I know my reaction to this story may be considered offensive to some religious people, but I think this is %$@#& hilarious :

The largest study of the medical power of prayer found secret prayers on patients’ behalf didn’t reduce complications in heart surgery and there was a 14 percent higher chance of problems when patients were aware of the prayers.

The research, appearing in the April issue of the American Heart Journal, followed 1,802 patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery at six hospitals. Of those, one-third weren’t prayed for, another third were prayed for without their knowledge by three U.S. Christian congregations, and the rest knew they were the subject of prayers by the church members.

The researchers, led by Herbert Benson and Jeffery A. Dusek of Harvard Medical School and Mind/Body Institute, found that people who knew they received intercessory prayers had the highest chance of complications of the three groups, 59 percent. Among patients who didn’t know whether they were the subject of secret prayers, complications occurred in 52 percent of those who were prayed for and 51 percent of those who weren’t.

The death rates for 30 days after surgery were similar across all the groups, the two-year study showed.

In other news, placebos aren’t as effective as medicine. Who knew?!

Seeing as this is an article critical of religion written in America, I expected this bit of backtracking at the end of the article :

Patients in the three groups had similar religious profiles and most believed family and friends would be praying for them. The researchers didn’t attempt to curtail those or the subjects’ own prayers.

“With so many individuals receiving prayer from friends and family, as well as personal prayer, it may be impossible to disentangle the effects of study prayer from background prayer,” co-author Manoj Jain, from Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, said in a statement released by Columbia University Medical Center yesterday.

Prayers from stragers don’t work, but prayers from friends and family might…yeah, that’s it. The closer to you are to the person praying, the more effective it is. Think of it as “six degrees of Jesus”.

There have been enough studies like this with different sample sizes and methodologies to pretty much please anyone, but it’s kinda sad to think that a study like this is required to temper its findings with a disclaimer to protect the feelings of those who might be upset by the results. Granted, when you’re studying prayer, the prayers of family and friends are an unknown quantity, but it’s not like this are factors “impossible” to measure.

My first post over at the Huffington Post is up now. It’s basically a slightly changed version of the immigration post I’ve done here twice. I’ll probably be cross-posting there from time to time, but it shouldn’t really change anything in terms of my posting here or at TMW.

UPDATE : They put up my bio without editing out the smartass comment. Awesome.

So much for all the “it’s a done deal” rumors that have been circulating non-stop for the past two months. Arrested Development is dead. For real this time.

Even the greatest salesman in the world is gonna have trouble selling something that nobody wants to buy.

Since Mexican immigration is the topic du jour (not in the blogosphere as much as the streets of L.A.), let me share the findings of a 2001 report from the Center for Immigration Studies :

Large-scale immigration from Mexico is a very recent phenomenon. In 1970, the Mexican immigrant population was less than 800,000, compared to nearly 8 million in 2000.
. . .
Though most natives are more skilled and thus do not face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants, this study (consistent with previous research) indicates that the more than 10 million natives who lack a high school degree do face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants.

By increasing the supply of unskilled labor, Mexican immigration in the 1990s has reduced the wages of workers without a high school education by an estimated 5 percent. The workers affected are already the lowest-paid, comprising a large share of the working poor and those trying to move from welfare to work.

This reduction in wages for the unskilled has likely reduced prices for consumers by only an estimated .08 to .2 percent in the 1990s. The impact is so small because unskilled labor accounts for only a tiny fraction of total economic output.

So the findings seem to suggest that there’s a nugget of truth in the xenophobic “they’re stealing our jobs” line in that unskilled workers are forced to compete with their immigrant counterparts, but the only “stolen” jobs are taken by greedy employers who want to skirt our labor laws and make a few extra bucks. The total lack of price reductions additionally supports the fact that there is no great economic incentive for this shift in the workforce. Sure, immoral businesses are saving money, but those savings are being put into their pockets, not passed onto consumers.

Because of their much lower education levels, Mexican immigrants earn significantly less than natives on average. This results in lower average tax payments and heavier use of means-tested programs. Based on estimates developed by the National Academy of Sciences for immigrants by age and education at arrival, the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a negative $55,200.

Although they comprise 4.2 percent of the nation’s total population, Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) account for 10.2 percent of all persons in poverty and 12.5 percent of those without health insurance. Even among Mexican immigrant families that have lived in United States for more than 20 years, almost all of whom are legal residents, more than half live in or near poverty and one-third are uninsured

Even after welfare reform, an estimated 34 percent of households headed by legal Mexican immigrants and 25 percent headed by illegal Mexican immigrants used at least one major welfare program, in contrast to 15 percent of native households. Mexican immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than 20 years, almost all of whom are legal residents, still have double the welfare use rate of natives.

Mexican immigration acts as a subsidy to businesses that employ unskilled workers, holding down labor costs while taxpayers pick up the costs of providing services to a much larger poor and low-income population.

…and the vicious cycle begins anew. Immigrants are paid less which makes them more likely to be in poverty which makes them more likely to need social services which they aren’t contributing “enough” towards because they’re paid less…but don’t fall into the trap of reaching the simple conclusion that “if they’re here, they should pay taxes”. Another part of the report points out that they do pay taxes, but there’s a rub :

The March 2000 CPS indicates that in 1999, the average federal income tax payment by households headed by Mexican immigrants was $2,156, less than one third of the $7,255 average tax contribution made by native households. By design, the federal income tax system is supposed to tax those with higher income and fewer dependents at higher rates than those with lower income and more dependents. So the much lower income tax contributions of Mexican immigrants simply reflect the tax code and not some systematic attempt by Mexican immigrants to avoid paying taxes.

In 1999, 74 percent of households headed by natives had to pay at least some federal income tax, compared to only 59 percent of Mexican immigrant households. Even if one confines the analysis to legal Mexican immigrants, the gap between their tax contributions and those of natives remains large. Using the same method as before to distinguish legal and illegal Mexican immigrant households, the estimated federal income liability of households headed by legal Mexican immigrants in 1999 was $2,538. Thus, the very low tax contribution of Mexican immigrants is not simply or even mostly a function of legal status, but rather reflects their much lower incomes and larger average family size.

Which is where most Republicans would start talking about tax “reform” as if raising the taxes of the poor is going to help someone who isn’t even lucky enough to live paycheck to paycheck. If businesses insist on paying immigrants shit, the least they should do is pass along the difference to help offset they problem they’re creating. Better yet, they should stop being allowed to break the law and save a few bucks. Or to paraphrase something I wrote earlier, breaking the law should always be more expensive than obeying it.

We’ve got a serious immigration problem in this country that’s the fault of businesses who have shifted jobs from American workers to illegal immigrants and the goverment that’s looked the other way for decades. The idea that the President and his allies want to codify this second class of workers (and solidify the division between the two) shows you how out of touch he is with working men and women. The struggle in the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere isn’t one between immigrants and Americans, but between the working class and the business/government entities that are looking for new avenues to cheap labor, even if it means exploiting ethnic tensions to turn people against each other.

I really, really hate the President’s plans for “immigration reform” and it looks like I’m not the only one :

“Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others – I don’t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.”
- Cesar Chavez

Since I’m too lazy to rewrite my thoughts on the President’s horrible, elitist, and divisive plans, here’s a rerun of a post I wrote back in November.

---

For all of you conservatives who love to praise the “free market”, let me call bullshit on this enduring lie that the President frequently cites to sell his immigration plan. From yesterday’s speech :

As we enforce our immigration laws, comprehensive immigration reform also requires us to improve those laws by creating a new temporary worker program. This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do. Workers would be able to register for legal status for a fixed period of time, and then be required to go home. This program would help meet the demands of a growing economy, and it would allow honest workers to provide for their families while respecting the law.

The “jobs Americans won’t do” lie was also recently advanced in the Washington Post by a spokesman for the Labor Department and a “panicking” farmer (via Kevin Drum) :

“There are just some jobs people don’t want to do,” Nassif said. “It’s the most developed nation in the world using a foreign workforce, and people need to recognize that. We need to make them legal.”

Jack Vessey said he listed openings for 300 laborers at the state office of employment last week to prepare the lettuce fields for harvest. “We got one person,” he said. “He showed up and said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’”

The key to unraveling this bullshit is that the anonymous laborer quoted above likely ended his gripe with “unless you pay me more”. The President wants you to think this is because American workers are shiftless elitists, but it’s the employers and their shills who are the assholes here.

What people like the George W. Bush don’t understand is that capitalism is not a one-way street. When the demand for workers is high and the supply of laborers is low, the rational solution would be for employers to raise wages, increase benefits, or both to ensure that supply catches up to demand. But that would mean actually spending more money, and we can’t have that.

Instead, employers have found a way to get around their obligations by employing “undocumented” workers (and thus creating a demand for illegal labor). Why are these men and women willing to do the same job that Americans are unwilling to do for less money? Well, they’re here illegally, for one. They probably don’t speak English well and have little familiarity with existing labor laws. They’re doing a job that’s unskilled while under the constant threat of deportation. Sounds like the new face of indentured servitude to me, but the President and his allies are trying to figure out ways to make it acceptable.

But here’s the key to all of these proposals : These illegal workers aren’t being offered citizenship, but membership in a “guest worker program”. Bush and co. don’t give a damn about the working class in this country, they just want to make sure that the crooks aren’t penalized for breaking our labor laws. The solutions bandied about would create a pseudo-citizenship which will protect employers but do little to lift immigrant workers from the bottom rung on the economic ladder. When residence is closely tied to employment, the threat of deportation doesn’t go away, it just gets hidden a little better.

Which makes this whole debate even more galling. Immigrants are being exploited, American workers are getting screwed, and the whole debate is happenening as if these two groups of victims are on opposite sides. If you want to stop illegal immigration, you don’t need to build a fence. The supply of illegal labor will go away once the demand for it ceases. We don’t need new plans, we need to rigorously enforce the laws already on the books. If that means that employers are going to have to pay more to the people doing the jobs that “Americans won’t do” and pass those costs on to the consumer, then it’s hardly our place to question the wisdom of the invisible hand, right?

Also, it should be stressed again that George Bush and his allies should be ashamed of themselves for slandering us with their anti-worker rhetoric. Aren’t you paying attention, America? The President of the United States just called you an indolent snob. He thinks you’re too lazy to do an honest day’s work and too effete to do work that will get your hands dirty. Doesn’t that piss you off? It should.

Awww…poor Ben/Augustine. He’s decided to step down to spend more time with his family. For those who want to know why Ben’s plagiarism is everyone’s fault but his, make sure to check out RedState. The pity-party is full effect, with Ben whining :

But in the course of accusing me of racism, homophobia, bigotry, and even (on one extensive Atrios thread) of having a sexual relationship with my mother, the leftists shifted their accusations to ones of plagiarism. You can find the major examples here: I link to this source only because I believe it’s the only place that hasn’t yet written about how they’d like to rape my sister.

I know that charges of plagiarism are serious. While I am not a journalist, I have, myself, written more than one thing that has been plagiarized in the past.

Don’t you understand? Ben’s the victim here. If he can’t convince you, take a look at some of the other diaries on the site’s homepage for various calls to arms, posted under titles dripping with self-righteousness like “This is About Decency”, “We Must Defend”, “We Must Continue”, and my favorite “We Must Attack” which begins with this hilarious bit of faux-intellectualism :

It was Hannah Arendt who introduced us to the banality of evil. There was more to this thing called “evil” than grainy newsreel footage of delirious chanting of “Sieg Heil” or the “Internationale.” Rage and hatred were not the first steps toward convincing seemingly normal people to go along with totalitarianism. First, repression had to seem normal. Domestic enemies were not hated – they were dehumanized. In the eyes of their countrymen, their souls were emptied of any qualities extraneous to Political Man. They were the imperialist/capitalist running dog/Jew/Trotskyite – and that was all.

In 2006 in America, we see perfect replicas of Stalin’s drones at work in response to about the only decent thing said about the Domenech affair on Daily Kos. It is an exquisite performance right out of the two minutes hate.

The left is all bent out of shape about Ben’s plagiarism. You know who else hated plagiarism?? Hitler!

Of course, it would be unfair to blame Ben for something written by others (no, Ben only takes credit for the good stuff other people write), so let me highlight the last line in his oh-so-classy resignation letter :

To my enemies: I take enormous solace in the fact that you spent this week bashing me, instead of America.

Such a humble statement from a guy who started this little disaster with the line “This is a blog for the majority of Americans.” The most pathetic part of this whole experiment gone wrong is that his “To my enemies” postscript is the closest this self-described spokesman for “the majority of Americans” gets to taking responsibility for his own actions.

Get over yourself, Ben. You screwed up. A lot. Real men don’t throw temper tantrums when they’re caught cheating.

Here’s a good example of the immoral healthcare system that conservatives are trying to protect :

Authorities released a videotape this afternoon of what they say is the dumping of a 63-year-old woman on the streets of skid row.

The videotape, recorded by security cameras outside the Union Rescue Mission entrance on San Pedro Street on Monday afternoon, shows a taxicab pulling a U-turn and then driving out of view. A few seconds later, a woman wearing a hospital gown and no shoes walks from the same direction, wandering in the street and on the sidewalk for about three minutes before a Union Rescue Mission staff person escorts her inside the mission.

LAPD Capt. Andrew Smith said he believes the taxi took the woman, a 63-year-old Gardena resident, downtown against her will after she was discharged from Kaiser Permanente Bellflower on Monday.

You’d think examples like this would prompt the American public to say to themselves “Hmmmm….I wonder why this doesn’t happen in other countries?”, but the very concept of providing healthcare to everyone is pilloried as a step towards despotism (unlike, say, the disposal of the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments). Here’s how Tom Neely and I sent-up the GOP talking point a couple of years ago :

If the Democrats knew what was good for them (ha!), they’d collect stories like this as evidence that the United States is long overdue for a universal single-payer healthcare system. Sometimes showing a willingness to go down in flames on principle prevents that very thing from happening.

I haven’t written anything about The Washington Post’s hiring of Ben Domenech because I support their first amendment right to piss away their credibility by hiring an asshole, but the dirt people have been digging up on the self-described spokesman for “the majority of Americans” has really shocked me. No, not Ben’s double-life as “Augustine” or his overt racism. The thing that I find amazing is that Ben Domenech is so ethically challenged that he plagiarized movie reviews. Movie reviews! These weren’t assignments that required research, interviews, or even a basic degree of accurracy. All he had to do was sit through a movie and write a couple hundred words about what he thought, but he couldn’t even do that without stealing.

The Smoking Gun got their hands on Dick Cheney’s tour rider. (via HuffPo)

It looks like our favorite hunter is too delicate to pick up a damn remote and change the channel himself. This rule is probably for the best though. With Cheney’s health problems and advanced age, it takes him a lot longer to trash a Presidential Suite than it used to.

I’m guessing Tom is too busy with his tour preparations to plug a certain book that’s coming out today….

Looking at the book’s page on Amazon, I noticed this slightly disturbing association :



I don’t know who would be interested in a book by a torture-loving goober like Horowitz and a book of hilarious political cartoons, but apparently there’s at least one of you out there. Since you already know how great This Modern World is, I’ll forgo the sales pitch and offer this bit of advice :

Don’t buy The Professors by David Horowitz

Seriously, it’s the same “radical professors” crap that conservatives have been whining about for years. We’ve seen this argument a million times before and it’s still as simple-minded as it was forty years ago. To conservatives like Horowitz, liberalism on college campuses is the result of political bias and intolerance for alternative views. While cherry-picked examples of political correctness run amok can certainly be strung together to support that thesis, there’s a more obvious answer that’s being overlooked by the egomaniacs on the right. When educated people disagree with you, it has nothing to do with political bias. They disagree with you because you’re wrong. If Horowitz and his peers had the slightest bit of humility, they’d take the unpopularity of their views among intellectuals as a sign that they might need to reevaluate their views. But that would require flip-flopping and we all know how wingnuts feel about that.

So now that you know which book you shouldn’t buy, lemme highlight part of what Giant Magazine had to say about Hell in a Handbasket :

It also showcases how infuriated he is with the current administration. We probably don’t need to tell you that Tomorrow’s opinions lean to the left–the book’s cover, which features President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove sporting devil horns, speaks volumes. Yet he never falls into blind partisanship. Even as Tomorrow rips into the president’s buffoonery, his political advisors’ twisting of the truth and fox news’s insulting and divisive rhetoric, he comes off not as a vengeful sour-grapes Democrat but as an articulate and thoughtful man who is genuinely concerned about the future.

Daniel Perkins has been making cartoons for over 20 years, and his work has never been sharper. This Modern World stands out as a voice of reason, pointing out the trouble we’re in and providing comfort to those who already recognize it. Who knows–maybe someday we’ll be able to look back on all of this and laugh.

So pick up Hell in a Handbasket and catch Tom next week on tour.

For those of you who watched American Idol tonight and saw somebody in the audience cheering and holding a sign with a pickle on it, that wasn’t a photo of contestant Kellie Pickler, it was Associated Press hack Nedra Pickler :

Look familiar American Idol fans? Since it’s the most popular show in the world or something, lemme point out that the graphic was originally made to highlight the fact that the press routinely gives Republicans a free pass while holding Democrats to a higher standard. Atrios in particular was all over this a couple years ago and described Pickler’s style as such :

Nit Picklering being the writing of news stories admonishing Democratic candidates for daring to not explain their own inconsistencies, as demonstrated by Nedra Pickler by the inclusion of some utterly irrelevant detail.

Matt Yglesias later expanded the Nit Picklering phenomenon into an article for the American Prospect :

Pickler, a 28-year-old Washington-based reporter who covered the auto industry before moving to the campaign beat last January, took Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to task for telling the story of a New Hampshire couple whose water supply was rendered unsafe for drinking or showering due to the presence of a gasoline additive, MTBE, without noting that they now, in fact, had potable water from an alternate source. Was Kerry remiss? Certainly no more so than Pickler, who failed to mention that the senator’s remarks came up as he was discussing the Bush administration’s efforts to shield manufacturers of the toxic substance from lawsuits. (MTBE has a propensity for poisoning groundwater). A revised version of Pickler’s story was released on the wires the next morning, now leading with the Kerry-bashing in the first paragraph, insinuating that the senator had inflicted emotional distress on the victims of his “dishonesty.” Actual harms caused by the chemical didn’t make the cut, however.
. . .
Pickler’s tic is a source of amusement, but it also has quite serious ramifications. While most discussion of media bias focuses on elite outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post, stories put out by The Associated Press form the backbone of national political coverage in the small- and medium-sized newspapers whose combined circulations far exceed the majors. These early campaign reports, moreover, set the larger story line that constrains later coverage of events. Once Al Gore got the “liar” label on the 2000 campaign trail, he was unable to shake it no matter how unfair the charges were or how much worse Bush’s behavior was. This is a movie we’ve all seen before, and it doesn’t have a happy ending.

And now her photoshoped mug has become a prop on the most popular show on TV. It’s fitting that the audience, producers, network, hosts, and contestants seem to be unaware that the sign that drew so much attention was a case of mistaken identity, since American Idol’s Pickler is dumber than a bag of hammers, but the original pickle sign was a humorous way to protest the media’s continual double-standard towards liberals. It would be nice for this to be used to shine a light on the talking points-recycling Pickler and her Republican-boosting colleagues. but since Idol is on Fox, don’t hold your breath waiting for Ryan Seacrest to point out the mix-up.

UPDATE : In case you thought I was mistaken, here’s a screengrab from the American Idol segment that features the Pickler :

I argee with Atrios. This isn’t as weird as Evil Bert, but WTF?!

Via BoingBoing, I see that there’s a new video floating around that supposedly shows Sasquatch. Here’s a screengrab from the vid :

Wow! A grainy, shot from behind video of what appears to be a fur-covered hominid stumbling around in the snow? I’m convinced, but it seems odd that in this age of camera-phones, we still haven’t seen a good pic of bigfoot. Now I didn’t want to waste this on a blog post, but I was there when the video was shot and got a pretty good photo of the missing link in question :



I was trying to sell this photo to the Weekly World News, but they decided to bump the story after Hitler’s ghost showed up to testify at Saddam Hussein’s trial. I have it on pretty good authority, however, that Saquatch has been asked to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008, so you’ll be hearing a lot more from our furry friend soon.

I’ve got a real “hate the sin, love the sinner” attitude about Catholicism. On the one hand, I have no problem with the religion itself and think Catholic commitment to social service puts most protestant denominations to shame, but I think the church leadership is hypocritical to its core (as well as corrupt, mob-like, etc..) Case in point, the church is ending a great program because their hatred of gays apparently outweighs their love of children.

The Boston Archdiocese’s Catholic Charities said Friday it would stop providing adoption services because of a state law allowing gays and lesbians to adopt children.

The social services arm of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, which has provided adoption services for the state for about two decades, said the law runs counter to church teachings on homosexuality.
. . .
Archbishop Sean O’Malley, who had sought an exemption from the law, said the church was faced with a choice between its faith and the state law.

“Sadly, we have come to a moment when Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Boston must withdraw from the work of adoptions in order to exercise the religious freedom that was the prompting for having begun adoptions many years ago,” he said in a statement.

Archbishop O’Malley. It would be one thing if you were taking some principled stand here, but your adherence to Catholic tradition and morals doesn’t seem to be strong enough to survive “green beer day” :

Sticking to a voluntary meatless Lenten penitence gets tricky for Catholics when St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday.

Traditionally, Catholics substitute fish for meat on Fridays during the 40 days of Lent as a reminder of the sacrifices of Christ.

However, for the second consecutive year, the Irish Catholic observance — celebrating the patron saint of Ireland — falls on Friday, March 17, the day many Catholics of Irish descent enjoy customary corned beef and cabbage meals.

Realizing the potential dilemma, Bishop Robert J. Carlson, head of the 132,000-member Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, is giving parishioners permission to eat meat to celebrate St. Patrick’s.
. . .
Many Catholic bishops across the country are giving permission to parishioners. But some bishops have refused to let their congregations off the hook.

For example, a telephone poll of church leaders giving the go-ahead includes New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan, Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk and Covington, Ky., Bishop Roger Foys, Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Bishop Thomas Dailey and Boston Cardinal-designate Sean O’Malley.

And just like you’re exercising your religious freedom by puting your prejudices above your commitments to helping children, I’m going to excercise my first amendment right to call your beliefs complete bullshit. Apparently the flexibility of Catholic doctrine is dependent on the whims of the church leaders, not the best interests of the people they’re trying to help.

Before I started guest posting at This Modern World I was a super fan. I’ve been reading the strip at Salon.com for almost ten years now, so you can imagine that I’m really looking forward to the newest collection. Especially since it’ll be longer than most of the previous collections and in full color :

Also, if you’re so inclined, contact the folks at The Daily Show and ask them to book Tom Tomorrow. They’ve got the whole “humorous slant on the news” thing in common, seems like a natural fit to me.