured us into false wars, and it's nothing but a game. To you it's just, "how much Annie Oakley drag is my dear Sarah sportin today?" And Paglia is right there with you, as oblivious as shit to people suffering around you.

I know Paglia's an idiot. I thought you were a reasonable man, with a heart and a mind connected to it. I was wrong.

I read your long diatribe on Joan's letter page. Save your breath in answering me.

This phrase:

"To the middle class white taxpayer with private insurance, the "underinsured" look like sympathetic working class whites. Very sympathetic. That's what makes this so wrenching. It is assumed that the non-white poor receive Medicaid, or something, by and large. Every opponent of reform probably knows someone -- and sympathizes with them -- who would benefit from reform. Defeating reform is not about "sticking it" to the blacks, or any other minority..."

tells me that you don't even know how dishonestly you're hiding behind your "reasonableness". This is NOT wrenching to you, or anyone in your party right now. Not even close. If it was, you'd be proposing solutions. But you're not, and you never will be. You do the math.

Your genteel assumptions about the "non-white" all being helped with Medicaid or "something" are just your way of shutting your eyes to them. Yours is the "William F. Buckley" take - privileged, condescending, clueless. That is not a compliment.

You're just the same as the rest of the mean-spirited Drudge-guillotiners posting tonight, just with a better vocabulary. How can you dump on millions? How can you ignore healthcare prices doubling and driving families into bankruptcy? How can you defend a public figure like Palin who inflames and gruesomely twists the debate, at real people's expense?

I already know your answer. It'll be 20 paragraphs long, and it will say nothing. Don't bother, I won't read your posts again. They're hogwash.

Sorry to be off topic, but had to chase you down to say "thanks" for the fabulous Camille Paglia Condensed Version - Latest Edition. Didn't think you'd see my comment in the AVALANCHE of swill on that page. Good lord what a mess in there - it's like a Memorial Day pile-up of Michael Savage listeners.

Can I get a direct link to the next installment? You saved me valuable minutes of not having to read CP's craptastic mind-spill, and I don't feel like I've missed a single inane point. You captured the purple haze of her non-stop, surreal fragging. I am forever in your debt.

Your version is a riot, hers is just a goddamned shame.

(Nuff said - you get squirrel, I get moose.)

There was also a very creative post by GonDaddy, early in the thread, comparing CP to Oasis. Both started out kinda ok, way back when, then slowly sucked. It went on, and was inspired. But your executive Paglia summaries are the best. I'll just skip the article next time and look for your moniker. Hence - if I could mainline it, I'd avoid the click too!

Where is Molly Ivins when you need her most?

it's more than a little hard to trust YOUR sincerity and journalistic integrity, given the thorough milking you've done to the most sensational aspects of this subject.

I've criticized you and other writers at Salon for glib coverage of healthcare issues (not Robert Reich, who consistently does a good job, with no cheap frills), but in the last few weeks you and Mike Madden and Joan Walsh have significantly upped the healthcare CONTENTS in your writing, and i thank you for that.

But there's nothing flip-floppy about ANYONE getting disgusted with the increasing sensationalism of MSM's coverage of the town hall meetings. If the subject was just Gatesgate or the Birthers - media-whipped-up, empty-calories both - media form and content would merge, no-harm-done (except in squeezing important topics off the headlines).

But it's a 60-year fight for direly needed change. It's disingenuous to decry those who want to curb the media sensationalism, if you and Salon have had a hand in it too. You'd be on higher ground if you kept to content instead of pushing tabloid at the same time. But that's how you make revenue, so don't get huffy when someone calls you on it.

"When Bush as asked about the protests agasint his Iraq policies, he would say with a smirk something to the affect, "Well thats whats great about this country and freedom, people can express their opinions." Translation; "I really don't give a fuk what the protesters have to say." As bad as that response is, it is better than Obams response." sajwan

Actually, Bush was infamous for not allowing ANYONE of the opposite view into his all-Republican "public" meetings. A few slipped through, but that was one of THE things that allowed him to be so completely in a bubble about public opinion, for so long.

It was a first for this country - pre-emptive censoring - and it's a big sign of civility that the Dems' town-hall meetings, as messy as they are, don't follow in Bush's footsteps.