It's not just penguins. Many species of birds are in decline in the U.S.

Some major population declines have been seen in northern pintail, greater scaup, boreal chickadee, common tern, loggerhead shrike, field sparrow, grasshopper sparrow, snow bunting, black-throated sparrow, lark sparrow, common grackle, American bittern, horned lark, little blue heron and ruffed grouse.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

Of course, some species not listed and decling just as fast (though were not neccesarily as common to beginwith). Cerulean warblers, olive-sided flycatchers, whip-por-wills have seen major declines.

Here in Northern Illinois, we've had an odd year. February was a cold month, dipping down to what should be our average winter lows (the first time in ten years we've dipped down to about our average lows here). But the rest of the year, with the exception of April and July (which were average) has been abnormally warm here. August had record rainfall here, which was quite surprising after numerous years of drought conditions in the summer.

By now, it's pretty clear global warming is occurring. While there is still nearly a one in a million chance the wingnuts are right that it's not caused by humans, that doesn't mean we don't need to do something about it.

Grass, a plant that many Americans seem to worship, is unfortunately not a good plant to be wasting space for. Between the grass storing less carbon than other plants, raking leaves and getting rid of them to help the grass grow, chemically killing weeds, cutting the grass, and watering the grass, it causes a lot of problems.

Global warming is happening. Some species of tree are spreading northward, others are dying. Spread of diseases and pests normally limited by cold is believed to be one of the biggest factors affecting most of the trees killed by global warming.

With the recent interest at adding sulfur to the atmosphere to slow global warming, I think it might be time we take another look at less risky alternatives. For example, why isn't the government studying carbon uptake in trees and planning ways to increase carbon storage? Well, they are, but the idea doesn't get so much attention because it can't fully solve global warming, so much as slow it down.

Well, a lot of people on this blog consider the Green party to primarily be a spoiler, helping to help Republicans. Personally, I think the Green party has some definite plusses, but also has some candidates that really do act primarily as spoilers, and some that may deliberately help Republicans. I don't mean all of them, by any means, but it's worth taking a look at which ones could do this in this years elections.

David Baker is running for Senate in Pennsylvania as a Green Party candidate. You'd figure he'd talk about abortion, right? Nowhere on his website does he mention it. So I clicked around, looking for his position, until I found this:

at http://www.bakerforussenate.com/structure.html

  CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE

Executive Team

    * Chair: Sherry Singer; Speech Therapist/ Republican
    * Vice Chair: Lt. Michael Singer; Former Naval Officer and Aviator, NASA Contract Research Pilot/ Republican
    * Vice Chair: Henry Irvin; Small Business Owner/ Independent

A Green Party team is also mentioned, but is not his campaign staff, and consists entirely of the state Green Party officials. Yes, David Baker, running as a Green Party candidate for Senate, is running a campaign both chaired and vice-chaired by Republicans, by his own admission. I wonder what his angle in this race is.

All of the plastic fetuses and ugly dead fetus pictures the anti-abortion protesters occasionally wave have given me an idea.

We need to make the public actually think about overturning Roe vs. Wade. And to do that, rather than just saying it, we should use some kind of visual effect.

Because of that, on the day of the confirmation hearings, once they are announced (and maybe at various times before then) I plan to be outside city hall waving metal coathangers and protesting Republican attempts to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Wouldn't it make sense?

We have a leak, not necessarily from the investigator, talking about Powell having records which included Valerie Plame's name.

Bolton, as Undersecretary in charge of Arms Control, would have had access to the report, if Powell had it. He worked under Powell at the State Department at the time.

It'll be Mel Martinez Bush picks. He's anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and loyal to Bush, as well as being on Reid's list of people the Democrats will tolerate, so he'll probably be approved easily - and if not, it'll hurt Reid.

Jeb Bush, of course, would name the replacement in the Senate. Considering Bush wants Katherine Harris out of the 06 Senate race against Bill Nelson, so that a candidate more likely to win can run, and all that she has done for Bush, he'd probably love to get her into a senate seat where she wouldn't be up for reelection until 2010. He also got her to step down so Martinez could win the seat in 04.

Martinez came out saying Guantanamo Bay should be shut down about a week ago. I'll bet he did that to ensure some Democrats won't oppose his nomination. He may look like he's not an absolute right winger, but he will be.