The honeymoon is over:

And [rightwingers] also accused the media of being in the tank for Obama, which is a standard “liberal media” charge, but which, at least in some cases, was an observable fact (although I think it had less to do with Obama and more with Clinton) and which now makes them all uncomfortable and susceptible to overreaction the other way. There is a reason why the Republicans laid so low during that period.  Read more 

Salon:

Can’t Darwin and God get along?

Of course they can, argues physicist and theologian Karl Giberson, if only many believers were more sophisticated and atheists less dogmatic.

Epic fail right from the start.

Atheism is the absence of a silly something, a resistance to prevailing dogma.

It’s cute and all (tiresome, too) to pretend that atheists have a specific dogma. In fact, atheists often disagree about what the proper definition of atheism is. But there ain’t no dogma.

No doubt my refusal to accept this bullshit premise will be considered sign of being dogmatic.  Read more 

The abstract of a paper from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (via):

Contextual priming: Where people vote affects how they vote
American voters are assigned to vote at a particular polling location (e.g., a church, school, etc.). We show these assigned polling locations can influence how people vote. Analysis of a recent general election demonstrates that people who were assigned to vote in schools were more likely to support a school funding initiative. This effect persisted even when controlling for voters’ political views, demographics, and unobservable characteristics of individuals living near schools. A follow-up experiment using random assignment suggests that priming underlies these effects, and that they can occur outside of conscious awareness. These findings underscore the subtle power of situational context to shape important real-world decisions.

Interviewed in the Daily Telegraph, one of the authors of the study remarked:  Read more 

Abbott reflects on tenure, financial woes

Over the past decade, Abbott has become a proponent of a single-payer health care model, and most of his colleagues in health care administration share his views on the subject, he said. Several months ago, he attended an American Hospital Association meeting in Washington, D.C., where administrators from some of the largest hospitals in the country called for adoption of a single-payer approach.

He’s a racist.  Read more 

Good for him:

[Mike] Stark, a 39-year-old former computer programmer and third-year law student at the University of Virginia, made a name for himself through his uncanny ability to get past the screeners for Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Limbaugh and other right-wing radio hosts to ask embarrassing questions. He recorded the conversations — they usually ended abruptly — and posted them on his Web site, and his renown grew.

In 2006, he took an interest in statewide politics and recorded a couple of body slams during George Allen’s snakebitten Senate campaign in Virginia, asking about accusations of Mr. Allen’s use of racial epithets.

Mr. Stark’s latest project has taken him to the Web site of Mr. Obama, who happens to be Mr. Stark’s choice for president. And while he said he did not relish making Mr. Obama a target, Mr. Stark is using the candidate’s own social-networking portal, my.barackobama.com, to confront him.

A little more than a week ago, Mr. Stark suggested to a group of liberal activists who share an e-mail list that they should organize a group on the portal to lobby their candidate to oppose legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants. The immunity is part of an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that is set to be debated this week.

“Obama is getting mad props for social networking,” Mr. Stark recalled arguing. “Why don’t we use social networking to let him know that he can’t keep elbowing his progressive base — the people who got him the nomination — away from the policy table?”

Well, let’s hope, for all our sakes, that Stark is right. (And why the heck would Obama be acting like that, anyhow? I thought everyone got to sit down at the table?)*  Read more 

Via the indispensable Avedon Carol: Rich, powerful corporations can break the law

California regulators admitted Thursday that for more than a year they didn’t even try to enforce a million-dollar fine against health insurer Anthem Blue Cross because they knew they would be outgunned in court.

In early 2007, the Department of Managed Health Care pledged to fine the state’s largest insurer for “routinely rescinding health insurance policies in violation of state law.”

But it never did.

That is a real good reason to not do business with Anthem Blue Cross.

Wow. I can’t say this has happened much to us, fingers crossed, but apparently in the UK it’s been something of a problem…and I thought the garden item most stolen in the EU was the garden gnome…

But don’t worry, ehow has the how-to about keeping your gnomes safe: “Garden gnome theft is a serious crime, and it’s up to owners like you to protect these defenseless woodland creatures from a life of wooden shoe making at the hands of tyrants.”

Social Interaction

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. This is by popular demand (Translation: Lambert asked me to do this)

In this first post, we start human behavior from a microsociological perspective – the view from below (I have some more macro stuff later). The very fact of being in the presence of others influences what we do and how we think of ourselves in profound ways. In other words, the sociological approach described here focuses on the architecture of everyday life : these aspects of life that we take for granted and are often invisible to us because they are so familiar but that sustain society in fundamental ways.  Read more 

We don’t really have what I’d call “power” here in the blogosphere, not yet at least. But and still: it’s fascinating to read Open Left of late. If anyone can be said to be ’connected’ and ’in touch’ with the Village establishment, it’s these folks. And Dayum! Can you say, “not happy with Mr. Hope?”

It’s funny. Since I took my Pledge not to say anything negative about him until after November, it seems I can’t find anything but that in the progressive blogosphere. The feeling I have isn’t quite schadenfreude, nor bitterness, or even ’I told you so-ism,’ but the hope (heh) that it’s finally beginning, and we’re coming together to see that ’third way’ centrist DLC crap is just that. Crap. When ’mainstream’ blogs are getting it, I can’t help but smile.  Read more 

Change we can believe in:

Obama will obviously screw every single person and constituency that has ever supported him, that supports him now or that will ever support him — and he will do so in an especially blatant, in-your-face manner — if he believes it will be to his political advantage. And he knows they’ll continue to support him anyway: “So what’re you gonna do, vote Republican?  Read more 

N.Y. AG Prescribes Subpoenas to UnitedHealth Group, Others

The nation’s largest health care insurer, four of its subsidiaries and a number of other large insurers are being served subpoenas — 16 in all — in a suit to be brought by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that charges the companies used “rigged data to manipulate the reimbursement rate to their customers who filed claims.”

At the center of the scheme, according to the attorney general, is Ingenix, Inc., “the nation’s largest provider of health care billing information, which serves as a conduit for rigged data to the largest insurers in the country.”  Read more 

Just a reminder: Sunday Morning Book Review tomorrow.

Let’s supplement those dying book review newspaper pages and review some books! What’s on your bookshelf? What books have you loved, or hated?

Teaser: Who says sheep detectives aren’t the best?

Also, please garden brag! Does anyone have corn that’s knee-high on the 4th of July? More tomatoes?

I finally took a few minutes to read Obama’s Greatest Religion Speech Evah, and it’s at least as atrocious as one might expect. The really amazing stuff comes toward the end (no fair peeking!).

Annotated for your (and the First Amendment’s) protection.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
As prepared for delivery
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Zanesville, Ohio

You know, faith based groups like East Side Community Ministry carry a particular meaning for me.  Read more 

FISA: A Time To Sit In At Obama’s Campaign Offices?

Many activists involved with the struggle to preserve our 4th Amendment rights and oppose the latest revisions to FISA were deeply disappointed by the substance of Obama’s response, which contained a whole series of misleading arguments, as Glenn Greenwald documented here.

While some were ecstatic that Obama listened at all, others had a higher standard, and found the disingenuous arguments to be insulting to their intelligence, particularly given how fundamental the issues are, and how clearly Senator Obama had previously stated his intention to filibuster if telco immunity was part of the deal.  Read more 

Our President seems to believe not in oversight but in “accountability moments” every four years when the population gives a strict up-or-down judgment on his performance. A thumbs up means a mandate for the entire platform. In some cases like Social Security and immigration the changes are shot down by a growing popular revolt, but essentially the whole package is considered affirmed. At that point Congress passes laws as directed by the President to properly implement the platform, and each policy is a black box to be blessed in the broadest possible terms with no debate or review involved.  Read more 

Fireworks were a lot more fun back then, and I was still in a celebratory mood on July 4th. Indulge me in a little nostalgia, and tell me what you miss from the USA before the Bush regimes’ despoliation.

… not least because salt is bad for my hypertension, but I’m going to grill some hot dogs on a nice square grill Leah sent me. (Thank God it came pre-cured!). Very Fourth-y!

And — surprise — organic ketchup and relish really do taste better. And, amazingly, my own giant food store, Hannaford, has a house organic line, so the prices for the better stuff are in line with the bad stuff.  Read more 

From Iraq.

McClatchy:

Independence Prayers

Dear All Honest and Patriotic Americans.

Its really a great feeling when man sees the fruit of the freedom after marching the long thorny path of fighting and struggling. The born of the free nation mixes with the honest blood that watered the soil and the rivers of the country.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY. Please pray for my occupied IRAQ. We gave rivers of blood and we still await our independence day. We don’t hate people but we don’t want to share our lovely Iraq with anyone.

There you have it.  Read more 

Business Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare

Employers and employees across the nation are hard pressed to continue paying the escalating costs of insurance premiums and healthcare costs. A business coalition has been formed to respond to this critical issue. All business leaders are welcome to join.

Single-payer healthcare is simple. It’s really Medicare-for-all. You get sick, you get care and the caregiver gets paid. Simple works, and simple doesn’t break.

May they find many members!

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  Read more