Joe Wilson, Heckling Republican Congressman from South Carolina and His Fellow Members of the GOP Didn't React in Such a 'Grand' Style to President Obama's Speech on Health Care Reform

"President Obama sought to reframe the contentious debate over health care on Wednesday, asking a divided Congress and a skeptical nation to reach consensus on legislation to expand coverage to millions of Americans and lower costs through an ambitious overhaul that has eluded lawmakers for generations."

Photo: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

 

"The speech was an effort by Mr. Obama to regain his political footing on health care, the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. After months of insisting he would leave the details to lawmakers, he presented his most detailed outline yet of his own plan, which he said would provide "security and stability" to those who have insurance and cover those who do not, all without adding to the federal deficit."

Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times

At 8:40 pm, last night, during President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress about his health care program, the American people were given yet another example of the ongoing deterioration of relations between the nation's two political parties.



"You Lie!" shouted Representative Joe Wilson a Republican back bencher from South Carolina in response to the president's remarks about illegal aliens. President Obama had just "vowed to lawmakers that his health-care reform proposals would not provide benefits to illegal immigrants."

"Murmurs of "ooh" filled the stunned chamber. Nancy Pelosi's chin dropped. Obama moved on to the next sentence in his speech, about how no federal money would be used to fund abortion. "Not true!" came another shout."

Wilson's breach of decorum was imitated by other Republicans: "There was booing from House Republicans when the president caricatured a conservative argument by saying they would "leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own." They hissed when he protested their "scare tactics." They grumbled ... when Obama spoke of the "blizzard of charges and countercharges."

"Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, leaning forward, received criticism for yelling, “You lie!” at the president."

"Democrats said, according to Carl Hulse of The New York Times that "it showed lack of respect for the office of the presidency and was reminiscent of Republican disruptions at recent public forums on health care.

“I was embarrassed for the chamber and a Congress I love,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “It demeaned the institution.”

"Biden said that he had not spoken to President Obama since the speech. But, “knowing the president, I’m sure he accepted the apology,” The Associated Press reported.

"After the speech, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who sat a few rows in front of Mr. Wilson, said he immediately approached senior Republican lawmakers to encourage them to identify the heckler and urge him to issue an apology quickly.

“No president has ever been treated like that. Ever,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Carl Hulse also reported in The New York Times that: "Other Democrats said they did not want to dwell on the outburst or allow it to overshadow what they saw as an effective address by the president. But they also said it bolstered their contention that some Republicans were not interested in constructive dialogue, and they noted that Democratic plans specifically barred coverage for illegal immigrants." 

After the speech, Carl Hulse reported that: "Republicans also said the heckling was out of line. “I think we ought to treat the president with respect,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, “and anything other than that is not appropriate.”

"Republicans held up their own version of a health care bill in protest on Wednesday night during President Obama's address, in which he vowed to cap costs at $900 billion. Mr. Obama made clear in his speech that he would have little tolerance for Republicans who were determined to defeat him. "I will not waste time," he said, "with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it."

Photo: Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

"And the House Republican whip," Carl Hulse reported that: "Eric I. Cantor of Virginia, told ABC on Thursday: “Obviously, the president of the United States is always welcome on Capitol Hill. He deserves respect and decorum.” He said that Mr. Wilson’s apology “was the appropriate thing to do.”

By Thursday, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic leader was calling for Representative Wilson "to apologize to the House," Carl Hulse reported.

Later Thursday, Congressman Wilson's office released a statement that read in part: "This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.”

Richard Simon of the LA Times reported that: "House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, a Democrat from Wilson's home state, said that he planned to push for a resolution expressing disapproval of the incident unless Wilson issued a public apology on the House floor.

Simon also added that: "Rob Miller -- the Democratic challenger for Wilson's House seat -- raked in 14,000-plus contributions totaling more than $500,000 since the Wednesday night outburst, according to the House Democratic Campaign Committee. The committee also has cited the shout-out in a fundraising appeal: "Calling the president of the United States a liar in front of the nation is a new low even for House Republicans."

"Robert Oldendick, Simon added; "a political science professor at the University of South Carolina, on Thursday described reaction within the state to Wilson's outburst as "surprise and strong disapproval."

"But whether it will hurt the lawmaker at home is uncertain," explained Simon in his reaction to Oldendick's assessment.

"There are 14 months for people's memories of this to fade before the election -- although I'm sure they'll be reminded by opposition campaign ads," Oldendick said. "While the reaction here has been pretty strongly negative, I don't get the sense that Wilson will be severely damaged.

"And he may, over time, be able to turn this mistake into his 'passionate opposition' to a plan that he felt was so wrong," Simon quoted Oldendick.

"For Mr. Obama, the speech was a go-for-broke moment; there is no more dramatic venue for a president than an address to a joint session to Congress. For many Democrats, the speech evoked memories of a similar health care address by President Bill Clinton, 16 years ago this month. Mr. Clinton called for "security, simplicity, savings, choice, quality and responsibility" - the same broad themes Mr. Obama evoked Wednesday night."

Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times

NASA Releases First Images from the Hubble Space Telescope After Upgrades and Repairs had Been Made in May by Space Shuttle Astronauts

 

"This is the first image NASA has released from the Hubble Space Telescope since it became fully functional after being repaired by space shuttle astronauts in May. Hubble’s newly repaired camera captured this image on June 13 and July 8 of a spiral galaxy in the Big Dipper constellation 6 million light years away."

-WIRED SCIENCE

Writing for WIRED SCIENCE Betsy Mason reports that NASA has begun releasing images obtained from the newly repaired camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The first image is of a spiral galaxy 6 million light years away from the Earth located in the constellation Ursa Major.

WIRED SCIENCE's Alexis Madrigal provides more on Hubble's first eight, clearer images of deep space objects and writes that: "The 19-year-old telescope is now more powerful than it’s ever been. Two new instruments — the Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph — are ready for action."

 

Planetary Nebula NGC 6302

"The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula, or Butterfly Nebula. NGC 6302 lies within the Milky Way, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The “butterfly” stretches for more than 2 light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

 

Carina Nebula

"These two images of a huge pillar of star birth demonstrate how observations taken in visible (top) and in infrared light (bottom) by Hubble reveal dramatically different and complementary views of an object.

Composed of gas and dust, the pillar resides in a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

  

 Omega Centauri

"Hubble snapped this panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster.

The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars. Globular clusters, ancient swarms of stars united by gravity, are the homesteaders of our Milky Way. The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The cluster lies about 16,000 light-years from Earth."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

  
 

Stephan’s Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92

"A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide color range, from young blue stars to aging red stars.

This portrait of Stephan’s Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, was taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3. Stephan’s Quintet, as the name implies, is a group of five galaxies. The name, however, is a bit of a misnomer. Studies have shown that group member NGC 7320, at upper left, is actually a foreground galaxy about seven times closer to Earth than the rest of the group."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

Supernova Remnant N132D

"The wispy, glowing, magenta structures in this image are the remains of a star 10 to 15 times the mass of the Sun that we would have seen exploding as a supernova 3,000 years ago. The remnant’s fast-moving gas is plowing into the surrounding gas of the galaxy, creating a supersonic shock wave in the surrounding medium and making the material glow.

The Hubble visible-light image reveals, deep within the remnant, a crescent-shaped cloud of pink emission from hydrogen gas and soft purple wisps that correspond to regions of glowing oxygen. A dense background of colorful stars is also visible.

"Probing this tattered gaseous relic, the newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope detected pristine gas ejected by the doomed star that has not yet mixed with the gas in the interstellar medium. The supernova remnant, called N132D, resides in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small companion galaxy of the Milky Way located 170,000 light-years away. The resulting spectrum, taken in ultraviolet light, shows glowing oxygen and carbon in the remnant."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

 

Galaxy Cluster Abell 370

"The Hubble Space Telescope’s newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) has peered nearly 5 billion light years away to resolve intricate details in the galaxy cluster Abell 370.

"Abell 370 is one of the very first galaxy clusters where astronomers observed the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, where the warping of space by the cluster’s gravitational field distorts the light from galaxies lying far behind it. This is manifested as arcs and streaks in the picture, which are the stretched images of background galaxies.

"Gravitational lensing proves a vital tool for astronomers when measuring the dark matter distribution in massive clusters, since the mass distribution can be reconstructed from its gravitational effects."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

Doomed Star Eta Carinae

"The signature balloon-shaped clouds of gas blown from a pair of massive stars called Eta Carinae have tantalized astronomers for decades. Eta Carinae has a volatile temperament, prone to violent outbursts over the past 200 years.

"Eta Car A is one of the most massive and most visible stars in the sky. Because of the star’s extremely high mass, it is unstable and uses its fuel very quickly, compared to other stars. Such massive stars also have a short lifetime, and we expect that Eta Carinae will explode within a million years.

"Eta Carinae is 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Carina."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

 

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217

  "This image of barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217 is the first image of a celestial object taken with the newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. The camera was restored to operation during the STS-125 servicing mission in May to upgrade Hubble.

"The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217 was photographed on June 13 and July 8, 2009, as part of the initial testing and calibration of Hubble’s ACS.

"The galaxy lies 6 million light-years away in the north circumpolar constellation Ursa Major."

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

All celestial object descriptions provided by WIRED SCIENCE

Health Care Plan Takes Shape as Congressional Democrats Pledge To Implement Legislative Action

Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is responsible for driving health-care legislation. Baucus has put together a Bipartisan Deal That Will Seek the Implementation of a $900B Health-Care Program.

Citing that the majority of the necessary legislative work for health care has already been accomplished, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was one of several Democratic Congressional leaders to make their opinions known to President Obama. Speaking on behalf of Congressional Democrats, Speaker of the House Pelosi is convinced she's got the votes to deliver the sweeping overhaul favored by Obama. Included among  key Senate Democrats to speak with the president was Senator Max Baucus of Montana who has crafted a version of health care compromise legislation that he is ready to push through the Senate.

“We are not going to dally. We are not going to dawdle,” Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said after a meeting with five fellow architects of his compromise legislation.

“Time is running out very quickly,” Mr. Baucus added. A key to Senator Baucus' compromise plans success Republican Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, has been quick to offer some positive assessments of the proposal crafted by Senator Baucus but she has also added that she believes that there are some adjustments still need to be made.

White House officials have been circulating the scenario that President Obama plans to discuss more details that he hopes will appear in a final version of health care when he speaks before Congress Wednesday night. In addition, Obama will use the speech to the American people to explain the need for an overhaul of the nation's health care system.

"The main audience is the American people and their stake in this," said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

White House officials believe that by making his address before a joint session of Congress, President Obama will be using a venue that will allow him to have the time necessary to achieve a greater focus on the issues involved in creating health care reform for the American people.

“This is a topic that probably takes some time to walk through,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said. One part of the speech, Mr. Gibbs said, would be devoted to “understanding what the public option is and what the public option isn’t.” Republicans said Democrats have misread the true opinions of Americans who used Town Hall meetings to question many parts of the Obama/Democratic plan. “The American people are asking us to start over,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “They want reforms, but they want the right reforms.”

The Baucus plan that has emerged from conference committee, incorporates a substantial number of adjustments to the way private insurance and Medicare are currently operated.One significant change has levied fees against the drug industry to begin making payments in 2010 that would begin at a cost of $2.3 billion a year and would be assessed according to each company's share in the medical marketplace.

Senator Baucus has also raised the discount rate required of companies in the drug sector that deal directly with Medicaid recipients. The Baucus legislation increases patients rebates from 15.1 percent to 23.1 percent. In the instance of generic drugs rebates would rise to recipients from 11 percent to 13 percent.

The Baucus bill requires that every American would be mandated to have health insurance coverage. Keeping in mind that the poverty level is $10,830 for an individual and $22,050 for a family of four; penalties would be assessed on a sliding scale that would require a penalty of  $750 a year per person for those who earned from 100 percent to 300 percent above the poverty level, while taxpayers with incomes greater than 300 percent above the poverty level would be charged a fine of $950 per person. For families in the100 percent to 300 percent above the poverty level bracket the charge for failing to have coverage would be a maximum penalty of $1,500 for a family and for families above the 300 percent bracket, a maximum penalty of $3,800 for a family would apply.

The New York Times reporters; Carl Hulse and Robert Pear point out that: "Employers would not be required to offer insurance coverage to their employees. But companies that did not would have to pay a fee for each low-income employee who received a subsidy, in the form of a tax credit, for coverage bought through a health insurance exchange. The maximum assessment on employers would be equal to $400 multiplied by the total number of employees."

Several important points need to be considered as Obama and the Congressional Democrats ready for their push to achieve health care reform. Among the points to include in any analysis of the state of health care reform are as follows: the many cantankerous at times Town Hall meetings did very little to change public support for reform or fragment Democratic resolve; insurance industry lobbyist remain at the negotiating table because their have failed to turn the public against health care restructuring; the Democrats remain committed as a party despite seeming public disagreements; health care legislation has passed most of its Congressional committee hurdles and is preparing to make it's way to the floor for voting to begin; the markups include protections from insurance companies from barring coverage for pre-existing medical conditions; lifetime caps on coverage have been eliminated and individuals cannot be dropped when they become ill; in the Senate Obama seems close to securing 60 votes for passage.

With this in mind there are still several obstacles facing Obama; the legislative package is extremely complex and large; Republicans and their business allies will do everything possible to corrupt the legislative process; and complaints raised among loud voices in the public arena to stop government from expanding are ever present.

A positive sign for the Democrats is that the health industry has stayed involved in the negotiating process.

An even more important reality concerning revamping the health care industry is that the public, although many have raised concerns about specifics of the plan, remain prepared to contribute their support to help build the broad coalition needed to make health care reform a reality.

A Fanatical Devotion to a Cause: Why Do the Cons Keep Dishing Out the Same 'Voters Don't Want Obama to Change the Health Care System' in America Narrative When It Just Isn't True?

 

"Jacques-Louis David does Karl Rove: political murders or suicide?
Marat and Karl Rove are ideologies of some stuff. Engineering foment is a nasty job and requires single mindedness with an ideology that can inspire the less thoughtful, more ignorant to follow into the morass of zealotry." Scari.org

Increasingly, Cons, as a political movement that has for decades projected an image of promoting individualism and free markets, are adopting an increasingly repetitive undertaking that exposes their own shortcomings of being so bereft of substantive alternative ideas that they have taken to laboriously repeating each other as a way to substantiate their claims of representing the will of the people when all that Cons are engaging in is to "inspire the less thoughtful, more ignorant to follow into the morass of zealotry." Rove displays this very tiresome practice by repeating many of the ill-conceived claims made by his fellow ideologue, David Brooks; that I wrote about in a post that appeared a few days ago in a September 1st posting I made to this blog.

Karl Rove recently 'wrote' a commentary that appeared in the Wall Street Journal that serves as an example of the cookie cutter type of pro-corporate viewpoint that is portrayed as fact by the main stream media.

As the Wonk Room has recently conducted an exhaustive refutation of a recent typical Frank Lutz, created Karl Rove distributed, collection of lies about the public's rejection of the public health care option that is nothing but vintage Con-created propaganda designed to support the insurance industry's monopolistic suppression of free trade, open marketplace practices.

The following was provided by the Wonk Room and points out in very substantive terms the several ill-conceived notions that the Cons are attaching to their ideological attacks on health care reform:

"A public option is unnecessary: "It's unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition enough." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Insurer and hospital markets are dominated by large insurers and provider systems. Private insurers rarely negotiate with dominant hospital systems and typically pass on the higher costs to beneficiaries in the form of higher premiums. Already, "1 in 6 metropolitan areas in a 2008 study of more than 300 U.S. markets is dominated by a single health insurer that controls at least 70% of consumers enrolled in health maintenance organizations or preferred provider organizations." Such consolidation negates any real competition. Without it, insurers don't negotiate prices and boost their profits. In fact, "there have been over 400 health care mergers in the last 10 years," and premiums have risen "nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes." A public plan could, in an environment of head-to-head competition, push private insurance companies to negotiate more aggressively with providers and dramatically lower health care spending." [Urban Institute, 10/03/2008; LA Times, 4/09/2009]

"Private competition in Medicare Part D has reduced costs: “The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore [the ability of private competition to lower prices]. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 — nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition’s benefits.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Medicare Part D beneficiaries have experienced significant cost increases. According to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows “significant increases in premiums, costsharing amounts, use of specialty tiers, and utilization management restrictions since 2008 that could have important implications for beneficiaries’ access to needed medications and out-of-pocket expenses.” [KFF, 6/2009]

"A public plan would shift costs to Americans with private insurance: "Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Private insurer payments promote medical inefficiency. A new public option will change the way the health care reimbursement system so that we pay for value, not volume and reward efficient providers. According to MedPAC, Medicare rates are adequate and consistent with the efficient delivery of services. In fact, over-payments by private insurers to health-care providers drives up overall costs. "Hospitals which didn't rely on high payment rates from private insurers 'are able, in fact, to control their costs and reduce their costs when they need to' and 'combine low costs with quality.'" [WSJ, 3/17/2009]

"A public plan will lead to a welfare state:"If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: Americans will choose a public health insurance plan from a menu of different options. The private insurance market isn't going anywhere. Private insurers will play an important role in providing more integrated coverage options than the public plan and would retain a "brand advantage" (in the same way that a lot of people rather have the branded drug than the generic) for consumers. Private insurers who "offer a superior product through high levels of efficiency, satisfaction in consumer preferences and ease of access to quality medical services" will thrive in a reformed market. [Urban Institute, 10/03/2008]

"The public option is too expensive: “Fourth, the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare — the purest form of a government-run “public choice” for seniors — will start exceeding its payroll-tax “trust fund” in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: A public option will lower family premiums. If a public plan is “far too expensive” and has higher premiums, then Americans will not enroll. But if a public plan offers lower premiums, it will motivate private insurers to lower their costs. As a result, health care costs would decrease across the board.

"Americans will be forced into a public option: "Government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan." [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: The government would not force Americans to purchase coverage from the public plan, but Rove would force everyone under 65 to enroll with a private insurer. Rove is essentially arguing that the public plan would work too well. It would use its inherent efficiencies to lower family premiums and force private insurers to aggressively negotiate on behalf of their beneficiaries.

"The public option would put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor: “The public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

    "TRUTH: A public option improves the doctor-patient relationship. Existing reform legislation explicitly preserves the doctor-patient relationship. As a draft of the HELP bill notes, “a strong doctor-patient relationship is essential to the practice of medicine, and patents have a right to an effective doctor patient relationships…Doctors, nurses, and other health professional have the right to judge what is best for their patients.” Moreover, the public plan’s payment innovations would reward doctors for providing quality care and spending more time listening to their patients. [HELP Legislation, 6/09/2009]"

In his Wall Street Journal commentary; Rove takes every opportunity to criticize Obama for his profligate spending habits: "He has already had the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus package, a budget that doubles the national debt in five years, an earmark-laden appropriations bill that boosted domestic spending nearly 8%,..."

Rove's commentary makes the additional complaint: "Mr. Obama's problems are legion. To start with, the president is focusing on health care when the economy and jobs are nearly everyone's top issue. Voters increasingly believe Mr. Obama took his eye off the ball."

Rove's commentary gleefully concludes by advancing that: "Presidents always encounter rough patches. What is unusual is how soon Mr. Obama has hit his. He has used up almost all his goodwill in less than nine months, with the hardest work still ahead. At the year's start, Democrats were cocky. At summer's end, concern is giving way to despair. A perfect political storm is amassing, and heading straight for Democrats."

Rove can only rely his hopes that his ideological fervor will work to negate any successes by President Obama and the Congressional Democrats in bringing about health care reform. Time will tell whether Rove's powers of prognostication drawn from his fanatical devotion to his single-minded job to cause foment among the masses will work.This writer sincerely hopes that Rove and his co-conspirators fail miserably in their attempts; and health care with a strong single-payer element included, becomes a reality for many suffering Americans and helps bring about fiscal sanity to the administration of health coverage in the United States.

Anthropologist Applies Contemporary Research Methods to Promote a Better Understanding of Darwin's Theory of Evolution

Agustin Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame has written a book entitled Evolution of Human Behavior in which he provides a rigorous synthesis that investigates methods of research currently being used which he employs in his connection of the study of human behavior and evolutionary theory. Fuentes main approach in his text is to incorporate his area of academic expertise, anthropology, to current debates regarding the evolution of human behavior, human evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, and biological anthropology.

Fuentes text contributes to a better understanding of the context of human behavioral evolutionary study to contemporary thought regarding the evolution of human behavior, human evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, and biological anthropology. Fuentes attempts his correlational approach by reviewing several popular approaches that include human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, memetics, and gene-culture co-evolution--on how and why humans have evolved behaviorally over the past millennia of human evolutionary development. In addition, Fuentes includes analysis that has been developed from genomic research, recent fossil findings, and ethnographic studies. Fuentes intention is to provide a holistic accounting of the interconnections between the patterns of human evolution that have become a part of the established nature of the development of humanity and human modes of behavior.

It is Fuentes contention that: "The social lives of humans, the way we live with other animals and the way we change the world around us all play major roles in making us who we are today."

Most recently, Fuentes has produced an article in the June issue of Anthropology Today entitled "A New Synthesis: Resituating Approaches to the Evolution of Human Behaviour," in which he argues that: "evolution is more than natural selection and "survival of the fittest."

"In the 150 years since the publication of Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' we have learned a great deal," Fuentes said. "It turns out that behavior, especially behavior that changes the environment around us, can be a powerful factor in the processes of evolution. It also seems that the way information is passed from generation to generation can involve much more than genes."

By using dogs as an example to prove his assessments, Fuentes combines accepted evolutionary knowledge with anthropological assumptions to develop his theories of how human behavior has developed over time. It is Fuentes contention that his insights provide a more accurate understanding of how human processes by which our cultures, bodies and ecologies change over time.

Fuentes completes his analogy between dogs and humans by explaining: "We have evolved the ability to care and cooperate intensely with other people, especially friends and relatives," Fuentes said. "But as humans we don't stop there. We can extend the net of caring across our species and even to other species. I suggest, following the philosopher Donna Haraway and the author Meg Olmert, that the relationship between humans and dogs is an important evolutionary one. It involves biology as well as our behavior. Humans and dogs have been shaping one another for millennia."