Another great line

Good thing an Obama aide said it. Democrats have no sense of humor and would have sought an impeachment. "Every family has a black sheep." Obama and Cheney share a 17th century French ancestor and are 8th cousins.

Here's a great line

Randall Bloomquist of WGST, Atlanta, reviews Graig Havighust's book, "Air Castle of the South," (U. of I. Press) in today's WSJ. It's about the rise and fall of WSM, an AM station in Nashville, which was created by National Life and Accident Insurance Company in 1925 to sell insurance to rural folk and ended up creating and spreading country music and the Nashville sound. I'll probably never read the book, but I loved this line:

"As history it is engaging but less than definitive. . . demanding that WSM [now owned by Gaylord Entertainment] live or die by the media economy's new rules feels a bit like asking your grandmother to work at Burger King to make ends meet."

4230

Totally Optional Prompts

Alumni of Poetry Thursday have started up Totally Optional Prompts, 1) the prompt will be posted on Saturday evening, 2) you write/post a poem at your own blog, and 3) the following Thursday you submit a link to that poem only (not your blog site URL) at T.O.P., 4) you leave comments (not criticism) after visiting/reading the poems of other T.O.P. participants.

The prompt for Saturday, Oct. 13, was from a Chinese poem, translated into English, "On Hearing a Lute-Player," and I selected one line for my prompt, "Singing old beloved songs." The back story: I'm a member of a Christian congregation with multiple worship styles (4 in 10 services) swinging from liturgical to beat driven rock. I wrote this in a few minutes after reading the prompt. I probably won't polish it--it's a bit cranky. Just needed to unload.

Singing old beloved songs

There was a day, maybe twenty years ago
(and I miss those times)
when we could quibble
about end times
or transubstantiation,
the length of sermons
or gay marriage,
paraphrases of Holy Scripture
or what happens to
the real presence when
the wine isn't consumed.

That was a simple time, light years ago
(I miss the challenge)
when we could argue
with Presbyterians
or Roman Catholics,
Pentecostals, Baptists
or Missouri Synod Lutherans,
children of the Puritans
(what happened to them?)
Now fights are in house . . .
worship form and music.

Totally optional prompts

4229

Use of the word "elite"

Nonfiction Readers Anonymous (a terrific blog by the way) thought it was amusing that Laura Ingraham, a conservative talk show host who has a law degree, has clerked at the Supreme Court and graduated from Dartmouth, would use the word "elite" when writing about agenda-driven liberals who look down on the little guy in fly-over country (her audience). Perhaps she thinks Laura is a member of "the elite." Not according to the dictionary, or the way conservatives use the word.

Here's the meaning of elite, from Webster's 9th:

the choice part or segment; especially a socially superior group; a powerful minority group, as inside the government;

Today, the elite may be "new money," or "land rich, piss-poor," but they are more likely to be academics who have tenure but not much else, or Congressmen who have been strapped onto the Beltway longer than most voters have been alive, or they may be a spouse of a former President (now making millions), accustomed to a sense of entitlement, or journalists making $40,000 a year and all the turnips they can eat, or former Presidents wandering lost around the world, or fabulously rich entertainers and celebrities who believe their own press, like the Dixie Chicks or Barbra Streisand. Attending Dartmouth and being a lawyer, gets you no points at all, near as I can tell. Nor does writing a few books, even those that get to the best seller list. Nonfictionanon, a librarian, even admits she'd never heard of her.

The word elite has little to do with wealth or where you sat out your 4-6 years of undergrad work. The way conservatives use the word, the elite may have no family pedigree at all, or they may have bunches, like John Kerry a man with a genealogy who married a widow with money. Today's elite are smug, self-appointed divas and web-site owners, some immigrant millionaires or billionaires like Soros and Huffington, or place holders on boards of NGOs who are massaging their guilt because they have so much money, or formerly useful people who have outlived their usefulness.

The elite used to have class; now they are just crass.

Good for you, President Carter!

The former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter (who sometimes forgets he has no authority, moral, symbolic or otherwise), didn't back down and act like a doormat in a recent incident in Sudan. 200,000 have been killed in western Sudan since 2003, African Arab on black African, Muslim on Muslim. Why would he think they'd respect an elderly white Christian they didn't even recognize?

Unfortunately, forgetfulness, fantasy and combativeness are all signs of early dementia.

Tossing the chips

Those of you raised in rural areas who may have had the opportunity in your youth to walk barefoot through a cow pasture, know what a chip is--when thrown it can have the feel of a hockey puck. Keep that in mind has you listen to the howls that Bush hates children because of his veto of increases in the S-CHIP program. Here's a summary from Congressman Jeff Miller about the expansion of services (poor children are already covered--this moves up to the next quintile and above),

Under the SCHIP expansion, an estimated 1 million to 1.2 million children would gain SCHIP coverage, but between 467,000 and 611,000 children would lose private coverage.

The annual cost to taxpayers of covering an uninsured child under the Senate's expansion plan would increase from $1,418 to between $2,508 and $2,859. This is 1.8 to 2 times the cost of SCHIP coverage for a child in a family at this income level or almost 2.5 times the average cost of private insurance.

The bill increases the age of "children" eligible for benefits to 25 years and permits States to continue to enroll childless adults.

The expansion would be financed by increased tobacco taxes, including a 61-cent increase in the cigarette tax, to $1 per pack. The bill assumes that there will be 22 million new smokers a year to ensure budget neutrality.

Expanding SCHIP to cover children in higher income families is not an efficient or cost-effective way to reduce the ranks of uninsured children.

The proposal put forward by Democrats would render the current income eligibility requirement for SCHIP meaningless and create an open-ended government entitlement for families, many of whom already have private insurance coverage.

And let's not forget, that this isn't about insuring poor children (no one 25 is a child and people without children aren't parents), it's about universal health care. If you've been hearing the horror stories about boomers and medicare, imagine that for everyone, but with personal health insurance destroyed.

Copied from an op ed in NewsBlaze.

General Sanchez' view of the press, Congress and the war effort

Ricardo Sanchez' harshest words were for the media, then Congress at his Military Reporters and Editors Address, Washington D.C. I'll excerpt a few items. First the media:

You feel qualified to make character judgments that are communicated to the world. My experience is not unique and we can find other examples such as the treatment of Secretary Brown during Katrina. This is the worst display of journalism imaginable by those of us that are bound by a strict value system of selfless service, honor and integrity.

You seek for self aggrandisement or to advance your individual quest for getting on the front page with your stories.

The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry. Once reported, your assessments become conventional wisdom and nearly impossible to change.

The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our servicemembers who are at war.

Holy moly. And for the administration:

This administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power. The latest "revised strategy" is a desperate attempt by an administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people.

And for the Congress

Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the republican and democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. At times, these partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield.

Congress must shoulder a significant responsibility for this failure since there has been no focused oversight of the nations political and economic initiatives in this war. Exhortations, encouragements, investigations, studies and discussions will not produce success.

At no time in America's history has there been a greater need for bipartisan cooperation. The threat of extremism is real and demands unified action at the same levels demonstrated by our forefathers during World War I and World War II. America has failed to date.

These are just excerpts. It's not pretty. But a strong feel of truth.

When Washington Post wrote up the speech, it totally left out his criticism of the media. Oh my gosh, what a surprise!

Canning the spam

At e-Commerce Times, Erika Morphy writes

Two men have been successfully prosecuted for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mail messages promoting pornographic Web sites, and reaping millions of dollars as a result.

Jeffrey A. Kilbride of Venice, Calif., was sentenced to six years, and James R. Schaffer of Paradise Valley, Ariz., was sentenced to and five years and three months, to be served in Arizona. They were prosecuted under the federal CAN-SPAM act.

Between Jan. 20, 2004, and June 9, 2004, the two bombarded AOL members with their spam, prompting more than 600,000 complaints.

They also engaged in conspiracy, money laundering, fraud, and transportation of obscene materials. U.S. District Judge David Campbell sentenced the two after a three-week trial, giving Kilbride a stiffer penalty for attempting to keep a government witness from testifying.

Unfortunately, she says it will be business as usual for the other porn slime spammers. The money's just too big and there's way too many bad guys. So just keep reporting it.

Documents on Jena 6

You can read the documents about the beating of a white teen by a group of black teens, an incident that had nothing to do with a tree or nooses, and more to do with thuggery. Now aging civil rights leaders with nothing to do, are jumping in to support some teen aged hoodlums.

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton says Congress should expand hate crime laws to deal more forcefully with noose-hanging incidents like the one in the Jena Six case in order to squelch what he called a sharp rise in racism.

Isn't this the same guy who got snookered by Twana Brawley? Does he ever come to the rescue of black citizens terrorized by black crooks?

Armenians in my family tree

When the Democrats decided an apology from the Turks for the slaughter of Armenians nearly a century ago was the way to defeat our troops in Iraq, I began to check the family tree. There wasn't much mixing until the 1920s and 1930s when the Scots-Irish Protestants and German-Swiss Anabaptists started finding each other, but we're quite a stew now. Native Americans, Alaskan First Peoples, Mexican Americans, African Americans. And sure enough, with the click of a mouse I see the west coast Kerkorians descended from the Pennsylvania Danner/George group as did I. However, I got bogged down with the Woos and the Lams, the Chinese "cousins" who are also in the Danner/George branch of the family (I have over 3500 names in my Family Tree Maker database).

What the Turks did to the Armenians was awful. Millions died or fled their homeland, leaving behind families, culture, churches and businesses. However, a much higher percentage of Irish died at the hands of the British through famine and immigration, going into exile in North America, Australia and New Zealand. Because Ireland is a tiny island, the Irish lost half its population to bad government and agricultural policies--far more than Africa did to the slave trade a century before the great famine.

So where do you start when demanding reparations and resolutions about old wrongs? The people who perpetrated them or suffered at their hands are gone. Should the American blacks go after the Arabs and African tribal chiefs because they initiated the slave trade needing an outlet for war booty? Can the Irish go after the British who were just going after the descendants of the Celts and Vikings who had earlier invaded and enslaved Ireland? Their descendants, those who survived those difficult times, have a better life in their new lands than the descendants of those who stayed behind.

Also, it is unthinkable that a powerful American ethnic lobby group, whether La Raza or descendants of WWII internment camps or descendants of the plantation slaves would ever stop with an apology, no matter how heartfelt, soothing and useless. The bar would be raised demanding more reparations for loss of culture, personal humiliation of great-grandpa and God only knows what other indignities difficult to quantify.

Today's opinion page in the WSJ pretty well summed it up:

If Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos want to take down U.S. policy in Iraq to tag George Bush with failure, they should have the courage to walk through the front door to do it."

For another view, see Silvio Canto Jr's blog

Starting the Christmas wars early

It's sad that Christians, who according to scripture, should be the least materialistic in observing days with religious meaning, have to battle the retailers who can't survive without the Christmas season over use of the word "Christmas" or the Mass of Christ. Of course, it isn't just retailers. One of my favorite stories on this muddle of respecting all religions except Christianity goes back to the 1980s when I got a glossy Christmas card produced by the Medical Library Association with greetings in about 10 languages, but nothing in English that said "Merry Christmas," even though it was in other languages. Then there was last years' "new books for the holidays" list from our Public Library published in a local magazine which managed to leave out all new titles that had anything to do with religion.



To solve this problem of offense to none while ignoring most, The Smithsonian sent out two catalogs, one "holiday" and the other "Christmas." I think holiday came first--and does have one or two Halloween items in it, but in the Christmas section of the holiday issue, the word Christmas is never used. Then in the Christmas catalog, the word Christmas does appear, although there is very little with any religious significance--12 days of Christmas nutcracker, Christmas flora throw, Victorian Christmas figurine. As an aside, there's a yummy Fontanini nativity celebrating the 100th year of the figurines made in Italy--8 pieces, $195, and you can get the 3 Kings for $175 and 3 palm trees for $50. For cat lovers, I think Smithsonian has just about the cutest stuff out there.

Update: Before tossing out the 20 page brochure from the Upper Arlington Parks and Recreation program for fall 2007, I checked: there is a photo of a Christmas tree, and it says, "Celebrate the Season in UA! UA Winter Festival/Tree lighting ceremony." There will be visits with Santa, holiday lights, and a brunch with Santa at a local restaurant. No Christmas in our town. Just a season.

4221

He says, she did

Dick Morris isn't my favorite source of information--he goes to whatever political wing will pay his bills, but he was with the Clintons a lot of years, and these quotes are well documented. It won't hurt Hillary a bit with liberals, they are just street creds, but for independents or moderates, it might make a difference. These are the statements in Bill's ad for Hillary, and Dick Morris' response.

Bill says: "In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor."

The facts are: Hillary's main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Bill says: "Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children's rights project for poor kids."

The facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

4220

How social theory has hurt minorities and women

Forget Anita Hill for the moment. What Clarence Thomas has done with his memoir (My Grandfather's Son) is remind Americans that many of the laws and regulations put in place to help minorities, especially blacks, most with good intentions but poorly thought out and burdened by useless guilt, have actually held them back. Now we're in a huge mess because careers, reputations, and entire organizations are built on government regulations, affirmative action and keeping the civil rights pot stirred (like the Jena 6 story, or crack cocaine sentencing).

Even Eugene Robinson, an associate editor of the Washington Post (Oct. 10), updates what Thomas said about liberals putting blacks in a box (although Robinson seems not to have read the book and calls Thomas pugnacious for recording in terrifying detail what was common to many blacks in the 1950s through the 1980s, even if it isn't today) -- "editors, reporters, columnists and tv producers keep only 2 phone numbers on speed-dial for use whenever any news breaks concerning a black person."

He noted, for instance, that it made no sense to bus poor black children to the schools of poor white children where they would get an equally poor education. Another social experiment: Thomas believes that racial preferences actually hurt black kids and place their achievements in doubt even when they excell. That claim really brought out the accusations of "pulling up the ladder" after he got in.

Now there is some research by Richard Sander of UCLA that says the same thing, but you can be sure it will be quashed or it will be called racist. There are people fighting for their livelihoods to say nothing of their legacy.

"The schools involved are dozens of law schools in California and elsewhere, and the program is the system of affirmative action that enables hundreds of minority law students to attend more elite institutions than their credentials alone would allow. Data from across the country suggest to some researchers that when law students attend schools where their credentials (including LSAT scores and college grades) are much lower than the median at the school, they actually learn less, are less likely to graduate and are nearly twice as likely to fail the bar exam than they would have been had they gone to less elite schools. This is known as the "mismatch effect." Not to shock you senseless, but I was an A student at the University of Illinois--at Harvard I probably wouldn't have made it. That definitely would have been a "mismatch."

The problem as Sander sees it, isn't that black students can't make it in law school, but that because of preferences, they aren't attending the right school.

"In general, research shows that 50% of black law students end up in the bottom 10th of their class, and that they are more than twice as likely to drop out as white students. Only one in three black students who start law school graduate and pass the bar on their first attempt; most never become lawyers. How much of this might be attributable to the mismatch effect of affirmative action is still a matter of debate, but the problem cries out for attention."

Good luck getting funding to research that! I heard an interview with Don Dutton on Mike McConnell (700 am radio) this morning--haven't researched it myself--saying domestic violence tougher laws are actually hurting women, especially black women, because if men are hauled off to jail on a first complaint, women are less likely to summon police and after the required anger management (for just the man) instead of couples counseling, the man is more likely to just kill her the next time. I haven't looked into this, but a brief google search brings up only feminist hyped websites and hysteria about how many women are killed every so many seconds, so the unintended consequences of stiffer penalties at the first cry for help wouldn't surprise me.

Another example of failed social theory mention on McConnell's show is the crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing story. Supposedly, it's racist to treat the two drug criminals differently. When it became obvious that crack cocaine was a serious problem in the black community in the mid-1980s, the Congressional Black Caucus lobbied for harsher penalties and got it. It was primarily black on black violence. So now there is a huge discrepancy, some say by race, but studies show it is amount sold, prior history, and weapons used that cause the stiffer penalties, not the type of drug. City Journal

Oh, and it's now called IPV, Intimate Partner Violence, at least in Canada, I suppose so gays and lesbians can be included. Sounds like a feminine hygiene product.

4219

e.e. cummings on richard dawkins

e.e. cummings wrote to his sister Elizabeth in 1954: "if you take Someone Worth Worshipping (alias 'God') away from human beings, they'll (without realizing what they're doing) worship someone-unworthy-of-worship); e.g.; a Roosevelt or Stalin or Hitler--alias themselves." Probably also applies to environment-fundamentalists, but cummings died in 1962 before the current pantheist panic.

The above information appears on p. 371 of "A poem a day," edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholar Albery.

Monday Memories--The Stalkers

Usually when I write a Monday Memory, it is something personal--a family or employment snippet. This memory surfaced while I was reading Clarence Thomas' My Grandfather's Son. Anita Hill's charges were so bizarre and unfounded, according to everyone who knew Justice Thomas, that you are left to wonder why would any woman do this, and how could she pass a polygraph test?

Unfortunately, there are people in every walk of life whose fantasies and longings are so strong you can't shake their beliefs with logic, recall or the facts. They may not fit any definition of mentally ill, but somewhere a false memory has taken root. I knew two such women about 30 years ago, and they were both "in love" with the same man, and firmly believed their love was being returned, if they could only get to him to consummate it. A glance, a kind word, a chance meeting at a grocery store--they were the building blocks of their burning desire.

One woman was divorced with 2 or 3 young children about the same age as mine; she was employed, homely, helpless and more than a bit strange. All of us at church felt sorry for her--until we had to spend more than 10 minutes with her. She was deeply in love with a staff member of the church and thought he returned her interest. He finally had to get police protection and a restraining order. I ran into her several years later on a job interview, but have no idea how that problem was resolved.

The other woman was also in love with this same staff member (he was extremely good looking and very charming with a great personality). They had had a bit more contact because her husband worked with him so they saw each other socially. She had almost become glue--I'm sure he had trouble shaking her once he became aware of it. You often saw them together--in a group of course, because it was a large staff, but she tried to be as close as possible. The adoration on her face was embarrassing. Eventually she divorced her husband--I don't know which one kept the children, but both left the church.

The much beloved staff member eventually "married" his gay partner.

4217

What kind of a blogger am I

Mother would be so proud. I'm off the charts with "no greed."

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I saw this at Gekko's site.

The itty-bitty buckeye

My daughter's Chihuahua doesn't think her buckeye sweater is the least bit cute. She couldn't wait to get out of it. A buckeye, for you non-Ohio readers, is an Ohio State fan, and my daughter and son-in-law are definitely that.

Abby hoping to escape from her buckeye sweater
Free at last
We are doing a few trial runs before November when they go to Las Vegas, and we puppy-sit. Our cat is not pleased, no not one bit. Our cat is 7 lbs., the dog about half that, but oh, she so wants to be friends with the big pussy cat. Not going to happen.

Friends of the Creche--Heartland Cradlesong 2007

This morning after church we bought our tickets for the November 9 performance of the Upper Arlington Lutheran Church adult choir premiering Michael Martin's choral and orchestral composition, Scenes from His Nativity, commissioned by the Friends of the Creche, a society dedicated to studying the creche tradition and collecting nativities. Our pastor, Paul Ulring, an expert on hymnody, is the keynote speaker and will discuss sacred Christmas carols used in contemplating the miracle of the Savior's birth. The $20 ticket also covers a Koldtbord, a traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve feast.

Donna selling tickets
The event takes place at The Church at Mill Run, 3500 Mill Run Dr., Hilliard, OH 43026, with the Koldtbord beginning at 6:15 p.m. and the concert at 7:30 p.m. Dave and Donna Hahm are the co-chairs for this event and tickets are available both at Mill Run and Lytham Road campuses of UALC. Beat the Christmas rush--invite a friend for a wonderful evening celebrating the diverse American cultures that include German, Norwegian, Irish, African American and Greek Orthodox Christmas traditions.

The main activities of the convention will be at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Dublin, OH and will include

Frs. Nathanael Smyth and Nicholas Hughes, monks from the Monastic Brotherhood of St. Theodore, Galion, Ohio, will present the art and hymnody of the Nativity in the Greek Orthodox tradition. Nannette Maciejunes, Director of the Columbus Museum of Art, will introduce the mid-20th Century African American Columbus barber and wood carver, Elijah Pierce, whose vision of the Incarnation shaped his life-long ministry of “sermons in wood” and made him one of the nation’s outstanding African American folk artists. In addition, the traditions of Norway, Ireland, Germany, and Slovakia will be featured.

An exhibit of nativities from the Marian Library of the University of Dayton will be introduced by Fr. Johann Roten, director of the library and curator of the collec-tion. Program highlights include two Midwestern artists: Jerry Krider of Columbia City, Indiana, and Gary Wilson of Monroe, Michigan. They will talk about the inspiration behind their unique respective expressions of the Nativity in wood and clay. They are among the artists who will be exhibiting in the Manger Mart for the first time. Also planned are programs on the herbal lore associated with the nativity, Advent calendars, building a collection on a budget, and more." From the website schedule

Is your profession a calling?

Several years ago I read an op-ed type column in the WSJ (it's hard to tell in a liberal newspaper if you're reading news or an editorial) that I've never forgotten. A journalist wrote about a friend from college who chose a career in business. The writer chose journalism because "he wanted to make a difference in people's lives," or something like that. By age 50, the writer had had several reverses in his career and was struggling to even make ends meet. His friend by then had retired from a successful business career--don't remember if he invented something, or sold something, but he'd made a bundle. Now he was living his dream--he'd created a foundation and was using his money to help people.

I think juniors or seniors in high school should be told the realities of life, handed a fistful of play/monopoly money, the classifieds from any major city with ads for grocery stores, restaurants, plays, housing, cars, etc. and a book of charts, graphs and stats on salaries. After they've figured out how they would live in Chicago, LA or Peoria, let them look through the college catalog. They may still want to be a librarian, a social worker, an architect or a journalist, but it might cut down on the whining 10 years later about college loans, cost of living, and how this generation won't live as well as its parents or grand parents.

Annoyed Librarian writes: "I always assumed that librarians working the really crappy jobs were doing it because they were lazy or stupid, or had no marketable skills, or had previously worked in an even more annoying profession, or were uncompetitive in some way they couldn't help (unable to move from the area, for example), or just not very good at their jobs. But now I know that it's possibly because they view librarianship as a calling, like being a priest or a rock musician. Those librarians are just living the dream, serving the public faithfully, saving the world one library card at a time."

Yesterday the WSJ featured the gift to NY School of Social Work of $50 million from Constance and Martin Silver. Mrs. Silver got a bachelor and Master's in Social Work there in the late 70s, but reading through the bio, she must have gotten it after she married Martin, because it says they met right after she finished high school and came to NY to get a job. He was already a graduate of NYU when they met (it's also possible she isn't wife #1 and younger). They became wealthy because of his blood-plasma business, Life Resources, Inc. which was sold to the British government for $110 Million in 2002 when they were still in their 60s. She says the gifts (this one and others to NYU) are to fight poverty because "they had struggled to overcome poverty." [Reading the story I don't think they were any poorer than the rest of us growing up in the 1950s--we all had a lower standard of living than today.]

I think the gift from the Silvers might better serve needy college students by offering scholarships to the business school or even trade schools for youngsters who don't have a "calling" but want a better life for themselves and their families. Only a growing government needs more social workers, and that's not how they met their dream.

4213

Bad news, good news about education

As I turned off the vacuum cleaner and was wrapping the cord, I heard Edward Crane of Cato Institute say (on Book TV, 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged) that his 16 year old daughter's Spanish teacher had required the language class to watch Al Gore's "award winning" documentary. The audience twittered, because this movie and the education system's propaganda has become a big joke before the speaker can even get to the punch line. Then he opined (paraphrased, since I didn't have a pencil with me), "The bad news is they're teaching this; the good news is the kids aren't learning anything."

Earlier John Fund (WSJ) told about his role as a pinata at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival . You almost knew before he described some of the speakers what was going to come--he said something about walking through the deepest thought at the festival and not getting his ankles wet (again, a paraphrase). Apparently while they consumed water from 7,000+ plastic bottles they were hearing that even if we could roll back emissions to the Robert Fulton era (steamboat), it wouldn't be enough. However, I looked through the list of speakers, and some of the program looked pretty interesting. The kids programming looked like 1970s reruns. If it didn't work for their parents, maybe it will work for them. Check out the link. Your experience in Aspen may be different.

I think I read Atlas Shrugged in 1963--all 1100+ pages. It was very interesting and challenging, better than most books by atheists.