Flu Shots are a Crock

The Wife and I have had quite a bit of difficulty with the field of pediatric medicine these days. We both have the image of our childhood pediatricians in our head as we are somewhat disappointed in McClinics and how they completely destroy any feeling of relationship and partnership with our baby's physician.

In general, the people we've interacted with at the local pediatrics clinic have been nice in an impersonal kind of way. But the Wife got something of a dirty look from a nurse the other day when she dared question her as to just how useful a flu shot can be when there are thousands and thousands of permutations of flu bug that can infect you.

Now in general we're pro-immunizations for babies. It sucks to watch a small baby get poked with 4+ shots in one sitting, though the nurses we've had administer the Baby her shots have been tremendously talented at making it as quick of an experience as possible with our help. Laying that aside, I'm not sure I'm sold on scientists who've attempted to link autism and learning disabilities to a higher concentration of immunizations at a young age. I'm not convinced that there's a causal link there and I haven't seen any study show more than correlation.

But I have to say, for now I'm convinced that flu shots are a crock. We were waffling about it last month when we gave the Baby a set of boosters and they asked us if we wanted to give her a flu shot, and our doctor pointed out how miserable it would be to have a sick baby. Well, not only did the Baby run a temperature for two or three days as a side effect of the vaccination, but she got sick last weekend. Just as she was getting better from being sick, she was due for her booster and then promptly burned a fever after getting it. I'm so glad we got that one extra vaccination.

Does anyone out there know of any legit studies on this? Any strong feelings one way or another? I'd be interested to hear them.

80s Moment: Footloose

I've had quite a few politically-oriented rants of late, so here's a blast from the past. I know that we've all had a moment where we were feeling so oppressed, so frustrated by being brought down by the man, that we just had to pull into a warehouse, put a tape into our VW bug with the volume turned way up, and dance until it's all better. For those of you who have yet to experience the joy and the wonder, or if it's just been a while, I give you Kevin Bacon in "Footloose." Enjoy:

Enlightened Thoughts from a Mormon Democrat: Preach On, Brother Card!

For those of you who are confused at my title, I understand. A Mormon Democrat is seen largely as a contradiction in terms, but there are more than you’d think. I happen not to be one of them, but some of my friends are. There’s even one in the Senate—the always lovable Brother Harry Reid of Nevada.

Orson Scott Card, a Democrat, writer, and Mormon recently wrote a fantastic bit of commentary about the current state of journalism in America and its overwhelmingly “forgiving” attitude of liberal politicians. Here’s the link. I tried for the life of me to excerpt it and I couldn't in good conscience leave anything out, so if you'd like to read it here, here goes:

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

For Those of You Who Doubt the Power of Media on Perception

Today I came across yet another study quantifying the man-crush the media has on Barack Obama. (Thanks to the L.A. Times for bringing it to my attention. It's an admirable self-indictment as it's as liberal an institution as any of the major cities' newspapers.)

The study was done by the Pew Research Center. They're legit. Rupert Murdoch doesn't own them or anything. The article found that news media coverage of Obama has been about a third positive, a third negative, and a third neutral or mixed. McCain's received coverage that has been about half negative, 20% positive, and the rest neutral or mixed.

The media's crush on Obama is well-documented and has been the substance of some of SNL's best routines of the current campaign. Though I'm typically among the first in line to indict the media generally for having a leftist slant, the article reminds us that McCain's current pattern of coverage is parallel to Gore's in 2000.

It's a good study, and it puts out there an interesting question to which it makes no pretense at having the answer: is the particular media coverage a cause or an effect of public opinion? Theoretically, it could go either way. I'm curious as to your thoughts out there.

I did want to post this, though, because it again could be seen of evidence of the power of the way events are portrayed over our perceptions of it. I've referenced that phenomenon more in relationship to how the recession's been incorrectly labeled in the name of fear, but certainly those who didn't decide months ago whom they would vote for would do well to take a step back from the hype one way or the other and find a means that they're comfortable with to get information on the candidates.

Though I'm more of a party man is cache to admit, I've gotten a lot of information from Project Vote Smart and The League of Women Voters. They do a pretty good job of just providing information, which I like.

P.S. Are you kidding me?

Political Bumper Stickers: Always Make You Think

It's an election year, folks. That means that in addition to forgetting about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay attention to which small town the candidates decided to pretend to care about today, in addition to highly-scripted-and-negotiated-beforehand-debates-crafted-to-appear spontaneous, in addition to pretending that these folks can actually influence the economy, and in addition to some of the best material those zany folks at SNL can provide, it's bumper sticker time! I'm not the first blogger to weigh in on this wonderful phenomenon, but here's my two cents.

I know what you're going to say. Nuts who are willing to deface the back of a perfectly good car that may have cost as much as $4000 need not wait until election season to do so. Maybe I just notice them a bit more during election season. I think the nuts might take it up a notch for those leap years, and this year is no different.

On the surface, it seems that the nuts are actually trying to persuade their readers to see the folly of their ways. I think that, in honest moments, the nuts will be ready to admit that they're not going to persuade anybody, but rather they're there for a laugh, or at most, to annoy those who disagree with them. Though most of my exposure is to zany left-wing ignorance via bumper sticker, I've seen my share of zany right-wing ignorance as well.



There are a few rules for living in Denver. 1) You're not hard core politically aware unless you drive a Suburu that's at least 7 years old. 2) You're not doing your part to raise awareness unless you tattoo the back of the thing with bumper stickers designed to annoy the Right. If you're using said medium to annoy the Left, you're more likely from the suburbs.

The Wife and I are not yet in compliance with the above regulations as we choose only to use our car to market (with no compensation, of course) body boarding products from Southern California that no one here will recognize or ski resorts we've frequented.

I found an interesting article on some of the results of said annoyance. If you look collectively at the tone of the bumper sticker messages, there's definitely an underlying feeling of bitterness that the opposing viewpoint dare coexist within our great democracy. According to some folks at Colorado State, while aggressive driving is the result of 2/3 of all auto accidents, drivers with politically charged bumper stickers are significantly more likely to be the causers of those accidents. Interesting, huh?



If I may again put on my glasses, bow tie, and leather-elbowed tweed blazer for a minute, I suspect that bumper stickers are the modern incarnation of America's tradition of pamphleting. Before the days of modern media, if you wanted to get your political viewpoint across, you'd make a pamphlet. It was occassionally brilliant political discourse with authors among the best and brightest of our country's Founding. But more often than not, it was a zealot arguing often under the guise of religious moral right (as in good, not right-wing per se) who penned these little gems. They'd be paid for by political parties, political machines, and even churches, and people couldn't get enough of them.

Other modern incarnations of the pamphlet include ever-so-persuasive-for-their-clarity television and radio commercials paid for by political action committees, talk radio, and my all-time favorite: the email forward that you send to people who already agree with you.

On the election generally, I was sick of this election about 10 months ago when I entertained myself on a drive from St. Louis to Denver by following the Iowa caucuses. There was little else I could follow on the way across Kansas. That was January after visiting the In-Laws for the holidays. Keep in mind that our taxes are paying the salaries and benefits for our good friends in our respective capitols to run for reelection this year instead of actually doing their jobs. It's getting to the point where I'd just rather it end.

Good Perspective on the Economy

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by professor, writer, etc. Gregg Easterbrook. I enjoyed it because it is a cry for perspective on the current financial situation, and I happen to wish that there was more of a cry for perspective from the media. I made the claim recently that this sort of down is just a part of modern economics and got called to the carpet for it by an old friend. Here's some additional reasoning for my position:

Gasoline Plentiful, Perspective Scarce: "Financial chaos is sweeping the world," a New York Times lead story said last week. I didn't notice any chaos in my part of the world -- every business was open, ATMs were working, goods and services were plentiful. There are economic problems to be sure. But chaos? Collapse? Next Depression? Please, media and political worlds, let's stop hyperventilating and show some perspective.

What is going on is a financial panic, not an economic collapse. Financial panics are no fun, especially for anyone who needs to cash out an asset right now for retirement, college and so on. But financial panics occur cyclically and are not necessarily devastating. The most recent financial panic was 1987, when the stock market fell 23 percent in a single day. Pundits and politicians instantly began talking about another Depression, about the "end of Wall Street." The 1987 panic had zero lasting economic consequences -- no recession began, and in less than two years, stocks had recouped all losses. (See John Gordon's excellent 2004 book on the history of financial panics, "An Empire of Wealth.") Perhaps a recession will be triggered by the current financial panic, but it may not necessarily be severe.

Politicians and pundits are competing to see who can act most panicked and use the most exaggerated claims about economic crisis -- yet the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are, in fact, strong. Productivity is high; innovation is high; the workforce is robust and well-educated; unemployment is troubling at 6.1 percent, but nothing compared to the recent past, such as 11.8 percent unemployment in 1992; there are no shortages of resources, energy or goods. Here, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows that return on capital is historically high; high returns on capital are associated with strong economies. Some Americans have significant problems with mortgages, and credit availability for business could become an issue if the multiple bank-stabilizing plans in progress don't work. But the likelihood is they will work. When the 1987 panic hit, people were afraid the economy would collapse; it didn't. This panic is global, enlarging the risks. But there's a good chance things will turn out fine.

Why has a credit-market problem expanded into a panic? One reason is the media and political systems are now programmed for panic mode. Everything's a crisis! Crises, after all, keep people's eyes glued to cable news shows, so the media have an interest in proclaiming crises. Crises make Washington seem more important, and can be used to justify giveaways to favored constituent groups, so Washington influence-peddlers have an interest in proclaiming crises.

An example of the exaggerated crisis claim is the assertion that Americans "lost" $2 trillion from their pension savings in the past month, while equities "lost" $8 trillion in value. "Investors Lose $8.4 Trillion of Wealth" read a Wall Street Journal headline last week. This confuses a loss with a decline. Unless you cashed out stocks or a 401(k) in the past month, you haven't "lost" anything. Nor have most investors "lost" money, let alone $8.4 trillion -- crisis-mongering is now so deeply ingrained in the media that even Wall Street Journal headline writers have forgotten basic economics. People who because of financial need have no choice but to cash out stocks right now are really harmed. Anyone who simply holds his or her ground with stocks takes no loss and is likely, although of course not certain, to come out ahead in the end. During the housing price bubble of 2003 to 2006, many Americans became much better off on paper, but never actually sold their homes, so it was all paper gains. Right now many Americans holdings stocks or retirement plans are much worse off on paper, but will be fine so long as they don't panic and sell. One of the distressing things about last week's media cries of doomsday is that they surely caused some average people to sell stocks or 401(k)'s in panic, taking losses they might have avoided by simply doing nothing. The financial shout-shows on cable tend to advise people to buy when the market is rising, sell when the market is falling -- the worst possible advice, and last week it was amplified by panic.

We've also fallen into panic because we pay way too much attention to stock prices. Ronald Reagan said, "Never confuse the stock market with the economy." Almost everyone is now making exactly that mistake. The stock market is not a barometer of the economy; it is a barometer of what people think stocks are worth. These are entirely separate things. What people think stocks are worth now depends on their guess about what stocks will be worth in the future, which is unknowable. You can only guess, and thus optimism feeds optimism while pessimism feeds pessimism.

There is no way the American economy became 8 percent less valuable between breakfast and morning coffee break Friday, then became 3 percent more valuable at lunchtime (that is, improved by 11 percent), then became 3 percent less valuable by afternoon teatime (that is, declined by 6 percent) -- to cite the actual Dow Jones Industrials swings from Friday. And the economy sure did not become 11 percent more valuable Monday. Such swings reflect panic or herd psychology, not the underlying economy, which changes over months and years, not single days. For the past few weeks pundits and Washington and London policy-makers have been staring at stock tickers as if they provided minute-by-minute readouts of economic health, which they do not. It's embarrassing to see White House and administration officials seemingly so poorly schooled in economic theory they are obsessing over stock-price movements, which they cannot control and in the short term should not even care about.

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AP Photo/Richard Drew

"It's a crisis! A calamity! The end of civilization! Say, is the limo with my champagne here yet?"

Consider this. On Black Monday in 1987, the market fell 23 percent. If you had invested $100 in a Dow Jones Index fund the following day, it would be $460 now, a 275 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the big slide of the past month, and still excellent. So don't panic, just hold your stocks. And if you'd invested $100 in real estate in 1987, it would be $240 today, a 30 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the housing price bubble burst. A 30 percent real gain in 20 years isn't a great investment -- until you consider that you lived in the house or condo during this time. To purchase and live in a dwelling, then come out ahead when you sell, is everyone's dream. Not only do stocks remain a good buy, America on average is still coming out ahead on the housing dream. (This example uses the Case Shiller Index for the whole country; because housing markets are local, some homeowners have lost substantial ground while others enjoyed significant appreciation.)

Economic problems are likely to be with us for awhile, but also likely to be resolved -- the 1987 panic and the 1997 Asian currency collapse both were repaired more quickly than predicted, with much less harm than forecast. Want to worry? Worry about the fact that the United States is borrowing, mainly from foreign investors and China, the money being used to fix our banks. The worse the national debt becomes -- $11 trillion now, and increasing owing to Washington giveaways -- the more the economy will soften over the long term. It's long-term borrowing, not short-term Wall Street mood swings, that ought to worry us, because the point may be reached where we can no longer solve problems by borrowing our way out. TMQ's former Brookings Institution colleague Peter Orszag, now director of the Congressional Budget Office, was on "Newshour" last week talking about the panic. Orszag is a wicked-smart economist -- for instance, he is careful to say pension holdings have declined, not been lost like most pundits are saying, as if there were no difference between decline and loss! The below exchange occurred with host Jeffrey Brown. Remember these words:

PETER ORSZAG: One thing we need to remember is we're lucky that we have the maneuvering room now to issue lots of additional Treasury securities and intervene aggressively to address this crisis.

JEFFREY BROWN: Wait a minute. Explain that. Lucky in what sense?

PETER ORSZAG: That people are still willing to lend to us. If in 20 or 30 years we continue on the same path, with rising health-care costs and rising budget deficits, we would reach a point where we wouldn't have that ability.

Senator ___________ for President?

In part of my ongoing "political science moments" series, I caught an interesting article on Drudge that made me think of something interesting about this campaign. First off, look at the last 52 years of presidential face-offs, and see what pattern there is:

2004 - Pres. Bush def. Sen. Kerry
2000 - Gov. Bush def. V.P./Sen. Gore
1996 - Pres. Clinton def. Sen. Dole
1992 - Gov. Clinton def. Pres. Bush
1988 - V.P. Bush def. Gov. Dukakis
1984 - Pres. Reagan def. Sen. Mondale
1980 - Gov. Reagan def. Pres. Carter
1976 - Gov. Carter def. Pres. Ford*
1972 - Pres. Nixon def. Sen. McGovern
1968 - Former V.P. Nixon def. Standing V.P. Humphrey**
1964 - Pres. Johnson*** def. Sen. Goldwater
1960 - Sen. Kennedy def. V.P./Gov. Nixon
1958 - Pres. Eisenhower v. Gov. Stevenson

Of the 13 elections mentioned, the last time a non-executive defeated an executive (President, V.P., or Governor) was when, thanks in no small part to Nixon's cold versus Kennedy's dynamic personality (and willingness to wear makeup) on the first televised presidential debate, Senator John F. Kennedy defeated former Governor-then-Vice-President Richard Nixon.

In 6 elections where an executive went up against a Senator, 5 were won by the executive. The numbers jump to 8 and 7 respectively when you take into account that Vice President Humphrey only served a short time and was previously a Senator and that President Ford was never elected to an executive office and only served a short time as president.

You have to go back to 1928 when former Cabinet member Herbert Hoover defeated former Governor of New York Alfred Smith to find another instance of a non-executive (though telling that he'd served in the executive branch for some time) defeating an executive. Before that, candidates' backgrounds were a bit more diverse and it becomes more difficult to discern patterns.

The theory is that Senators aren't as well-equipped to run a good campaign as are executives, that they're not as experienced at running the size of staff required to organize on a national level, that they're more likely to be career politicians than to bring other experience to the table, and that they've not had to cater to independents like executives have had to. JFK's success doesn't even necessarily refute the theory since you could argue that he was uniquely equipped to overcome these challenges as he came from a political machine family. And he was just a good guy--a social liberal but a Cold War Hawk. All things being equal, it's a pretty good predictor of who will win any given election.

So, if you're a poli sci geek like yours truly, you should be fascinated by this election for the simple reason that it's so rare for two Senators to face off. Even though Sen. McCain has no executive experience, he's no stranger to presidential elections, so maybe that will be to his benefit.

The above-mentioned article refers to something of a behind-the-scenes evidence of experience v. lack thereof. It's a reporter's description of the Obama campaign compared to the McCain campaign. Apparently, Obama's campaign staff is having a bit less success at staying on top of the logistics of a complex national campaign than is McCain's. If conditions are how the reporter describes, it's interesting that the press seems to have as much of a crush on Obama as it has.

I'm eager to see how it all turns out.

*President Ford was a Representative before being appointed as V.P. to replace Sprio Agnew after his resignation. He then succeeded Pres. Nixon after Watergate, never having been elected to either position.
**Vice President Hubert Humphrey was originally a Senator before succeeding Lyndon Johnson as V.P. after President Kennedy was assassinated.
***President Johnson was a Congressman before serving as President Kennedy's V.P. and succeeding him as president.

A Couple of Good Reads for Dads

Both to a credit and to a fault, we have no shortage of reading and discussion material on raising a family. It's funny. I'm fairly certain that the Mom and the Dad essentially brainwashed me into being a pretty decent kid. I can only remember one instance of being grounded in the conventional sense, I have no memory of being yelled at, I can think of no instance of being physically disciplined (though the Mom tells a story of me taking a Marks-A-Lot to her freshly-applied wallpaper and giving me a swat), nor can I think of any instance where my parents were in disagreement. And I paid attention.

And yet, I rarely got into significant trouble, didn't use drugs or anything like it as a teenager, got good grades, kept busy, and got into college. When I talk with the Mom about how it is that she and the Dad pulled this off, she typically shrugs and says things like, "Your dad and I always were just on the same page." In short, she gives me little to work with.

At a time when the traditional family faces many challenges to the point that the "traditional family" is almost quixotic (though worth aspiring to), as a society we also have never had more access to opinions and ideas by experts or otherwise. Searching for "parenting" books at Amazon.com yields 97,607 results.

I've been frustrated by two things: 1) they're all ridiculously contradictory to the point of being little more than hotbeds of parental insecurity and fodder for arguments with other parents, and 2) they're often marketed more for mothers than fathers.

As to the first problem, that just comes with the territory. With my limited experience I've come to the conclusion that you just have to take what you can from what you read or hear and mix it in to whatever recipe you're comfortable with. There's a certain amount of trial and error for which I'm sure we'll have to beg forgiveness someday of our firstborns.

As to the second problem, I've made it my crusade to find good books on fathering. If anyone out there has a recommendation, I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, here are mine, each with an accompanying short description and review:

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know, by Meg Meeker


I just finished this one and really liked it. Dr. Meeker is a practicing pediatrician and pediatric therapist specializing in working with young women. As such, she has some anecdotes that are enough to make this big lug a bit dusty. It's pretty empowering and is adamant that, if done well, a father can make a huge difference in a young woman's development. As a man who's terrified of the number he'll do on his daughter, it was reassuring. It is, however, not for the uber-liberal who doesn't believe that things like rules or guidelines are good for children.

Mack Daddy: Mastering Fatherhood Without Losing Your Style, Your Cool, or Your Mind, by Larry Bleidner



This was written by just an average schlub. After rolling my eyes at the title, I picked it up before the Daughter was born out of frustration at being able to find much else on the subject and was pleasantly surprised by it. It's tone is very conversational, even occasionally (though rarely) a bit crass. (When crass, it's almost like when/if a college professor drops a cuss word--you can tell they're doing it for cred but it's totally unnecessary and even a bit awkward.) It has no analysis or anything, but very much de-mystifies having a baby and does it with good humor that, for me, helped the whole thing sound very doable.

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads, by Gary Greenberg and Jeannie Hayden


This is the Boy Scout Handbook of new dad books. It's illustrated, it's very how-to, it's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's helpful. Best bit of information I got out of that thing was how to swaddle a baby, though it wasn't long before the Wife figured out how to do it better. There's a pattern forming there....

My Belated Two Cents on the Financial Crisis

I thought this was funny and worth sharing. Thanks to my buddy from the Mo-Row and neighbor Dave for passing it along.

Oddly enough, I don't have a ton to say about the crisis, so sorry if this is anti-climactic. Though who'm I kidding? It's not like anyone out there was particularly dying to hear my opinion. Besides, my buddy Bitner and his new clan of commentators have had ample to say about the crisis that trumps anything I could add.

I will say this. I'm concerned that the bailout is now being called bigger than the New Deal, when I'm at least mostly convinced that the New Deal had little to do with bringing us out of the Great Depression; World War II did that.

Naively or not, I tend to believe that these things happen and they happen every 10-15 years or so, regardless of what the politicians do. I don't believe that tax policy can affect much more than the margins of the economy. We get a bit of a confusing message, though, because when the economy goes well, whoever initiated the last big tax policy/spending plan claims victory. When it goes south, whoever opposed the plan pulls an "I told you so."

That being said, the best thing we can all do is hang in there. Resist the temptation to look at your portfolio every day to watch it wither and die, and if you've smartly saved a few extra bucks and manage a budget, if anything dump a bit more into it now. It'll bounce back. It always does. Investing in something now will make you part of the solution and you'll become a beneficiary of the relatively low prices out there now.