“There Are A Hell Of A Lot More Bears.”

Those are the words of Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent the last 20 years studying the animals. His comment is about a population explosion of polar bears in Canada's Eastern Arctic region. They bears, used as a poster child for global warming are not only not threatened, but are thriving.

Pictures of a polar bear floating precariously on a tiny iceberg have become the defining image of global warming but may be misleading, according to a new study.

A survey of the animals' numbers in Canada's eastern Arctic has revealed that they are thriving, not declining, because of mankind's interference in the environment.

In the Davis Strait area, a 140,000-square kilometre region, the polar bear population has grown from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 today.

"There aren't just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears," said Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent 20 years studying the animals.

His findings back the claims of Inuit hunters who have long claimed that they were seeing more bears.

Now that is one area, it is not definitive proof of anything, one way or another. Anymore than a hot summer or a cold winter prove anything. (Well, other than the summer was hot or the winter was cold, that is.) The article quotes others saying the polar bears are too being threatened. So the arguments will continue. But there are a lot more complexities than the true believers in the First Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of Global Warming® admit to and a lot less "settled" science.

Consequences

Or why the rush to ethanol is a bad idea. 20 percent of last year's corn crop is being consumed by ethanol plants. Next year it will rise to 25 percent.

And the cost of animal feed is skyrocketing as a result. This will translate to higher and higher meat prices.

WASHINGTON - Strong demand for corn from ethanol plants is driving up the cost of livestock and will raise prices for beef, pork and chicken, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

Meat and poultry production will fall as producers face higher feed costs, the department said in its monthly crop report. Ethanol fuel, which is blended with gasoline, is consuming 20 percent of last year's corn crop and is expected to gobble up more than 25 percent of this year's crop.

The price of corn, the main feed for livestock, has driven the cost of feeding chickens up 40 percent, according to the National Chicken Council. The council says that chicken, the most popular meat with consumers, will soon cost more at the grocery store. The industry worries the competition from ethanol could cause a shortage of corn.

Corn prices have risen over 50% over the last year ($3.20 per bushel versus $2 last year). The price will continue to rise as demand increases. That isn't all, either. Although the article doesn't mention it, high-fructose corn sweetener is widely used in other products. Expect those prices to skyrocket as well. Yes, farmers will undoubtedly plant more corn as a result. But that will cause other consequences. Count on it.

Janus To Announce Candidacy. Or Not.

There are reports that Chucky "Janus" Hagel is planning to announce that he is jumping into the race for the 2008 Republican nomination for President.

    Mr. Hagel's candidacy could refocus the presidential contest debate, adding his Iraq doubts to those of former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, currently the only prominent Republican in the race who has been skeptical about the basis of the war from the beginning.
    The question on nearly every Republican's lips yesterday was whether Mr. Hagel can raise the $100 million-plus that campaign analysts say will be needed by the end of this year to be a serious 2008 nomination contender.
    "Hagel has a strong conservative record and great campaign skills, and if he could raise money, he could be a serious competitor," said Charles Black, who has advised every Republican presidential campaign in the past 31 years. "But his opposition to the president on the Iraq war would deny him access to the great majority of primary voters. Most of them support Bush on Iraq."
    In Nebraska, Republican officials and operatives say Mr. Hagel could raise money as an anti-war Republican presidential aspirant, especially from the Omaha business community, which strongly supports him.

Only he's not really running for the Republican nomination.

What he is trying to do is make himself attractive to a third party attempt (read Unity '08). He knows - unless he is a complete idiot - that the Republican base would have nothing to do with him because of his self-serving and self-aggrandizing stance on Iraq. But he is hoping to parlay that self-conscious stance into a third party run. That's my read on it, anyway.

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

And sometimes a movie is just a movie. In yet another case of a movie reviewer projecting her own beliefs, opinions and ideas onto the movie being reviewed, Slate's Dana Stevens merrily assaults the movie 300. Starting right out with a comparison to Nazi propaganda, she actually deteriorates from there and sees every possible societal flaw in history plainly evident in a movie that is derived from a comic book. This is just plain sad.

 In interviews, Snyder insists that he "really just wanted to make a movie that is a ride"—a perfectly fine ambition for any filmmaker, especially one inspired by the comics. And visually, 300 is thrilling, color-processed to a burnished, monochromatic copper, and packed with painterly, if static, tableaux vivants. But to cast 300 as a purely apolitical romp of an action film smacks of either disingenuousness or complete obliviousness. One of the few war movies I've seen in the past two decades that doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment, 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity. In at least one way, the film is true to the ethos of ancient Greece: It conflates moral excellence and physical beauty (which, in this movie, means being young, white, male, and fresh from the gyms of Brentwood).

Here are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with the "bad" (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both). The Persian commander, the god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is a towering, bald club fag with facial piercings, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him.

Probably one of the all-time worst cases of projection in recent memory. All of Stevens' own perceptions, biases and prejudices are thrown at the movie. Said movie being derived, remember, from a comic book. But it can't just be entertainment, you see. There has to be evil behind it. Just ask Stevens. Prediction, critics will hate it, moviegoers will love it. And Leni Riefenstahl has not been reborn.

Dissecting The Libby Case

Charles Krauthammer examines the Libby case and exposes the foundation of lies that the case was built on from the beginning. It is a harsh assessment.

Scooter Libby has just been convicted for four felonies that could theoretically give him 25 years in jail for … what? Misstating when he first heard a certain piece of information, namely the identity of Joe Wilson's wife.

Think about that. Can you remember when was the first time you heard the name Joe Wilson or Valerie Plame? OK, so it is not a preoccupation of yours. But it was a preoccupation of many Washington journalists and government officials called to testify at the Libby trial, and their memories were all over the lot. Former presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer testified under oath that he had not told Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus about Mrs. Wilson. Pincus testified under oath that Fleischer definitely had.

Obviously, one is not telling the truth. But there is no reason to believe that either one is deliberately lying. Pincus and Fleischer are as fallible as any of us. They spend their days receiving and giving information. They can't possibly be expected to remember not only every piece, but precisely when they received every piece……

…..Given that so many journalists and administration figures were shown to have extremely fallible memories, is it possible that Russert's memory could have been faulty?

I have no idea. But we do know that Russert once denied calling up a Buffalo News reporter to complain about a story. Russert later apologized for the error when he was shown the evidence of a call he had genuinely and completely forgotten.

There is a second instance of Russert innocently misremembering. He stated under oath that he did not know that one may not be accompanied by a lawyer to a grand jury hearing. This fact, in and of itself, is irrelevant to the case, except that, as former prosecutor Victoria Toensing points out, the defense had tapes showing Russert saying on television three times that lawyers are barred from grand jury proceedings.

This demonstration of Russert's fallibility was never shown to the jury. The judge did not allow it. He was upset with the defense because it would not put Libby on the stand — his perfect Fifth Amendment right — after hinting in the opening statement that it might. He therefore denied the defense a straightforward demonstration of the fallibility of the witness whose testimony was most decisive.

My position on this whole thing has not changed one bit. I am very uncomfortable with the notion that someone can be charged with "lying" about a crime that has not itself ever been shown to have occurred. I have seen the attempts to argue that Libby was somehow obstructing an investigation, but the fact is that Fitzgerald knew - with utter certainty - who had actually leaked the information. And he knew it was an accident. He did not pursue Richard Armitage but instead went after a staffer. But not for the crime Fitzgerald was originally given the task of investigating. Instead we were given a three-ring sideshow that revolved around different people having different memories of events.

There will be no more acts in the sideshow. Libby was the only victim Fitzgerald was able to claim in this particular special prosecutorial witch hunt. (I have been against the use of "special prosecutors" for a long time.) But another door has been opened. When the precedents set here lead to the next witch hunt directed at the opposite political party, do not be surprised.

WaPo Notices Bleak Prospects For Russian Journalists

The editorial board of the Washington Post takes note of the recent suspicious deaths of a number of Russian journalists critical of Vladimir Putin and his mafia-style government. It is very dangerous to be a journalist in Russia these days if you are in any way critical of the government.

Normally it would be unwarranted to speculate that Mr. Putin's security services might have had something to do with the journalist's death — or, for that matter, with the shooting of Russian specialist Paul Joyal outside his Prince George's County home March 1. But the instances of violence against journalists in Mr. Putin's Russia and of the brutal elimination of his critics both at home and abroad have become so common that it's impossible to explain them all as coincidences. Since the Russian president took office in 2000, 13 journalists have died in contract-style murders, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which ranks Russia as the third most deadly country in the world for reporters.

Mr. Safronov's death was preceded by the slaying in October of Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya who was gunned down in her apartment building. The exiled Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was investigating Ms. Politkovskaya's death when he died of poisoning in December; British authorities have been unable to reach the two leading suspects in his death because they are being shielded by Mr. Putin's government. Mr. Joyal was shot in the groin days after appearing in a television documentary about Mr. Litvinenko. In it, he had said that the message to Kremlin critics was "no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you in the most horrible way possible."

I've noted the same thing, of course. It is extremely deadly to be an enemy of the Putin regime. If this many journalists have died, how many others with less publicly visible jobs have also died? Russia is slipping back into a dreadful mix of Soviet-style authoritarianism with organized crime. People who complain about the US government might want to really take a hard look at what it is like in other countries.

A Day On The Lynx

Bad news for all you weekend warrior golfers. The Animal Uprising™ appears to be sending its minions to learn how to operate golf carts. This can only mean one thing. There will soon be another hazard on golf courses everywhere.

As Walter was inspecting the Cape Rock Water Treatment Plant property Tuesday night, a rabbit leaped into his golf cart — followed by a 25-pound bobcat. The rabbit then jumped back out, leaving Walter alone with a large, frightened feline.

"The cat went from a sleek predator after fast food to a ball of fur trying to jump through the windshield of the golf cart," Walter said.

Golfers will not begin to heed our warnings of course. They are far to clubby to take advice from someone who only golfs under duress.