How deep is shallow?

Sometimes I'm embarrassed for my sex. A "journalist" for the WSJ, Laura Meckler, and her "source" for her completely anecdotal analysis of the McCain campaign in Ohio, Marilyn Cameron, causes me to think it was a mistake to encourage women to leave the home for the workforce in the 1970s. I've come to expect the WSJ news articles (not the editorial page) to be more liberal than the NYT, but this was so shallow you could actually see the bottom. "In Ohio the economy rules," Feb. 27, 2008

Here's how the story goes--completely hung on the recent (since 2001) experiences of Marilyn Cameron, Ohioan, 65 years old, retired nurse.

1. She's thinking of voting Democratic for the first time since JFK. The article identifies her as 65. Maybe they talked about it in her high school civics class (she would have been 17 when JFK was elected in 1960), but the law wasn't changed until 1971, in response to the VietNam war protests. Neither Meckler or Cameron seemed to realize this--and Meckler was rushing for a deadline and apparently WSJ didn't give her a password and had no way to log on and check the details.

2. Cameron's husband worked for 34 years for the same company and took a buy out in 2001 at age 56. She worked as a nurse and had the benefits. What a sweet deal! Job security for 34 years. And a buy out!! How tough can life get? Did he invest his buy out in stocks or mutual funds and try out something he'd always wanted to do? Or did he buy a new model car or boat? Don't know; doesn't say. Did he sit around and complain with his buddies at the bar, or did he go out and get another job? Don't know; doesn't say. My husband took a buy out (by choice) in 1994 and started his own company, and was never happier, and also never made as much money as he did when he was a partner in a larger firm. We cut all expenses to the bone, didn't go out to eat for a year, and drove his old Nissan until it fell apart. We used my employee benefits.

3. Cameron's daughter is "one pay check away from mortgage foreclosure." So? For the 18 years before our children left home and I went back to work full time, we used every paycheck down to the last penny. We did have a small savings account--not the three months salary that all experts recommend, but we could have covered one mortgage payment. It's called, "planning for emergencies," Ms. Meckler--look it up.

4. Ms. Cameron wanted to retire when she was 64, and "had to withdraw $15,000 from her 401K to pay off bills including $580 a month for health insurance until she qualified for Medicare." This whine hurts my ears! She retires early, and instead of being thankful she could COBRA until eligible for government health insurance, she's a cry baby that she had to use her own money to pay her own bills! I'm guessing she also got Social Security, since she apparently wasn't a state employee in Ohio like me (I'm just waiting for some illegal to try to get SS on my number!)

5. Eleven of her twelve grandchildren have health insurance, but ONE doesn't!! Hello! Young people can accept or reject their employer's health plan. When our kids first left home we were either badgering them to get on a plan or we were taking out short term policies on them. Even 40 year olds turn down health insurance--some people think nothing can happen to them and life style is more important than health plans. Ms. Cameron may have one of those in her family--and I'd say she's darn lucky only ONE isn't insured.

6. Buried at the bottom of the article, where the common sense always appears in the WSJ, is a quote from Ms. Cameron's son, who has a different last name. He is a financial analyst living in Norwalk (so apparently her kids went to college--I'm surprised she didn't complain about paying for college in the 80s). He's the only one who makes sense. "When the government gets its fiscal house in order" things will improve, he says. "Spending is out of control." He also thinks good old mom will NOT vote Democratic.

Remember to cite your sources

or you might get an e-mail from me. Here's a note I sent to a Christian web site.

[the information on your website matches] the text of David Fuller's biography of John Huss in the book, "Valiant for the truth; a treasury of evangelical writings," compiled and edited by David Otis Fuller, McGraw-Hill, 1961, pp.79-81. I think you have incorrectly cited your sources. You have used, word for word, approximately 9 paragraphs, from these pages, and thus, the material should be in quotes, and the book cited, not just the author. Or you need to rewrite the information using your own words, and still site him as a source. Because of U.S. copyright law, which means McGraw Hill owns the way this particular history was put together by Dr. Fuller, you are in violation of the law. That is not a good Christian witness. It's called stealing in the vernacular. I'm sure God forgives, because He probably knows you didn't learn how to properly cite your sources or use research appropriately when you were in school, but a sharp eyed lawyer for a large publishing firm with deep pockets might not be so forgiving. If I found it in 2 seconds using google, so will someone else. The magazine article is also not correctly cited, but I don't have that in front of me. The Book of Martyrs is available in many editions and is probably public domain, and I'm not up on how to cite that, but you'd be safe citing the edition you used.

Don't worry about the polar bears

Do worry about the Jolly Green Giants Marxists taking us hostage by this bogus registering them as endangered. The globe, at least this year, is not getting warmer, it's getting colder. Ask anyone in Wisconsin or northern Illinois where they've had record snowfalls. And that record may only last one year, and it may mean nothing, but it does mean that panels of UN flunkies and Al Gore don't control it.

"Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on." DailyTech Blog

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At the food pantry

The weather is nasty today, so I'm hitching a ride down town to work at the Lutheran Social Services food pantry. Catch you later.

4669

Automobile reviews for dog lovers

There's no end to helpful information on the internet. Here's DogCars.com which reviews cars and their dog-friendly features. My favorite, a Dodge Caravan. It got a 5 paw review (best). And I don't even have a dog!

"One of the problems I’ve seen with many of the vehicles I’ve driven is that the manufacturers have traded cargo space for passenger space. Third-row seats that are hard to get rid of and second rows that don’t fold flat seem more common than ever. Swell for the folks hauling little Susie and all her Brownie troop friends, but hell for those of use who are trying to ditch the seats (cup holders, DVD players, etc.) and make room for Rover.

Nothing I’ve yet seen handles this challenge as well as the Stow ‘N Go seats in the Dodge and Chrysler minivans. You can go from having a seven-passenger van to having a wide-open cargo van in less than five minutes. You can have some seats but not others. The seats disappear into the floorboards in so many different ways and so easily that even I, with my minivan ennui, was impressed beyond all measure. The seats you don’t stow? Pull up the floorboards in front of them and … more there’s cargo room underneath!"

My brother has one of these--really a neat car. Maybe my next van. . .

Kids are swearing more

Now, where do you suppose they learned it? Timothy Jay says teenagers use 80-90 swear words a day. I saw Melanie Glover's Sacramento Bee article in the Columbus Dispatch. I didn't swear as a child; still don't. My parents didn't; my friends didn't. My own kids learn to swear and cuss on the playground in grade school.

From the blogs I read by women, I'm guessing that today children are learning to cuss and swear from their mommies, if she gets off her cell phone long enough to yell at them in the back seat of the SUV. Even Christian moms seem to think that "being real" is a better witness than being modest or well-spoken.

The inequality myth

Wall Street Journal's Carol Hymowitz again trots out the old saw that women with the same level of education earn 20-25% less than a man and the glass ceiling is turning to steel. Here. I know from our stock annual reports that there are darn few women on the boards of major corporations. But ask yourself, is it diversity if they are just smaller or darker versions of the good old boys who are already on the board? When they get to that point in power, prestige and income, just what would they be bringing to the table that would benefit women and minorities on their way up--people who went to college with a GED or after military service or who attended a junior college and lived at home before transferring? Now that would be true diversity. If they aren't representing me, the investor, then why would they be on the board? What did an expensive Ivy League education get Mama Obama? She's raising her kids and supporting her husband's career! What woman in her right mind would give up that to sell plastics or mine coal from the office board room?

But Hymowitz's statistics (supplied I think by Catalyst) lie anyway, the value of diversity aside. They are not adjusting for the right variables. Thirty five years ago claiming "same education" might have made sense; today it doesn't. They need to be looking at women who

first and foremost are married, because most top male executives are--today marriage is the big divider between getting by and doing well

have a spouse who manages the home, the nanny and the housekeeper

have a spouse willing to chauffer the children to sports and activities, take the pets to the vet, serve on the school committees, meet with the teachers, make all the appointments for doctor, dentist and hair cuts, hire and supervise the lawn service, oversee the nutritional needs of the household, and help out mom and dad at the retirement home

who are willing to work 60-80 hours a week

who spend hundreds of hours a year on the Bluetooth while sitting in airports, sleeping in first class on airplanes

who are willing to have no personal relationships with other women, or maybe occasional casual sex with lower ranked male colleagues

who are willing to endure the long commute from the fashionable suburban McMansion

who can, and this is critical, show that they have never bumped anyone better qualified out of line because of affirmative action or need for diversity in the company (which brings huge resentment with networking colleagues whether or not they admit it)

I'm at risk

of sounding like Mama Obama, but I'm not proud of my country when I experience our entertainment industry, which seems to define us around the world--TV and film and popular music. I walked through the living room in time to hear Jon Stewart making Hitler jokes at the Academy Awards last night, and left in disgust. My husband and I disagree on how to waste time. I went back to reading blogs. Molly Willow of the Columbus Dispatch didn't mention it--just said he was better than last year. That must have been excrutiating or her decency meter is screwed up.

Three of the best ensemble casts you'll ever see are found on the sets and story-lines of Ugly Betty, House, and Boston Legal. However, they are so anti-Christian and left leaning, I've stopped watching them. The assaults on sexual morality in Ugly Betty became very predictable even while clever and "fresh," gay jokes having been pushed aside for transexual. On Boston Legal, only the partner with dementia is allowed to make a conservative or sensible, practical comment. And B.L. isn't even subtle about bimbo women lawyers. I've lost track (haven't watched in about 2 years) of the female actors, each with fabulous looks and ever more plunging blouses and unbuttoned shirts--they were furniture designed to enhance the male leads.

Dr. House? He thinks people who talk to God are religious, but those who hear God's voice are crazy. As though Hugh Laurie would know God if he stepped out from behind a burning bush. Yes, Michelle, there are times we aren't proud of our country either.

Why is she always late? Monday Memories

It's Monday--the schedule shows lots of meetings. You're tapping your fingers watching the second hand of the clock, wishing the chair would get this show on the road. But they're waiting for the late comers. Why is that? I answered this puzzling question here.

Monday Memories

The lawyers are lining up as you read

Newt warned of this in a WSJ column a while back, and here's another from Feb. 11. Not that the Dems would listen, but Newt urged them to let Michigan and Florida have their say (they were smacked down and thrown out of the selection process for flexing too much independence) to avoid this possible fight. The nightmare of "super-delegates," one of whom is Bill Clinton, and other powerful rich Dems wiping out the little guy, is not a pretty picture. I hope that security patrol around Obama is pretty secure--messing with the Clinton machine has been dangerous for life, limb, career and reputation since their Arkansas days.

"For over seven years the Democratic Party has fulminated against the Electoral College system that gave George W. Bush the presidency over popular-vote winner Al Gore in 2000. But they have designed a Rube Goldberg nominating process that could easily produce a result much like the Electoral College result in 2000: a winner of the delegate count, and thus the nominee, over the candidate favored by a majority of the party's primary voters. . .

Would the U.S. Supreme Court even take the case after having been excoriated for years by liberals for daring to restore order in the Florida vote-counting in 2000? And, would Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, the dissenters in Bush v. Gore, feel as strongly about not intervening if Sen. Obama was fighting against an effort to change a presidential election by changing the rules after the fact? Will there be a brief filed by Floridians who didn't vote in their state's primary because the party had decided, and the candidates had agreed, that the results wouldn't count?" -- Theodore B. (Ted) Olson

(HT Doyle)

Also, the two drawings of the candidates in the WSJ article are the ones used most frequently, however, don't you think Hillary looks much younger--maybe by 20 years--and Barack looks much darker and older, maybe by 10 years and one additional black grandparent? Is this Wall Street Journal's way to influence the selection/election, and just who will be influenced by this subtle tweaking of features? Women? Blacks? Republicans? Artistic readers?

Obama

One other reason to vote for McCain

That makes two. National security is number one. Anyone come up with three?

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters says: "At least two Supreme Court justices will likely leave in the next four years, both of them from the Left, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The election will determine whether the court continues to turn in a more constructionist direction, forcing policy back to Congress where it belongs, or whether activists can outlast the constructionists. Jurists nominated by Obama or Hillary will have a much different idea of the Supreme Court's role than those nominated by McCain."

I'm still of the opinion that the Supreme Court shouldn't be making law. That's how the left sneaks around the will of the people, but we elect Representatives and Senators to make law, not just so they have a playground to go out and run for President.

Campaign rhetoric and the Bible

In office, politicians have their hands in your pocket; but during the campaign, those hands are in the Bible, picking and choosing verses for just the right moment. Once in office, politicians all pretty much do the same--ask for more money. Methods differ--JFK, Reagan, and Bush all brought more money into the government coffers by cutting taxes of the wealthiest; our current crop of campaigners, want to raise taxes of the wealthiest, because it isn't income, but gaps that concern them.

Standing on scripture, they all have a good foundation--wealth and money is one of the most common topics in the Bible, ranging from not worshiping it, giving the government what it asks for, and sharing it with the less fortunate. It is fertile ground for the seeds of political campaigns, particularly with an electorate that claims a high percentage of belief in God--at least when polled. (Nearly 70% in 2007 according to Barna Research).

The conservatives preach a hope found in the individual. This message of hope tells us we can do anything we want, achieve any goal by our own effort and builds our pride in a nation that allows this because it is rooted in Biblical principles.

The liberals preach a hope found in a compassionate bureaucracy and code of laws, ever changing to meet the needs of the moment. This message of hope tells us we aren't there yet, but in our collective weakness there will eventually be strength to defeat all the forces of hunger, disease and personal unhappiness, even that brought on by our own behavior.

Both conservatives and liberals use either Moses leading people to the promise land (Old Testament) or the city on the hill (New Testament) to rally the crowds, to promote a bill, or filabuster a colleague's plan.

The conservatives during political campaigns urge us to remove the scaffolding that has been built up around our Constitution, a maze of court decisions, layers of codes, and reams of bills and laws, choking off access to the original structure.

The liberals during political campaigns urge us to see the structure as still crumbling and unfinished, in need of more scaffolding, not less, more carpenters, brick layers, hod carriers, right down to the tiniest nail and brad.

Over time, it has been easier to believe that a government is kind, benign and well-intentioned than to trust and believe in the goodness and decency of our neighbor, or even ourselves. After all, we don't even live up to our own standards, we'd better slap on another layer of government to make sure we do and say the right things.

Although I'm a Christian, I'm not a Dispensationalist--I don't pour over biblical texts to piece together a theory of end times and use that as a reason to believe. But no matter who is preaching that theme, my high school classmate Dave who sends out via e-mail teachings exhorting us to believe, or the TV/radio preacher, or the pastor in your church, I've noticed that the United States doesn't seem to be remotely included in any of those texts.

And that does worry me. Do you suppose we should stop standing on the Bible and start believing it?

Orphans of the Revolution

Carlos Eire, a Yale professor and author of "Waiting for Snow in Havana," talks about his life as one of Castro’s orphans, a Cuban tragedy from the 1960s. He was sent by his parents to the U.S. when he was 11 to protect him from Castro and communism. Even as a young child within a year after the revolution he noticed in school the group think and the fear of speaking out. His father died in 1976--he never saw him again. Here's a story that wouldn't sell in Hollywood. Those folks love Castro.

From the Wall Street Journal Online

Party on for the party

According to the NYT which was sniffing out how campaigns were spending their money, for Hillary

"Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising."

That's got to make the little party faithfuls who've been sending in their checks from Social Security of $25 or $30 feel a bit sick. $11,000 for pizza in just January?

And then I read. . .what made the big donors angry. I know they've got money to burn, but they want results.

The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton's chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.

Rich pols in both parties just have no concept of how the rest of us live, do they? Think of that next time she gets teary over the plight of the working family.

Story link.

County seats of Ohio

When you don't grow up in a state, these things don't come naturally. So here is a map of the counties with their county seats. I've been here 40 years now, it's time for me to know that Port Clinton is the county seat of Ottawa County where we have a second home, and that Sandusky isn't in Sandusky County, nor is Upper Sandusky, Ottawa isn't in Ottawa County, and Urbana is the county seat of Champaign County (I wonder if homesick Ohioans settled in central Illinois?). Now that I've joined the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance, I'd better know some of these county issues.

TB--Technology Burnout

I think I have it. Last night I reloaded the software on my HP laptop for the 4th or 5th time in a year--I've learned not to keep valuable files on it. But the cd burner works, which doesn't on my old PC. My new PC is in the guest room still boxed up--I bought it before Christmas. Not only will I have to learn Vista, but some of my favorite programs will not work, because they are generations old as software counts its age. My A-fib kicks in just contemplating moving from my old Family Tree Maker to the new version. What if I lose a great great grandparent in the transition? That cute little photo printer I wrote about last July? Still in the box.

My husband wants to show his photos of Haiti to the children at Highland school where he helps in the math/science class. This preciptated the great CD hunt for the photos from last year; then looking at the disc someone else made because that's all we could find; which meant a hunt for our old DVD player (got a new one at Christmas from our daughter), thinking our disc might be in it; and sorting through various untitled discs in my office; and finding the new mouse that doesn't work with anything. Once I got the laptop up and running, we inserted various discs and I taught him how to look at those files and tediously move 167 photos into a new folder I'd created on the laptop--truly you don't want to subject 4th graders to 700 photos, some (many) badly composed. Whoever had made the disc we were viewing had folders within folders within folders, plus had misspelled Ouanaminthe on everything (used a Q in stead of an O, and it doesn't really matter, it's just annoying--and I often misspell it too--think "Juana").

All this leads up to Walt's 100th edition of Cites & Insights. Although he is writing for the library crowd, both the IT people and librarians (he's IT), he covers a lot of territory that I think is useful for people like me--teetering on the edge of insanity over technology changes and frustrations. His style of writing is so much like mine I often resolve to change after I read an issue--adverbosity, side bars, parentheticals, interesting asides, philosophical insights, etc., but he is left of center and I am right of center. He pretty much stays out of politics in his professional writing, so that part doesn't matter much. Being a reformed liberal, I notice it, however. Even after reading his assessment on the paper/print costs of various printers, I printed the whole issue and plan to enjoy it this morning at the coffee shop. If I can get there. We had an ice storm last night. Thanks, Walt, and congratulations on your 100th issue. I need you more every day!

Change: coins of a low denomination

Democratic Debate. Austin, Feb. 21, 2008

unified to bring about changes in this country.

we now have an opportunity to potentially change the relationship between the United States and Cuba after over half a century.

solid agenda for moving change forward in the next presidency.

And it is my strong belief that the changes are only going to come about if we're able to form a working coalition for change

And that's a policy that I'm going to change when I'm president of the United States. [outreach to Mexico]

I do think there is a fundamental difference between us [Clinton and Obama] in terms of how change comes about

I've been talking about making sure that we change our tax code so that working families actually get relief.

and so my plan was pretty good. It's not as good now, but my plan hasn't changed. The politics have changed a little bit.

the American people have to be involved and educated about how this change is going to be brought about.

but if we don't change how the politics is working in Washington,

and that's what I intend to change when I am president of the United States of America.

Channeling FDR

The U.S. could have been out of the Great Depression by 1933, saving our parents and grandparents much grief. When you look at our recovery compared to Canada’s or some of the European nations, you see how FDR’s diddling and fiddling, setting up an alphabet soup of agencies to bring business under the heavy hand of the federal government, practically destroyed the country. The war didn't save us economically--we were pulling out of the FDR quagmire by 1941--but it took his eye off the ball, and he had to put his energies elsewhere. The rhetoric I hear today from Hillabama sounds like they’ve been channeling his speeches and ideas from the 1930s.

“Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, removed from the presidency an enormously shrewd and resourceful leader who had for the past decade expressed a hostility bordering on hatred for investors as a class. Many business people, among others, had feared that FDR harbored dictatorial ambition; some believed that he ultimately did exercise arbitrary power in some if not all areas—for instance, his unconstitutional “destroyer deal” of 1940 in which, without congressional approval, he gave away fifty warships of the U.S. Navy to a foreign power. His demise must have enhanced the confidence many investors felt in the future security of their remaining private property rights.”

"Regime uncertainty: Why the Great Depression lasted so long and why prosperity resumed after the War,” by Robert Higgs, Independent Review, vol. 1, no. 4, Spring 1997, pp. 561-590. Here.

Obama

A warehouse full of abandoned hope

If you don't like Bush's NCLB, maybe you'll prefer what the Democrats have done in Detroit? This story about education in Detroit at Sweet Juniper (HT Blake at LIS.com) turned my stomach. Somebody's taxes paid for this. Yours and mine.

"This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste. The interior has been ravaged by fires and the supplies that haven't burned have been subjected to 20 years of Michigan weather. To walk around this building transcends the sort of typical ruin-fetishism and "sadness" some get from a beautiful abandoned building. This city's school district is so impoverished that students are not allowed to take their textbooks home to do homework, and many of its administrators are so corrupt that every few months the newspapers have a field day with their scandals, sweetheart-deals, and expensive trips made at the expense of a population of children who can no longer rely on a public education to help lift them from the cycle of violence and poverty that has made Detroit the most dangerous city in America. To walk through this ruin, more than any other, I think, is to obliquely experience the real tragedy of this city; not some sentimental tragedy of brick and plaster, but one of people.

Pallet after pallet of mid-1980s Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, still unwrapped in their original packaging, seem more telling of our failures than any vacant edifice. The floor is littered with flash cards, workbooks, art paper, pencils, scissors, maps, deflated footballs and frozen tennis balls, reel-to-reel tapes. Almost anything you can think of used in the education of a child during the 1980s is there, much of it charred or rotted beyond recognition. Mushrooms thrive in the damp ashes of workbooks. Ailanthus altissima, the "ghetto palm" grows in a soil made by thousands of books that have burned, and in the pulp of rotted English Textbooks. Everything of any real value has been looted. All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential. It is almost impossible not to see all this and make some connection between the needless waste of all these educational supplies and the needless loss of so many lives in this city to poverty and violence, though the reality of why these supplies were never used is unclear. In some breathtakingly-beautiful expression of hope, an anonymous graffiti artist has painted a phoenix-like book rising from the ashes of the third floor."

The writer claims not to know why these supplies were never used. Isn't that odd? Pork is pork, whether it's New Orleans levees or Detroit's schools or a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, and somewhere on a dusty shelf there is a book with a list of the guilty who promised the children of Detroit they'd bring home the bacon. The writer seems to have made it out alive with excellent communications skills, so let's hope there were others. You just won't believe the photographs.

If there's a huge, crumbling American city with corrupt government and do-nothing state reps in DC that is controlled by the Republican machine, I have forgotten the name. But maybe in Detroit they "have hope" for "a change" sometime in "the future." Maybe they're swooning over Obama if they've forgotten their history.

Someone thinks an MLS matters

While browsing through the University of Illinois Library School (not called that anymore--maybe never was) announcements I noticed that on Feb. 27 there would be a talk by Rya Ben-Shir, MLS, Senior Manager, Intelligencenter, Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Inc. Deerfield, Illinois on why she and Takeda Pharmaceuticals insist on MLS/MLIS prepared librarians for all of their librarian positions. How novel. Illinois didn't choose an MLS trained librarian as their Dean, John Unsworth,--they went for high tech--and Ohio State's Library Director, Joe Branin, is moving that direction by proposing the MLS be removed as a requirement for professional positions. I think we could see the writing on the wall when a number of years ago, they added “be willing to obtain an MLS within two years” so they could attract some skills or ethnic groups to round out the technical and affirmative action requirements. Often that was stop gap, with the new hires moving on quickly, because then they had both the MLS and the desired status that other institutions were wanting. ALA is no help. It pokes its leftist nose into every little cranny of political and navel gazing movement, leaving librarians to struggle on their own with low salaries, failing bond issues, and a professional leadership always chasing the talent brass ring of other professions. It wouldn't surprise me if ALA takes pride in the fact that beginning librarians, with advanced degrees, probably qualify for government earned income relief, government health insurance for their children and school lunch programs.

When two college kids invented a better way a mere decade ago to find and serve up information (Google), and librarians oo'd and ah'd, dithered and quivered over digital rights, and then went on with business as usual to save the world through socialist politics and local lyceums, our fate was sealed. And they, idealist entrepreneurs, became millionaires many times over. We should have stuck with our knitting.