She listed her concerns “as a token conservative librarian,” and I state my responses below.

“It’s too expensive. Just because something is a nice idea doesn’t mean that we can afford it as a nation. Now, this one is arguable, I’m not sure if it’s the case.”

What we have now is breathtakingly expensive and not getting any cheaper. We’re paying a lot for health care in this country.

“The Obama administration is not being forthright about their plans. I worry that the regulations they are passing are in place to put private insurance out of business so that we only have a public option.”

It’s hard to argue with the “fifth column” argument, but let me try. Obama has shown a lot of openness to business in his short time in office. He’s helped bail out Wall Street, and he hasn’t imposed any draconian plans.

Social Security didn’t put private pension plans out of business. I have faithfully contributed to private plans for many of my working years. What Social Security did was provide a safety net so that America’s workers weren’t beholden to a private model.

I see the public option as changing behavior through market pressure — exactly what a conservative should be looking for, right?

“If we only have a public option, our medical system will no longer be the most innovative in the world. While it’s true that we are not a particularly healthy nation, this is the country where you want to live if you have the misfortune of getting very ill. My son died (and yes, the bills were terrible, even with insurance) and I was comforted by the fact that he has incredible, amazing, cutting edge care by a team of neurosurgeons, respiratory therapists, etc.”

I’m sorry for your son’s death, and I’m glad he had good care. But innovation isn’t limited to the U.S. system, and it’s also no guarantee that those who have the “misfortune of getting very ill” will get good treatment. Some will, and some won’t. Besides, even countries with good health care for all have innovation. Stephen Hawkings is a product of the British health care system.

“It isn’t morally right to require people (who may not believe in our western medical system) to purchase medical coverage.”

What about people who don’t believe in our home insurance system… or who don’t agree with driving rules?

From my family’s point of view, “requiring” health coverage is equal to “allowing” health coverage. I think you and I differ in whether we believe healthcare coverage is a basic human right and an economically wise path. We can agree to disagree, of course.

“I also want to say that I think you are misinterpreting the people who “compare” Obama to Hitler. I think what people who bring this up are saying is that we need to be cautious to honor our constitution because even Hitler was elected.”

I really don’t see the people carrying Hitler posters making such a nuanced argument. What I see is anger and hatred (and some racism).

“We do not live in a pure Democracy, and I do not want to (if so, the majority always rules, and that’s scary – what if the majority hates gay people?). We live in a Republic, and one that’s predicated on basic rights and freedoms. And even when that is problematic, it is important, crucial even.”

Democracies–pure or otherwise–are living, growing things. There was a time when it was considered outlandish for women to vote. For black people to own homes in “white” neighborhoods. Things change. We can change about health care.

“That said, all of the problems you bring up are indeed problems, and I would like to see solutions. I would like to be able to discuss solutions without being called out as a right wing nut. And I want to be respectful and kind.”

I’d like to discuss solutions without being labeled a Nazi or a Communist. I’d like to be heard. I know that our broken health care system needs repair. I would like people to listen to the ideas being shared with an open mind.

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As one poster speculated, “Controlling the ammo was a prerequisite for controlling Russia and China by the communists. Make ya wonder don’t it?”

There has been a run on guns and ammo ever since Obama was elected, despite no proof anywhere that the Obama administration considers limiting access to guns a priority even close to, say, propping up our failing economy or fixing health care.

The reality is that Obama is a citified intellectual who would die of exposure if left to hunt for his food, who wouldn’t know a brass casing from case law, and in any event has his focus elsewhere. He is furthermore surrounded by people like him who have no inkling of how strong folks in some parts of the country feel about their guns, and his people will occasionally judge wrong in their gun legislation, and then be quickly course-corrected.

But myths are more powerful than reality, and the central myth fueling the guns-and-ammo panic is an old and powerful story: A BLACK MAN IS TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS! Or perhaps that should be “guns,” since the symbolism wouldn’t be lost on a fourth-grader.

It’s funny (or not) how this ism has a parallel with marriage equality, in which, with no supporting evidence, the story is that GAY PEOPLE ARE RUINING MARRIAGE FOR EVERYONE ELSE!

Unfortunately, Obama has had far more impact in this area than he has on guns. It is Obama’s Justice Department that filed a bristlingly homophobic brief on behalf of DOMA, and it is Obama whose big gift to federal employees was to hand them a few ancillary same-sex benefits (because, we are told, DOMA prevents him from going farther).

Meanwhile, a shiny-pulpit minister on the west coast has been telling people — wink wink nudge nudge — that Obama will soon lift Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. A few months back, that would have excited me. Now I feel bored and appeased, as if the point of this rumor is to get me to stay quiet before I realize I’ve been duped again.

We have too many isms in America — isms that divide us, isms that we refuse to acknowledge.  White men aren’t emasculated if a black man becomes president. The sacred institution of marriage isn’t trampled upon if the doors open wider to let in more loving, committed couples. And these are all the same struggles, in the same direction.

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Democrats Abroad, Sydney Election Night 2008

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

Don’t get me wrong, when it became obvious Obama was winning big, it was fun to be at the Democrats Abroad party at the Slide Nightclub in Darlinghurst, Sydney, waving my pint and shouting as the results came in. It was all the sweeter because it was clear  this was no ordinary victory. To borrow an expression, “we beat them like rented mules.”

But the full significance of this election to the world at large swept over me an hour later, in an ordinary pub where a woman with a chihuahua snuggled in her arms sat outside sunning herself, men in the back played video games, and workmen struggled to install one more table near the door.

Lizanne and I had thought it was too early for McCain to concede, and were sprawled on a couch talking about the events of the day, when a screen-scroll announced that regular programming was preempted.

As Obama strode onto the stage, we stood up. This was for practical reasons — we couldn’t see the screen from where we sat — and yet it somehow felt right for other reasons. We were honoring something much larger than a new president.

The workmen put down their tools.
The bartender stopped wiping glasses.
The woman with the chihuahua walked in and stood with us.
The men in the back left their video games and came forward.
People drifted in off the street and stood quietly, eyes fixed on the screen.

No one sat. Everyone stood for Obama.

As Obama spoke, the pub was pregnant with respectful silence. I wanted to take a picture but my hands were wet from wiping away tears.

Obama finished his speech; then everyone in the pub — all but two of us Australians — cheered and applauded.

Life picked up where it left off. The television resumed its mindless daytime chatter, and soon the workmen were making a tremendous racket. The video-game players wandered to fresher territory. The woman with the chihuahua reestablished her post at the prime outdoor spot in front of the pub, her nervous little dog still tucked in her arms. Everyone else either got a beer and sat down, or stepped back into the sunshine of a Sydney spring day to resume their quotidian tasks.

But I felt, at long last, no longer an American with an asterisk, apologizing for a government at odds with the world.

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But first, you need to get your fanny to the polls NOW, because turnout will be HUGE… HUGE… HUGE. Go ahead and get it out of the way — early voting isn’t just sensible, it’s fun, and witnessing to your own experience is the best way to convince someone else to follow your example. The earlier you vote, the longer you have to say to your friends, family, and co-workers, “I voted. Have you?”

Some years I just want to put a Democrat in the White House; this time I want to elect Obama. I’m looking forward to a leader who will help us out of this directionless quagmire we’ve been in for the past eight years. I’m excited about Obama — his presidential demeanor, his ability to unite, his forward-thinking policies. This is a very necessary election.

I will be in Australia on Election Night, but my co-presenter Lizanne and I (memo to Lizanne: feel better, I haven’t finished my presentation yet) are hoping we can share the evening with others interested in watching the election.

So pack some fruit and water, lace up your most comfortable shoes, head to the polls NOW, and while away the time by humming my own Obama ditty (to the tune of “Jesus Lifted Me”):

I’m so glad I’m voting for Barack,

I’m so glad I’m voting for Barack.

I’m so glad I’m voting for Barack!

Get the vote out, get the vote out –

We’re voting for Barack!

Then put in for a day off and help others get to the poll. I guarantee you will not regret it.

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I am a veteran, taxpayer, homeowner, worker, and many other demographic slots you can tuck people into. I’ve lived in many places in this country and they are all “pro-American” because they ARE ALL PART OF THESE UNITED STATES — west, east, north, and south, city and suburb and beyond.

I am voting for Obama as a president who can unite us again — with one another and with the world. I am voting for Obama because his approaches to the economy, health care, foreign relations, education, and the environment promise to repair the sad direction this country has taken in the last eight years.

A special request to disaffected Hillaryites: please join me in helping elect the president that Senator Clinton can join forces with to heal this country. When Palin was nominated I remember hearing that she was “energizing” the right, and I thought, hoo boy, she is also about to energize the LEFT, and that has proved true. I can’t imagine too many Hillary supporters voting for Palin — though I am sure CNN’s intrepid reporters will find a couple if they start looking — but if you are even remotely on the fence, remember that four years of McCain/Palin (which with McCain’s health is a generous guess) will be four more years of diminished world status, economic disarray, and continued assaults on the freedoms and benefits of being American.

(Not to dwell too much on the negative, but I really hate it when men select the least-qualified women they can find. I have spent my whole career handicapped by those femmetards.)

I am so excited about voting tomorrow that I may have to sleep with my Obama-Biden car magnet under my pillow!

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I hope Tim’s session was recorded, though I know ALA has this idea if they record too many sessions No One Will Come To Conferences Any More. I believe the opposite is true — it’s called marketing — but anyway… all I heard for the next two days was “As Tim said…” or “Tim made this really good point…”

I’m aware some folks get irritated by Tim, and this is what I think it’s about: Tim really doesn’t care what we think of him. He’s on Planet LibraryThing, puzzling through the creative problems associated with user engagement and whatnot.

Every once in a while he says something really provocative. You can agree with Tim or not, but it’s not as if he’s calling anyone a pee-pants poopyhead (let alone — to give us a political moment — anything so disgusting as “Obama Bucks,” which so amply underscores the bankruptcy of the McCain campaign).

My recommendation is take a chill pill, and when your library software can do even a fraction of what Tim’s software can do, then you can begin to waste time stewing over him.

Anyhoo, so I’m sitting in the Cincinatti airport waiting for my flight and working on this test installation of Dokuwiki, when I install a plugin called IndexMenu and then begin browsing its demo page. What word do I see? Synecdoche! One of my favorite words, largely because I had to get an MFA to learn it is pronounced close to “Schenectady,” and not — as I had been saying it for several decades — “cynic douche.”

What small neural spark had someone slide “synecdoche” on a wiki page? My guess is it’s the special handshake known among English majors… we are insidious moles. You find us everywhere.

How about that Colin Powell, eh? He joins Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Buckley in the long line of people who say Yes We Can. Tomorrow I go to the polls and vote for Barack Obama for president!

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I hope you’ll join me in voting early. Here are my top ten reasons to join me in “voting Early for Obama” — please add more of your own!

1. Bragging rights for placing the first votes for Barack Obama, who will be one of the historic great presidents in the history of the United States.

2. Easy parking.

3. Short lines.

4. You can wear your “I voted!” sticker for almost two weeks.

5. Provides plenty of time to address any glitches with your polling booth, identification, etc.

6. Slow traffic in the polling place increases the chances of talking the poll workers out of a cookie.

7. Particularly for Florida voters, early voters can explain to our friends and neighbors what new, intricate voting method has been inflicted on us in this election.

8. Through November 3 you get this super-cool conversation opener, “The reason I already voted for Obama is…”

9. Frees up election day so you can help get out the vote.

10. No chance of waking up November 5 to ask yourself, “OMG, did I forget to do something REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT???”

YES WE CAN!

YES WE WILL!

PLEASE JOIN ME IN VOTING EARLY FOR OBAMA!

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It turned out that embedding a call for documentation writers in between screeds about the election turned out to be wildly effective (even though I do not speak for My Place Of Work, blah blah blah — something they did NOT ask me to say, in case you’re wondering).

I wish I could get Margaret and Helen to post this, but FRL will have to do: My Place Of Work even has a little more documentation work left — and not only that, MPOW has two openings (two!) for “self-motivated, enthusiastic software developers … with at least 2 years of systems (non-web) development experience.”

Access was Fabu!

I finally made it to Access, and this conference was amazing (except that Amy Buckland and I never got to meet — boohoo!). The favorite modifier was “Evergreen,” as in Evergreen-LibX, Evergreen-Vufind, Evergreen-SOPAC, Evergreen-Zotero, Evergreen-Google-Book-Search… whew!

The list of people I finally got to meet face-to-face — and it’s a long list! — included Andrew Nagy (I’ve seen him from afar), Annette Bailey, Godmar Back, David Fiander, and Dan Scott. I also had reunions with many, many folks. Conferences are about learning, but a lot of that learning happens informally… there’s something so companionable about sitting at a table with people I like while we listen to a speaker and tap away at our laptops.

Tweeting the Debate!

During the debates I’ve been wildly tweeting — and now I learn I can even embed my tweets in this coverage! Twitter, despite some bumpy scalability issues earlier this year, has really embraced its zeitgeist with a Twitter site specific to politics (post there, and your tweet also shows up in your timeline). The debate may push me over the 5,000-tweet mark!

My writing

Someone wrote me yesterday to mention I hadn’t written much about my writing. Lately I have had time for two writing activities: aggressively revising older essays (and sending them out), and staying on top of the monthly writing workshop I manage.

The workshop is good because when I’m not writing, I should be thinking about how to write, and every month I need to look very closely at several manuscripts. I do have a whole “how to run a writing workshop” post in my head, but my failure to write about writing may be more of a sign that when I have a little time, I’m actually writing.

How to “win” against open source

This article, co-authored by Harvard and Stanford business wonks, made my skin crawl. I’ve wanted to respond to it in length, but in some ways I’m simply dumbfounded. You should read the full article to really catch the strange alien vibe of economists talking about how to use the “network effect” (which they do not fully understand to begin with) and other strategies to undermine open source. Even Gartner, the ultimate business-analysis squares, has cautiously tipped its hat to open source (in a kludgey, uncle-with-obvious-dentures-and-green-plaid-jacket sort of way). Boo Harvard and boo Stanford.

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Personally, I think Maia underplays her own qualifications; unlike Palin, she understands the market and foreign policy, she’s smart as a whip, and she’s well-spoken. Plus, she’s funny — intentionally funny. But alas, she’s not in a position to be a heartbeat away from the red phone.

Meanwhile, on a more positive note, these young whippersnapper veterans are for Obama. As an older, Cold War veteran for Obama, I particularly appreciate “We deserve a strategy that honors our sacrifices.” All I can say is HOO-AH!

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All the while he has argued for a smaller role for government — at least, in his own country. He’s more than happy to meddle in other countries, especially where oil is involved. (Darfur? He can’t be bothered with that.) He’s a typical fortunate son — and don’t let that down-home-folksy posturing or fake-Southern-accent fool you; he was born in (then) oh-so-wealthy New Haven (CT, not TX) and as a young man attended Andover (MA, not TX), followed by Yale and Harvard, plus a cushy detour in the Guard.

Oh, and for those of you unfamiliar with the military-industrial complex, what we have overseas is not just a few tent cities with troops heating up cans of beanie-weenie over an open fire. We’ve set up a second country in Iraq — a massive, contractor-run world — and you’re paying for it, endlessly. (I am of the belief that we can’t just depart overnight — what we break can’t be that easily repaired — meaning that we’re going to keep paying for it.)

Now we’re being told to sign off on a huge blank check to Wall Street, hurry-hurry-hurry! (Jon Stewart did a brilliant play-by-play comparing the rush into Iraq with the rush to sign this package.) Oh, and of course, it’s a plan that the GOP insists has a “smaller role for government” than the one originally proposed, which at least injected some adult supervision and sanity into a government bailout.

I understand people who are miffed at the unfairness of the government bailing out homeowners who got in over their head. I don’t feel that level of anger, maybe because more than once I’ve been tempted to spend beyond my means.  The money was easy, and besides, everyone was doing it. What saved me was first, a partner who shares my values and encourages us to make wise choices, and second, a book, Your Money or Your Life, that rescued me from a period of poor financial management in my late 20s and early 30s.

I live a life where Starbucks is a treat when I’m traveling, lunch in a restaurant is the exception, and I am allergic to paying full-price for clothes. I don’t live entirely debt-free, but when I suddenly had to buy a car this summer, I was able to pay for half of it right on the spot (and you all know I wrestled with the devil — I actually filled out the paperwork for a far more expensive car, and then drove to another lot and made a very sensible purchase). I have a small student loan from my MFA I am paying down with double-payments every month.

I could go on — our idea of an adventure is to lunch on the free snacks at CostCo — but you get the drill. The key here is that it’s not like my income prevented me from going wild (even though it should have). When we house-shopped, we — a minister and a librarian — “qualified” for a house far above our means, and it took strong personal discipline to buy a house that made sense for us, rather than what we saw people buying. It wasn’t just mortgage credit; today I could buy a vacation home with the combined limits of my (paid-off-monthly) credit cards.

I had bad house-envy in this area for a while — I kept wondering how so many people could afford those fancy homes. O.k., now I know the answer: they couldn’t. We’ve been living in the real world, and they have not. Our house may be on the small side, but it’s beautiful and comfortable and in a wonderful neighborhood (and we put a significant “down” on it). If it ends up we can’t sell it for a while (though prices in Tallahassee have not plunged the way they have in the rest of Florida), someone at FAM or in the legislature or working at FSU will enjoy it as a rental. If it stayed empty for a while, we could tighten our belts yet more and survive.

I got an uneasy feeling other people don’t live like us some time ago, when someone at another Place Of Work commented that due to an odd pay schedule, some of his co-workers would be tightening their belts while they waited for paychecks. He didn’t mean entry-level support staff; he meant middle-class workers driving late-model cars, living in commodious homes, and lunching out daily. I thought, are these people living paycheck-to-paycheck?

But my point here is that regardless if bailing out homeowners is “unfair,” if it saves the economy from a complete crash, so be it. I would strongly recommend we make it hard for people to buy beyond their means in the future, and there need to be some cold splashes of reality for a few folks. Yet what we cannot afford to do is give unfettered rein to the jokers who got us in this pickle in the first place.  Nor can we make their exit from financial management comfortable and easy while the Americans they exploited are struggling to cope with reentry into the real world.

Since Reagan was president, Americans have absorbed the muddled message that less government means more money in their pockets. That has been true — for the very wealthy, and for the profligate Wall Street pirates making merry with our money (q.v. this YouTube clip of the Keating 5 — remember the S&L scandal? Remember McCain’s complicity?).  For the rest of us, this radical deregulation has led to a severe financial crisis where people believe they have more money in their pockets — only instead of the financiers complict in this folie a deux teetering on office ledges, they’re negotiating posh exit packages.

It’s time common sense prevailed in Washington.  We need calm, poised leadership, not hucksterish posturing. (Don’t even get me started on McCain canceling the debate — have you seen him side-by-side with Obama? Of course he’s avoiding the debate!) We need to take action, and it should be sooner than later, but what we don’t need is for Bush’s going-away gift to be a blank check for his moneyed cronies. We need to help America, not put a stake in its heart.

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