Maybe he'll change his mind and support a single payer system. I can't afford my own healthcare, so I won't be able to donate to his fund to cover his medical expenses.

I can't believe how many people believe the corporate propaganda that is against healthcare reform. We live in scary times.

I just do not understand the anger and hostility directed at Representatives trying to discuss health care reform. Clearly this is not at all about health care anymore. If you have a person working as an activist health reform objector, who has lost his health insurance and opposes changes to help him obtain affordable health coverage there is something else going on. Very sad and alarming to see such frightened and uninformed people on continual display.

What disgusts me so much is that the Party of obstruction on this health issue has not one idea on how to reform our broken system. Financial ruin, recission, and denial of insurance must be all right for these people if they have theirs. The neighbors and friends of these people who are left out and left behind just do not matter to these hysterical shouters who seem intent on destroying any discourse to remedy our failed system.

So raise the deductibles and premiums while covering less and doing nothing for small business (which cannot compete against big business in any fashion in this country) and shout down all attempts to level the playing field.

So just how "broken" and "failed", as Adam describes it, is a system if the President keeps insisting that we can keep our existing healthcare plans? 

As for Mr. Gladney, I think Mark Steyn put it best,

Gotta love this "post-racial America": Democrat union heavies can beat up a black guy using racial epithets and leave him in a wheelchair unable to speak — and happily (unlike, say, a black professor being asked for picture ID) it's not "symbolic" of anything at all. Not a Sharpton in sight to speak up for him: Mr. Gladney's only shot at fame is an entry in The Guinness Book of Records under "Least Famous Black Hate-Crime Victim In America."

Oh, the irony!  What's hilarious is that the Republicons don't have any idea how foolish they look.

How many pro-Obamacare people have been hurt at these town hall meetings?  I'm not saying the left or right are using "thugs" to indimidate one side or the other, just a question.

I agree we need health care reform, just not socialized medicine. There has got be be a "middle ground" on this issue. I've seen personally how socialized medicine works & I for 1 don't want any part of it. On the otherhand I've seen our system that charges outlandish amounts of money for services, but more people come to the US vs leaving the US for healthcare. Why not make a system that covers people if you pay into it (& doesn't cover you if you don't) & the charges for services are reasonable. Obviuosly there would have to be more to it than this simply because the beurocrats on both sides feel the need to add into it but it could be a start. Also at the same time if you are happy with your current healthcare provider & doctor you ought to be able to keep it.

The representation of what went on that day as Democrat 'Union thugs' beating up a black man for racial reasons is as transparent as it is absurd.

It is just the next chapter in the hysteria that marks the Republican base's mindset.

The next one down the line is the story that goes "Obama thugs keeping discourse out of town hall meetings".

Laughable, really, except the Republicans still have a constituency who are being led down this path of shameless lies and distortions without regard to the actual policy implications.

I have said it before, and told I was being heavy handed. I predicted it months ago and was told my prediction was distasteful. Nonetheless, here it is again: the Republicans of today are behaving very much like the Nazis of pre-war Germany. They blame immigrants, ethnicity and Liberals of dragging the country away from some fictional, mythic past. All that is happening for real is that the white majority is adjusting to their new role as the largest sub-group among many. They are 'losing' their country (or at least their stranglehold on it). Gone are the days when being white and male was all you needed to get by.

The violence will continue. The hysteria will continue. It will all get a lot worse than it gets better.

My suggested response: try to keep them calm while the storm builds. If one of them is a neighbor or friend or family member, try and talk them down from their hystrionics once in a while.

Sooner or later their representatives will have to face their failures and regroup - with some actual policy plans of their own.

I suspect even this will be ugly, but it will at least be devoid of the rage and racism.

I hope. On the other hand, the country might just explode.

I hope. On the other hand, the country might just explode.

And the right-wingers are hoping for just that.

No, RF, I disagree.

They don't want the country to explode. In their present mindset, they can't imagine a country constituted anyway except with the white majority at the helm; so they may, in the short term be willing to risk the explosion to try and maintain the status quo. But in the long term, this is their home and they will adjust.

Just as the anti-Weimar forces had to face the realities of the middle of the last century, our lower-middle class and Southern brothers will have to face the realities of this new century. Let's just hope a cataclysm isn't the cost of the awakening.

One more question, Why is it that the left is the ones that always bring "race" into the argument? I'm not saying all the left but most of the ones on tv, radio, papers, etc.

"I hope. On the other hand, the country might just explode" 

"And the right-wingers are hoping for just that."

Thousands of pages of "healthcare reform", and nothing about reforming medical malpractice insurance or medical tort reform.... Change you can believe in.

Ron, how many gigs of memory does it take to download that thing???  This computer doesn't have the space on it so I gotta ask what other issues are in it not relating to healthcare? none of our elected officials can write anything without adding something to it.

dirtyshirt, I take great exception to your declaration that "they can't imagine a country constituted anyway except with the white majority at the helm".

And who are the racist, socially programmed people on these blogs? People like you and Random. Your comments are not only inaccurate, they are also quite insulting and inflammatory.

I am a conservative and I respectfully ask that you stop speaking for me and putting words in my mouth, thoughts in my head, and actions to be exercised. You, dirtyshirt, are a fringe extremist in this bigger picture and I am really sick of reading your unfounded accusations regarding conservatives. 

So, since I'm so sick of it, I'll just stop reading. Problem solved.

And Shwaine, just wondering, how come you haven't dropped in to point out that someone has "godwinned" the thread?  ; )

So I guess it's okay for those of like mind to compare those they oppose to Nazis. Alrighty then.

vanityfair: my comments are grounded strictly within a historical context which speaks for itself. The Germans who opposed the Weimar Germany felt the past was better than the future or the present; that it represented a simpler time of mythical proportions which included no immigrants, no sharing of power with minorities, Liberalism on the wane, no homosexuals out of the closet, greater wealth, etc., etc..

I am not just engaging in name calling. These are historical parallels and factual. This is not me throwing epithets at the opposition. If you think the parallels, despite being obvious, have no bearing on the behavior of today's American conservatives, then okay. I happen to think otherwise. I think we have a small piece of history repeating itself.

Note I am  not predicting a Hitler or a Nazi party or anything of the like. All I am saying is that the irrational screaming and disruption of town hall meetings, the distortions and misrepresentations of fact (and mostly of policies of the opposition and what they represent) the conspiracy theorizing ad nauseum, the fear mongering....

All of it is very similar to the pre-war Germans. If it isn't you, then all the better.

The fact that these behaviors exist today and have their historical parallels is not a matter of debate. It is the truth.