Month: March 2011

A British soldier, Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, was inseparable from his bomb-sniffing Springer spaniel, Theo. Together they forged a formidable record of finding IEDs that could have killed. Tasker was shot by a sniper, after which Theo returned to his kennel. A few hours later, Theo died of a seizure. Tasker's dad reflects:

"My honest opinion on this is, when Liam went down, Theo did not have the comfort from Liam to calm him down. I truly believe when Theo went back to the kennel, that would have a big, big impact because Liam was not there to comfort him."

These things move me in ways I cannot fully express.

Alan Taylor is adding Japan earthquake photos as they come in.

A reader writes:

Just a minor pushback on this quote: part of the real disaster regarding Katrina and Haiti was complete human incompetence in the preparation for a known possible crises and organizing the recovery from it.  I don’t think Japan has this problem at all.  Unlike Haiti and Louisiana, the Japanese government has wisely prepared for potential earthquakes and tsumani disasters by regulating the building codes to ensure minimum damage from the frequent earthquakes in the area (Haiti) and the government in Japan is anything but ill-prepared and inefficient (Louisiana).  That is not to say the Japan earthquake and ensuing tsumani isn’t a huge humanitarian event or that it is any less horrific a disaster.  But Japan is far, far better prepared to deal with recovery than either Louisiana or Haiti. 

I lived in Louisiana during Katrina and the aftermath and I can tell you that government failed its citizens at ALL levels: local, state and federal.  Strong hurricanes hitting the gulf coast was not an unknown event.  The fact the New Orleans was a bowl and sinking since the levees were erected was not unknown and yet no one with the power to do anything about it did anything about it.  Local and state officials dithered and fiddled away while allowing positions on the levee boards to be appointed as bribes essentially allowing incredible corruption to occur.  In the aftermath of Katrina were fears of complete societal breakdown just as we later witnessed in Haiti.  Again, I don’t think this will be an issue in Japan making their recovery much smoother than here and Haiti.

Emily Rauhala provides a primer on earthquake preparedness in Japan.

(Photo: Tokyo Fire Department rescue workers arrive at Kudan Kaikan in Tokyo as local media said its ceiling fell down after a strong earthquake, injuring people inside the hall Friday, March 11, 2011. By Itsuo Inouye/AP)

"When I hear Hitchens, I feel sorry for cancer," – joequirk, upon watching a Youtube'd takedown of Dinesh D'Souza. 

You don't have to be a flaming Marxist to see that there's something askew here.

Anderson Cooper's grueling report here.

Heather Mac Donald has no love for NPR's CEO, but she's underwhelmed by the "scandal":

I fail to see the relevance of an NPR employee’s off-air criticism of the Tea Party to the question of NPR’s federal funding or its liberal bias.  Conservatives can easily prove liberal bias by analyzing the content of the programming.  And it is in that arena alone that liberal bias matters.  Does anyone really think that no NPR employee finds the Tea Party racist, or, equally importantly, that no NPR employee should find the Tea Party racist? 

The public is not entitled to a particular political belief system among the recipients of tax payer dollars, just to the scrupulously fair airing of all views.  CSPAN’s hosts for Washington Journal are impeccably even-handed in their questioning of liberal and conservative guests.  Despite the regular, predictable, and paranoid ranting of conservative callers accusing CSPAN of stiffing conservative entities and individuals, CSPAN is absolutely balanced in its coverage of political viewpoints.  But it could well be that some of its hosts believe that the Tea Party is racist, or that Obama is a socialist.  Who cares?  In believing so, they would merely reflect positions that are present in the public. 

But when these views are expressed in order to get donations – even donations shielded from the federal government – it gets murkier. Of course, there is an irony in the activist right criticizing NPR for looking for non-government sources of funding. Personally, I think NPR and PBS would do better without public funding. And it goes without saying that the difference between NPR and Fox is that Fox anchors say such things all the time in public and on-air. You cannot catch them in some sort of hypocrisy because they wear their propaganda on their sleeves.

For Juan Cole, the earthquake and tsunami remind him of the futility of war:

Every once in a while, amidst our petty wars and squabbles with each other, Nature reminds us that the real threat to humankind comes from her, not from other human beings. Climate change is human-driven, but its danger is in unleashing uncontrollable natural forces of immense power. We are still defenseless against a meteor strike of the sort that helped polish off the dinosaurs. And, we lack good defenses against tsunamis. Unless we can put aside our divisions and work effectively together on these natural threats, humans remain in extreme danger as a species.

Odd that massive earthquakes seem to be more common in the last decade or so. Unless we were less able to monitor them in the past.

(Photo: Mego's Twitpic.)

A reader writes:

If I had a mirror in front of me I am sure I would see steam streaming out of my ears after reading the email from the guy who has been sexually unfaithful to his wife for seven of their eleven years of marriage.  I have been reading your blog for several years, and I don't think anything has ever made me so angry!

I have been happily, monogamously married for almost 18 years.  Neither of us has ever had another sexual partner. Did our sex life suffer after the births of our three children?  Yes.  Did I go through a period of feeling like my breasts were for food not sex?  Yes.  Did sex become dull and infrequent, bordering on non-existent for a time?  Yes.  Did I feel at a point like I could be perfectly happy never having sex again?  Yes.

My body had been stretched and taxed by child-bearing, feeding, and rearing.  My hormones were in a continual state of flux.  I was perpetually sleep-deprived.  Did my husband have to sacrifice his sexual needs for a time while I bore, fed, and nurtured our children?  Yes.

Today, things are very, very different.  Our children are older.  In the next few years, two of the three will likely have moved out.  Sex is good and getting better and better.  We weathered that season of life together.  What would our marriage look like today if he had elected to visit prostitutes and have a string of sexual flings to satisfy his own desires and preferences?  It would look a lot like divorce.

Of course, I cannot imagine my husband making the kind of selfish choices this man has made.  I wonder what diseases he may have brought home to his wife.  I wonder how he can look in the eyes the woman who is mother to his children and not know that he has violated her as well as their marriage vows.  How can he look at his children, the fruit of that marriage?  How can he look at himself in the mirror? Blah.

Thanks for the opportunity to appreciate anew my wonderful, faithful, loving husband.

Another writes:

Marriage is hard, with or without monogamy. I find it painful to read this guy's self-justification given that he isn't honest enough with the family he claims to care about to tell his wife the truth and give her the opportunity to find a solution that works for her as well. Because I have news for him. It's not that she's just not very sexual; it's that she's so drained by her daily life that there's not a lot of energy to devote to her own sexual needs.

As far as I can tell, for a period there, his wife was working full time to support four people, and taking care of the feeding, social, and emotional needs of 3 other people, one of whom is ADHD and having difficulties, another of whom is out of work and feeling wounded. And his solution is to find a lover and invest his emotional giving outside the marriage. Which probably isn't solving any of his wife's needs, is it?

Another:

If the reader was trying to earn any sympathy for his view on monogamy – wow, it would be hard to imagine a more spectacular failure. First, he's lying and then offering flimsy justifications for his ongoing lies. Even proud advocates of non-monogamous relationships, like Savage, would not sanction this potentially dangerous dishonesty. Second, despite openly acknowledging that several external factors – financial problems resulting from his layoff, nursing and birthing two children, and one child's ADHD – contributed to a deteriorating sex life, ultimately he places all of the blame on his wife. He reports no efforts on his part to help the situation, or respond supportively to any (quite normal) difficulties his wife might have had balancing the new roles of mother and baby's food source with her sex life.

What makes this reader's dishonesty especially galling is that his wife actually gave him a free pass to have a girlfriend outside the marriage! He rejected her offer because she proposed "some pretty ridiculous rules of engagement" – what were those, one wonders, when she was already willing to go so far as allow him to have sex with others? I imagine her side of this story would sound rather different.

In short, he wasn't willing to negotiate the terms of non-monogamy with his partner; he just wanted to have his cake and eat it on his own terms.