But the president is spurning them, natch:
Barack Obama has announced that he is withdrawing from all existing treaties and security arrangements with the ursine community. Explaining his sharp break with the Bush administration’s policy of supporting overseas bear operations, president Obama said “bears are still our valued allies, but we can no longer pursue the arrogant policy of unilaterally supporting one member of the animal kingdom over another.”
He added, “Of course I believe in bear-exceptionalism, just as I believe in badger exceptionalism and tree sloth exceptionalism. But the days of a pecking order in the animal kingdom, with top of the food-chain predators and disrespected bottom-of-the-food-chain prey, are over.”
Some animals are more equal than others.
However, on the plus side, Speaker Pelosi introduced a bill to reach out to the ursine community by introducing an amendment to the stimulus package to provide 100 billion dollars to universities to determine whether ursines did or did not favor sylvan locations for biological waste disposal.
Yet more evidence that it didn’t matter who won the presidency, at least with respect to the War on Terror. You’ll recall that during the campaign, out of all the items in the Federal Budget, McCain kept criticizing the 3.1 million dollar Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project, which keeps our mountains terrorist-free. (The project is also teaching us how to modify Ursus arctos horribilis DNA to make them even more horribilis….)
Meanwhile Obama scrapped Bush’s plans to set up a missile shield in bear country, yielding to pressure from the Bengal tiger community.
Oops, make that the Siberian tiger community.
Well, that sounds like a better investment of taxpayer dollars than the billions spent by the state department to determine what religious institution the Pope belongs to.
Sigh. Of course Obama doesn’t believe it’s right to arm bears.
Yogi never did like strangers in his home and castle 🙂