Maybe there was something to that “Pact With the Devil” stuff?

I  made some disparaging remarks about Pat Robertson and his public comments on the disaster in Haiti, but Colby Cosh notes in his MacLean’s column:

…. I suppose one might point out that even the wicked Pat Robertson is entitled to just treatment at the hands of his critics. In talking about the “curse” he believes Haiti lies under, Robertson was referring to a genuine event in the annals of that country’s revolutionary struggle—the 1791 Voodoo prayer for liberty in the Bois Caïman. As some liberal and perhaps even “secularist” observers have pointed out, this aspect of Haitian history is something of a legitimate problem for traditional Haitian Christians. It might even be a problem for a sincere Catholic who took the trouble to inquire into it!

So there is a historical perspective to Robertson’s comments.

Although it doesn’t make the remarks any less stupid – unless of course you are someone who literally believes in a devil that signs compacts with people. Personally,  I’d need to see the paperwork.

Are the Olympics over yet?

The other day, one of the media news stories was how some residents of Vancouver actually live on “Olympic” Street (or Avenue). Must have been a very, very, slow news day.

Let’s rev up the excitement!

The Joke in Copenhagen

I have now gone from being merely skeptical of the global warming frenzy to being angry by the revelations that we have been defrauded by people who have manipulated data and stonewalled any critical analysis of their findings and who have had the unmitigated gall to call themselves scientists. I am angry because  politicians and bureaucrats seem determined to forge ahead with policies that will do mortal damage our economies in spite of the information now becoming available that data was doctored in order to prove a predetermined hypothesis.

To add to all of this, after the e-mails out of East Anglia and just when the “scientists” and the global warming theorists were getting into their damage control mode attempting to explain that what the e-mails said meant something entirely different than what it sounded like, they were hit by a report from Russia that the temperature database from that country had been manipulated by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to show greater warming in Russia that was actually the case.

From there we went to the circus in Copenhagen where demagogues such as Venezuala’s president Hugo Chavez received standing ovations for his attacks on capitalism and his arch-enemy the U.S.

Assembled world leaders cheered on Chavez Wednesday during his first, scheduled speech, a ringing attack on all things capitalist that earned him standing ovations from leaders of the Third World.

Chavez berated developed nations for creating an “imperial dictatorship” that rules the world and urging his audience to “fight against capitalism,” the “silent and terrible ghost” that was haunting the elegant conference chambers in the Danish capital.

“I promise I won’t talk more than others have talked this afternoon,” he said at the start of a rambling, 25-minute diatribe that outshot other speakers by a full 20 minutes. In the wide-ranging speech, he called capitalism the “road to hell” responsible for poverty, murder, AIDS — and even unfair climate agreements, the Toronto Star reported.

And there were others –

Over in Copenhagen, we have Robert Mugabe, perhaps the most brutal and corrupt despot in Africa, whose life’s work has been to destroy the once-prosperous country of Zimbabwe, lecturing the West on the “hypocrisy” of its position on climate change. (Zimbabwe doesn’t have to worry about greenhouse gas emissions, because, thanks to Mugane, its economy is in a state of collapse.) Update: Here’s Stephen Lewis talking about a new report on Mugabe’s use of rape as a weapon.

We have the government of China, which won’t allow its citizens free access to the Internet, complaining that the climate summit is “not transparent.”

We have Hugo Chavez, who took time off from shutting down Venezuela’s radio stations to fly to Denmark, complaining about western “dictatorship.” (If anyone back in Venezuela disagrees, he’ll toss them in jail).

And it goes on.

Of course we also have the patriotic Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, standing up for Canada – sorry, my mistake. You have David Miller slamming Canada by volunteering to accept a Fossil award in Canada’s name.

“Like most Canadians, I’m embarrassed … our government continues to be one of the biggest obstacles to reaching agreement,” Mr. Miller said as he accepted two “Fossil of the Day” awards on behalf of Canada last week.

Two other commentaries that are well worth reading.

As always, a well-written, thoughtful column by Rex Murphy, which says in part:

If the hard science of global warming, or at least as much of that emergent discipline that may be called hard science, is to be the factual and scientific fulcrum on which policies for the world’s energy are to be decided, then it logically follows that such science must be absolutely untainted. That it not be infused with the activist spirit, that advocacy follows the science, not that science seeks to comport with advocacy. It is really impossible to read some of those e-mails and not to take, from both their tone and their substance, that the necessary neutrality and disinterest of true scientific enterprise – the essential virtues of science – have been severely disobliged.

Has the science been tainted, is the question of our time. Has the authority and prestige of scientific practice been invoked at the very moment when its methods – its practice – has been, to any degree, corrupted or degraded? This would be a reasonable question – and let me stress it is still a question – even if the project or subject was one of far less consequence and scope than the planet’s climate and its economic practice.

That question is not being asked with the rigour we should expect. There is something about the great cause of global warming that tends to disarm scrutiny, to tamp down the normal reflexes of tough questioning and investigation that the press brings to every other arena. The great conference at Copenhagen seems to have whistled by the quite momentous challenge that the East Anglia e-mails presents to the centrality of the claims made by the global warming cause. Lots of fossil-of-the-day moments – not many hard press conferences.

Then another by Roger J. Simon on Pajamas Media, who was in Copenhagen for the conference and who observes that the conference was less about CO2 reduction than about moving power into the hands of the UN.

It will say the same of Copenhagen, no doubt. At least the presence of the various despots (Chavez, Mugabe, the re-upped A-jad, etc.) was not as damaging this time. It was more of sideshow, compared to the true objective of COP15 – the cementing of UN bureaucratic power under the guise of CO2 regulation. That was why the Climategate revelations were particularly poorly timed for the United Nations. Yes, they were largely ignored or dismissed at press conferences, but they were an overwhelming presence about which many were aware.

But much of the reality of the conference seemed to me to be an opportunity for third world countries to try and extract money from the west to use for their own purposes. This comment from a US agricultural reperesentative at the conference had the same take on the proceedings.

“To me, it appeared like they wanted our money to fix the problems they have that didn’t necessarily have anything to do with greenhouse gases or climate change,” he says. “It’s just the fact that they wanted to redistribute the wealth.  They wanted our dollars because we were the ‘rich Americans’.”

I think that pretty much sums it up: redistribution of wealth. That’s the plan.

Tiger missing in action, but the story rolls on

I told myself that I would not write anything further on the trials and tribulations of Mr. Woods. But it just won’t quit!

In recent weeks, women have been falling out of the sky trying to get their 15 minutes of notoriety, although it’s probably more like 5 minutes these days.  However, I am fascinated by what kind of person wants and needs this kind of public exposure? There are, I do believe, a lot of sick cookies out there. Give them the sniff of a scandal and they seem to line up, yelling, ‘me too’! ‘Me too’!

There is no question that we have long gone past the stage where you can even believe less than 1% of what you read. Actually, that probably happened after the first day. We have heard stories about financial agreements between Woods and his wife and talk about divorce, but it is very hard to believe that any of that information is based on any verifiable facts.

There is probably no-one who has kept his personal life closer to his chest than Woods and anyone that breached that trust knows that they would find themselves shivering out in the cold, and lonely, Tigerless woods before they could blink. Look at what happened to his original caddy Fluff, when he started to get some publicity and started talking about his financial arrangements with Tiger. It’s quite possible that he suffered whiplash on his way out the door.

Mind you, what still baffles me is how Woods could have let himself get into this situation. Was he unaware that he was a celebrity – no, a HUGE celebrity – and it would be just a matter of time before some inquisitive muckraker would meet some disgruntled bedmate and he would be burnt toast.

It’s surprising that it didn’t come to light that way, although the story has been told that the Enquirer did have the story and sat on it for the benefit of Woods appearing on one of its other magazine’s covers. So was Woods picture on a magazine cover worth more than the magazine sales for a scandal on the most recognizable athlete in the world? Very hard to believe., but maybe the Enquirer chief was a fan and was looking for golf tips.

It’s also obvious that Woods’ management people knew what was up. What a sleazy job – arranging rooms for trysts and the like.

So there we were, thinking of Tiger as this consummate family man, sitting around home and playing with the kids on his weeks off. But when you stop and really think about it, that was really our fantasy. We thought he was a normal guy – a better golfer to be sure (well, way better) – but basically a normal guy raised with good family values but with a lot of money. And that was the difference. He had a whole lot of money.

Here we had a man with more money than some small countries, off doing photoshoots for commercials, showing up at big sporting events, golfing with high-flying buddies, off to Dubai to look at golf course designs, all the while everyone fawning over him and treating him like royalty. At some point I suppose you begin to feel that you really are special and totally protected. And you probably don’t get much in the way of good, personal advice. Who’s going to tell the King that he has no clothes?

Greg Stewart of the Peoria Journal Star writes about Mark Steinberg, who heads the global golf division for International Management Group, of which Tiger is their client:

As for Steinberg? Odds are you won’t hear him issuing any statements like Williams did.

Steinberg was with Woods last month in Australia, where his alleged affair with Mistress No. 1,Rachel Uchitel, was first reported. It is incomprehensible that a person who manages every aspect of Tiger’s public life had no knowledge of his now-disastrous private life.

Yet it is understandable how Steinberg might feel helpless in this situation. Advisors earn their keep before the shot hits the fan, not after. But Steinberg is all-too-aware of how he landed this job in the first place. At the 1998 British Open, Hughes Norton, then Tiger’s agent at IMG, told Woods that it wasn’t a good idea to be photographed with then-girlfriend Joanna Jagoda.

Not long after, Woods fired Norton and replaced him with Steinberg.

So there is a history. And thanks to Geoff Shackelford for that link and for his postings giving me more information on the Tiger Woods saga than I ever wanted to know.

And now, as if Tiger didn’t have enough problems with family, the media is hyping a possible steroid taking scandal (at least they seem to hope it is) involving Canadian Doctor Anthony Galea. Although this story gives Tiger a break.

There is no evidence at all, not a known shred, that Woods used an illegal substance or cheated on the golf course in any way.

We do know this from a New York Times story this week: A Canadian doctor who says he went to Woods’ Windermere, Fla., home four or five times in February and March of this year to treat Woods’ left knee with a legal, cutting-edge technique known as platelet-rich plasma therapy is under criminal investigation in the United States.

It’s enough to almost make you feel sorry for the guy.

Climategate and an angry reaction

Some strong words from Lorrie Goldstein in the Toronto Sun.

If you’re wondering how the robot-like march of the world’s politicians towards Copenhagen can possibly continue in the face of the scientific scandal dubbed “climategate,” it’s because Big Government, Big Business and Big Green don’t give a s*** about “the science.”

They never have.

What “climategate” suggests is many of the world’s leading climate scientists didn’t either. Apparently they stifled their own doubts about recent global cooling not explained by their computer models, manipulated data, plotted ways to avoid releasing it under freedom of information laws and attacked fellow scientists and scientific journals for publishing even peer-reviewed literature of which they did not approve.

Now they and their media shills — who sneered that all who questioned their phony “consensus” were despicable “deniers,” the moral equivalent of those who deny the Holocaust — are the ones in denial about the enormity of the scandal enveloping them.

[snip]

Big Government wants more of your taxes. Big Business wants more of your income. Big Green wants you and your children to bow down to its agenda of enforced austerity.

What about saving the planet, you ask? This was never about saving the planet. This is about money and power. Your money. Their power.

If it was about saving the planet, “cap-and-trade” (a.k.a. cap-and-tax) — how Big Government, Big Business and Big Green ludicrously pretend we will “fight” global warming and “save the planet” — would have been consigned to the dust bin of history because it doesn’t work. We know it doesn’t work because Europe’s five-year-old cap-and-trade market — the Emissions Trading Scheme — has done nothing to make the world cooler.

You can’t much plainer than that.

Enough, enough with Tiger Woods

OK, I have had it with the Tiger Woods story. I am sick of instant experts being trotted out to tell me how Tiger OWES it to the public (read that to mean the media) to go public and tell all; bare his soul to the world.

Well Tiger isn’t going to do that – at least I hope he doesn’t get pressured into doing that. This is something that he has to deal with at home and privately. Why the hell would he come on TV and embarrass his wife and family further.

We have seen an endless line of politicians doing that, with the long-suffering wife standing beside them, giving their ‘support’ and forgiveness for the pol’s transgressions. How humiliating!

But Tiger isn’t looking to get re-elected or even keep his job. He is still the greatest golfer in the world and people will still come out in droves to watch him dominate.

Right now some idiot is on the golf channel spouting off that “we” need to see Tiger “ourselves” although I am not sure why. What Tiger does with his personal life is his business and has nothing to do with anything that affects me.

There is nothing that Woods can do about the media stories that have been written already nor those that will be written in the future. All he can do is control his own actions from here on in.

The only thing that blows me away – and this is not just with Tiger – is how these high profile athletes and politicians and the like really expect to step out of line and get away with it. Tiger has been called the most recognizable athlete in the world. Really, how dumb-assed was he to think that something like this wouldn’t become public at some point. I’m just surprised that it played out the way it did.

But this too will pass. It’s not like he’s the only rich and famous person to stray from the straight and narrow and he sure as hell won’t be the last.

Was it Lee Trevino who early on in Tiger’s career speculated that the only things that could stall Tiger’s march to become the greatest golfer in history was an injury or a bad marriage? So far he’s survived the injury.

Probably a damned good thing that Earl isn’t still around though.

Climategate and the Mainstream Media

The internet has been buzzing since the publication of the e-mail files that were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain. However the interest in them doesn’t seem to have spilled over to the  MSM.

ABC, CBS and NBC’s collective silence on “ClimateGate” has reached ridiculous levels as the broadcast networks continued to ignore the great and growing scandal. The bias by omission has now become scandalous.

“The networks’ silence on ClimateGate is deafening. Scandal, cover-ups and conspiracy are the bread and butter of the media. Yet they have selectively and deliberately decided not to report this bombshell – or any of the incriminating details surrounding the scandal – because it goes against their left-wing agenda,” Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell complained in a statement released today.

Phil Jones announced yesterday that he is temporarily leaving his post as head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) pending the investigation into the controversial e-mails and documents that started ClimateGate.

Yet none of the broadcast network weekday morning and evening news shows addressed ClimateGate or the incriminating Jones development since the news broke yesterday. This marked 12 days since the information was first uncovered that they have ignored this global scandal.

Another site pointed out similar concerns.

With the AP busy fact-checking Sarah Palin’s book and much of the rest of the media busy trying to trip her up at her book signings, a huge story seems to have passed them by: ClimateGate.

However, as Noel Shepard at Newsbusters pointed out earlier this week that several days after the scandalous news broke, neither ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, nor NBC had bothered to cover a huge story that is becoming bigger by the moment. He also notes that NPR seemed to be a part of the blackout. Here are some of the stories they did deem important within those few days:

• ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” Friday did a very lengthy piece about Oprah Winfrey ending her syndicated daytime talk show
• ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” Monday did a lengthy piece on new revelations involving the marital affair of Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.)
• CBS “Evening News” Saturday reported a ten-year-old pianist playing at Carnegie Hall
• CBS “Evening News” Sunday did lengthy pieces on the website FreeCreditReport.com not being free and the movie “New Moon”
• CBS “Evening News” Monday did lengthy pieces about defective drywall and a man who makes money wearing t-shirts
• NBC “Nightly News” Friday reported on Switzerland’s supercollider being turned back on
• NBC “Nightly News” Saturday did a somewhat lengthy report on food carts
• NBC “Nightly News” Sunday reported the release of British singer Susan Boyle’s CD, and then followed it up with another report Monday on her promoting it.

More “big news” as of this writing was about the couple who managed to crash the White House state dinner on Tuesday night, as well as the annual Black Friday shopping crush.

And of course there was the very important Tiger Woods car accident story that the world awaited with breathless anticipation. They did note that Fox was on the story, but of course the MSM doesn’t consider Fox to be a legitimate news network.

An amusing (and enlightening) video of interviews with some major environmental organization spokespersons on this issue can be seen at Pajamas TV. The interpretation of these interviews could be called ‘total denial’.

This is definitely going to put a crimp in the ‘science is settled’ position of the global warming crowd and is certainly going to inject new life into the global warming sceptics.

But what is even more damaging is what this type of scandal does to the scientific community. Scientists are supposed to look at facts and once that is done, look at more facts. And if the data doesn’t support their initial conclusions then the conclusions need to me adjusted. That is why I have never understood the ‘science is settled’ argument by proponents of global warming. Real science is never settled.

But this looks to be a bunch of people calling themselves scientists who have predetermined a solution and then have fudged the data to ‘prove’ that conclusion. This is not science based on facts and their honest presentation. This is science driven by an agenda.

How can we believe anything they say from this point on.

Tiger Woods and the curse of being famous

It is an unfortunate fact that in this day of blogs, e-mails, facebook, twitter, cellphone cameras and all of the other communications technology out there, being a celebrity is a hazardous lifestyle. There is little to no privacy available to you if you stray from the confines of your security enhanced home and even within those confines you need to keep your head down.

Tiger Woods’ recent accident has generated a rush of speculation and stories touted as ‘factual’, without any comment from Woods himself or his family nor any official statement from any other source. But you can sense the paparazzi’s lust to drag another icon down into the mud.

And that’s the problem: Tiger Woods is an icon. This far into his career he has been scandal free, a family man with a beautiful wife and a young family, but also dedicated to his craft. He is considered to be the most recognizable sports figure in the world. He has it all.

But now the sensationalized media is speculating about a marital dispute which, should it turn out to be the case, will severely tarnish his image as a man whose life is based on strong family values and reduce him to the status of all of those other athletes who have graced the covers of the scandal sheets.

He will still be Tiger Woods, possibly the greatest golfer of all time, but there will be a certain element of clay always clinging to his shoes.

I hope for his sake and for professional golf as well, that Mr. Woods will escape this tarnishing of his reputation.

This article says it very well.

We get news faster than we ever have. We just can’t trust it to be right. So patience, credibility and fairness are among the casualties here, too, at the intersection of celebrity and scandal — where voyeuristic rubbernecking is fun and nobody feels the need to tap the brakes, and the result is an international icon bleeding on the street while surrounded by more questions than answers.

I don’t pretend to know what is and isn’t true here. What I do know is that Woods is too famous to have any kind of accident quietly. Once upon a time, in a black-and-white America that was more romantic and less human, Joe DiMaggio could be an epic sports hero in public despite having secret issues with Marilyn Monroe in private. But that day is as dead as both DiMaggio and Monroe. There are too many lights on you these days for an athlete to be around anything shady.

Too many people are watching. And a cellphone camera is now credential enough to make just about anyone “media.” We’re all in this together now, linked by things like Twitter and Facebook, the lines blurred between network news and networking, which is how a reporter from Fox News somehow came to be “reporting” on this Tiger Woods incident while holding up a copy of the National Enquirer and citing TMZ in a mutated media ménage a` trois that didn’t exactly conjure a credibility that seems to have died with Walter Cronkite.

Here’s what we kind of know: The National Enquirer reported that Woods was having an affair with a New York party girl named Rachel Uchitel, who is one of the hottest Google trends today and has taken an unusual number of photos in a bikini. This report may or may not be true. That hardly seems to matter. Uchitel is denying any affair. That hardly seems to matter, either. Very soon after this report, Woods was checked into a hospital for facial lacerations and a suspicious car accident that either featured his wife aiding him or possibly beating him, depending on which whispers, outlets and paid-for-information anonymous sources you believe.

[snip]

What may or may not have happened to Woods isn’t any kind of new, of course. Promiscuity is older than sports, and falls from grace might be older than both. Kobe Bryant’s wife is wearing a $4.5 million apology for this kind of behavior on her finger. But what is new here is how quickly scandalous news spreads in an instant-gratification society that microwaves, TiVos, Google searches and gets its infotainment on demand. The news travels so fast that it is out there before it can be verified and before the participants have even uttered a public word, and the more credible news outlets are forced to follow the flocks toward TMZ and the Enquirer or be left behind.

And here’s why that’s relevant:

What if it isn’t true?

How do we go back and fix that?

And isn’t that kind of accident ultimately more damaging than the one involving Tiger Woods?

Remembering 911 at PJTV

Bill Whittle at PJTV reminds us to remember.

Obama can do no wrong, even when he is doing right

This column in the Vancouver Sun by Shelley Fralic annoys me on two levels.

Firstly she looks at the photo of US President Obama supposedly ogling the butt of a Brazilian girl, along with French President Sarkozy and immediately writes a gushing column as to how it is not only all right for Obama to be doing this but it is a good thing.

The good news is that President Barack Obama is a real live red-blooded all-American man, and I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have that kind of guy running the most powerful nation in the world than some moribund frozen-pulse old fart (can you say the Bush boys) leading the free world.

[snip]

Thank heavens Obama has a natural, instinctive eye for the ladies, otherwise he’d be dead.

In fact, anthropologists will tell you that humans always have been, and always will be, attracted to beauty in the opposite sex, be it a peacock’s plumage, a woman’s curves or a man’s burly biceps. It’s what keeps the species interested, and going.

So if the U.S. President, who’s married to a looker and is no slouch in the handsome department himself, has a thing for junk in the trunk, good on him.

The continuing story from the media: If it;s done by Obama it,s OK.

Secondly, it is all bullshit as the actual video of the event shows.

I am no fan of the President of our neighbours south of the border, nor his apparent policies, but I detest this kind of cheap reporting. Pluck a frame out of a video stream or a sentence out of a paragraph to prove a non-existent point to manufacture a non-existent story.

They used to be able to get away with this type of crap, but since the advent of the internet it is much harder to keep under cover. But obviously Ms. Fralic needs to learn how to do a bit of research.