The Anchoress

:::Please scroll down for Update:::

Kim at Wizbang is looking at this information from the Tennessee Center for Research Policy, and she’s wondering at how much glory, laud and honor come Al Gore’s way while George W. Bush’s Crawford Ranch is a model of noble and all-holy green-ness, that gets ignored.

Writes Kim: Keep in mind that this piece by Rob Sullivan was first published in the Chicago Tribune in 2001, so the fact that President Bush’s home was ecology friendly was not unknown in the media. They just chose to ignore it while they heaped praise on Gore.

The press and the left also ignore the moves Bush has tried to make to keep underbrush cleared to prevent wildfires. My FDNY friends say it’s wise policy.

If the information on Gore’s usage is true, I take a page from others who say Gore can use all the energy he can afford to pay for. If it’s not, we’ll soon know (See Gore’s response in the Update). But my concern isn’t how much the fella uses; I don’t buy into the whole “sky is falling” narrative, so I don’t care…what I am more interested in is the enduring double-standard of the press and the left.

I think it’s an amusing double-standard. Gore gasses away about the environment while he and his friends use private jets to go from huge, air-conditioned home to home, and he is heaped with accolades and good press, while Bush says little about the environment but lives the green-creed in Midland and gets only negative press. On every issue.

So, while you hear nothing at all about President Bush successfully gaining international co-operation for a green initiative that does not destroy economies like the Kyoto treaty, and you read nothing about how the president is committed to helping the restoration of ancient Iraqi Marshlands, you hear rather too much about all the preening and moralizing going on by Green Al Gore…except when he cancels interviews that might make him address…inconvenient dissent.

At the Oscars last night, someone said that Al Gore has been dedicated to “this issue for 30 years…” but when he was veep, President Clinton did not even submit the Kyoto treaty to congress for ratification, and the congress sumarily rejected it in a resolution, 95-0. Somehow that inconvnient truth keeps getting missed or re-written

Also, Al Gore said last night that “this issue is not a political issue, it’s a moral issue” (albeit a flawed one) but if that were true, you’d think he and his co-religionists would be generous and gracious about recognising President Bush’s personal and political efforts in this area. Instead, they bury it. The left buries it, the press buries it, the “concerned, green” pols who say global warming is “the greatest threat to the world,” bury it.

And that, to me, proves that there is nothing moral about this whole global warming sham, and everything political about it. When you have a genuine emergency of any sort, you welcome all available hands and quibble about who gets the credit, later. When you have a political agenda, you do…something else.

I can’t say it enough: if the big boys of Global Warming aren’t really taking the issue seriously…if they find it so unserious as to allow the issue to be used as a political wedge or a rabble-rousing sound-bite, and that’s all…well, then I don’t have to take it seriously, either.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey waxes biblical, suggesting that Gore take the beam out of his own eye before he scolds us for our splinters, here: There’s nothing wrong with Gore using that kind of energy if he’s willing to pay for it. [...]Besides, as we saw at the Oscars last night, Gore wants the rest of us to downsize and conserve rather than just treat energy like any other market — and Gore is obviously not doing that for himself.[...]The point that the global-warming alarmists make is that we have to stop releasing carbons in order to reverse the “crisis”, as they called it over and over again, not to create a rations market that acts like a parasite to the energy market. If the situation is as dire as Gore painted it in An Inconvenient Truth and at the Oscars last night, then one might expect a little more self-discipline from the chief alarmist disciple.

Rick at Brutally Honest decries: “The fawning, the bootlicking, the sycophancy.”

Vanderleun says: Once you learn to fake sincerity, the rest is easy.

Crittenden is also covering and Don Surber reminds us that Gore also has a zinc mine and an oil well on his property.

I have nothing against mines. Just stop the damn lecturing, already.

UPDATE: Vice President Gore’s people have made a response.

1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

There, you stupid right-wingers - Gore has bought his indulgences, so his soul is green and pristine and he will still go to ecology heaven. Whew. Thank goodness! Now the rest of you, just buy your indulgences and you can pollute all you want - it all evens out! Can’t you figure that out, yet? And that means, btw, that really is no emergency, after all. But there are good things you can and probably should do. And if you don’t start doing them soon…you’ll be made to.

Ed’s update is better than mine. Go read it.

Btw, just as an aside, I don’t think we’re supposed to assume (as CBS News and the left did, back when the Bush WH did not specifically address the faked TANG documents) that since Gore isn’t specifically disputing the findings of the Tennessee group, that means he admits to them…and I happen to agree with that. Just because Gore is not disputing the story doesn’t mean he admits it; his job is not to prove a negative. Nor was Bush’s, but that too is another enduring double standard.

Kim’s update says Gores is using up a lot of alternative energy, too, instead of actually cutting back.

Also writing:
Hot Air
Instapundit
Roger L. Simon
Don Surber
The Sundries Shack
Reihl World View
ABC News

Related:
Indulgences for Rich Eco-Sinners
Saddam/Bush and Eden again
Beyond Kyoto: Effective work sans the UN
Yes, Global Warming is Hoo-ha, Part II
Yes, Global Warming is Hoo-ha
The Media’s Full Court Press on Global Warming
Scientists call for Kyoto debate
The Global Warming Gasbags

Last Friday - the first Friday of Lent, actually - I posted this story about the so-called “Tomb of Jesus” being “found,” and then forgot about it.

So, I was surprised today to find the post getting eleventy billion hits. Soon the emails began to follow, both good and bad. There were the usual extremes from left and right, from the “you stupid Christians are finally going to find out you’ve been played for suckers all these years,” to the “Oh my GAWD, the world is ending, these [secularist] people are going to crucify us all.”

Admittedly, there are only a few of those. Some emails are wisely mocking the whole affair and most are more along these lines: “Anchoress, why aren’t you going after this with both barrels? Why are you just laughing instead of hitting back?”

What’s to hit back? Why hit back? This is just the world, doing what the world does. But His Kingdom is not of this world! Stop fretting that “some may lose faith,” over this. If they do, then they were in the shallow soil to start with, and they’ll either find a better place to root or they won’t. Pray for them and then let the Holy Spirit do that Spirit Thang we love so much.

Some of you are writing that you fear this is the beginning of an era of suppression for the Church. As one of Buster’s g/f’s would say, “Well, duh, you just figured that out?”

So what? There will always be a remnant, and the Church is never stronger and more alive than when the world is trying to beat it down.

For goodness sake, why are you surprised at any of this? Why are you worried? Remember that half of what you see is an illusion and the rest of what you see is a passing fashion, and you’ll fret a good deal less, no matter what the issue. But on this particular story, I say let the world spin it. If the Spirit moves you to, instead of wringing your hands or indulging in hate, which will in the end only disable your own soul, do what the monastics have done throughout the history of the church: make reparation and do penance for those who can’t or won’t do it for themselves. It’s Lent, after all - season of reparation and detachment. Detach, a little.

I think it’s an extraordinarly good thing that this issue is coming up during Lent, when we’re already supposed to be in a mindset of humility and conciliation. If you’re really concerned about this story - or even if you’re only mildly annoyed - this might be the perfect application of Lenten discipline, a way to “make amends” for the disrespect of the world. So, pray. Chant the Psalms. Get up in the middle of the night, when no one else is doing so, and pray. Be silent. Best of all, fast. Pray and fast and “offer it up.”

Let the whirling dervishes whirl. You can’t stop them, anyway. And then be amused, because if you know history, you know that sometimes - often, in fact - the machinations of the world seem to have the upper hand, but again and again the Eternal has defeated time and trends. So it goes, and thus it shall continue.

And yes, I am amused. I’m not cavalier, but I see this stuff as both predictable and tiresome and so I’m choosing to be amused at the assaults upon Christianity which occur like clockwork (or labor pains) every Christmas and every Lenten/Easter season. And I think it behooves Christians to take all of this with as much humor as possible - laugh at it in every way you can - because laughter is a lance into the empty bubble of pride by which so much evil wafts by.

Whenever we look up at the world and its princes, we see a telling lack of humor, an utter inability to self-deprecate at its core, which exposes a vulnerable soft underbelly which may be pierced.

So, pray. Fast. Laugh. The world was never supposed to love you, after all. You signed on to be despised.

Julie at Happy Catholic is already laughing, at some Dyspeptic Mutterings.

Favorite Fun Line So Far: from Autopsy: I just want to see the “reenactment” scenes, where Jesus stands at the head of Peter’s fishing boat and says, “I’m the King of the Jews!”

Related: We must be getting close to Easter

Also writing:
Kim at Musing Minds is thinking similarly, and check out her great new web-look!
Mac’s Mind covers it fully.
The Three Massketeers sigh in resignation and then move us all along to a really great Lenten reflection
Stand to Reason gives an intellectual rebuttal.
Captains Quarters Blog is sensible.
says Time and Newsweek are simply doing what they do
Texas Rainmaker is up to 9 Updates!
Hot Air points out that they’re blowing their own timeline.
The Dude finding Jesus.
Liberty Film Festival thinks about Cameron.
Doug Ross

You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to think, with any certainty, of any man as damned.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (Le Milieu Divin)

I love that. I love the mystery and paradox of it. Some might disagree, but I think part of humility is accepting the fact that we cannot know for absolute certain the fate of anyone’s soul because to engage in that sort of speculation is to dare to put limits on the mercy of God, or to know God’s Mind of Justice. As I’ve said before, no one knows what happens between a soul and God in those infinitisimal moments between life and death - our hearts are only our own so far as we can know them, after all and - as Chesterton said - “the self is as distant as any star.” So, it’s probably always best, insofar as our own souls are concerned, to not try too hard to take inventory of someone else’s.

Sometimes one selects a book and calls it “this year’s Lenten reading” only to find oneself defeated by language or distracted by the demands of the living or the lateness of one’s reading hour.

I’m finding that to be the case, this Lent. With the best of intentions, I’m finding that re-reading Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle, (which really is a great read) is just not the right thing for me, this year. If I manage to make it to a retreat I have planned, I may well be able to fly into The Cloud of Unknowing and find it fruitful, but for now I’m doing better with reading something light and fast, and then chewing on it for the day - using it as Lenten Lectio, so to speak.

So, this book, the Catholic Book of Quotations by Leo Knowles, is serving the purpose. It’s not as comprehensive as one might like, but it does meet the trick. Throughout Lent I’ll be throwing out a tidbit from it for your own snacking - something might speak to you, or it might not.

Did you?

I don’t know anyone who watched. Even my best pal in the world, for whom Oscar night was one of the highlights of her year - right up there with the World Series - could not be roused to interest by the show. “I haven’t even seen any of the movies,” she yawned.

I actually had seen a few…The Queen (it was alright) and The Departed (it was alright. DiCaprio was stunning).

This year, I didn’t even bother peeking in on the red-carpet clothes show, which I usually enjoy. This year? Shrug.

From what I read, those who missed it, didn’t miss much. Although from reading Liberty Film Festival’s Live Blog I learned that Bruno Kirby died in 2006. This made me very sad, because I’d always enjoyed his work. A shame.

Like Ed Driscoll, I found my own amusement in the form of a rented version of the film “Stay” starring Ewan MacGregor and Ryan Gosling. Apparently it came out in 2005 (boy, time moves fast) but it was still the best movie I’d seen in a year. Visually it was gripping, the story is originall and keeps you guessing…rent it, you’ll like!

Slightly O/T but interesting, Small Dead Animals links to some inconvenient truths about what Al Gore’s concerts will do to the environment.