I Don't Like You Either.

Dr. Laura Blames Spitzer's Wife

Watch Dr. Laura Schlessinger claim that Spitzer's use of prostitutes was all down to his wife's failure to "make him feel like a man"....  What does a man feel like, I wonder, in Dr. Laura's world?   Based on what I've read and heard about her views on men and what they want, she knows some very different ones from the ones I know.  I wouldn't want my husband to be---or feel---like one of those. 

As my friend from Minnesota used to say, "Oh for STUPID."

In the meantime, some source who spoke to The New York Post alleges that Spitzer has had a hooker problem for, like, SIX YEARS.   I'd say his wife clearly has a problem, though not the one Dr. Laura is focusing on.

In both instances, consider the sources.

Quote of the Day for 25 April 2007. New York Times: "Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons."

Bill Maher mentioned the collapse of bee colonies on Real Time Saturday and now this article has appeared in The New York Times.  EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS. 

This is BAD NEWS, my friends.   

[quote begins from The New York Times by Alexei Barrionuevo, "Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons"]

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives....

“Clearly there is an urgency to solve this,” Dr. Cox-Foster said. “We are trying to move as quickly as we can.”

Dr. Cox-Foster and fellow scientists who are here at a two-day meeting to discuss early findings and future plans with government officials have been focusing on the most likely suspects: a virus, a fungus or a pesticide...

“There are so many of our crops that require pollinators,” said Representative Dennis Cardoza, a California Democrat whose district includes that state’s central agricultural valley, and who presided last month at a Congressional hearing on the bee issue. “We need an urgent call to arms to try to ascertain what is really going on here with the bees, and bring as much science as we possibly can to bear on the problem.”

So far, colony collapse disorder has been found in 27 states, according to Bee Alert Technology Inc., a company monitoring the problem. A recent survey of 13 states by the Apiary Inspectors of America showed that 26 percent of beekeepers had lost half of their bee colonies between September and March.

Honeybees are arguably the insects that are most important to the human food chain. They are the principal pollinators of hundreds of fruits, vegetables, flowers and nuts. The number of bee colonies has been declining since the 1940s, even as the crops that rely on them, such as California almonds, have grown. In October, at about the time that beekeepers were experiencing huge bee losses, a study by the National Academy of Sciences questioned whether American agriculture was relying too heavily on one type of pollinator, the honeybee.

[quote ends]

Fortunately, scientists are already on it.  We'd better pray that they can come up with some answers.  It's a serious, serious problem.

For a first-rate novel that actually discusses this problem, see The Biographer's Tale by British author A.S. Byatt.  I had never heard about this problem till I read it. 

16 April 2007. A Bad, Sad, Terrible Day.

Here is the only news I can think about today.

THE DEADLIEST SHOOTING IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

Here is what is known, as far as I can tell: 

1. The gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, then committed suicide:

1. After shooting two people in a dormitory, he stormed a building called Norris Hall.  After chaining the doors, he then killed 29  more.
2. 15 people were hurt.  Some were seriously injured.    Student were jumping out of the windows in panic.  The professor stayed behind, perhaps to try to block the gunman.  He was killed, according to one student who escaped.

quote begins from The Huffington Post, Gunman Kills 32 in Virginia Tech Rampage]

Trey Perkins, who was sitting in a German class in Norris Hall, told The Washington Post that the gunman barged into the room at about 9:50 a.m. and opened fire for about a minute and a half, squeezing off about 30 shots.

The gunman first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the students, Perkins said. The gunman was about 19 years old and had a "very serious but very calm look on his face," he said.

"Everyone hit the floor at that moment," said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. "And the shots seemed like it lasted forever."

Erin Sheehan, who was also in the German class, told the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, that she was one of only four of about two dozen people in the class to walk out of the room. The rest were dead or wounded, she said.

She said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."

[quote ends]

At Salon.com: Walter Shapiro, "Still grave and deteriorating." The equally grave and deterioratng state of war rhetoric, public debate and meaningful democratic process.

<<Back to Introduction.

I've said it before: I lack the enviable certainty of many of my liberal contemporaries.

I stand by in wonderment that they can be so sure they're right.  The issues are so complicated, sos dependent on conditions that I for one can't guess at and am loth to imagine.   I feel the same about them as I do about Bush. 

Should we withdraw all troops from Iraq?  Should we surge forward?  How do they know?  What's the evidence, for or against?  By which I mean evidence.  More and more, the evidence for my opinions consists of the opinions of other people I've decided to put my faith in.  And more and more, that feels perilous to me. 

Of course, I feel from time to time as if I know too, but in all honesty, it's more that I feel that I "know."  At some level, I know that I don't.  Other people aren't hindered by any such doubts.

The President and General Petraeus think they know what to do about Iraq, as do Nancy Pelosi, Jim Webb, and other people from my side of the fence.  And this is one thing I know:  all of them know more about it than I do, at least as regards logistics, risk/benefit studies, and so on.

And this is another thing I know:  half the problem with the discussion is that no one ever finishes their sentences.   

Now James Baker---Mr. "Grave and Deteriorating"----is weighing in on the President's, and General Petraeus's side.

[quote begins from Salon, "Still Grave and Deteriorating," by Walter Shapiro]

The president's plan ought to be given a chance," Baker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The general [David Petraeus] you confirmed 81-0 just the day before yesterday, this is his idea. He's a supporter of it. He's now the commander on the ground in Iraq. Give it a chance." Baker repeated his refrain so often that it sounded like he was channeling some perverse version of a John Lennon tune: "Give Escalation a Chance."

[quote ends]

The trouble I have with the request to "give it a chance" is that it's an incomplete sentence.  A chance to do what, exactly?   A chance to win?  Win what for whom?  What measurable, identifiable goal or prize should we expect?  How will we know when we get there? 

I'm disconcerted that this is Baker, previously of the Iraq Study Group, telling me this.  Not that I believed he was objective, but I'd given him credit for a certain level of detachment. 

What's missing at this point is information from reliable sources.  Everything is getting filtered through politics, including an article such as Shapiro's.  As I trust Salon and have determined over the years that their views and mine are generally parallel, I am inclined to allow my opinions to be guided by them. 

But the stakes at present are too high for me to rely even on Salon.  I want objective data to the extent any can be had.