What societal changes have created the "Nones"

Not all societal change moves at the speed of the lockdown’s spiritual and moral disruptions. Some take decades. So when Charlie Ollermann summarized in Sunday School on October 30 a few details about how Christianity and organized religion are losing both the numbers and the influence game, I took note. It went something like this (a quote from Pew site), “Pew's National Public Opinion Reference Survey found that the majority of Americans -- 63% -- consider themselves Christian, down from 78% in 2007. Meanwhile, 29% of adults list their religion as "none," meaning they consider themselves atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular." That figure has increased since 2007, when 16% said they have no religion.” As he moved on to our lesson in 2 Thessalonians, I jotted down four societal changes which I thought were the root causes building over the last almost 60 years. I expanded my thoughts here at my blog.

1 ) The War on Poverty (launched January 1964). Trillions (est. 16 in 2014, 27 in 2019) have been spent, the power of the federal government has grown enormously, and both liberals and conservatives strongly disagree on results, or even how to describe poverty. In my opinion religious groups whose Biblical charge was charity, benevolence, feeding and clothing the poor, in short, following the commands of Jesus as outlined in Matthew 25, were severely compromised by taking grants to do their “good works.” (This worsened after GHW Bush’s “thousand points of light.” Yet, over 50% of Americans do not pay federal income tax, and 25 million workers are given money when they file for taxes (EITC, $60 billion). The median income of a single mother household is $49,214, and for a married couple household it is $101,517 (i.e., 2 incomes) according to U.S. Census, 2020. Uncle Sam is not a good step-father, but poverty pays well. Children of married parents rarely grow up in poverty. All four of my points directly or indirectly involve marriage. If poverty were to be ended tomorrow at noon, millions of people would be out of work. . . very well paid jobs with amazing benefits, most in government, but many in non-profits and NGOs. That would require new government programs to aid those recently unemployed.

2 ) Vatican II (1962-1965). Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc. don’t usually think that Vatican II affected us much, but in my opinion the Roman Catholic Church is our mother, or at least a grandmother in our major doctrines—Diety of Christ, the Trinity, a canon of scripture we call the Bible, sacraments as an expression of faith, the Christian life, evangelization, missions, what is heresy, etc. People catechized in the 70s or 80s speak about how poorly they were taught the basics of the faith. When we joined UALC in 1976 our “catechism” book cover was pink and orange with balloons. And that’s also a description of what was between the covers. I’d never seen a Luther’s Small Catechism until Dave and Pam Mann taught a night class at Mill Run about 20 years ago. I think growth of the “nones” reflects on the sloppy, silly and social justice Pablum people educated in the 70s and 80s received. They were not prepared to educate their own children when they were so poorly catechized—both Protestants and Catholics.

3) The Population Bomb and Earth Day (1970s) moving on to earth worship, Green New Deal and pantheism. Paul Ehrlich’s book “The population bomb” scared me to death. He said hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in spite of all the agriculture and aid programs we (many by churches) were supporting. Well, we’d already caved to contraception, so why not abortion? Now in the 21st century we can’t sustain a population replacement rate and killing the next generation is considered righteous even by many Christians. Now we’re forced to accept immigration, even illegal immigration, just to support our economy. But we’ve made a Faustian bargain (deal with the devil) and are taking in drugs, sex trafficking and criminals in the deal to maintain the population. Plus, Christian non-profits are taking huge grants from the government to manage all this. People from 200 countries now come through our southern border adding great stress to those states, which then make us all border states. Communing with nature now replaces “organized” religion designed for the family (which often seems very disorganized to some) with various efforts (and riots) to save the planet, our so-called Mother. This pantheism combined with demonizing men and marriage is reducing society’s need for churches.

4) Second Wave Feminism (early 70s for the general public). Although scholars would date this from the “pill” developed in the 1960s and various books, I didn’t pay much attention until “The women’s liberation movement” became a kitchen table topic among women. I was quite caught up in it myself. I had young children, had a master’s degree, and could really identify with the conversations so many were having. We were already active in a fair housing group, a prison reform group, and a race relations group (all loosely church based). Falling for the seductive message that the male/female differences were just cultural and should be changed was easy for my generation. Between the availability of the pill and free sex (which has never been free for women, only men) and the siren call of fabulous careers, prestige, and a bigger bank account, women were literally fleeing the home for the office. So who passes on the faith to the kids if both parents are working, exhausted in the evening, and using week-ends for family time, especially Sunday morning?

I do not point to the Baby Boomers (born after WWII and before 1965) for initiating these changes. The leaders of the various movements and authors of the transformational books were mostly born in the 1930s, or even the 1920s. But the Boomers as adolescents certainly bore the brunt of the changes and misinformation. They are the parents and grandparents of the “nones” who are not just skipping church-- many live in fear of a collapsing planet and won’t commit to anything, not even a job let alone marriage and a family, made worse lately by Covid, and no faith in Jesus.

Divorce statistics from divorce lawyers

 I was looking for an update on some 2005 divorce statistics from my blog and came across a website for divorce lawyers and these interesting tidbits.  These three professions have the highest rate of divorce, dancers (43), bartenders (38.4) and massage therapists (38.2). These three professions have the lowest rate, clergy (5.61), optometrists (4.01) and agricultural engineers (1.78).

The groups with the most divorces are downscale adults (adults making less than $20,000 (annually)  (39 percent), Baby Boomers (38 percent), those aligned with a non-Christian faith (38 percent), African-Americans (36 percent), and people who consider themselves to be liberal on social and political matters (37 percent).

Among the population segments with the lowest likelihood of having been divorced subsequent to marriage are Catholics (28 percent), evangelicals (26 percent), upscale adults (adults making more than $75000 annually) (22 percent), Asians (20 percent) and those who deem themselves to be conservative on social and political matters (28%).

A lot of other statistics that might surprise you--or not.  https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/

The Last Walk by Roland Lane

Last Walk

For me it was a poignant video moment from the hundreds we have witnessed from Ukraine in the last two weeks. Perhaps you saw it too. A father and son walked hand in hand toward a town or city. The son was about four or five years old and was wearing a yellow parka or slicker of some sort. The father was in his late twenties or early thirties. He looked over the head of his son as three or four adults passed by going the opposite direction. Those individuals were carrying backpacks or some type of luggage. Our small family of father and son carried nothing. The video footage lasted about four seconds, but the image spoke the language of this war. What do you say and what are you thinking in what may be the last walk with your son?

My thoughts flew back to the happy memories when I walked hand in hand with my father as we shuffled along through the golden leaves of a bright autumn day in Circleville, Ohio. Circleville was the home of the Circleville Pumpkin show and we walked from where we parked our car on Washington Avenue to Main Street and turned right where parade officials were lining up the floats for the afternoon parade. For me that corner of Washington and Main was magic. Great piles of leaves and brightly decorated floats greeted us along with the aroma of spiced tea, coffee, chocolate, elephant ears, minced chicken sandwiches and pumpkin pie. It was five years after the end of World War II. I was five years old and one of the first baby boomers, a part of the magnificent class of 1945 and a happy recipient of the blessings of peace.

In springtime my focus shifted to Newark, Ohio the childhood home of my mother. On Sundays our family walked a block to church on Western Avenue a street lined with cottonwood trees. It was springtime, and the Cottonwoods dispatched millions of white cotton-like wisps to greet little kids walking to church. The cotton wisps covered lawns and parked cars and on windy days it looked like a snowstorm. I walked hand in hand with my grandmother and I knew from the earliest memories I was not an ordinary grandson. There was a warm and wonderful connection with Grandma Cora that I did not fully understand until much later. My grandma’s eldest son, my uncle Mark died in the last months of the war. I was born six weeks after it ended. I did not discover until much later in life that my grandma Cora saw me as the replacement for the lost son.

My father lived a good life. He was the best man I ever met and although he was almost 92 when he died, all the earlier joys and happy times did not make it easy for me. It was a little past 9:30 am and I and my dad were in his hospital room alone together. I moved his oxygen mask away from his face and bent down to speak into his right ear while I nervously watched the numbers plummet on the oxygen monitor on our upper left. I spoke eight words and he four. My dad and I both knew it was our last conversation. It was one of the shortest conversations in my life and simultaneously it was the most dramatic and most intimate. Be it physical, emotional or mental, most of us will take a last walk with a loved one.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are now taking that last walk. Much of this might have been avoided had the U.S. leadership not botched the exit and abandoned thousands of friends in Afghanistan. Now, the world watches Taiwan. Biden stubbornly hangs on to the notion of “no oil from here” and begs oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. Are we all now in agreement that Biden cannot distinguish friends from enemies? This might be the last walk for the United States.

 
Roland Lane, March 20

Baby Boomers exceed all other generations in wealth

Where are you in distribution of wealth--born before 1946, or baby boomer, or gen-x, or millennials? The Boomers after 2005 began pulling ahead of the "silents" in wealth accumulation, and never looked back. Even with a little back sliding by boomers during the recession, I see no way the millennials will ever catch up--have they been given too much or just taken on too much debt.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/?fbclid=IwAR3xXjxcnVsekzvw3DtdeeJeDKhOXFec1sCugV2kGGbdGMu6cjoBcY0jpGE#quarter:
119;series:Net worth;demographic:generation;population:all;units:levels

The Middle Class Yarn spun to frighten you

It's not exactly fake news, but it's misleading--the story you hear that the middle class is shrinking and so many more people are using government benefits because of the gap between the very wealthy and the "others." There are three things to consider:

1) demographics/age,

2) marriage or the lack of it, and

3) expansion of federal benefits from the poor and deserving to the middle class.

Rejoice, patriots. It's not true. The middle class is only shrinking because so many people have moved up to the next quintile! Have you ever driven to the suburban areas of Columbus (or the city where you live)--I can't believe the homes, schools, shopping centers, churches, gyms, parts, etc. And the new high rise housing in the central city for all those millennials willing to pay the apartment costs.

Also, as the boomers retire, they are now living on their pensions and investments (the very wealth Elizabeth Warren wants to go after), plus they are drawing Social Security. And guess what, a two parent household with both adults working has a much higher income than a one parent household who is most likely a woman. Two adults in a home have more time to distribute to the children to see to it they are educated and well-fed. It's amazing how many "experts" in socialist think tanks switch to "household" to show poverty rates and don't factor in $30,000 in transferred benefits like EITC, SNAP and Section 8.

We've been in 4 of the 5 quintiles in our 58 years together, as have many our age. We have 5 streams of income, as do many our age--some if they have military benefits have 6 or 7. We're certainly not suffering, but as retirees, we have less INCOME than when we were DINKs, but more WEALTH because we have lived frugally and invested or lived on one income. Warren wants to punish us for living on less when we were in our 40s.

Left of center think tanks crunch the numbers and in horror say, the sky if falling. There's a gap that wasn't there in 1979. We need a more "progressive" system--higher taxes. Well, duh. You mean when we lived in an upper middle class neighborhood of the 70s in a home with 1.5 bathrooms, 2 TVs, 1 phone, 1 car, 1 income, and lived month to month with 2 growing children in our home? Do you mean when we had 1 week vacation, which we spent at Mom's farm, and paid our own health insurance? Do you mean when we had a mortgage and a car payment, but no credit card or college debt (never had that because we never borrowed). Do you mean when FICA withdrawals from our 1 check ended at $22,900 and there was no Medicare tax (now is $127,200 FICA + 1.45% for Medicare)? And the personal exemption? Much higher then. Don't have the exact figure for 1979, but if the 1913 rate (year of modern income tax) of $3000 were adjusted for inflation it would be about $72,000--anyone getting that?

So what has the government done for the poor and low income with all the tax money and safety net money we've sent in the last 40 years? Well, the so-called safety net expanded so much that the middle class now qualifies for many entitlement programs meant for the poor. The middle class voter now screams if there's no COLA for Social Security (which originally was for the poor widows and orphans) and Medicare.

Now 55% of the U.S. population are receiving some sort of entitlement--and it's not because we're poor, it's because we're middle class and wealthy. It's because for every election the politicians dangle an increase for the population served by Social Security, or one of our 5 health insurance programs. Government programs NEVER get smaller--they always expand, and since there are so few poor people in America, they expand into the middle class. There are people earning over $100,000 who qualify for government benefits--even Obamacare.

The big lie Obama tells again and again

Another favorite lie of Obama is the BIG ONE--income gap/inequality. Few remember this but Bush took office with the effects of the 1999 recession on his hands; income of the top 1% plummeted well before 9/11. You've probably forgotten because Bush didn't waste a lot of breath blaming Clinton. And the income of the top 1% has been going up since, and has really taken off under Obama.  Have you heard him mention how well they are doing—surely you’ve seen the photos of the parties.

Also, wealthier households are usually married couples and better educated. Why promote education as a solution to poverty if you demonize those whose parents, grandparents and self have finished college? And do the math. Two wage earners with college educations are better off than a single mom who didn't finish high school. There will be a gap!

The biggest loss in wealth in 2008 was from the housing recession. Progressives will argue this to the grave, but it was our own federal bank regulations (the 1977 CRA and its expansion)  intended to help the poor by putting them in mortgages they couldn’t possibly afford and punishing banks if the didn’t, that created that. Blacks and Latinos were hurt the most in the housing collapse. CRA was bad for the poor and bad for the country, and ended up hurting everyone.

Also, people are retiring at a baby boomer rate--that means pensions pay less than jobs and people move down a quintile or two. We certainly did. Our children now have incomes much higher than ours, but it wasn't that way in 2000 when we had two incomes. Boomers also have different work rates and divorce rates than pre-boomers.  Women earned much more than previous generations, and the men earned less. After divorce, they both have less.

Yes, Obama’s big one is the wealth gap—the gap has always been there, but his policies plus factors he had no control over because they began years ago are the reason.  Yes, the federal government discourages marriage and encourages dependence on hand outs, and that’s not a good formula for wealth building.

Older Americans Fuel Entrepreneurial Boom, Says New Study

According to the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, individuals between the ages of 54 and 64 represented 22.9% of the entrepreneurs who launched businesses in 2010 – up from 14.5% in 1996. Since 2007, the foundation says, this age group has created new businesses at a higher rate than any other.

Baby Boomers Fuel Entrepreneurial Boom, Says New Study From the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation - Encore - SmartMoney

Attention Boomers! Where is your doctor?

USAToday reports, "The number of doctors refusing new Medicare patients because of low government payment rates is setting a new high, just six months before millions of Baby Boomers begin enrolling in the government health care program." Can you believe there's not a word in this article about why or who caused this, only that Congress has failed to stop an automatic 21% cut in payments that doctors already regard as too low. Where did that come from? Is this more Cloward and Piven--try as hard as he can to make everything break at once?

The CMM will tell you 3% don't accept Medicare, but in Illinois it's 18%. 19% of DOs won't accept new patients.


Doctors limit new Medicare patients - USATODAY.com
HT Murray

Born in the USA lyrics read by Glenn Beck

Now that's a sobering experience. Heard Glenn in the car this morning; he was reading Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" aloud. You've got to love how celebrities get rich off of kids by denigrating the country that's made them wealthy and famous. Politicians too. Particularly the ones in power right now. I don't know whose story about Viet Nam Springsteen's telling in the song, but it wasn't his--he got classified 4F by acting crazy for his physical, according to Wikipedia, which of course, is not a real source, but I'm not interested enough to look further. [Disclaimer: the post time has been adjusted so the TT stays on top.]

And now they gather and groove at Tea Parties and Obamacare Town Halls

Woodstock. 40 years later. The boomers can get real mad at you when you try to take something away from them, like drugs (the helpful kind), hip replacements, valve repairs, prostate exams, colonoscopies, MRIs, heart monitors, AIDS cocktails, flu vaccines, radiographs, echo cardiograms, insulin, Lipotor, etc. It's nice that recent research continues to find the long term benefits of aspirin, but "take one and call me later," is just not going to fly with this group. They are not their parents' elder generation!

To think they would grow up

to support and dance around the Porkulus Bill. "Some are going to live and some are going to die. . . make sure that tunnel has a door."

Listening to lies about the economy

CNN had extensive coverage of Biden banging the drum for a depression, and the sooner the better. Yes, he actually was doing that even when the August 2008 report read thusly:

Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the third annual increase in real median household income.

Meanwhile, the nation’s official poverty rate in 2007 was 12.5 percent, not statistically different from 2006. There were 37.3 million people in poverty in 2007, up from 36.5 million in 2006. The number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007.

However, I went in an looked at the 2007 Census report and was charmed to see what I realized my last few years of working. We were in a recession in 1999 and 2000; then the 9/11 attacks took place in 2001, we went to war, and although the economy struggled, Bush took on the burst bubble from Clinton, as the next president will take on this burst bubble. (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1968 to 2008 Annual Social and Economic Supplements., p. 5)

Household income is going to continue to go down, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama--hello! Have you heard? Baby Boomers are retiring! They certainly aren't poor, but they aren't living on salaries, but on investments, that item Obama wants to tax more (i.e., the rich). They aren't buying high end consumer goods; they aren't buying new houses; they don't need new clothes and new cars. I bought my van in 2002, I love it, and see no reason to trade. My income (a pension check) is about 1/3 of my (fabulous) salary. They're taking money out of the country and spending it in Europe and Asia.

And we continue to import poor people to flood our social services at the bottom. Neither McCain nor Obama have a plan to stop a huge economic and social problem created by bad legislation in the 1960s when socialist brain surgeons decided the country was too white and too European.

Change? Hope? You bet. And you'd better hope someone is paying attention to demographics, or you'll be as famous as FDR following Hoover, dragging us down, and down and down for a full decade.

This economy

Although we hear a lot of mumbling about “this economy” (most of the people we hang out with are Democrats), it’s been a pretty good summer for my husband. He’s sold 5 paintings and 22 prints; we have no way to judge or compare with others since he’s not a full time artist--just a hobbiest. Our neighbor here at Lakeside is an auctioneer. He says he’s had a fabulous summer. “There’s money out there,” is a paraphrase that came through our porch screen. One item (consignment auction) where the base price was $800, went for $37,000. Tibetan 17th century must be in big demand. A number of neighbors are retired teachers or university faculty with far more in STRS than I have, plus they all seem to "consult" or "substitute," or "mentor," and I know it isn't about the money.

One thing I haven’t seen addressed in the “this economy” poor-mouth, media stories is how we retirees are spending our money. Remember, the boomers are now 60. They have all their “wants and needs” for big ticket consumer goods, and so they aren’t buying homes, cars and refrigerators. With a demographic that big, even without a mortgage problem brought on by shaky loan methods of zero money down and flipping houses for investments, I would think there would be a softening of the economy.

Also, many retirees know how to tighten their belts--we had years of experience when we were younger. But like us, many retirees decided to see a bit of the world before checking into the retirement home. The first 10 years of our marriage, we had no vacations at all. For the next 30 years, we primarily vacationed at Lakeside, my mother’s farm, or visited relatives while younger families went into debt for Disney World, ski vacations, or a sandy beach on either coast. However, since I retired we’ve been on an Alaskan cruise, tours to Germany and Austria, Ireland, Italy, trips to Finland and Russia, a 16 day Amtrak trip, and several architectural bus tours through the U.S. In the spring we’re going to the Holy Land and my husband is signed up for his third mission trip to Haiti (participants pay their own way). Yes, some of that money has stayed in the United States to be spread around the travel, leisure and service industries, but an awful lot has traveled out of the country starting with foreign airlines, and going to foreign hotels and restaurants and tourist sites. The U.S. exports a lot of its travel dollars.

Also, as usual, there’s a disconnect between how people see their own lives, and the general condition of others--most Americans are optimistic about their own situation, but not others’:

“But here's the bad news for the dour Democrats in Denver -- most Americans don't share their economic pessimism. That's the finding of public opinion expert Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute. "Most Americans are feeling pretty good about their jobs and their personal lives," she says after investigating the fine details of recent polls. Her report goes right to Mr. Gramm's concern about the gap between actual economic performance and the dreary negativity of politicians and the media.

She finds that 76% of Americans say they are actually optimistic about the direction of their own lives and their personal economic situations -- even though only 18% are optimistic about the country. That's the big disconnect. "These numbers haven't changed much over time," Ms. Bowman tells me. Political Diary

More on the baby boomers' dilemmas

Victor Davis Hanson has a list.

"The current debate about energy in the United States has devolved into doing the same old thing — consume, don't produce and complain — while somehow expecting different results. Congress talks endlessly about the bright future of wind, solar and new fuels, while it stops us from getting through the messy present by utilizing abundant coal, shale and tar sands; nuclear power; and oil still untapped in Alaska and off our coasts."

And then there's the housing market, the war (which was overwhelmingly supported in the beginning), and Social Security.

"There are never bad and worse choices, but only a Never Never Land of good and even-better alternatives. Housing not only has to stay affordable for buyers, but also must appreciate in value to give instant equity to those who have just become owners.

When things don't go well, we always blame someone else. Why drill off Santa Barbara or Alaska when we can sue those terrible Saudis for not putting more oil platforms in their Persian Gulf?"

VDH Private Papers

Advice for boomer retirees

Readers jumped all over those whiners that the WSJ wrote about on April 1. I blogged about them, too. Usually, in letters-to-the editor the WSJ tries to offer a cross section, but I guess no one feels too sorry for a 57 year who had a 6 figure salary and can't retire early at their accustomed standard of living because the economy burps. Here's a summary of comments in yesterday's paper

Save

Live modestly

Learn to understand risk

Learn from past bubbles, whether it's technology or real estate

Take responsibility for your own actions

Locate that document that guarantees you will never experience problems [that was my personal favorite]

Use a little hindsight--like what was your property worth 2 years ago compared to 5 years ago

Not a single sympathizer in the boatload.

Why I worry about the Boomers

God bless 'em, are they ready? Ready for retirement? That story this week in the WSJ was really outrageous. Jennifer Levitz opened with a story of a 59 year old who is "postponing" his retirement. Then she moves to a liberal economist who says what is happening today hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Oh really? That was before my time, but I did hear a few stories from my parents, and grandparents, and it's insulting to their memory and struggles to be whining like this. According to the article, their homes are worth less (than when, a year ago?) and their stocks are worth less (than last quarter?) so that makes it worse than the Great Depression. With all the information available in books and on the internet, do these people never look at charts?

She also wrote about Ellen Minter, 57, who had a 6 figure income before retiring--she probably made more in a year than I did in a decade. She and hubby sold their San Francisco home and bought real estate in California wine country; he retired and then their portfolio started to collapse. He's looking for work again. Why, unless you are a boomer for whom the waters have always parted, would you think the good times would always roll? If they were willing to cut back I'm guessing they could still make it, but high living is addictive--isn't it?

I retired at age 60, but I wouldn't have even considered it if a very unusual thing hadn't happened. My mother-in-law died. Now, she was in her 80s and had been in poor health at least 20 years, so that part wasn't a huge surprise. She had outlived her husband (who wasn't ill) who had retired (actually was pushed out) and moved his pension into a privately controlled account, so she got it all at a time when the stock market was on its way up. Shortly before she died, it was on its way down again, and we were going to start dipping into her principle to pay for her nursing home care. Her three children shared her estate equally, which included the primary residence and some property in Florida. Never in a million years would we have expected a dime from my husband's parents. We invested the money and I decided the income plus my pension just about matched my income if I continued to work. Now, obviously, we'd have a lot more if I'd continued working and banking that, but for what? What if I'd died or became ill at 64? Who wants to die at the reference desk answering questions about Cushings Disease in dogs or cryptorchid horses? Time is money, and I'm a millionaire if minutes count.

In 1999 and 2000, while I was still working, my 403b had three bad, bad quarters, and had really flattened after a very nice run up in the 90s. There was a technology bubble that burst. From 2001-2007, I had three bad quarters. Probably the biggest run up in history. But what did we hear from the media and the Democrats? We were told we were in the worst economy since the Great Depression. We may actually be on the cusp of a recession, and why shouldn't we? Smart people and dumb people both made bad choices on real estate investing.

But the boomers have a lot of years left to live in retirement. I hope they breathe deeply and put away a little for a rainy, down down day, because there will be more. They will further be hurt if they elect a Democrat who promises to raise taxes, tries to destroy businesses and jobs with global warming scares, and won't make us energy independent.

Tom Brokaw doesn't get it

Tom Brokaw's new book, Boom, examines the influence the baby boomers have had on our society and culture, and he includes a wide variety of well-known and non-celebrity persons born in that era. Listening to him being interviewed on Laura Ingraham this morning and then reading some excerpts from the web, I was left with the impression conservatives know a lot more about how liberals think and react than the other way around. (Just as a quick aside: the only way they know how to have an interesting conservative character on a TV series is to afflict him with dementia--Boston Legal.) Laura pointed out that the single most important boomer to impact our culture, love him or hate him, is Rush Limbaugh, who got a quick mention in a section about drugs and not the media (I'm assuming his prescription drug addiction). Brokaw defended himself, not by addressing Rush's influence on millions, but by decrying the influence of talk radio in general--that it isn't balanced, and Rush mocks people. The Democrats when in power, will continue to harp on that.

He doesn't get it. Rush (and Medved, and Hewitt, and Ingraham, etc.) ARE the balance. The radio airways are open to the liberals, but they haven't succeeded in drawing an audience that will hold the sponsors. People don't listen to talk radio because there is nothing else--they listen because they want to hear another view that they can't get on broadcast news and cable news, where liberals have a lock. During one of the news breaks on a conservative show, I get to hear Anderson Cooper, a Vanderbilt/Whitney descendant, go on and on about global warming (guilt?). Many conservatives interview people who disagree with them, and usually make them look weak. Laura nailed Tom on this point, and he wandered off into the swamp of "we're never going to resolve this. . . .so why belabor the point."

Here's something else he doesn't quite grasp--the women's movement. In writing about the women's movement that evolved at the same time his daughters were growing up, he says, "One of our daughters is now a physician; another is a vice president of a major entertainment company; and the third is a clinical therapist. They place no limits on their ambitions, but for them, those ambitions also have had to fit within the context of having children. For all the gains made by women, and the recognition within society of how important that is to a healthy body politic, we have not satisfactorily resolved the workplace consequences of having children."

Why not say, "We have not satisfactorily resolved the family and parenting consequences created by women going off to work 10-12 hours a day."