What does the Salon coverage look like when a significant percentage of the population chooses to disagree with an informed opinion based on scientific findings? Answer: see Global Warming.

Coverage of Global Warming deniers in Salon would lead you to believe that they are uninformed and utterly backwards in their thinking. Will we see Salon apply similarly critical reporting when discussing views held by over 75% of women?

Where is Obama on this? His leadership on what he wants to call his signature issue has been lacking. Aside from his spending the summer telling the public to support whatever Congress comes up with, he's done very little to move this issue forward. Instead he's been on the sidelines with the rest of us watching the train wreck that is Congress turn this into what will almost certainly be an ineffective, inefficient boondoggle.

The Obama administration should right now be threatening a veto of any bill that includes A, B or C and/or does not include X, Y or Z. He needs to get Congress in line and explain to the people that he is behind a bill that does the right things and doesn't do the wrong ones.

I believe that much of the issue here is rooted in the segmentation that goes on in our society. Some of this is driven by marketers who target us micro-segment at a time. But most of it is driven by our reluctance to move outside our comfort zone and build community with those that are different. Pick up an activity listing from your local "community" center and you'll see that these are communities at all. Every event is targeted at some small group: Young Families, Singles, Couples, Parents of Children with Special Needs, Seniors, Single Parents, Teens, LGBT, 20's, 30's, etc. Even for parents with young children there is no commonality as there are classes for 6-12 months separate from 12-18 months. Are these distinctions real? Certainly. Should they be explored? Absolutely. But there is a price and that is that we seek out the comfort of being surrounded by those exactly like ourselves and lose sight of needs and concerns of others.

If we realize what we have in common as a community we might find more people get up on the subway to give a seat to a pregnant woman. But we might also see the mother and her 5 year old give up their seats to the two guys who just got off the night shift. We need more emphasis on our commonalities and we might start to think about the greater good rather than our own.

An NPR reporter summed this up best this morning while attempting to state exactly how huge the Oprah news was. He said something like, 'this is the biggest entertainment/media news since Jay Leno moved to the 10 PM timeslot.' OK, the Jay Leno move was about 2 months ago. At this rate we'll have at least 10 more similar "bombshells" before Oprah leaves the airwaves. Her show will be missed by many...end of story please.

"...this kind of data has a way of scaring members of Congress who are unsure about whether or not to back the president."

It would be quite ironic if Congressmen started to abandon Obama because of his approval ratings. I would suggest that it has been Obama's deference to Congress that has been responsible for his biggest failures and declining approval ratings. Obama has allowed Congress to take the lead and run amok on the budget, other spending bills and, most prominently, healthcare. Congressional handling of these matters has the stink of business-as-usual in Washington. It is tragic how Obama has squandered his initial sky-high approval in deferrence to a body with such (rightfully) low approval marks. That Congress might be abandoning him as a result is salt on the wound.

The outrage over these guidelines has truly amazed me. For starters, the studies underlying the decision have been around for a while. This is a recommendation based on science that has been brewing around in the public domain so it shouldn't surprise anyone. Then you have conservative groups criticizing the decision and linking it to potential rationing that would result from proposed health care reform. But most amazing is the reaction from the left. People who criticize those who 'ignore the science on global warming' are prepared to ignore the science on breast cancer detection if it gets in the way of more mammograms.

It's absolutely impossible to say what the best approach is here. If there's anything we've learned about medical guidelines it's that yesterday's "must do" often becomes tomorrow's "must avoid" and vice versa. But to assume that the way we've done something for the past X years is the way we should continue to do it in the future is a surefire way to make no progress in terms of better, cheaper and more pleasant health outcomes.

Our decades long shift towards a service economy has made it virtually impossible to stimulate our economy in a meaningful and lasting way. Instead of government stimulus being targeted at a core manufacturing sector, we are instead targeting dollars at industries where the money very quickly winds up overseas. The problem with Obama's stimulus and job creation agenda is that he targeted it at Education, Healthcare and the Environment. These are all worthy causes and great political buzzwords but the foundation of a strong economy they are not. Education spending may pay off in the long run but it is still unclear how the Environment serves as an economic engine (rather than an inhibitor) and spending in Healthcare is just a joke. It is already the most rapidly growing sector of the economy and that's a bad thing. If Obama really wants to cut healthcare costs he should be looking for ways to eliminate healthcare jobs...not add them.