In a discussion on a mailing list with mostly neo-Catholics (conservative Novus Ordo types), I got annoyed that they were treating the passing of John Paul II as a veritable apotheosis; their rhetoric elicited visions of him riding up body-and-soul into heaven upon a fiery chariot.  So I basically just interjected that the pontificate of JP2 had been by far one of the worst pontificates of all time (rivalled by and in the same league as only that of Paul VI).  You can imagine how they assaulted me; they were practically foaming at the mouth and rabid.

After a point, the discussion turned to the neo-Catholics claiming that all the problems in the Church were the fault of the bishops, and that John Paul II had been trying to avoid a schism and was just taking the approach of appointing good bishops.

Knowing what I would find, I went through the Catholic Almanac and looked up every bishop in the United States, and then looked up each one's appointment date, creating a spreadsheet.  None to my surprise, I found that JP2 had appointed 93% of the then-currently active bishops of the United States over the course of his agonizingly protracted papacy.

As you can imagine, the reporting of these numbers instantly killed that discussion thread.

Wow, off-topic but at last I know of the Almanac.  I have never known how to figure the lineages out, or where to start!  Thanks, Ladis.

Here's a great resource for episcopal lineages:
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/