Friday Cranium Combustingly Cute Blogging

Another one:

After the unfortunate saga of Knut at the Berlin Zoo, it seems that zoos have learned that these hand-raised Eisbären need to be raised by a staff, so as not to bond too closely with any one person.

Seriously...how cute is that. The only thing cuter may be my neighbors' new Maltese puppy.

This made me all blubbery, but it's still one guy in one car

You've got to love this ad (including what you can generate with a computer now, though most of the outside-of-habitat footage was done with a real bear). But while the image of a polar bear hugging a human in thanks is a powerful and compelling one, individuals tootling around in even electric or hybrid cars is not the answer. A commitment to better and more convenient mass transit is -- and given what we're seeing out of Republican governors, we're not going to get it.

McCain is out of His Mind...Sarah Palin and the Future of this Country....

Unqualified, wingnut, crazy, scary....these are just some of the words that come to mind when looking at the life and time of Sarah Palin.

Ah, Sarah Palin, runner up to the Ms. Alaska crown, outspoken opponent of a woman's right to choose, enemy of the Polar Bear, and great leveler of the field in the area of youth, gender, experience and the naming of children, will be side by side with pinky mouse McCain on the republican stump starting immediately.

Is this a joke? Trailing her cadre of children, including the infant dangling oddly from the arms of an older daughter, this oddball is being paraded around the bubble where the Bushies live, while the rest of America is shaking their heads at the similarities to the Harriet Miers debacle. Isn't anyone advising the McCain campaign?...what an embarrassment!








Sarah Palin is advertising herself as a mother, but if the naming of children is any indication of one's ability to reason and govern, then the republicans are in trouble. How she chose her kid's names is anyone's guess (and it has been mentioned that on those occasions that she admits that she tried pot , which I should add is legal in Alaska, she may have thought up those names!)

So, we've got Track and Willow, Piper, and Trig(Paxson Van Palin,) but worst of all is poor Bristol, who is known as Brillo....Track will be called up to duty in Iraq soon, Trig may be the love child of Brillo...who can keep them straight? Trig, with Downs Syndrome is more likely the 44 year old wanna-be Commander-in-Chief's, child, though she remained pretty scary thin throughout the pregnancy; shes strongly anti-choice yet kept this a secret from even her closest co-workers for 7 months, knowing that the child would have Downs Syndrome. US Conservatives at About.com had this:

The Palin family released this statement the morning after Trig Paxson's birth:

“Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

Three days later, Gov. Palin was back at work.

She went back to work 3 days after having this child!? And who is going to be caring for these children when she is VP? McCain is pretty damned old, not to mention the cancer; he could very well die. Is this who we want for president? Haven't we been through the not very bright and very crazy wing-nut thing for 8 long years already? Palin has no experience; less than no experience in that she is in such a remote area...her level of experience is in no way comparable to Obama's supposed lack of experience; she really, really has no experience except in the way of governing a state with very, very few people. She has had the ability to wield a strong outspoken wingnuttian stance on just about every issue that the rest of the country is too busy trying to pay the rent and juggle some semblence of a life, to take seriously, and the fact that McCain and his team view any part of her bio as a viable political option is just plain scary.

Onward: She has a husband who is part commercial fisherman and part oil field worker, and a history herself as a "maverick" of sorts, who hunts and fishes and is a lifetime NRA member; her bubbly yet carefully crafted delivery of support for the war, guns, and the conservative line, make her an interesting choice for McCain in a field where the PUMAS might actually be crazy enough to vote for a woman, any woman....my god, is it not apparent that Alaska and the life there is not representative of most of the country and that just as McCain is removed from the lives of most Americans to the point that he can't even state what "middle class" means or how many houses he has,what car he drives, this nut is also so far from the main stream as to be...a joke....this is a joke, right?

Sarah Palin is a surprise, and she is surely an all or nothing roll of the dice for a desperate Republican party that is looking towards a convention shown in split screen with hurricane Gustav bearing down on NOLA, in a stark remembrance of the failures of this administration. Even now, the White House is trying to pull Bush from having to appear on that split screen. Clearly this is not what Bush needs for his legacy of failure...Forget the beauty of karma and how the timing of Gustav cries out to the Bushies paybacks-a-bitch boys! Is the gulf prepared for this thing?...its horrifying that all of this time later, the infrastructure questions have not been clearly addressed and flooding has become a huge problem across the country.

I fell pretty strongly that most Americans are disgusted enough on both sides to just vote the knee jerk opposite of what we've had. I cant see this Palin woman going up against Biden in any meaningful way and I look forward to McCain trying to hold his own in a direct debate with Obama. But in reality, most Americans lack the interest, attention span, and mostly time to go much past their morning paper in this. They will vote their pocketbooks and the gas pumps...the war...food prices...and disasters on television. I'm not so sure that polls mean much in this strangest of strange times, but they sure are embraced by the media as a foundation for creating a reality show that could somehow produce ratings. This particular episode is like the Big Brother house when the old guy makes a pact with the sorority sister.

So, with Brillo and Trig, Twig, Twat, and Pipe....Tracks and Willy and the little green sprout....as the shiny-shiny that Mom, (with her obligatory still-working-apparently vagina,) is holding up to distract us from the magnificent speech of Obama, we have to know that it wont last long when its clear that the meat is not there. Mom is viewed as an intellectual lightweight, as is McCain, and up against the democratic ticket they will fail. Remember, most of America views Alaska as a scene from the Cicely Alaska of Northern Exposure. What happens when the scruffy John Corbett character ends up being the scary hairless mouse McCain?

Not to even mention that scandal has rocked her office lately in the form of an aide trying to kick her sister's ex out of his job. That bit of pulpy gossip has legs only in that its personal dirt of the kind that sells rags on the checkout line. Further, her popularity among the sparse voters up there could have something to do with $1200 oil rebates to cover the price of fuel....is she popular? Maybe, if you could even begin to tease all of this out.

So, if this is for us a Dan Quayle moment, minus the sharp intellect of the Q, then I hope to be heading north for the duration...If its just another installation of that wacky DC show, Wingnuttia, then I hope that Ms Palin and all the little Palinettes enjoy their 15 minutes of fame.
Some of us are serious about trying to fix this country; John McCain is certainly not. This nomination proves it beyond a doubt.

c/p RIPCoco

If it's going to be wrecked anyway, let's party like it's 1999

You're fucked anyway, so we're going to drill away

First the Bush Administration denied that global warming is a fact. Then they denied that our habits had anything to do with it. Now they've decided that since we're fucked anyway, why should the polar bears be any different? Their habitat is being destroyed, so there's no reason not to drill. Forget about trying to STOP their habitat from being destroyed, it's man the torpedoes and full speed ahead:

Two conservation groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the Bush administration's decision to let oil companies unintentionally harass or harm polar bears and walruses off the northwestern Alaska coast.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage claims that federal officials violated laws designed to protect the animals and their sensitive habitat in the Arctic waters of the Chukchi Sea.

"These regulations set the parameters for how oil exploration will be done in the next five years," said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the suit along with Pacific Environment. "The Chukchi Sea is critical habitat for those animals. For them to survive in the face of global warming, we simply cannot allow oil development there."

Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to grant legal protection to seven oil companies in the Chukchi over the next five years should they accidentally harm "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses while drilling or during other exploratory activities. The agency is named as a defendant in the suit, along with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials said oil and gas exploration will have a negligible effect on the bear and walrus populations. Global warming is most likely to cause the animals' numbers to dwindle, the agency said.

But with Knut now a big, real, polar bear, does anyone care?

I'm not sure most people ever really connected the cute fuzzball at the Berlin Zoo with the real plight of polar bears in the wild. But now that Knut is a big bear:



...one has to wonder if the plight of polar bears in the wild is even a blip on the public's radar.

I'm not sure what makes polar bears so compelling, but you would think that their plight would make the difference in hammering home the very real effect that global warming is having on our planet. There's something delightfully doggy about polar bears. They're like Great Pyrenees on steroids, with their black button noses, their big feet, small ears, and white fur. If there ever was a creature that looks as if it were crafted by Steiff, it's this one. Polar bears, as long as the footage you're looking at doesn't involve them killing and eating a baby seal, which constitutes a fatal Collision of Cute that negates their cuteness, always bring a smile to our faces. This is why the combination of a tiny snow-white cub being bottle fed by a dour-looking middle-aged guy with the worst mullet in history caused millions of women around the world to ovulate simultaneously.

I can't even watch footage of polar bears in the wild anymore, because it breaks my heart. How can you look at a photograph of a polar bear on an ice floe, looking at the huge body of water where other ice floes used to be, as if trying to figure out how the hell he's going to get to where there's food?

The polar bears are so endangered by our addiction to fossil fuels that in fifty years, two-thirds of them will be gone:

Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, even under moderate projections for shrinking summer sea ice caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, government scientists reported on Friday.

The finding is part of a yearlong review of the effects of climate and ice changes on polar bears to help determine whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists estimate the current polar bear population at 22,000.

The report, which the United States Geological Survey released here, offers stark prospects for polar bears as the world grows warmer.

The scientists concluded that, while the bears were not likely to be driven to extinction, they would be largely relegated to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast, where summer sea ice tends to persist even in warm summers like this one, a shrinking that could be enough to reduce the bear population by two-thirds.

The bears would disappear entirely from Alaska, the study said.

“As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear,” said Steven Amstrup, lead biologist for the survey team.

And while this ecosystem melts, world leaders fiddle:

Leaders of some of the world's fastest-growing economies are on track toward a "sensible" international agreement to curb climate change, Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced Saturday.

But the hard-won consensus at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum includes no targets for emissions reductions and oceans of wiggle room even within the non-binding APEC communique.

[snip]

"We agree to work to achieve a common understanding on a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal," says the text, "to pave the way for an effective post-2012 international arrangement."

APEC members also agreed to reduce "energy intensity" - the amount of energy needed to produce a unit of economic growth - 25 per cent by 2030.

That non-binding, one-per-cent annual reduction doesn't translate into real cuts in emissions, but could slow the rate of increase.

In other words, we're going to give lip service to trying, but actually do nothing.

It all makes you wonder if there is some sort of disease politicians get when they enter so-called public service. Because when you look at Washington, and the Democrats' inevitable caving to George Bush on Iraq by giving him withdrawal requirements to which he must only adhere if he feels like it, "aspirational goals" could be the new Democratic Party slogan.

The Daily Knut

I don't care what Stephen Colbert says, he's still cranium-combustingly cute:

In case you've never seen the videos at RBB Online, when Knut nibbles on Thomas Doerflein's hand like that? He's PURRING.

All together now:

AWWWWWWWWWWWWW.......

Why they invented YouTube

OK, it's heavy on the tubthumping, but it's funny and makes its point well.

It would be funnier if we saw the reaction of bystanders to two guys dressed up in polar bear pajamas.

Around the Blogroll (and elsewhere)

Here's what you should be reading today:

Andy Ostroy on Media Castration during the Bush Presidency. (And just as an aside, he thinks Al Gore is going to announce a presidential run in September. Mark your calendar. If he's right, then things get interesting.)

Maryscott O'O'Connor recaps the latest banning brouhaha that apparently went down over at Le Grand Orange (now with extra Skippy, who shows that Kos the Great and Terrible isn't being as magnanimous by allowing individual blogrolls as he says).

If you haven't been reading Poor Impulse Control in the days since Tata's dad begin hospice care at home, don't miss it. You'll laugh, you'll cry -- sort of like what Tata is doing. Picture Art Buchwald's hospice salons on hallucinogens and you'll sort of get the picture.

Pierre Tristram has some thoughts on the impact of Elizabeth Edwards' illness on her husband's campaign. I'm not sure I'm as fatalistic as he is, and I sure as hell don't think this is about John Edwards being too ambitious to care for a sick wife. I think it has to do with the kind of person Elizabeth Edwards is:

Melina puts Marc Maron's e-mail that he is once and for all, definitively and irrevocably finished with Air America Radio into perspective. (Now with added parrots!)

Knut, the orphaned polar bear cub in Germany, has his own blog! It's in German, but you can't have everything. (h/t: Tami)

If this doesn't make your cranium explode from a lethal combination of teh joy and teh cuteness, then you are not human:



Look at the goofy expression on this newscaster's face as he introduces the story, and on the face of everyone in these video segments. I'll be you look like this right now too. I know I do.