Don't mention the polar bears, Bush tells US scientists

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sava

I love how people make Bush out to be the bad guy here... as if he's the one behind some massive conspiracy silencing the scientists.

He's the one appointing these guys and it seems he approves of how things are being done since he hasn't sacked anyone dispite the numerous examples of political hackery to the detriment of sound policies.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by AAHZ



im honored actually... just to be in YOUR presence NYE

Have you had any hard hits to the head lately?

[DinoDoc]

Wait a minute? The bears aren't even in danger and Oerdin is still whining?

[ZEE]

Originally posted by notyoueither


Have you had any hard hits to the head lately?

you were a master here when i was a nobody... you are still the master IMHO. I give you ALL my respect notyoueither...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Below would be an example of novel, unique and fairly well done Bush critique as opposed to ill thought out and tired emotional appeals to "Think about the polar bears!! Ohhh won't someone please think about the polar bears!!"

You know those polar bears whose population continues to grow since the 70's. Hence the reason the Dept. of Interior remains mum. Were they to rule on polar bears going on the threatened list today they would say NO. Only by buying into a potential yet not yet realized threat would they break their own rules of categorizing the threat level to a species. So they say nothing and allow the special interests groups to use the polar bears pictures on a melting ice flow as fodder for political football, when the truth is something completely different than the narrative would have you believe. (Note this is not to say destruction of their habitat would not necessarily be a calamity for polar bears but it is a new precedent to categorize them as threatened when it is not clear that their numbers are actually decreasing as a function of habitat destruction.)


All that aside, to a reasoned critique of Bush

The Conservative Case Against Bush
His heart is in the right place, but he can't seem to do anything right.

BY JOSEPH BOTTUM
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

After six years of President Bush--thought by nearly every observer to be the most socially conservative president of recent decades--where does social conservatism stand? No one can deny there have been some bright spots: the defeat of the Democrats' Senate leader Tom Daschle in 2004, the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito to the Supreme Court in 2005, a few successful state referendums in 2006.

What isn't so clear is what it all amounts to. The noise has been overwhelming since George W. Bush took office. Abortion, euthanasia, stem cells, public Christmas displays, same-sex marriage, pornography in the movies, faith-based initiatives, immigration, visible patriotism: We've been warned by the media, over and over again, that Republicans are reshaping America into a Puritan's paradise. But at the end of the day, the media mostly won and the Republicans mostly lost. Social conservatism is in little better shape now than it was when Bush was first elected. In many ways, it is in worse shape.

In truth, no branch of conservatism has prospered much under Bush, particularly since the beginning of the Iraq War. Economic conservatives have had several victories, particularly with tax cuts, but on their fundamental worries about bloated government spending, they've been routed. From 2000 to 2006, the Republican Congress proved as financially undisciplined as its Democratic predecessors--and occasionally even less disciplined, as the prescription-drug entitlement and Katrina relief showed. And that's to say nothing about the scandals involving Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley and all the rest. The Gingrich Republicans used the long parade of congressional corruption to help defeat the Democrats in 1994, but they seemed all too ready to join it themselves once they had held power for a few years.

Even the neoconservatives have suffered. The original agitators for the toppling of Saddam Hussein--and the first to see clearly the threat of global jihadism--they seemed to the media to have gotten what they wanted with the invasion of Iraq. But the Bush administration did not give them the kind of war, much less the kind of peace, for which they had called.

Why, these days, should the Sudanese government fear the United States will intervene to halt the slaughter in Darfur? Why should the Iranians worry about an American strike against their development of nuclear bombs? Shortly after the success of the initial invasion of Iraq, Libya announced it would dismantle its weapons of mass destruction. It's hard to imagine any Middle Eastern country doing the same now. Since 2003, the neoconservatives have been the whipping boys of a left invigorated by the floundering Bush administration--all while that same administration has systematically rejected their policy suggestions, culminating in the disheartening appointment of the self-proclaimed realist Robert Gates as the nation's new secretary of defense.

So why were conservatives supposed to cheer the president's State of the Union address this January? If we haven't yet demonstrated to the world that we can successfully oppose the jihadists, if we haven't yet brought government spending under control, if we haven't yet established any permanent advances on the life issues--if all that Republican government has successfully managed over the past six years is to inspire a rabid opposition at home and abroad--then many opportunities have been squandered. Every conservative I know is depressed these days, and they are right to be. Under President Bush, conservatism has won only in the sense of not losing as quickly as it would have under a President Gore or a President Kerry.

The common turn among commentators, once they've recognized Mr. Bush's weakness, has been to declare the betrayal of some form of authentic conservatism. In book after book--from Bruce Bartlett's "Impostor" and Patrick Buchanan's "State of Emergency" to Jeffrey Hart's "The Making of the American Conservative Mind" and Richard Viguerie's "Conservatives Betrayed"--a number of self-declared conservatives have announced the apostasy and treachery of George W. Bush. Thus Mr. Bush is an ideologue where sincere conservatives are pragmatists. Or Mr. Bush is a spendthrift where true conservatives are budget-balancers. Or Mr. Bush is an expansionist where genuine conservatives are isolationists. Or Mr. Bush is a religious believer where real conservatives are religious skeptics.

Some of these commentators, particularly the economic conservatives, have valid complaints, though like the rest of us they must face the fact that things would have been even worse under a Democratic administration. But their conclusion that the White House has flown under false colors is ludicrous. In all that he has tried to do--reform education, fix Social Security, restore religion to the public square, assert American greatness, appoint good judges--Mr. Bush has proved himself a conservative. Of course, along the way, he has also proved himself hapless. The problem isn't his lack of conservatism. The problem is his lack of competence.

Apart from the still not certain pro-life views of the two new Supreme Court justices, where is there a major success to which one can point? In the opening days of his presidency, Mr. Bush declared that the return of government support for faith-based institutions would be the great legacy of his administration--as well it might have been, if the whole thing had not quickly collapsed into a clown show of political missteps, fumbled chances and administrative infighting so vicious that the director of the faith-based office eventually took to the pages of Esquire to denounce his co-workers as a bunch of "Mayberry Machiavellis."

Stem cells are perhaps the exception, for there President Bush did indeed hold the conservative line. It is worth remembering, however, the way in which he did so: Letting federal funding for embryonic stem cell research become a public crisis when quicker action would have kept it off center stage. By allowing it to boil over, the administration allowed its opponents to shift the focus off abortion, where the pro-life movement seemed to be gradually winning, and onto embryonic stem cells, where the nation has yet to be convinced. There's a reason the word "abortion" was never spoken from the podium of the 2004 Democratic Convention, while the phrase "stem cells" was trumpeted dozens of times. Correct action, even when strongly undertaken, is not the same thing as persuasive leadership.

Regardless, little else comes to mind. President Bush was absolutely right that Social Security is a looming disaster, and as a result of his efforts, Social Security reform is now dead for a generation. The White House saw clearly that education in this country needs a complete overhaul, and we got as a consequence only the bureaucratic annoyance of the No Child Left Behind Act. The Republicans' lack of political savvy abandoned an astonishing number of unconfirmed judicial nominees--and now we have a Democratic Senate unlikely to confirm any conservative judges at all.

Many things contributed to the Democrats' victory in the 2006 election, but by any reckoning, a considerable part came from the electorate's unhappiness with the situation in Iraq. So what, then, are conservatives to make of the war?

This much seems certain: If the United States loses in Iraq, the consequences will be incalculably bad. Indeed, those consequences will come even if the war is won, as long as the perception remains that it has been lost. For all the absurdity of the media's endless comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, the parallel here seems exact: We will not be helped by recognizing, years later, that the struggle was going better than it seemed at the time. Nearly every historian now realizes that the Tet Offensive was a military disaster for the North Vietnamese. The American belief that our opponents had won, however, proved a sufficient political triumph to swell the antiwar movement. From that moment on, Vietnam was over. Eventually, we admitted defeat and abandoned our allies--with the Cambodian killing fields, the Cuban adventure in Angola, and the Soviets' invasion of Afghanistan all following like dominoes through the 1970s.

Things at home were little better. For conservatives, the 1970s stand as the nadir of American social history--the "decade of nightmares," in Philip Jenkins's phrase. This was the era that installed the media culture of suspicion, surrendered the nation's cities to crime zones, suffered double-digit inflation, nationalized the sexual revolution, and gave us Roe v. Wade. Direct cause and effect for such things are always difficult to decide, but, in one way after another, we were demoralized for a decade after America's defeat in Vietnam.

The consequences of American defeat in Iraq are likely to be similar. Around the globe, the jihadists will be inspired to greater and greater violence--as the "lesson of Iraq" keeps any U.S. government, Democrat or Republican, from committing troops to a foreign struggle. The weaker opponents of radical Islam will quickly become even more vulnerable. Can southern Sudan hold without at least the distant intimidation of American military intervention? Can Nigeria? Can Indonesia? Terrorism, too, will surely expand as a chastened United States finds it cannot realistically threaten such nations as Syria, Iran and North Korea with military consequences for supporting terrorist organizations.

Domestically, a large range of conservatives will seem discredited by an American defeat in Iraq, which is why their liberal and radical opponents so quickly, and fecklessly, embraced the claim that Iraq is lost. On crime, abortion, education, government spending--the whole litany of domestic concerns--the American conservative movement may well find itself starting over, back once again where it was in 1974. The result will be perhaps most disheartening for social conservatives, as decades of intellectual and political gains against abortion are frustrated.

And the fact we must face is this: We have already been defeated in Iraq. Perhaps not in literal truth; a better policy, better implemented, might yet bring about a stable, democratic country. And certainly not in historical terms; Iraq is only an early chapter in what must be a long struggle against global jihadism. But, at the very least, the battle for perception of the Iraq War has gone entirely against the United States. In the eyes of both the American public and the Islamic world, we have lost--and lost badly.

The reason is President Bush. His administration has mishandled the logistics of the war and the politics of its perception in nearly equal measure, from Abu Ghraib to the execution of Saddam Hussein. Conservatives voted for George W. Bush in 2000 because they expected him to be the opposite of Bill Clinton--and so, unfortunately, he has proved. Where Mr. Clinton seemed a man of enormous political competence and no principle, Mr. Bush has been a man of principle and very little political competence. The security concerns after the attacks of September 11 and the general tide of American conservatism carried Republicans through the elections of 2002 and 2004. But by 2006 Bush had squandered his party's advantages, until even the specter of Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House was not enough to keep the Republicans in power.

To abandon Iraq now would be the height of irresponsibility. It would lock in place the perception of defeat, with all the predictable consequences, and it would abandon the Iraqis to whom we promised freedom and democracy. President Bush has clearly done the right thing in refusing retreat and pledging to stay the course in Iraq.

But hasn't that always been the problem? Again and again, he has done the right thing in the wrong way, until, at last, his wrongness has overwhelmed his rightness. How can conservatives continue to support this man in much of anything he tries to do? Iraq is not America's failure, and it is not conservatism's failure. We are where we are because of George W. Bush's failure.

All the 2008 Republican presidential candidates should understand the task they face over the next two years. George Bush's ideals have gotten him elected president twice, and his incompetence has finally delivered the Congress to his domestic opponents and empowered his nation's enemies abroad. Iraq needs an American president who embraces Bush's principles--and rejects his policies. The United States needs much the same thing.

Mr. Bottum is editor of First Things, in whose March issue this article appears. Tomorrow: Michael Novak makes the case for President Bush.

WSJ

[Kidlicious]

Good, I suppose they won't be calling to have him put on coins like they do Raygun.

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
You know those polar bears whose population continues to grow since the 70's. Hence the reason the Dept. of Interior remains mum. Were they to rule on polar bears going on the threatened list today they would say NO. Only by buying into a potential yet not yet realized threat would they break their own rules of categorizing the threat level to a species. So they say nothing and allow the special interests groups to use the polar bears pictures on a melting ice flow as fodder for political football, when the truth is something completely different than the narrative would have you believe. (Note this is not to say destruction of their habitat would not necessarily be a calamity for polar bears but it is a new precedent to categorize them as threatened when it is not clear that their numbers are actually decreasing as a function of habitat destruction.)

Saying that the population continues to grow since the 70s is misleading, since it's only recently that the population is declining. Sea ice is now retreating earlier in the year, meaning polar bears have less time to fatten up on seals so they can last through the lean summer.

According to the article below, the federal government issued a report last Nov that said far fewer polar bear cubs are surviving at Alaska's northern coast. If that's from the Dept of Interior, then they haven't been mum, have they?

Polar Bear Survival Rate Falling

Dan Joling, Associated Press

Nov. 16, 2006 — Far fewer polar bears cubs are surviving off Alaska's northern coast than in years past, a federal government report released Wednesday has concluded.

The study of polar bears in the south Beaufort Sea, which spans the northern coasts of Alaska and western Canada, also found that adult males weigh less and have smaller skulls than those captured and measured two decades ago.

The study does not directly blame the changes on a decline in sea ice. However, fewer cubs and smaller males are consistent with other observations that suggest changes in sea ice may be adversely affecting polar bears, the study said.

The study warns that the decline in cub survival and the smaller adult males are the same conditions that preceded a decline in the polar bears of western Hudson Bay, Canada, where the population dropped 22 percent in 17 years.

Advocates seeking protections for U.S. polar bears say the report proves their point.

"It's just another example of seeing all of the impacts that scientists have previously predicted coming to pass," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity in Joshua Tree, Calif. Siegal is the lead author of the petition seeking to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

"The Grim Reaper of global warming is now clearly killing polar bear cubs," said Deborah Williams, president of Alaska Conservation Solutions, an Anchorage-based group aimed at halting climate change. "This study should be interpreted as a cry from the North to reduce greenhouse gases."

The report stopped short of saying the Beaufort Sea polar bear population, one of two in Alaska, had declined.

However, "Significant changes in cub survival and physical stature must ultimately have population level effects," the report concluded.

The report estimates the Beaufort Sea polar bear population at 1,526, down from a previous estimate of 1,800 bears. That would be a 15 percent decline, but researchers said the current study used different methods of counting.

The Beaufort Sea bears is one of two Alaska stocks. The other is the Bering-Chukchi stock off Alaska's northwest coast, a population shared with Russia.

Polar bears are classified as marine mammals because they spend much of their lives on sea ice. The listing petition claims that polar bears are threatened because of drastic declines in ocean ice due to global warming. A decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on listing America's polar bears as threatened is due next month.

Polar bears depend entirely on sea ice for survival, according to the USGS report. Warming has caused major changes and scientists foresee more melting.

"Because more profound declines in sea ice area and extent are predicted for these northern regions, continued monitoring and conservative management of the SBS (Southern Beaufort Sea) polar bear population is warranted," the report concluded.

Siegel said the effects of shrinking sea ice are occurring exactly as summarized by the scientists quoted in her group's listing petition.

"Only it's happening sooner than they thought," she said.

The USGS report compared data on cubs collected from 1990 through last spring to studies from 1967-89.

Females give birth in January and emerge from dens with new cubs in March or early April. Cubs typically accompany their mother for 2 to 3 years.

For polar bears measured during autumn months, the number of surviving cubs born that spring declined from a mean of .61 cubs per female to a mean of .25 cubs per female.

"This decline can only be explained by lower survival of cubs after den emergence," the report said.

Changes in the physical stature of polar bears, both body weight and skull size, appeared to parallel the decline in cub survival, the study said. The decline occurred even though bears measured in the latter study were older. The study called the decline significant.

"Such changes in physical stature may suggest different impacts of reduced summer sea ice on adult male and female polar bears," the study said.

In spring, adult males often forgo foraging opportunities and focus on finding females for mating, the study said. Entering the summer in relatively poorer nutritional shape, they may be more vulnerable to summer sea ice retreat, which can separate polar bears from the most productive foraging habit, the study said.

Reduced foraging opportunity for adult females usually is first reflected in poorer survival of their young, the study said.

Several recent observed deaths were directly related to sea ice retreat or changes in food availability associated with sea ice retreat.

In autumn 2004, four polar bears drowned trying to swim from short and distant pack ice. During winter and spring 2004, researchers recorded evidence of three polar bears hunting, killing and eating other polar bears.

Last spring, three adult females and one yearling were found dead. Three of the bears had depleted their lipid stores, an indication they had starved. The fourth, one of the adult females, was largely scavenged, and cause of death could not be determined. However, her death was unusual, the study said, because prime-age females in the past have had high survival rates.

"These anecdotal observations, in combination with both the changes in survival of young and in physical stature reported here, suggest mechanisms by which a changing sea ice environment can affect polar bear demographics and the status of populations," the report said.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/11/16/polarbear_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20061116093030

I also saw a program on either the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet about the shorter ice time. If they're not endangered, they soon will be IMO. Of course I wouldn't be surprised if they don't get put on the endangered list yet, if the Bushies have any say in the matter.

[Arrian]

Ogie's article is pretty good for a consie critique of Bush. But of course, written from that perspective, all the failings and faults are with Bush... not with the ideas themselves. The ideas, of course, are GREAT. It's just that they were implemented by an incompetant.

From where I sit, I see a range of ideas - some good, some bad - that were implemented by an incompetant. Iraq, for instance, was a bad idea made worse by incompetance. And obviously I chuckled a few times at various references to the domino theory (Vietnam tie-in, and then later vis-a-vis Islamic terror).

Iraq is not America's failure, and it is not conservatism's failure. We are where we are because of George W. Bush's failure.

Heh. SCAPEGOAT.

I loathe Bush, and blame him for a lot. But there are lots of people to blame for Iraq, both Republicans and Democrats. And, sorry, but IT IS AMERICA'S FAILURE, even if Bush is the most to blame. He is the President of the United States. And a whole bunch of republican voters are to blame for THAT.

-Arrian

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon

Saying that the population continues to grow since the 70s is misleading, since it's only recently that the population is declining.

Not proven AFAIK. Of the 19 groups of polar bears, 5 are declining 14 are either increasing, stable, or unknown.

Reference Drake's Article which is more recent then the Discovery article and embodies the same alarmist 2004 examples.

The Discovery Article simply attempts to give the false impression that Polar Bears are going the way of the Dodo when they specifically speak to a given group, namely the Beaufort Sea bears. They pose statistics and then immediately discredit them by saying the numbers are in question due a different tallying methodology.

What the true global population growth or decline is a question of note, but the Discovery article gives no illumination to that question.

What is indisputable is the entire population has doubled since the 70's anything more than that is conjectural.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Arrian
Ogie's article is pretty good for a consie critique of Bush. But of course, written from that perspective, all the failings and faults are with Bush... not with the ideas themselves. The ideas, of course, are GREAT. It's just that they were implemented by an incompetant.

Well Duhhh!!

From where I sit, I see a range of ideas - some good, some bad - that were implemented by an incompetant. Iraq, for instance, was a bad idea made worse by incompetance. And obviously I chuckled a few times at various references to the domino theory (Vietnam tie-in, and then later vis-a-vis Islamic terror).

You and I agree. We shouldn't have gone into Iraq. That being said too late now, buck up, and do it right.

Heh. SCAPEGOAT.

I loathe Bush, and blame him for a lot. But there are lots of people to blame for Iraq, both Republicans and Democrats. And, sorry, but IT IS AMERICA'S FAILURE, even if Bush is the most to blame. He is the President of the United States. And a whole bunch of republican voters are to blame for THAT.

-Arrian

I blame the Dems for putting up an asshat like Kerry. Any candidate at all could have won. All they needed was someone halfway decent. Culpability thy name is DNC.

[Arrian]

Of course you blame the Dems. It's easier than assigning the blame where it really belongs. Though Kerry was obviously not a good candidate.

-Arrian

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe

Not proven AFAIK. Of the 19 groups of polar bears, 5 are declining 14 are either increasing, stable, or unknown.

Reference Drake's Article which is more recent then the Discovery article and embodies the same alarmist 2004 examples.

The Discovery Article simply attempts to give the false impression that Polar Bears are going the way of the Dodo when they specifically speak to a given group, namely the Beaufort Sea bears. They pose statistics and then immediately discredit them by saying the numbers are in question due a different tallying methodology.

What the true global population growth or decline is a question of note, but the Discovery article gives no illumination to that question.

What is indisputable is the entire population has doubled since the 70's anything more than that is conjectural.

OK, maybe it's only a decline in the US population. But if we (the US) end up labeling the polar bear as endangered, that's only relelvant to our population anyway, right?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Arrian
Of course you blame the Dems. It's easier than assigning the blame where it really belongs.

I have no problem calling Bush an incompetant dumb sh1te. (I do however draw the line calling him a scheming manipulative mastermind of draconian influence as is too often the wont on these boards). Teh fact that I had no good candidate to vote for in the last election pisses me off to no end. I expected Bush to be a dickhead, I was wanting to vote Dem only to have the peacenick leftist moonbat **** ****wads take over teh party and put up someone I could never stomach or hold my nose for.

Cause of all that I had to waste my vote and go Bednarik.

Though Kerry was obviously not a good candidate.

-Arrian

Dcha Think?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Wait a minute? The bears aren't even in danger and Oerdin is still whining?

Take it up with Bush. Just a couple of weeks ago he said the polar bears were in danger of becoming extinct. Was he wrong?

In any event it seems wrong to admit there is a problem with polar bear populations then prevent scientists from talking about the situation.

[DinoDoc]

Oerdin: Except there doesn't seem to actually be a problem with bear populations.