mike madden's comment that "pressure from progressive groups helped keep Democratic leaders from ditching the plan in the end" misplaces the source of the pressure. groups like moveon and pda did indeed coordinate grassroots pressure for a public option; but it was not these groups whose opinion was being expressed; it was that of the tens of thousands of us who actually took the trouble to make multiple phone calls and send multiple emails to senators and representatives. it is our opinion, not moveon's. people, not just pressure groups, want the public option.

madden might more accurately say that strong grassroots pressure countered the wisdom of the cable news sages.

i really resent this column. i am 79 and have been working for a single payer health plan for many years, and one of the things i have noticed is that at least half of the people i come in contact with in this effort are themselves seniors. we know the benefits of medicare and we think it shold be extended to all. go to any single payer or public option rally and notice the percentage of greyhairs in the audience. it is quite obvious that we support reform.

the writer offers a single piece of evidence for his rant - the kaiser poll showing that 34 percent of people over 65 believe they would be worse off with health care reform. many of us have heard about impending heavy cuts in medicare and wonder if in fact, health care reform might not affect our benefits. that does not mean that we therefore oppose reform, and the kaiser poll does not say that it does. it merely reflects the widespread lack of information about what reform actually will consist of.

ira rosofsky should go soak his head.

can salon please, please, find a substitute for the self-satisfied ms paglia? i don't even care about the politics. this woman is all attitude, no sense.

get over it - this is a perfectly normal function, as is flossing, washing one's face, even scrubbing unmentionable places in the shower. no one who flees from public nail clipping has much cred when complaining at someone else's problems with public nudity in the locker room.

while i agree with the thrust of this column, it is disingenuous to say that the people who do not agree suffer from "an inability to distinguish between advice and force." we go to our doctors for advice, and if we don't take it there has to be a good reason. the default position is to do what the doctor suggests; and when that suggestion is backed by an official recommendation, it carries a lot of weight.

as an uncircumsized male, and glad of it, i'd suggest that those recommendations also include a section on hygiene.

hey salon -- let this story die. no one cares except the people who will never accept obama's citizenship anyway. these endless rebuttals only prolong the story.

certainly these paragraphs have to take some kind of prize for gobbeldygook:

1. The web is transitioning from mere interactivity to a more dynamic, real-time web where read-write functions are heading towards balanced synchronicity....

2. The complete disaggregation of the web in parallel with the slow decline of the destination web.

3. More and more people are publishing more and more “social objects” and sharing them online. That data deluge is creating a new kind of search opportunity.

i confess i cannot make any sense of these sentences. (the last actually does parse, but the fact that it has to hide its subject inside quotation marks drains it of meaning.)

i do however understand the concept of the "river of news"; and much as i admire dave winer, as someone who has actually worked in the news environment for a long while, i assure readers that such a river existed long before there was an internet, and diving into it may get you wet but if won't really inform you. it was to give a representative picture of that river that news organizations came into being. editors and reporters perform a function, which is to bring their reports together in one place and at one time so that all of us can see the picture. if we all see something different, we have no common basis for interpreting the world.

in a way, sports is journalism's fairyland; but it's still a very important part of the social dna. salon was one of the few places one could get an independent sports report, and king kaufman did a good job of it. a pity the column is ending.

salon would do better to get rid of a posturer like paglia, and keep a real reporter.

as someone who put in a lot of time working for daily papers, i appreciate this look into the possibilities of nonprofit journalism. but i question the notion that socalled "investigative reporting" is the main value of the daily paper. rather i think it is the day-to-day coverage of local politics, courts, business, school sports, local arts, etc., all presented in an easily packaged format, that will be most severely missed. investigative journalism is the icing on the cake. the bread and butter is provided by the beat reporter.

a cell phone is almost a necessity for a homeless person, who must keep in touch with friends and social service agencies. some homeless people have phones that are paid for by friends or relatives. some get to the point of need where they sell their phones, and so lose them, at which point they will have to scam up another. but the cell phone is certainly not unknown among homeless and it isn't surprising that someone had one at the center mrs., obama visited.

the headline says "war is bound to follow." the lead graf says "Someday, perhaps, war may follow."

leaves one uncertain as how frightened one should be.

i think wittgenstein wrote somewhere, "death is not an event in your life."

on the other hand, dying is.