Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "Jim Crow Was The Wrong Analogy To Use"

Someone must have told Ms. DNC the Jim Crow laws were the Democrats' idea.

But also, allowing ex-felons and illegal immigrants to vote with no ID is probably a side you don't really want to say is the image you equate with African Americans. And how she thinks the 2000 Gore Bush hanging chad fiasco fits in here is bizarre. Bush, as you recall, won that district; it was the Democrats who didn't want to believe minority voters could choose anyone but whom they were told to vote for.

HotAirPundit: Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "Jim Crow Was The Wrong Analogy To Use"

Do what I say, not what I do--Democrats

According to a 2008 article at American Thinker by Randall Hoven, lawyers and law firms are heavy donors to the Democratic party, with 76% of all donations to Democrats, the same percentage as Hollywood. (BTW, this is a paltry number compared to Democrats in the library profession.)

American Thinker Blog: Lawyers and the Democrats

So why, if they are so liberal and progressive, are law firms doing such a poor job of recruiting African Americans into their profession, even with affirmative action?

According to a completely unrelated article by James Lindgren in the Journal of Contemporary Legal issues, Vol. 17, 2008, "In 1960, 2.0% of male lawyers and judges ages 36-45 were African Americans. After several decades of affirmative action, in 2000 the proportion in the same age group has grown only modestly to 2.8% of male lawyers. Since the 1980 Census (when most African-American lawyers ages 31-65 would have graduated from law school before the era of affirmative action in law school admissions), the changes for African-American men have been even less impressive in employment by private firms and companies: from 1.8% of males in 1980 to 2.1% in 2000."

The Private and Public Employment of African-American Lawyers, 1960-2000 by James Lindgren :: SSRN

And in yet another unrelated statistic from the census, the anecdotal evidence that blacks are losing out in self-employment apparently isn't true either. Without affirmative action, they haven't done that much worse than the lawyers. Self-employed blacks have gone from 3.6% to 4.1% since 1960, compared to 11.1% to 11.4% for whites. It is down for both groups over the last 100 years.

GK Chesterton comments on the Weiner scandal

Not really, but he does talk about small, round, hard things. . . like Weiner's . . . brain.

"A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large.

In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but is not so large.

A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. . .

A lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument."

Delusional Democrats and Union Thugs in Wisconsin

Kathleen Vinehout, a Wisconsin state senator who fled to Illinois to avoid her duty to her constituents said this after an improbable naive and hopelessly pious statement about honor and harmony too bizarre to even quote:

On March 9th, Republican Leaders invented a new process of passing a bill, without warning, without a hearing and without even a bill on the Senate floor. Republican Leaders engaged in legislative trickery to deny us the democratic process; seeking only to advance their national agenda.

James Lindgren offers another view at "SSRN, Social Science Research Network" which probably state Democrats routinely ignore, just has they ignore the national one.

This essay takes a brief and preliminary look at the remedies available to the Wisconsin Senate to enact its 2011 proposed budget legislation without Democratic senators who fled the state in February 2011. Article VIII, §8 of the Wisconsin Constitution requires a three-fifths quorum only for statutes that are fiscal, that is, statutes that actually appropriate money, impose taxes, create a debt, or release a claim owed to the state. Even then, these categories have consistently been interpreted in the most limited form conceivable.

Weiner's wife and marriage

It's been a surprise to me that the slogan of the day (the last 2 days) for Associated Press (distributed to multiple syndicates) has been that the "Weiners have a strong marriage." Look, she was out of the country when the scandal broke, he was using her absenses which are frequent since she's Hillary's aide to sext his on-line buddies, and they've both been using the Clintons as mentors. I supposed that's a fool's idea of a strong marriage, but if she hangs in there with him, she's just another abused Muslim wife married to a despot. It's in her tradition.

How great a lover and husband can he be? In order to achieve those erection photos, he needed to be masturbating while excitedly anticipating others seeing it. Who really gets that overwrought by the sight of the erect male member other than other males? Who buys all those male porn magazines--other men. There will probably be more to come out of the closet for this guy. There are some secular Jews who don't like Israel although they may see themselves as Jews (Weiner actually is pro-Israel except for his party choice), and some married men who don't really like or respect women, may love their own wife (again, Weiner has a strange way of showing devotion and loyalty). I'm just saying. . .

Father's Day is June 19--think about it!

"To everyone who had a great dad who was always there for you, great. And if you got a crummy one in life's father lottery, well, honor him anyway. The Bible promises you a blessing if you do. It's the only one of the Ten Commandments that comes with a promise.

Men who marry the mother of their children reverse the devastation of childhood poverty. It's worth more than a college education in family economics compared to the single mom household. On the other hand, married dads who walk out on the family, usually for another, younger version of the wife of their youth, hurt everyone involved, including his kids, friends and community." Norma Bruce, June 20, 2010

Why are librarians' salaries so low?

From my blog 5 years ago, March 2006.

There are people needing promotion and tenure to study this, but here's my take. Librarians have no organization to represent their own interests. Oh, they have lots of organizations--out the wazoo--but just look at the names: American Library Association; Medical Library Association; Association of College and Research Libraries; California Library Association. Do you know what my husband's professional organization is called? The American Institute of Architects. Get it? It is representing ARCHITECTS. People, not government entities or buildings. And although I'm sure it leans left like most professional organizations, I haven't heard that the AIA is trying to get President Bush impeached while they redesign cities in Mississippi as service projects.

"Librarians and library workers are under-valued, and most people, whether members of the public, elected officials, faculty, corporate executives, or citizen board members, have little or no idea of the complexity of the work we do." from California Library Association web site.

In my opinion, this inclusion of “library workers” in all attempts to get the professional, degreed salaried librarians paid a fair wage worthy of a master's or higher degree is part of the problem. “Library workers” may have high school degrees or they may have PhDs in Victorian Poetry or Trombone Performance, but they are not degreed librarians. This may explain why people (even librarians) believe the degree isn’t important, and so the salaries can stay low. Anybody can do it, right? Just ask the ALA (which spins its wheels in political, i.e. federal and state, battles).

But, then, it's not my battle anymore--or even theirs. Librarianship is going the way of the buggy whip manufacturer. A few with special crafting skills are still needed, but it's not a career or profession anyone should reach for.

Daily challenges

Today someone gave me three of these.

Yes, Panera's cinnamon rolls--620 calories each, 24 grams of fat (There is a nutrition calculator on the internet.) On the plus side, they do contain 20% rda of vitamin C and 13 grams of protein--that's more than a can of black beans! Right now, they are packaged separately and I'm debating their future. It's the last day of exercise class. Should I take them along and divide them among the ladies (and one man)? Should I put them in the freezer where they might call to me? What would you do?

Gingrich is deaf to his team's advice

"Newt Gingrich’s entire team of paid Iowa campaign staff, as well as his national spokesman and senior aides in New Hampshire and South Carolina, have resigned en masse, a staffer told The Des Moines Register.

“You have to be able to raise money to run a campaign and you have to invest time in fundraising and to campaign here in the state and I did not have the confidence that was going to be happening,” said Craig Schoenfeld, the Iowa executive director of Newt 2012."

Iowa caucuses


Go, go, gone Gingrich, I hope. There are some excellent people in the field. We don't need all his baggage.

Why we watch reality TV

OK. You caught me. I do watch some reality TV--like the people looking for 2nd homes in exotic places for $2.5 million on HGTV; the guys pimping their semi-trucks purple and pink; the fellows bidding on lockers full of stuff so that they can earn a living at auctions; occasionally a hoarding show on TLC; the clothes closet make-overs on What Not to Wear. Once in awhile I turn on one of those talent shows ala Arthur Godfrey 50 years ago. But never those shows that involve "rejection, elimination, and other forms of public humiliation." So why do people watch this stuff?

1) Connection; 2) Self esteem boost (Geez, I'm not THAT bad); 3) Social information (what NOT to do).

Right now I'm watching (sort of) the Weather Channel--first hurricane of the season is Adrienne, or Adrian (haven't seen its spelling). I suppose that's a reality show. We're having a neighborhood picnic tonight.

Psych Your Mind: Why we watch reality TV

Health disparities

The new golden goose. Disparities. It's must be the magic word for getting grant$$.

African-Americans have the highest life time risk for HIV (1 in 22) compared with whites (1 in 170) and Hispanics (1 in 52). Sociologists and government health workers try to attribute this to poverty, homophobia and housing, and increasingly, you see geographic location thrown in. However, this idea is repugnant, insulting and degrading to the millions of low income men and women who do not have multiple same sex partners or are not unfaithful to their spouses.

Tiger and Arnold (Austrian males have the highest rate of promiscuity) and Weiner are certainly not poor or powerless, nor lacking in health insurance, yet they've chosen a promiscuous life style endangering the women they married and the children they've conceived.

It is personal choices not neighborhood, not income, not race that determines whether one will have HIV. Unfortunately, that choice may be a man choosing not to tell his wife or girlfriend that he is gay and has been having sex with men. It is his own homophobia, not mine.

HIV/AIDS and African Americans | Topics | CDC HIV/AIDS
HIV, AIDS and Men Who Have Sex with Men
Fact Sheet

Wisconsin union protestors spoil the day for Special Olympians meeting with the governor

This is the "progressive" political philosophy that has brought about the death of over 90% of children with Down Syndrome aborting them before they catch their first breath. This is the thoughtless political philosophy that allows the President of the United States to yuck it up about their abilities, and late night comedians left wing bloggers to ridicule Sarah Palin's son. Did these young (and probably paid) "zombies" have any idea what they were doing? Maybe not. Brains of mush. The Olympians are much smarter, kinder and happier than this crew brought in by the unions.

Why read Chesterton today?

Recently I began reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. So far, I've made it through the Introduction written by Philip Yancy, and part of Chapter 1. Actually, I've never cared much for Yancy's writings--he always seems so tentative and uncertain--I think because I just can't identify with what he's fleeing--fundamentalist, legalistic Christianity. Even in this small introduction, he continues to needle his strawman, stereotypical Christians. But he says in the Introduction that Chesterton revived his faith, and when he feels himself going dry, he goes to the bookshelves and pulls off a volume (in collected works it's possible he exceeds Luther and Calvin).

From the American Chesterton Society page:

All the issues we struggle with in the 21st century, Chesterton foresaw, and wrote about, in the early 20th century. Social injustice, the culture of death, statism, assaults on religion, and attacks on the family and on the dignity of the human person: Chesterton saw where these trends, already active in his time, would lead us. He was a witty, intelligent, and insightful defender of the poor, the downtrodden, the weak, and especially of the family. He loved good beer, good wine, and good cigars. He wrote in just about every genre: history, biography, novels, poetry, short stories, apologetics and theology, economic works, and more.

As a literary critic, Chesterton was without parallel. His biography of Charles Dickens is credited with sparking the Dickens revival in London in the early 20th century. His biography of St. Thomas Aquinas was called the best book on St. Thomas ever written, by no less than Etienne Gilson, the 20th century’s greatest Thomistic scholar. His books Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man are considered the 20th century’s finest works of Christian and Catholic apologetics. And audiences still delight in the adventures of Chesterton’s priest sleuth, Father Brown, as well as such timeless novels as The Man Who Was Thursday, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and others.

I like this quote (from Yancy's introduction): "I tried to be some 10 minutes in advance of truth and I found that I was 1800 years behind it." Whether this applies to Chesterton's conversion to Roman Catholicism or his personal beliefs, I'm not sure, but I know that if it's truth you're seeking it's best to return to the basics.
American Chesterton Society

Why university libraries are becoming closets

When I returned to work in the late 1970s at Ohio State University Libraries, one niggling problem was "closet libraries," which had been set up by various specialties and faculties to serve their specific needs. I guess they thought the library system was not flexible enough or knowledgeable enough to handle them.

A few disappeared. There is no longer an Agricultural Economics reading room, an Arnold Credit library, the one that served plant pathologists, or the journal collection for the veterinary medical faculty on the third floor of Sisson Hall, or other special collections (I'm more familiar with the ones west of the river). But they just popped up somewhere else. Increasingly, these collections are digital, and although they may meet in Thompson Library (recently renovated), they long ago by-passed the library.
Six digital media collections containing over 850,000 media assets that will reach over 20,000 students in 105 course sections annually.

History Multimedia Database (Humanities)
Arts & Sciences Media Manager (Humanities)
Charles Csuri Archive (Arts)
History of Art Visual Resources Library (Arts)
Huntington Archive (Arts)
Knowlton School of Architecture Digital Library (Engineering)
Related project: Praise Poetry Video Database (Humanities)

And this is just the group that has a defined mission statement (committed to cutting through the red tape, sharing resources and making things work on a grassroots level--I think they mean library) and collegial arrangements for staff, faculty and course credit. There are others.

Now it's the main library (Thompson) that has become the closet for books in special collections.

Social media for the MSM editors

"Editors from major newsrooms around the country, including CNN, 60 Minutes, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, will arrive on [the Ohio State University] campus next week for the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism's social media KipCamp. They will spend the week exploring how to leverage Facebook, tweet strategically, tell better visual stories and more." No mention in the blurb of conservative news sources, nor the dangers of blogging and microblogging. I hope they rush someone in to cover the Weiner type problems and the reasons the left defended him, and even now are saying it was just sex instead of a culture of cover ups and hypocrisy.

A list of the fellows from AP, NPR, CBS, WaPo, NBC and various environmentalist journalists, all on the warming bandwidth.

The dignity of work

This is a repeat from a blog I wrote in 2006 after working at the food pantry.

Did you know that the "working poor" families and the welfare families in this country have about the same income, but the working families by percentage of income are the most generous of any group? Yes, they donate a higher percentage of their incomes than do the wealthiest income group; and welfare families with about the same income give almost nothing to others. There is dignity in work and self-sufficency. Occasionally, something happens to people of limited means--maybe grandchildren have to be taken in, or a heating bill is outrageous, the support check doesn't come, or there's an illness, so they need a little boost from the food pantry.

Nearly all of Texas’ anti-abortion subcontractors are Christian groups

This is wrong. Morally and ethically and pragmatically. It weakens the churches and prevents them from proclaiming their message of salvation to people who are poor, suffering and vulnerable.

From 2006 to 2010, the state spent $11.7 million on its Texas Alternatives to Abortion Services Program, with nearly $7 million of that finding its way to 33 nonprofits (all but one with Christian affiliations) via the state’s primary contractor, the nonprofit Texas Pregnancy Care Network, according to public records obtained by the Texas Independent.
The Alternatives to Abortion Program — funded by state and federal money — was created in the 2005 legislative session for “the development and operation of a statewide program for females focused on pregnancy support services that promote childbirth,” according to the contract between the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and TPCN.

Nearly all of Texas’ anti-abortion subcontractors are Christian groups | The Washington Independent

Whether it's pregnancy services, summer lunch programs, food pantries, tutoring and language services, housing programs, financial counseling or jobs programming, churches need to cut the siphon that leads to the federal and state governments' money tank. If we're not allowed to discuss Christian marriage with the recipient of counseling services, or tell Bible stories while the children eat lunch, then it's time to ask member Christians for more money and tell the feds to get out of your church.

More signs of late brain maturity--stress from debt

"Researchers [at Ohio State University] found that the more credit card and college loan debt held by young adults aged 18 to 27, the higher their self-esteem and the more they felt like they were in control of their lives. The effect was strongest among those in the lowest economic class.

Only the oldest of those studied – those aged 28 to 34 – began showing signs of stress about the money they owed." Rachel Dwyer

I suspect the researchers should have included in the study the amount of alcohol and drugs these 20-somethings ingested as teen-agers. That's a known factor for destroyed brain cells, or slowing their maturity.

But then, what's Congress' excuse?

The Spring of the Unexpected Soft Patch

These are actual quotes written by degreed economists and journalists (and a few bloggers), who never seem to expect the outcome when a president who campaigned to fundamentally change our country and redistribute income from the wealthy to the poor through regulation and taxes actually succeeds in his plans. Why only the conservative talking heads like Fox's Beck and EIB‘s Limbaugh, some of whom don’t have a degree in anything, had full knowledge about the end results, I don’t know, but apparently they do read history and their parents talked about the Depression.

GM chief financial officer resigns unexpectedly. March 10, 2011

Obama's support among blacks slips unexpectedly, Hispanics too. April 7, 2011

Though economists are anxious about the unexpected slackening, they largely remain confident that the lull will prove just a soft patch and they still expect a strengthening jobs market to revive growth in the next quarters. April 15, 2011

Sales For Sarah Palin’s Second Book Spike Unexpectedly. April 17, 2011

Housing Starts in U.S. Unexpectedly Decrease to 523,000 Pace. May 17, 2011

Orders for long-lasting goods unexpectedly fell in February, raising concern over the sustainability of the rebound in U.S. business investment. March 24, 2011

Sales of existing U.S. homes unexpectedly declined, manufacturing in the Philadelphia region slowed and consumer confidence dropped, pointing to an economy that is struggling to regain momentum following the surge in energy costs. May 20, 2011

Consumer confidence unexpectedly decreased in May to the lowest level in six months as Americans grew concerned over the outlook for jobs and the economy. May 30, 2011

The economy will be in full-fledged recession by year end (although I can argue that the economy has remained in recession since 2008). The mainstream financial media are all calling the “unexpected” bad news as a “soft patch” in the economy. Tomorrow’s Non-Farm jobs report is going to be very weak. June 1, 2011

Denmark's economy unexpectedly went into recession, new figures showed yesterday. Denmark's economy contracted for a second quarter after consumers cut spending. Denmark now joins Portugal as the only European nations in a recession -- defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. June 2, 2011

Obama Eligibility Lawyer Unexpectedly Resigns: Mole Within Hawaii's Department of Health Alerted Corsi That No Long-Form Birth Certificate Existed Prior to February 24th. June 2, 2011

The jobless rate, unexpectedly, edged up to 9.1%, the second straight monthly gain and the highest this year. June 3, 2011

Oil Rebounds as API Shows Unexpectedly High Stock Draw. June 7, 2011

Read this carefully and explain

"This parking space is for expectant mothers and fathers with new born children."

Think about this "gender neutral" message for a moment. . . Does the huge luxury store that caters to my every whim for cheese or wine or meat want to earn points and create a customer-friendly image with politically correct, nonsexist nonsense which sounds like it was translated from a foreign language?

Why does an expectant father need a special parking place? Is he bloating or having charley horse pains in his hip as his waist expands so far he can't see his feet? Or this. If a woman has a new born in the car and drives to the Giant Eagle, is she even aware that she might be expecting another wee one? Or is the sign missing a comma, and really means the space is only for expectant mothers, or for fathers driving around with a new born in the car?  But that would mean mothers with a new born can't park there.

Also, think of the insensitivities this communicates to radical feminists (aka feminazis) who believe pregnant women are not even mothers, but simply carriers of a clump of parasitic cells that can be removed because it isn't a human yet.
 
Think about this and the last time you went to the store with young children.  Is it really more difficult to schlep a new born into the store than two toddlers and a sullen teen-ager who would rather not be seen with you? Which one really needs to be nearer the door?

Believe me, forty plus years ago I never took young children or babies to the grocery store, or to church, or to day care.  Saturday morning at Kroger's or Tarpy's was MY time, and I wasn't about to share it.