3891

Somehow, I'm not surprised

"BIOFUELS--DOE Lacks a Strategic Approach to Coordinate Increasing Production with Infrastructure Development and Vehicle Needs." And that's just the title.

3890

What do socially responsible librarians talk about?

Certainly not libraries.

Darfur
Rachel Carson
Hunger, homelessness and poverty
Global warming
feminism
gay, lesbian, transexual, bisexual issues
Katherine de la Pena McCook lifetime award (you'd have to be there)
flogging books by their members, like Library Juice
fixing media bias (on the right)
Pastor's [sic] for Peace
alternative media
free speech buffet

And you thought all librarians did was read while wearing sensible shoes, shushing and unjamming the printer!

3889

A Line in the Sand

There is an important report available on the internet titled, "Line in the Sand; Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border," prepared by the Majority Staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Investigations, Michael T. McCaul, Chairman.(2007?) It concludes that in order to stop the criminal activity at the border, we need:

Greater control of the border can be achieved by:

• enhancing Border Patrol resources, including expanding agent training capacity, and technical surveillance abilities;

• constructing physical barriers in vulnerable and high-threat areas;

• implementing state-of-the-art technology, cameras, sensors, radar, satellite, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to ensure maximum coverage of the Nation's Southwest border;

• making permanent the "catch and return" policy;

• expanding the use of the expedited removal policy;

• establishing additional detention bed space;

• improving partnerships and information sharing among Federal, State, and local law enforcement;

• building a secure interoperable communications network for Border Patrol and state and local law enforcement;

• mandating a comprehensive risk assessment of all Southwest border Ports of Entry and international land borders to prevent the entry of terrorist and weapons of mass destruction;

• promoting both international and domestic policies that will deter further illegal entry into the United States; and

• enhancing intelligence capabilities and information sharing with our Mexican counterparts and improving cooperation with the Mexican government to eradicate the Cartels.

Achieve some of these goals, Mr. President, and then maybe we can talk about reforming our immigration policies. Show us you are as serious at home as you are in Iraq.

3888

Glamorous professions

Photography always sounded sort of glamorous to me until I read the breakdown of hours, requirements, salary and benefits in today's WSJ. Remember, the average school teacher earns more than $34/hour.

Who, on average, is better paid--public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker.

According to this article, event photographers earn between $10-25 an hour as stringers. Now that's next to awful, don't you think? And the requirements sound a bit demanding to me, although what do I know--I was just a librarian who sat around all day and read books. An event photographer might spend as much time in editing, correcting and production as shooting the event; might have to invest $10,000 in equipment; probably misses all the important holidays with his/her family; and has a physically demanding routine dragging around all that equipment and doing set-ups.

Now, the pluses are you get to attend some interesting events and might see celebrities. You can't pay the rent or utilities by sighting Michael Jackson or Paris Hilton once a year.

Might be smarter to become a teacher, retire early, and take up photography on the side.

3887

Strangers chatting in the park

We stopped our walk (going opposite directions) to watch the children in organized play. We were amazed to see a group of very little boys in matching, over sized t-shirts--maybe 3 or 4 years old--being led by men also in matching t-shirts and caps in something that resembled drop the handkerchief. Some mothers had sought out shady spots in which to park the strollers with younger children. At first I thought it might be an early VBS group or a day-care center on an outing. Then I realized all the leaders were men, so they probably weren't fathers, day-care workers, or VBS volunteers. It began to dawn on me that this was a city parks program, and these were probably paid high school or college age staff.

"I wonder when these children get a chance to just be kids and not have adults organizing their play time?"

"I don't know, but I think they are too young to understand competition or soccer."

And we continued on our way, getting our exercise the old fashioned, fuddy-duddy way, pondering the ways of the young who had none of our advantages of hindsight. The little boys joyfully followed their leaders in pied piper fashion.

3886

FDR's dismal record

When I was in high school and college, we were taught that FDR was practically the savior of our nation. All sorts of socialist programs were instituted, but we were told they were all for our own good, even the ones that failed. My mother and father never agreed on the worth of his presidency and programs and their entire lives cancelled each others votes. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson are the three legs of the tippy stool of socialism we deal with today.

Today's WSJ reviews The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes (HarperCollins, 2007). "Roosevelt's dismal performance in the 1930s would not prevent him from becoming the most popular sitting president in American history," the reviewer writes.




From the left, he is viewed as

an inspirational leader who offered hope and

a wager of battles against evil capitalists

His critics on the right see the era of FDR differently

his policies prolonged the miseries of the Great Depression

he left behind the hard-working, middle class citizen

did far more damage than Hoover, who himself was a poor president

was soft on the cruelties and economic failures of the Soviet Union

developed a class-war rhetoric still in use today.

It will be interesting to see if my public library can find a way to purchase this title not friendly to an icon of the left. Publisher's Weekly, bible of all public librarians, includes in its review the usual put-downs : "breezy narrative," "tells an old story," "plausible history," but does concede that it is an even-tempered corrective to the unbalanced stories of this era. Since it just came out in June, it's probably not yet on order at public libraries. I'll try OhioLink in a few weeks.

Monday Memories of Memories

The Tech Reunion

The Committee for the Reunion did a fabulous job. From the nametags, to the dinner to the visit to the campus, it all ran smoothly, and we saw lots of old friends and heard many, "Do you remember when we. . ." I do wonder though what's happening to the classes behind us. There was no 25th or 40th for those classes, even though the other years we've attended there have been. Where are the classes of 1967, or 1972 or 1977?

For some reason, we don't have a copy of my husband's senior picture--red hair and sparkling green eyes.

These two friends hadn't seen each other since 1960, and without an announcement, probably couldn't have found each other at the dinner. My husband became an architect and Ron (on the right) became a very successful commercial artist. Now in retirement, they are both painters.

My new Tech friend Barb (on the right) who loves RV-ing, seeing the country, and reads my blog! Check out her reunion site for more photos and memories.

The Tech campus has 76 acres with many new buildings since the 1950s, but this landmark is called Stuart Hall, opened in 1940, named for the first principal. The first students arrived September 11, 1912 and classes began 5 days later.


My husband earned a letter in track and cross country. It is one of the few schools in the country where you could run cross country and not leave the campus.

The class gathered on the steps of the Arsenal Building for their class photo. There were more people at the evening event, and some here that didn't come to the dinner. If I'd been in charge, of course, I'd have asked all the ladies to put aside their purses and papers, and tell everyone to take off their sun glasses. However, no one appointed me to problem solve for the class photo. The Arsenal Building stored military supplies during the Civil War, and today has administrative offices.

The Awards Ceremony was held in Anderson Auditorium (1975), and the Alumni Choir sang below an American flag with 34 stars (found in the attic of one of the buildings).

Three members of The Slobs (social club) standing on the second floor of The Barracks, which at one time was under the command of the U.S. government (which owned the entire site). It was the building in which these guys had ROTC. One of The Slobs, Scott, brought his mom to the Alumni awards ceremony and lunch--a Tech grad of 75 years ago. And she's still beautiful!
Good-bye Tech. Maybe we'll see you 5 years for the 100th anniversary of your founding.

3884

IRCA to CIRA--from alphabet soup to nuts

To get a feel for how we got to the mess we're in with IRCA (1986) and its growing little sister CIRA (2007), read the panoramic view in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 367, 1966, a special issue titled, "The New Immigration." It's an interesting issue, with articles by people like Ted Kennedy and Frank Mott. We would be welcoming skilled, professional and technical workers we were told, and the charts and graphs showed a very small percentage of service and farm sector workers. President Johnson had assured us before signing the 1965 immigration bill into law in October 1965 that, "Nothing in the legislation relieves any immigrant of the necessity of satisfying all of the security requirements we now have, or the requirements designed to exclude persons likely to become public charges. No immigrants admitted under this bill could contribute to unemployment in the United State." (LBJ, January 13, 1965). Pipe dreams. A joke. No crystal ball, not even an understanding of human nature, just like now. With all the other social problems going on in the 1960s, the American people hardly noticed that "family reunification" clauses might mean one legal immigrant could be bringing in 20 relatives who then would bring in their relatives.

We (or rather the giants we elected to congress) needed to rework it all in 20 years and got the "Immigration Reform and Control Act" of 1986--the word "control" was added because almost all the immigration was non-white, non-skilled, many political refugees, with much of it illegal by the 1980s and with the growing problem of porous borders. Then the Immigration Act of 1990 was added to the pantheon. There is an interesting overview of the competing interest groups and issues like homosexuality, aids, social security, welfare, etc. at "The Politics of Immigration Reform in the United States, 1981-1990" by Daniel J. Tichenor in Polity Vol. 26, No. 3 (Spring, 1994), pp. 333-362.
Online here. Tichenor marvels that Congress got anything done at all--sound familiar? In other words, they gave us a bi-partisan mishmash, filled with complex and competing ideas over 20 years ago.

"With little support for internal enforcement, IRCA dealt with the illegal population residing in the country by granting legal status to nearly three million illegal aliens. The enforcement provisions of IRCA, which penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, never
established a reliable identification system of employee eligibility. As a result, an underground industry of fraudulent documents permitted illegal immigration to return to pre-reform levels. The Immigration Act of 1990 granted stays of deportation to family members of aliens legalized under IRCA. The 1990 law also established an increased "cap" on legal immigration that may be "pierced" for relatives of citizens. Several refugee groups received special protection as well."

Opinion polls indicated Americans wanted a decrease, not an increase, of immigrants in the 1970s and 1980s. Then as now (as proposed by Bush--the non-amnesty amnesty), the problem of illegal aliens was solved by making them legal--only in 1986 there were approximately 3 million illegals. No one knows how many we have today--12 million is used as the low end figure.

We have competing forces--the 1986 IRCA solved nothing and actually made things worse. Adding the word "comprehensive" in 2007 to an already unworkable plan won't improve it. And I'm guessing that if the internet, blogs, cable TV and talk radio had been around in the 80s, so that the American public understood how it was being screwed by big business, big agriculture, big labor, feel-good, liberal Christians and weak willed, clueless politicians, particularly Republicans, IRCA would have gone down in flames in 1986.

"The 1986 and 1990 laws were supported by a fragile coalition of liberals, who celebrate entitlements, and conservatives, who embrace the market. The pro-immigration tenor of these laws cohered not to a dominant public philosophy, but rather accommodated the programmatic ambitions and ideals of distinct political movements."

There are powerful interest groups in this country who want a continuous supply of poor people--not just to fill low skilled jobs, but to use as political pawns. They need the statistics to prop up demands for more and more taxes, the life blood of politicians. Then they are also combining forces with other interest groups like Moveon.org and La Raza who simply want to destroy the USA as we know it.

Those of us who object to porous borders, irresponsible legislators, foreigners flaunting the law, criminals wandering our streets, and wasted money on social programs are called nativists, xenophobes, and racists. When in fact, we are the ones who have been lied to, promised the impossible, and are cuckold.

3883

Sandy vs. Scooter

"Why the "unusually harsh sentence," as William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who served on the advisory committee on sentencing guidelines, put it? Because, the judge explained, "people who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of the nation in their hands, have a special obligation not to do anything that might create a problem." Of course, Sandy Berger, national security adviser to Bill Clinton, hid original documents on his person, took them out of the National Archives, destroyed them, and lied to investigators. One might think of this as "creating a problem." But Berger got no prison time and a fine one-fifth that imposed on Libby." Kristol

But then, Berger was a Democrat. The President has the power to pardon, even for a such a strange non-crime as this.

Live Breathe and Die: "In recent years, the Democratic playbook has included talking points designed to convince Americans that the Republican Party is mired in corruption. The phrase that Democrats incorporated into their public pronouncements was a Republican ‘culture of corruption.’ As evidence of this, they point to Scooter Libby, charged with lying to a grand jury. They also point to the political witch-hunt in Texas where charges had been brought against Republican, Tom Delay.

What the press sweeps under the rug though is the ongoing evidence of true corruption in the Democratic Party. Unlike Scooter Libby, who apparently had lapses in memory, getting dates mixed up, many prominent Democrats were caught red handed, intentionally sticking their hands in the cookie jar. There are varying degrees of crime, and the real criminal intent seems to be on the side of the Democrats. Whether or not the public hears about the culture of corruption amongst the Dems is another story."

3882

We're on our way

to the Tech reunion. The class meets tonight at a private club, and all the classes get together tomorrow on the campus. That's when we'll see most of the guys my husband hung out with--The Slobs. Arsenal Tech isn't your ordinary school. It's awesome--or was when my husband and his parents attended. Bigger than the town I lived in.

At the last minute, my husband decided to wear his tux--I'm sure he'll be the only one--so I had to change my attire to a dress. But that's fine. We love to dance, and no lady looks graceful dancing in slacks or jeans. They just don't swing. And I have two outfits for tomorrow--one if it is cool, one if hot. Our weather has ranged from 40 to 91 in 48 hours here. And I'm taking along "Digging to America" by Anne Tyler to read in the car, and some old radio shows on CD, so we're all set. The cat, of course, is in hiding, thinking we're going to throw her in the car, but she isn't going on this trip.

Catch up with you later.

Thursday Thirteen Resolutions

According to Willowcreek's Network, my highest score is in Wisdom, and second highest are Administration and Giving (tied). These are not popular, fun "gifts." These traits are sensible, insightful, practical, fair, commonsense, thorough, objective, responsible, resourceful, disciplined, organized, efficient and conscientious. See what I mean?

Because I write on a variety of topics, and so many blogs, I have to be cautious about criticism. You just have no idea how much is excluded (I keep a written journal), so I make an effort to redirect some energy. Not always successfully. First, I drafted this 13 list and then went through and deleted the word "try." Try is a really wimpy verb, and I criticize others who use weak verbs and sloppy sentences. It's unlikely I'll be able to keep these--I think I've already broken number one and number four, but here goes.

1. When I see an outrageously dressed person, brown cotton eyelet full circle skirt, gray pumps and pink bandana I will turn my head or close my eyes instead of drawing a sketch.

2. When I see someone who has problem at the sample table of the coffee shop, I won't speculate what losing or gaining 20 lbs could do for his/her health and knees.

3. When I see a smoker, I will resist cataloging wrinkles, coughs, and yellowed fingers using my strongest traits.

4. I will resist going to church so I won't be tempted to comment on things that upset me or theology that doesn't make sense.

5. When I see a loose dog or cat, I will pray for the critter's safety instead of criticizing the careless, bad mannered owner even my neighbor with the Vizsla that wants to join us on our deck during dinner.

6. When I see an ugly, unreadable, squirrely webpage or blog, I will not scan through it looking for the webmaster or comment section.

7. When I accidentally come across Katie Couric or another gloomy news reader, I'll just change channels.

8. When I hear or read about what the idiots in Congress are doing, I'll refrain from calling them names--or the people like me, who elected them.

9. I will blog less at my regular site and work on my hobby bloggy and illegal immigration blog. I stopped blogging for a week and dropped 300 points on TTLB.

10. Since I'm such a good problem solver, I'll satisfy this need by finding and fixing problems in my house, car, garage, closets and bookshelves or experimenting with new recipes. By 2010, I can probably have these under control.

11. I will try to keep track of only 2 or 3 Republican 2008 candidates and not poke fun at or make rude comments about the other moral midgets others.

12. I will ignore family problems. Mine and yours. No one wants to be someone else's fixer-upper or project.

13. I will refocus on my art. A critical eye is needed in perspective, value, hue, tone, and quality. I think it's been a year since I did this one.

3880

The sad record of the Left

"There are no megalomaniacal mass-murderer that the Left has not supported, no Democracy that it has supported." Read the list here by Steve Haas at American Daughter.

Let's move the UN

This building is obviously too expensive to repair, so I think it is time to let another country enjoy hosting it. Free up some parking places in New York. Give those mansions of foreign diplomats to the homeless hotels.

HT Amy

3878

What's uglier than power line towers?

Lots of things.

Wind farms

nuclear power cooling towers

solar panels dotting the neighborhood

piles of firewood for cook stoves

earth mound houses and huts

banks of batteries for a cloudy day

fields of corn to be fed to automobiles

3877

Reading the want ads in JAMA

You might think it's about the work. Not so, if these want ads tell the story.

A Columbus, GA position provides malpractice insurance, a great climate and accessibility to all the attractions in Florida.

Puyallup, WA offers a diverse community where you can live the lifestyle you want.

Philadelphia offers opportunities for research on smoking, obesity, depression and suicide.

Mercedes, TX wants you, but you must have proof of legal authority to work in the U.S.

Southeastern Kentucky counties offer excellent pay and a naturally beautiful mountain location.

Boulder offers a partnership track in a fabulous location.

If you take the job in Columbia, SC, you'll live and work in a wonderful coastal area, 2 hours from Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head and the Sea Islands.

3876

Here's a pup you don't want

A few weeks ago I showed a cute puppy that needed a good home. He'd been badly abused. Here's a "puppy" that fits over your oxygen tank if you abuse your lungs with cigarettes. He's called Oxy-Pup and comes in two styles.


This photo is from a display in China and is supposed to represent how many cigarettes one smoker would consume in a year. I saw it at The Laundress, who has now gone a full year without smoking. Good girl.

3875

Remember the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?

That was a study that went on about 30 years in the 20th century among poor black men in the south to see what happened when syphilis went untreated while they were receiving "free" health care.

"The United States Public Health Service, in trying to learn more about syphilis and justify treatment programs for blacks, withheld adequate treatment from a group of poor black men who had the disease, causing needless pain and suffering for the men and their loved ones.

In the wake of the Tuskegee Study and other studies, the federal government took a closer look at research involving human subjects and made changes to prevent the moral breaches that occurred in Tuskegee from happening again."[CDC]

In my non-medical opinion, we're doing the same thing to black children in Africa under the guise of malaria research. I was absolutely sickened by the latest issue of JAMA (May 23/30, 2007, Vol. 297, No.20), which is entirely about malaria testing of combination drug therapy primarily on children of Afghanistan, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, and Ghana. I don't understand all the big words, but I do know that while "healthy" children with high parasite loads were receiving short term medications, they weren't receiving insecticide treated bed nets, currently one of the more effective methods to combat malaria since do-gooder environmentalists inspired by Rachel Carson got DDT removed from the market in the 1970s.

I can also read the treatment outcomes--yes, no one died (oh goodie), but the side effects were observed (remember these are children!) which included anorexia, coughs, weakness, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, pruitus, seizures.

"The overall health of the children in this cohort was excellent. There were no deaths and no episodes of malaria that met WHO criteria for severe malaria. There were 19 episodes of malaria that were considered complicated and treated with quinine for the following reasons: single seizures, hyperparasitemia, inability to sit up or stand, persistent vomiting, and lethargy." ["Combination therapy for uncomplicated Falciparum Malaria in Ugandan children" p. 2210]

No one ever died from DDT. Not a bird. Not a baby. Just mosquitoes that killed babies. But every year more than a million people now die from a disease that was virtually under control in the 1970s. Most of those who die are children. JAMA is usually politically astute on social and political issues--left of center all the way. It's all aboard the global warming band wagon. It tippy-toes around the environmentalist disaster with this ridiculous comment:

"Following the collapse of the global eradication campaign in the early 1970s, malaria control programs around the world dwindled as funding dried up, technical guidance became confused and at times contradictory, and much of the global community seemed ready to accept that malaria was an unavoidable fact of life in tropical regions."

What nonsense! The eradication of malaria collapsed because somebody was more worried about bird eggs than African children living to adulthood. It's a very nasty disease to survive, let alone to die from. The survivors have life long disabilities. And there are many long term effects from the anti-malaria medications, to which the parasites are becoming resistent, so those meds are becoming stronger.

I shudder to think of all these people (pregnant women, babies and developing children) sleeping under or on pesticide treated nets and mats, the other brilliant plan to fight malaria. A ridiculously expensive plan, even if it were to work, and even if mats and nets could be distributed to every household in danger. It is so much easier, safer and cheaper to kill the disease at its source--the female mosquito! For 2003 it was estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa to get bed nets to 80% of the population would require 175.2 million insecticide-treated nets. I wonder how safe it is to work in a warehouse filled with thousands of ITNs, or to drive a truck load of them over bad roads in the hot sun to distribution centers. And roads. Are there roads by which these ITNs can get to the people who need them?

Meanwhile, the researchers/authors discuss how many women and children might be sleeping under the same net, and would that affect the number. How many angels dance on the head of a pin.

3874

More abortion tax dollars wanted by Planned Parenthood

Since it started offering abortions in the 1970s, Planned Parenthood has performed over a million abortions, many of them with our tax dollars. No, it doesn't get all its funding from the public trough, just about a third through Title X, and it's coming back for more. Some people actually donate money to this death machine, which I suppose is the balance of its budget. 5,000 abortions a week isn't enough--it wants $100 million more--even as its abortions are up and its other services such as important health tests for women, are down. Having a Republican President who had a Republican (wimp alert) congress was no protection for those babies. President George W. Bush and the Republican-majority Congress Increased Title X to a record $288.3 million in FY 2005. And what about PlaP's claims on its website that Title X money isn't used for abortions? Well, let me think. Dump it all into one pot, pay the other bills like mammograms and high blood pressure and salaries and rent with it, and use the other accounts for surgical abortions. It's an industry--and the product is death. All that's needed to shut it down is to check the number of teen abortions against the number of reports to child welfare agencies on underage children seeking services. That won't happen.

Now that the ban on chopping up the few babies who make it alive to the birth canal was upheld, the Democrats are really panicked. "Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Jerrold Nadler have introduced a bill, called the Freedom of Choice Act, that would dramatically expand federal protection of abortion rights beyond what is required by Roe v. Wade or Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The bill would invalidate many federal, state and local abortion laws, including the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act." [ACLJ] However, Democrats have always played straight with us on this issue; they are pro-abortion. It is the Republicans who are too squeamish to stand up for what they said during their campaigns for office.

Go here to fight additional funding for Planned Parenthood with your tax dollars.

3873

Populist pandering by politicians promising penalties

A reader's comments in USAToday, June 5:

"As long as we live in a society where people drive their Yukons and Expeditions 3 blocks to the store instead of walking, where roads are jammed with people driving to work while half empty trains and buses pass them by and where leaf and snow blowers have replaced rakes and shovels, I will be keeping fingers crossed for $6/gallon gasoline."

You do just have to sigh when Congress panders for votes over the few gas stations that raise prices beyond their profit margin. Like they never do anything unethical or for a profit (like William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana).

Did I ever tell you that it's been 40 years?

Yes, we moved to Columbus, Ohio 40 years ago this week. Hardly seems possible. For some reason I remembered that this morning on my way to the coffee shop, thinking I still feel like a visitor!

I was recruited in February 1967 at the University of Illinois by the personnel officer of Ohio State University Libraries to come as a Slavic cataloguer; he located a job for my husband with an architect he knew through church. The night we met Sam Calabretta (partner in that architectural firm), I fell in love with the idea of moving to Columbus. My husband was a bit more conservative and wasn't really sure it was right. But Sam was so upbeat about the possibilities here, we were soon sold on the idea. My job wasn't as good as the one I left, but my husband's was probably 10 times better. And since the children arrived soon afterward and I didn't return to work until 1977 in another position, it worked out fine.

On our job interviews in April, we found a lovely apartment at 2120 Farleigh Road in Upper Arlington. We didn't know we weren't in Columbus (it's a suburb), and after six months we bought a home about 5 blocks from the apartment and we lived there for 34 years.

Our apartment on Farleigh, 2nd from left
I didn't take many photos of the inside; this was at Christmas. We had that TV until the 80s. The wreath behind me was made from IBM cards and sprayed with gold paint--a very popular 1960s craft. We still have that chair and the dining room hutch in the back ground. I think we still use some of the x-mas decorations, too.