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Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Charlottesville

A bunch of Tea Partyers are having a little rally in Danville tonight. Everyone who shows should leave their Xanax at home, so as to better facilitate mouth-foaming anger.

They're going to burn Rep. Tom Perriello in effigy, because of his vote in favor of health-insurance reform. You want to be worked up for something like that, you know?

The Chatham Star-Tribune has the story:

Danville TEA Party Chairman Nigel Coleman said, "We were outraged to find that Tom Perriello had voted in favor of this bill. I was with dozens of 5th District voters in his office two days before the vote and we pleaded with him to stand with us against the Pelosi plan.

"At this point we feel we have no representation in Congress."

The Danville Tea Party Web site takes it a bit further, though. Nancy Pelosi is "a treasonous witch." (They plan to burn her in effigy, too). Support for health-insurance reform "is treason against the United States."

So we burn them in effigy.

I don't get it. What is wrong with these people?

Don't they realize this is precisely what crowds of angry Islamic extremists do -- to President Bush, for instance -- to send a message that he and the United States are the epitome of evil?

Let's emulate the terrorists!

Can't they comprehend how much they're marginalizing themselves?

Don't they get it that the whole country is going to shaking their heads and tittering about about that gang of dumb-as-a-doornail rednecks in Virginia who burned THEIR OWN leaders in effigy, rather than, say, Osama bin Laden?

Jeez. It kind of makes you wonder where it's going to end.

Young woman with a sign outside the West Hartford, Connecticut town hall before a health-care reform town hall meeting September 2, 2009 / Wikimedia Commons

The Deeds-McDonnell debate thread has veered into health care. Let's have a separate thread about this.

Four points from yours truly:

1) I favor reform with a  "public option" because that will force health insurers to compete in an arena they aren't forced to compete in now. That's because those insurers have a federal antitrust exemption now.

2) It galls me that there are 6 health-care lobbyists in Washington for every congressman and woman. And every one of them is fighting to preserve, and enlarge, their share of the health-care dollars pie.

3) I might be able to settle for regional cooperatives, because those would be like what Blue Cross-Blue Shield USED to be before most of their execs got greedy and turned those companies from not-for-profits into for-profit firms.

4) AT THE VERY LEAST Congress must get rid of this antitrust exemption that stifles competition among insurers, encourages inefficiency and costs consumers in the form of higher rates.

What are YOU for or against? Let the argument begin!