So be good, for goodness’ sake! Or don’t, it’s really none of my concern.

Let’s meet again in ‘10,
Simon

Why is it that the guys who’ve got the biggest piece of the pie keep telling the rest of us we don’t deserve what we’ve earned?

Take it away, James:

Its story unfolds on an alien planet in the 22nd century, but director James Cameron says his new film “Avatar” is a metaphor for the way humankind treats Earth today…

Set on a distant planet called Pandora, in the heart of a vast tropical forest, it recounts how strife erupts between an indigenous tribe and an Earth-based consortium pillaging for a precious mineral.

“I see it as a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicised as some would make it, but rather that’s how we treat the natural world as well,” the Canadian-born filmmaker said.

“There’s a sense of entitlement — ‘We’re here, we’re big, we’ve got the guns, we’ve got the technology, we’ve got the brains, we therefore are entitled to every damn thing on this planet’,” he said.

“That’s not how it works and we’re going to find out the hard way if we don’t wise up and start seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural cycles of life on earth.”

James “King of the World” Cameron is lecturing you about your unearned sense of entitlement. Isn’t that cute?

Is there an industry with a bigger carbon footprint than moviemaking? That flick cost something like $300 million to make. How many “natural cycles of life on earth” did it disrupt in the process? How much evil, evil carbon dioxide was produced? How many continents’ worth of mango trees would you need to plant to make up for it? Why is it okay for James Cameron to devote whole rooms full of energy-sucking computers — and the Red Bull-sucking nerds in front of them — to creating photorealistic cat people, but I get a lecture when I leave my cell phone charger plugged in?

It’s not enough to be rich and famous if you’re not somehow “relevant.” Whether it’s Prince Charles or Al Gore or Leonardo DiCaprio or any of these other guys, they all have the same message: “Hey, I deserve to live like this. Now shut up and shiver in the dark, you peasants.”

In other WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE FROM GLOBAL WARMING news: Environmentalist bête noire Phelim McAleer gets kicked out of another global warming event for asking a global warming preacher about global warming.

And speaking of Carbonhagen! You’ve probably seen this already, but it really is worthy of further study:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yet another ludicrous computer model intended to make you stop asking questions about global warming. These earth-saving Eisensteins were so busy art-directing this little masterpiece that they didn’t realize they were undercutting their own narrative. Because, you see: The little girl wakes up. None of it was real. Some very naughty grownups just filled her little head with horror stories.

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

Update: Some guy from the New York Times says I’m not reasonable, meaning that I really am.

Oh, and his “more reasonable” example, the NYT’s own Andrew Revkin, also happens to be the one who shut off Phelim McAleer’s microphone for daring to disagree with Al Gore. That’s using the power of reason for ya. So I’m quite happy to be a part of the group of which Revkin is not a member.

Although it’s nice to be quoted by the New York Times and receive credit for it. First time for everything!

Update: Entertainment Weekly asks Cameron if he thinks Avatar will make a profit. He replies:

“If we announce Avatar 2, we made money. If we didn’t make money, we’re a bunch of dumb f—s. But we still made 2,000 jobs for three years, and that’s a good thing.”

Job creation is indeed a good thing. That is, if you don’t care about the natural cycles of life on earth. You’re here, you’re big, you’ve got the guns, you’ve got the technology, you’ve got the brains…

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about her. Not that we’d have heard of her in the first place if the media had their way. But now the National Enquirer, which made fools of all of them, has this update:

When Rielle Hunter, the mother of John Edwards’ love child, demanded more money in child support from the disgraced two-time Presidential loser, he tossed her and their daughter out on the street, sources tell the ENQUIRER exclusively!

Top secret documents obtained exclusively by The ENQUIRER provide undeniable proof that John Edwards is the father of his mistress’ love child – and show that she’s asking for nearly $18,000 a month in support!

But Rielle Hunter’s cash grab so infuriated the disgraced presidential candidate that, sources say, he basically tossed her and their daughter out on the street just days before they were set to move into a house he’d bought for them!

Usually I don’t like a lot of exclamation marks! But then again, these are the guys who broke the story! And kept it alive even as their more “respectable” brethren in newsrooms across the country were trying to sweep it under the rug! So I’ll allow it!

As if Edwards’ week didn’t suck enough already, now details are emerging about the tell-all book by his one-time faithful assistant and uncanny Will Arnett lookalike, Andrew Young:

The underside of modern American politics — raw ambition, manipulation, and deception — are revealed in detail by Andrew Young’s riveting account of a presidential hopeful’s meteoric rise and scandalous fall. Like a non-fiction version of All the King’s Men, The Politician offers a truly disturbing, even shocking perspective on the risks taken and tactics employed by a man determined to rule the most powerful nation on earth.

Just think: This lying, amoral, manipulative creep might have been President of the United States. People would’ve believed in him just because he has a pretty smile and says things they want to hear. We sure dodged a bullet, huh?

But wait, there’s more!

According to FoxNews.com:

In a rare move, North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr announced Thursday that he will oppose the nomination of a U.S. attorney to his state until the investigation of John Edwards is complete.

Edwards, the two-time Democratic presidential candidate who last year admitted an affair with his former campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter, has been under federal investigation by prosecutor George Holding since at least the spring. On Nov. 30, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Thomas Walker to replace Holding, whose tenure expires in September 2010.

Holding is investigating whether Edwards used campaign funds to pay for Rielle’s silence, or whether he spent it on furniture that wasn’t carrying his baby. There’s some concern that Holding won’t be able to finish his investigation before he’s replaced. But that would imply that the current administration is a bunch of ruthless political partisans with an utter disregard for the rule of law. As if!

And hey, guess whose presidential campaigns Thomas Walker has contributed to? Their names rhyme with Juan Tedwards and… hmm, I guess nothing really rhymes with Barack Obama. So that seems pretty inappropriate. But hey, it’s 2009; the more brazen the conflict of interest, the better!

(Thanks to Deceiver supertipster Fortunate Son)

Update: I’m told that Rielle was also namechecked in the latest episode of Gossip Girl. Although these days she’s closer in age to the Golden Girls.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“We’re standing at the abyss! Mankind is doomed if we don’t do something right now! Um… as long as it doesn’t interfere with my personal convenience and comfort.” At least that guy in the clown car was committed to the concept, if not his own dignity.

There’s so much going on with Climategate that it’s hard to keep up, you guys!

• Scientists in England are fighting accusations of groupthink with… more groupthink.
• Sarah Palin writes a Washington Post op-ed on Climategate, Al Gore responds (“Global warming is like gravity, you denying denialist denier”), and Palin returns fire (“Yeah, genius, it’s a naturally occurring process and you can’t change it by ruining the economy”).
• The news is finally catching on to, well, the news. But mainly to tell us that it’s not really news. “Nothing to see here, people!”
• The founder of the Weather Channel says Climategate is a fight between David and Goliath, and “Goliath now occupies Copenhagen.”
• Every breath you take, the EPA is watching you.
• To paraphrase one of the greats: “Science.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You’d think these guys would be happy that we’re all gonna be okay. But then they wouldn’t have such a convenient excuse to boss us around.

“These are private e-mails, more than 10 years old…” He made the same claim in a Slate interview today, but they didn’t call him on it like this CNN guy did.

Putting aside the fact that these “private” e-mails are work product from a publicly funded institution, and are evidence that the science is far from settled, they’re not all 10 years old. They do span the last 13 years, but the most recent e-mail is from just last month. They’re evidence of an ongoing effort to hide and manipulate the data, and to suppress dissent. It’s been going on for a long time, and they’re still trying to get away with it. Al’s doing it right here.

There’s no possible way he can admit any of that, of course. His financial and psychological investment in this crap is way too deep for him to acknowledge such, ahem, inconvenient truths. The only way to deal with such a massive blow to his ego is to just bull through it. Pretend it’s not happening. He is, to borrow a phrase, a Climategate denier.

He used to really irritate me, but now he just makes me sad.

No, I guess it’s both.

And according to the Associated Press:

Letterman asked the audience members to clap if they thought Woods was a “jerk.” Letterman then asked them to clap if they thought he was a jerk.

Both received applause.

On the one hand, Letterman is a comedian, and Tiger Woods is the biggest story of the month, if not the year. It’d be tough for him to avoid it. (Although he’s done a fine job of avoiding jokes about the current President of the United States…) So he went with the self-pitying “Wow, that guy is almost as big of a creep as me, eh, folks?”

Which would be fine if it was just him working things out with his wife. But what about their kid? Can you imagine if you were 6-7 years old and this was your dad? On national TV?

I’m trying to imagine his young son’s first Bring Your Father to School Day…

“And what does your daddy do, Harry?”

“He tells jokes.”

“Oh, that’s nice. What kinds of jokes?”

“Jokes about kissing ladies.”

“…ah. Kissing your mommy, you mean?”

“No. He tells jokes about being a serial adulterer who prefers women half his age who work for him. He likes to screw around with them behind my mommy’s back. I was pretty much an accident.”

What? You don’t think so?

Keep joking about what a creep you are, Dave. The Applause sign will light up as always, and everything will be okay. Don’t even worry about what it does to your family.

As the world edged into financial crisis, there were repeated warnings that we were headed for disaster. In the end, disaster struck. In many ways, the challenge of climate change has a similar feel, and the alarm bells are ringing just as loudly. But while it was possible to bail out the banks and to stimulate economic recovery with trillions of dollars of public finance, it will not be possible to bail out the climate—unless we act now.

Yet even when the basic science of climate change has been accepted by almost all scientists, many others still seem to think that it is unfounded, and that the world has more important questions to address. Reducing poverty, increasing food production, combating terrorism, and sustaining economic recovery are seen as more deserving of our attention. But this is a false choice, for climate change is not an alternative priority to all of these; it is in fact a “risk multiplier,” a factor that will undermine our ability to achieve any of these things.

It goes on like that. And on. And on. It’s the usual fearmongering AGW junk: Every single scientist who matters agrees that WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE FROM GLOBAL WARMING, the only way to save humanity is for you to stop asking questions and cede authority over every aspect of your life to us, etc. This was probably written before Climategate broke, so Chuckie had no way of knowing that our suspicions about the unsettledness of the science would be so well confirmed.

The real sticking point, though, is this:

With this in mind, it seems to me that we need to adopt a new approach. Surely the starting point must be to see the world as it really is, and perhaps to accept that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nature and not the other way around. Nature is, after all, the capital that underpins capitalism.

One of the richest men in the world — whose only real job his whole life has been to wait for his mother to die, who never travels in less than perfect luxury, whose carbon footprint must be almost as big as Al Gore’s — is once again lecturing us on the planet-killing evils of capitalism. How dare we commoners strive to better our useless existence? Don’t we know that the good things in life are reserved for people like Prince Charles?

Is it just guilt? When your every need has been met your entire life, when you’ve never had to worry where your next luxury automobile is coming from, and yet you’ve done so little to deserve it, does it make you feel like a jerk? Maybe ol’ Chuck figures if he can’t save his dignity, he can at least save the planet.

And that’s not even taking into account the number of trees that were killed to print this week’s issue of Newsweek. That can’t be good for nature, I mean Nature. But fortunately for Gaia, that magazine may soon go the way of the dodo. Only not so fondly missed.

Update: In the interest of recycling, here I am smashing Chuck’s dumb “carbon footprint reduction” last May.

He’s not kidding around with this stuff, people. Both his Jaguar and his Land Rover have been converted to run on biofuels. Every single one of his mansions has at least one compact fluorescent bulb, and all his servants have been instructed to breathe as little as possible. Heck, he’s even got a recycled wife! He’s inspired me. To do my part to stop Global Warming, I’ve instructed my driver to keep the Bentley under 55 when driving over the poor.

Update: And in case you doubt his Scientological scientific credentials: Prince Charles Urges Government to Protect Alternative Medicine

Hee-hee-heelarious! And you know what’s even funnier? Guess who the musical guest was? Rihanna! Oh, LOL! She got to sit backstage and watch a bunch of crowd-pleasing jokes about domestic abuse go out on national TV! ROTFL!

Hey, how come SNL never did a sketch about Rihanna bumping her face into a car window 8-10 times? Where was the rib-tickling sight gag with a steering wheel wrapped around her head? Why is domestic abuse a horrible thing unless it’s happening to a man?

“Tiger’s wife has good reason to kick his cheatin’ ass,” you say. “He had it comin’,” you say. Well, I’m sure Chris Brown thought he had good reason to do what he did too. It wasn’t until society put great pressure on him that he pretended to be sorry. Now we’ve got another possible case of domestic abuse among the rich and famous, and it’s a big joke. Sorry, but it’s wrong, no matter who the victim is or what he or she might have done.

In other domestic abuser news: None other than Chris Brown tells Vibe that he feels like Oprah stabbed him in the back. Way to make us forget about your violent streak, genius.

Update: Turns out Woods was hurt worse than first reported, and the hospital sending him home as quickly as they did was “highly unusual.”

So, how do you show that you really believe the words that are coming out of your mouth?

Not like this (courtesy of the Daily Telegraph):

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

“It’s too cold to walk from the hotel to the convention on global warming. Let’s take a limo!”

And then there’s the delicious cherry on top of the hypocrisy sundae:

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

Taking a private jet to a conference on stopping global warming is a bit like traveling in a sedan chair carried by indentured servants to a summit on stopping human trafficking. Except we’re the ones they want to enslave. If they get their way, they’ll crush us with taxes, make our energy bills skyrocket, and otherwise cut our standard of living back to 19th-century levels. “Okay, you guys sit there shivering in the dark while we whoop it up with some Copenhagen hookers!” All because “the science is settled,” when anybody with an Internet connection can find out for themselves just how unsettled the science really is. And, of course, because it’s just not fair that we live better than any other human beings in the history of the world. Why don’t you feel more guilty?

If the only way to save the planet is to help destroy the planet, then… maybe we’re not really destroying the planet? These guys don’t really believe what they’re saying — that we’re on the verge of apocalypse because of anthropogenic global warming, or man-made climate change, or whatever they’re calling it this week — or else they’d never burn another ounce of fuel in their lives. They’d never go anywhere that can’t be reached on foot, and even then, they’d try to find a way to lower their CO2 emissions. Hey, how about putting a dry-cleaning bag over your head and securing it with duct tape? I’ll help!

(Hat tip to Hot Air)

Whatever else you want to say about Chris Brown, he’s definitely predictable. I predict that the next thing he says in public will be really stupid.

Did he let me down? He did not let me down. During his 20/20 interview tonight, he talks about his robotic Youtube apology to all his fans:

“I had a week of — not — not even a week, maybe three or four days of PR. And they just telling me like, ‘OK, don’t say this. And don’t say it this way, ’cause they’re gonna take it this way… So, I had in my — my head wasn’t really giving me a chance to be me. It was just being myself through other people. … It was genuinely from me, but it wasn’t projected genuinely.”

If you want to see him projecting genuinely, apparently you have to go back to his previous Youtube statement:

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Yeah, I’m tellin’ you. We not, we not. And I don’t do all this talkin’ on the thing, this just some new stuff I’m doin’, I wanna say what up. ‘Cause I ain’t been out there in a minute. But. New album gonna be comin’ soon. We workin’ on that right now. It’s called Graffiti, got everything on it, know what I’m sayin’? So y’all be ready for that. I’m about to drop a single this summer for y’all, so. We ain’t goin’ nowhere. Everybody that hate us, they just been haters. All my real fans, I love y’all. I ain’t a monster.”

Genuine projection! Back to the 20/20 interview. Brown goes on to explain the benefits of his domestic violence counseling:

“In this class, I’m not saying necessarily teaches you how to love, but like those emotions that get mixed up when you just in love or just whether it’s jealousy, insecurities, whatever the case may be in — in relationships. They teach you how to control a lot of — certain things.”

Thanks for clearing that up, ace. And regarding his subsequent ode to Rihanna, “Changed Man,” he says:

While Rihanna said that she has not heard the song, Brown told Roberts that he played it for her a month after the incident and she cried.

“I played the song for her. …The day I did it…a month after the situation,” he said. “She called when she first heard the song. And I mean, I’m not trying to say — call her any liar or anything like that. But I played the song for her when I first wrote it. And she cried.”

So he beat her up, acted defiant until he realized his career’s in enough trouble already, and wrote a song about how he’s different and stuff. And now he says Rihanna isn’t lying about not having heard the song, but she totally did hear it. And also? She cried! Because it was such a beautiful expression of his changedmanitude. So buy his album.

Why in the world would anybody see that as creepy and self-serving and pretty good evidence that he hasn’t really changed at all?

Brown’s closing statement:

“I really just — just try to — try to focus on what it is that I can do as far as my talent. …and really show people what they fell in love with me for. And just really kind of give them — give them all of me back.”

No refunds. Get lost, jackass.