The Bell Tower

Why?

“Tiger has to take ownership of what he has done. He must get his personal life in order. I think that’s what he’s trying to do. And when he comes back he has to show some humility to the public,” Tom Watson said before the Dubai Desert Classic earlier this month.

“I would come out and I would do an interview with somebody and say, ‘You know what? I screwed up. And I admit it. I am going to try to change. I am trying to change. I want my wife and family back,’ ” Watson said.

Take ownership of what he’s done?  What the hell does that mean?  How can he disown it?  He did it, it’s his behavior.  The only person he owes an apology to is his wife and we don’t know the whole story.  Maybe she’s a raging bitch and he cheated because he couldn’t stand her.  Maybe she cheated on him too.  Maybe she doesn’t deserve an apology.  How the hell do we know?

The only reason Tiger has to apologize to anyone is money.  He wants to get his sponsorships back so he has to make it look like he’s sorry for doing something that - were he truly sorry for it - he wouldn’t have done in the first place.  And he has to please the executives who run the sport he dominates so they will allow him back to play.

Fans shouldn’t be fooled.  Tiger doesn’t care about them.  Nor should it matter what his opinion of them is.  People don’t watch golf because the guys hitting the ball give a damn about viewers.  They watch because these people play it better than anyone else.  Tiger Woods can sleep with two elephants, an Emu and a platypus.  When he wakes up in the morning, he still hits a golf ball better than every other human being on earth.  Fans want to see that.

To hell with all this judgment and hypocrisy - as if all these other golfers and corporate executives aren’t doing the same damned thing in their own bedrooms.  This false veneer of ethics is born and bred by people who seek to impose their will on the rest of society.  It’s arrogance cloaked in morality. I’m certainly not saying he was right to cheat on his wife.  I’m saying we don’t know the whole story, it’s none of our business in the first place and whatever the facts are, they won’t be changed with a BS interview filled with false contrition and hypocrisy.

If Tiger wants respect from the rank and file, he should come out with 5 o’clock shadow, a wife beater and a can of Pabst, tell the world to kiss his ass and then go win the next 10 tournaments in a row.  When are we going to stop pretending that the lives of these various public figures have any impact on our own beyond the entertainment they provide when they perform?  It’s an insult to our intelligence.

Contempt

“‘To use racist arguments to try to bait black people to get them to be anti-abortion is just disgusting,’ said Guy-Sheftall, who teaches women’s history and feminist thought at the historically black women’s college.

‘These one-issue approaches that are not about saving the black family or black children, it’s just a big distraction,’ she said. “Many black people don’t know who Margaret Sanger is and could care less.”

First of all, using race to influence political positions is the flagship strategy of the left wing in this country. How many Democrats did we hear during the primary insist that a vote for Barack Obama was a vote for the black community (not to mention the implication of a vote against)? For that matter, we saw feminists take out a full page ad in the New York Times insisting that Hillary Clinton “speaks” for all women. Of course this strategy is abhorrent but hearing a teacher of “feminist thought” wail about identity politics is comparable to enduring a lecture on the evils of gambling from Pete Rose.

Second, that last statement is extraordinarily contemptuous. I don’t care if Beverly Guy-Sheftall is black, white or purple. On what grounds can she make such an assumption? She specifically singled out the black community as if they were likely to be ignorant of American history. Why wouldn’t “many blacks” know who Margaret Sanger was?

In fact, all Americans would benefit from learning exactly who Margaret Sanger was - and I don’t mean by reading the BS propaganda materials pumped out by Planned Parenthood or the various right to life camps. Pick up a history book, cross reference your sources and decide for yourself whether you think the grand poo-bah of family planning was a pillar of human rights and racial sensitivity or not.

The general impulse from the left towards American historical figures is to deconstruct them. I would wager a year’s salary for example that more Americans would be able to associate Thomas Jefferson with Sally Hemmings than they would the governorship of Virginia. When it comes to various “luminaries” of the progressive movement on the other hand, the howls of defense are nearly deafening. As a matter of fact, here’s what Planned Parenthood has to say about both Jefferson and Sanger:

“…attempts to discredit the family planning movement because its early 20th-century founder was not a perfect model of early 21st-century values is like disavowing the Declaration of Independence because its author, Thomas Jefferson, bought and sold slaves.”

And comparing the Declaration of Independence to the family planning movement is like comparing sex to a high five because both make me feel just bully. But I digress. So where is Thomas Jefferson’s “fact sheet?”

Voyeurism

“NBC was right to cover the story, and showing the video was a necessary news decision.”

Wrong. The line between journalism and voyeurism is perfectly clear. Of course NBC had to cover the story. There is no need to show the man’s death except to solicit ratings. The purpose of journalism is to convey information to the uninformed. We know he’s dead. The journalistic value in actually airing the footage is zero. The editors at NBC will probably cloak their decision in some lofty language about journalism and the duty of the press. The reality is, it was unnecessary, gratuitous and irresponsible. Period.

“Ef the poor!

“‘An increase in tobacco tax rates is not only sound public health policy but a smart and predictable way to help boost the economy and generate long-term health savings for states facing deepening budget deficits,’ said John Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

‘We have irrefutable evidence that raising the tobacco tax lowers smoking rates among adults and deters millions of children from picking up their first cigarette,’ Seffrin said in a statement.”

Oh really? If it’s so effective at lowering the smoking rate, where’s all the money coming from then John? It’s amazing how the left will lambaste Republicans for giving tax cuts only to the rich while screwing the poor. Meanwhile, what’s a more regressive tax than a $1 tax increase on cigarettes. Which of the following do you think is going to have a harder time affording this, Bill Gates or the homeless guy on 34th street? It’s a regressive, cynical, irresponsible way for the government to make a quick buck on an unpopular and overwhelmingly poor minority whom the left themselves will argue are plagued by an addiction they cant kick. So let’s take that poor single Mom working double shifts at the local restaurant and charge her an extra buck a pack for a habit she can’t quit. This is the kind of bureaucratic strong arming that national health care will exponentially magnify.

Like I said…

TIME magazine sounds like the fat guy at the dinner buffet trying to justify the bag of marshmallows he ate in the car on the way over. “I’ll definitely live longer if I get stuck in the elevator on the way up.” They’re all missing the point. You can find “some evidence” to retroactively prove any possible weather outcome. It’s pretty clear the snowstorms have caught many in the “scientific community” by surprise.

Here’s the only sense to come out of the liberal hand wringing that Mother Nature has just inadvertently created on the left:

“Ultimately, however, it’s a mistake to use any one storm - or even a season’s worth of storms - to disprove climate change (or to prove it; some environmentalists have wrongly tied the lack of snow in Vancouver, the site of the Winter Olympic Games, which begin this month, to global warming). Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. And while our ability to predict the former has become reasonably reliable, scientists are still a long way from being able to make accurate projections about the future of the global climate. Of course, that doesn’t help you much when you’re trying to locate your car under a foot of powder.”

Uncertainty. This is the entire point of opposition to the absurd increase in government authority that these alarmists want to put in place - and cap and trade definitely falls under the ridiculous alarmist category. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re just running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off trying to convince us that we have to adopt all sorts of ludicrous “solutions” we know for sure will damage the economy and empower bureaucrats. We’re less sure about the actual environmental impact but never mind. It’s windy out. Jump off this bridge and worry about the consequences after we’re falling.

Of course Republicans are going to exploit the snow storms, just like the left exploited the heavy hurricane seasons not so long ago. The alarmists are constantly adjusting their numbers and predictions to keep up with the unpredictability of Mother Nature. It’s hard to find anyone serious on the right or left who will outright dispute warming trends. That’s where the agreement ends and the spinning starts. Will it continue, is man responsible for it, can man do anything about it even if we are responsible, what is the real coming impact, can we modify that impact, what will the impact from various alternative energy solutions be, etc.

The uncertainty about those questions comes through crystal clear in this article, intentionally or not. The left and the “scientific community” are tone deaf to this. I use quotes because science is about the search for the true nature of our environment, not the quest for policy initiatives. That’s where the science ends and the politics begins. Few in the media or the government ever bother to draw that line. Just because one is against cap and trade for example does not automatically put them in the global warming denier category. Unfortunately, so many “in the know” refuse to have a sensible discussion about this. They’d rather spotlight the extremes and burn all opposition at the stake in their quest for a command economy driven not by consumer demand but by government fiat.

I don’t wager against the spread…

“‘We’re in for a stalemate . . . an extended one,’” predicted a senior State Department official, who requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. The opposition will persist ‘but won’t be capable of bringing down the government.’”

If that doesn’t sum up the Obama administration, I don’t know what does. They can’t figure out who’s going to win so their solution is to take no stand at all. Democracy, human rights, freedom… all BS. All that matters is the political fallout and it’s too hard to figure out where that will land yet.

What has this president stood for since he’s been in the White House? I suppose the argument could be made that he’s stood sorta tough on health care but he’s even wavering on that now and all the Democrats have lost is their filibuster proof majority in the Senate. And anyway, what does it say that Barack Obama is more willing to stake his presidency on the political positions of campaign contributors and policy wonks than he is on basic human freedom?

It’s true, perhaps the United States can’t do much for the fledgling and possibly doomed movement in Iran. It doesn’t matter. Neither does where these protesters stand on irrelevant policy issues like nuclear proliferation. American presidents should always and without hesitation stand for freedom. Period. But what can the Iranian people do for this guy’s next election? Barack Obama does not belong in the White House.

HUD

Another terrible candidate who may very well wind up Governor of New York. It’s funny how the blame for the recession goes: blame Bush, blame the private sector, blame greed, blame de-regulation, blame the Republicans. No mention is ever made of the absolute fraud that Democrats perpetrated by forcing loose lending standards onto banks so they could make a fat buck on poor and lower middle class home owners. This is the heart and soul, the core of the crash we’re still trying to recover from. Now, one of the primary architects of that crash is seeking the governorship of New York by attempting to further cripple the banks he so roundly screwed in his years at HUD. He has no business even sniffing the chair once occupied by Theodore Roosevelt.