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Saturday, November 28, 2009, 10:48 PM
The_Anchoress

I shed tears of gratitude and joy that you have come round again, O Advent, to shake us from our torpor as early night comes, and the match is struck, and the message is brought home once more; that we are forever in the absence of light; it is beyond us and exterior until we make it welcome and bring it, like a lover, within. Welcome into our deepest void, welcome into the parts of us touched by human frost and stunted. Welcome, O Light, beaming glorious, into remotest apertures of our souls, rays aglow, warmth permeating where we have left old fires unattended and embers to wane, and our abysses to grow chill, and uninhabitable. Welcome light; dispelling illusion, and chasing old ghosts to rest.

With the sunset tonight, the promise is renewed; the story begins again. The beginning; quiescence, empty and void. Then movement; an annunciation; a Word -one boundless, vibrant “yes” that shakes creation; “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior!” Soon their will be dreams, and silent wondering, and a gathering, and a starry night rent with song. The Word Present penetrates lonely, lost humanity, and enters into the pain and fear, the tumult and whirlwind; He and sets His tent with us not merely dwelling among, but literally with us; with hunger, with the capacity for injury and doubt -with enough vulnerability to be broken- and within this espousal, everything is illuminated!

First Things editor Joseph Bottum writes “the end of advent”:

What Advent is, really, is a discipline: a way of forming anticipation and channeling it toward its goal. There’s a flicker of rose on the third Sunday—Gaudete!, that day’s Mass begins: Rejoice!—but then it’s back to the dark purple that is the mark of the season in liturgical churches. And what those somber vestments symbolize is the deeply penitential design of Advent. Nothing we can do earns us the gift of Christmas, any more than Lent earns us Easter. But a season of contrition and sacrifice prepares us to understand and feel something about just how great the gift is when at last the day itself arrives.

More than any other holiday, Christmas seems to need its setting in the church year, for without it we have a diminishment of language, a diminishment of culture, and a diminishment of imagination. The Jesse trees and the Advent calendars, St. Martin’s Fast and St. Nicholas’ Feast, Gaudete Sunday, the childless crèches, the candle wreaths, the vigil of Christmas Eve: They give a shape to the anticipation of the season. They discipline the ideas and emotions that otherwise would shake themselves to pieces, like a flywheel wobbling wilder and wilder till it finally snaps off its axle.

Read the whole thing and understand why I am inspired, this year, this Advent, this very night -O Holy Night- to keep Advent at the fore, and the World of Illusions and Easy Forgettings somewhere at bay, where I can not so easily reference it, or be so quickly distracted.

Will I be newsless? No. But I will be news, less, Advent/Liturgy, more.

Each day you and I will be in Advent -the time of coming, that which anticipates all the rest- so that (and this is my heartfelt prayer) when December 25 comes, we will not be sick of it, and the Darkness will not feel glee at our diluted light; instead we will have only just begun to hear strains of ancient song, coming closer in ever-stronger waves. Like a quickening pulse grown stable, and signaling life where it was thought lost. Our longing will only just have become satisfied, and our journey only just begun.

I have a friend whose mother, after a stroke, had very limited speech. If she wanted to wish you well, or express happiness for you, she would say “Merry Christmas!” It meant everything good, everything full of love.

As we light our first candle of Advent, let us move forward in humble adventuring, seeking out the divine “Yes” spoken from heaven and the faith-filled “yes” whispered on earth. Let us strike a match and cover our faces in prayer, that the lifting up of our hands be as an evening sacrifice, acceptable. Let us eat figs and drink wine, and work faithfully at our labor, and sweep and sing and slumber, until we gather with shepherds and kings, to meet, and to worship, and to tell what we have found.

Then, if we have only “Merry Christmas” to say for the rest of our lives, all around will understand how packed with meaning is the phrase.


Graphic thanks to Curt Jester

Related: Hidden Jewel: An Unsung Advent Hymn (H/T)
Julie makes excellent use of Fr. R.A. Knox
Deacon Greg: 40 Years Ago
Mother Maria-Michael Newe: Advent; Longing for Christ
Catholic Key: Something Beautiful from the Desert of Lent
Msgr. Charles Pope: Five Advent Reflections
Top Ten: Things to Know about Advent


Saturday, November 28, 2009, 6:14 PM
The_Anchoress

Got a really nice note from the Norbertine Nuns in California, who thanked me for mentioning their wreaths, which are selling gangbusters, according to the Abbess. Have any of you ordered any? I am curious to know what you think, because the Boy Scout troop we usually buy ours from is selling popcorn instead of wreaths this year, so I need a new outlet, and if I can buy a wreath and help out a monastic house, I’m up for that! Perhaps I will order one, this week.

Speaking of “buying,” did anyone go out for “black Friday?” I didn’t but I never do. Crowded stores make me feel all ughy. What was it like for you? Instead I stayed in and took some of the excellent advice I received here, for children’s books, and I also found (for my yellow-lovin’ ballerina 3 year-old niece) this book and this yellow tutu, that is almost offensively cute!

I’m sending Buster back to school with a gift for one of his favorite coaches. Can you guess what it is? Why, yes, it is a sample pack (two samples, actually) of Mystic Monk Coffee, along with one of their new travel mugs, which is my new favorite hot beverage container.

You can’t really tell from the picture, but what is cool about the mug is that while the bottom is perfectly round for your cup-holder, the body streamlines into an oval, with a thumb-ledge. So if you’re carrying it and other things, it is easier to grasp. Also, the lid has real a real o-ring, which provides real sealing, so things seem to stay hotter, longer. I like it. It is my early stocking-stuffer from hubby!

And then there are these really lovely sterling silver and enamel cross earrings, from our friend Kim at Musing Minds and her little Cottage Industry

Being something of a cottage industry, myself (someday I’ll get my Zazzle shop going!) I do like to talk up those businesses that are mom-owned or family-run. I still wear and use the very same sturdy, lovely fancy agate rosary bracelet I’ve been talking about for three years, from just such an enterprise.

Hey, Mother Angelica started with handmade fishing lures. Then she became one of the biggest fishers of men in recent times! I say kiss your endeavors up to the Lord, and keep dreaming!

FTC Disclosure: purchasing wares from Amazon, or Aquinas & More, or the Nuddle Blanket or the Mystic Monks via the buttons in my sidebar or the links within this post generates modest income for this site. Nuns and cottage industries, however, are nice to buy from, just because they’re nice to buy from!


Saturday, November 28, 2009, 3:07 PM
The_Anchoress

For some reason, even though we did not host Thanksgiving here, and none of us overdid during the day (I even convinced my MIL to eliminate the pasta course) yesterday most of us around here were like zombies, unable to do much more than grunt at each other and read or nap.

In the later part of the afternoon, Buster convinced me to go out for a cup of coffee and a game of chess, but the fact that I beat him tells you that even he was not in his proper head. Zombieland was leftovers, books, King of the Hill, and I didn’t even give the news more than a passing glance because it was all so depressing; I could either dive into the headlines and produce the vulgar rant that would quickly build within me, or I could take a day off and try to bring a fresher mind to it, today.

I took the day off. My mind is no fresher. I look at the headlines and the vulgarity comes to the fore.

It becomes increasingly clear the Democrats have become the party that does not give a crap about what mainstream America thinks or wants. They have decided that owning both houses of congress and the White House means they do not have any particular responsibility toward fundamental ethics-in-governance, honesty, accountability or transparency. This goes beyond simply tsking, “imagine how they’d be screaming if Bush (or anyone with an R after their name) were doing this…”

The Democrat congress that promised to “drain the swamp” and usher in a new era of everything good and open and uncorrupted has proved that it does not actually give a crap about any of that.

Do you see an abuse of power in the President of the United States firing an Inspector General (and attempting to slander his mental capacities) in order to cover up a misuse of funds involving a sex scandal, and do you wonder why Congress is not investigating same?

Well the answer is the Democrats have absolute majorities in both houses, and they don’t give a crap that you see an abuse of power in the White House; the guy in the White House is a Democrat, so there is nothing to see. Shut up. “We are the majority,” say the Democrats, “and we don’t give a crap about it.”

Do you see something intrinsically corrupt and disoriented in a US President and Attorney General ignoring a clear case of voter intimidation in the last election, and in Congress’ silence on the issue? There is nothing to see. It was just a guy with a baton, who happened to be standing outside a polling place uttering innocuous words about putting the right man in office; if he intimidated anyone, they -the intimidated- must have issues. Shut up. “We are the majority,” say the Democrats, “and we don’t give a crap about it.”

If you are concerned that the Attorney General is overstepping himself when he declares that taxpayer money may be used to fund a dubious “community service” organization -one that the President promised would have a voice in shaping his policies, but which the Congress had already defunded due to its questionable practices- don’t bother taking it up with Mrs. Pelosi or Mr. Reid. There is nothing to see, here. Just shut up. Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid and their Democrats do not give a crap about it.

If you are concerned about a President naming dozens (nay, scores) of “czars” within his administration, like little politburo minions, all put into power without congressional oversight, and accountable only to the president? Well, it’s sweet that you care, but the Democrat congress is in the majority, and while some of its regal members make a point about being addressed by the title for which they have worked so hard, that superficial trapping and deference-due is all they’re looking for. They do not really care whether a Democrat president has sidestepped their oversight and neutered them. Shut up. The Democrat majority is preening, and they do not give a crap about czars and constitutional checks and balances just now.

If an inconvenient truth seems to be bearing down upon us
, and you believe the congress, which has been fervently embracing the lie for nearly a decade, needs to investigate how and why the lie gained so much credence and power over so much of our lives, well save your breath for your porridge. What story? What so-called “truth?” Can you google it? Is there a story? Do you see anyone in the press even writing about it? We just had dinner with Katie Couric at the White House, and she didn’t mention it! If it’s not even on the radar of the press, there what are you talking about? Whaaa? Climategate whaa? Never heard of it. We plan on force-feeding green policies deeply into the gut of American life, because we’re the people who are going to save the planet, and you’ll eat it and like it, because-its-good-for-you-shut-up. We Democrats are in the majority, and we do not give a crap if you have questions or if the science is unsettled, or even rigged, after all. There is a movement to further, and we do not give a crap if the whole thing is a lie.

If you simply want to understand why our current government is in such a rush to implement (or force) unpopular (and seriously unaffordable)policies onto America -even as our friends across the ocean are busily hammering up signs shouting “Here be Monsters,” and trying to warn us away from dangerous waters- well, it’s because shut up. The Democrats do not give a crap about your quaint wonderings.

In the headlines, I see an American president who does as he damn pleases and serves himself and his pals, before the American people. I see a congress that is comfortable living in full-scale betrayal of their own pre-election rhetoric, and rather contemptuous of the people it claims to rule serve and to protect; contemptuous of their values and contemptuous of their concerns, contemptuous of the very idea of exceptionalism, except for themselves.

Perhaps they reason that if the American people were stupid enough to believe them (and the press that abetted them in all their lies, in all their faked indignation about cronyism, partisanship, ethics, transparency and personal character) then they really do not have to care. Why should they -the glorious they- be held accountable to the easily duped?

If there are noisy, unsophisticated rubes ranting on about a full-scale betrayal of democratic values in America, the Democrats are not listening and have somewhere else to be; the limosines are waiting, the private jet engines are running, despite the planet-death, and the Democrats are on their way out the door, which has opened upon a misty darkness. They have their coats over their arms and as the America they helped to overindulge and spoil calls out, “but what are we doing, where are we going,” they look back only briefly, in deep disdain.

Frankly, my dears, they don’t give a crap.


Friday, November 27, 2009, 10:34 AM
The_Anchoress

As we have seen with Climategate (and with the ACORN expose), the US Press does not report on stories it does not like; perhaps that is why we have not seen headlines about what this Benedictine nun, who is a medical doctor, specializing in internal medicine, is saying. [English Subtitles]

Stick with this first video, as Sr. Terese Forcades, OSB, begins with her credentials and some flu/virus basics. It ends with a bang. Then move on to video two:

In video two, Sister talks about irregularities in the vaccine, then explores the “second irregularity” at about 5 minutes in…and it certainly seems rather startlingly irregular.

Video 3: Looking at political fall-out from these irregularities:

You can watch all 6 videos of Sister’s talk, which is very systematic, serious and level-headed, here


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 2:09 PM
The_Anchoress

Before I sign off until sometime tomorrow-night-or Friday, I wanted to take a minute to thank all of my regular readers (and new visitors) for continuing to bother reading me, even when I annoy; even when you hate yourself for doing it; even when I’m writing about politics, instead of religion; even when I’m writing about religion, when you wanted politics; even when I’m writing about baseball, when all you like is football, plus you hate the Yankees; even when I’m busy being all Catholic-y when you don’t much care for Rome.

I am truly grateful for the civil debate in my comments sections; you guys are the best; even when it gets hot, it never descends into name-calling or true nastiness.

I am thankful for the occasional hitting of the tip jar and for the way you guys use Amazon and buy Monk Coffeethrough here, just to help out. I’m grateful that you buy nun soap and hand creme to help nuns you don’t know.

I’m grateful that you’re those kinds of generous folk, because you humble and teach me. I just had an email asking if I knew any cloistered nuns who could use a little financial help this Thanksgiving? Of course I do. But you see what sort of great readers I have? Most people don’t even think that way!

The attitude of gratitude; it’s the broadest and most direct route to Joy:

To be imbued with Joy is to be a missionary to the multitudinous “everyday people,” people who are perhaps not burdened in an especial way, but who have just lost track of “what there is to be happy about.” If you work the thread backward, a fruitful Joy can help beget the gifts of Wisdom and Understanding upon others.

If one does not have some measure of Understanding, one cannot find and feel gratitude. I have a friend like this. Ask her what she’s grateful for, she can come up with her kids, her health and her car, and that’s about it; she is always in a semi-funk and slightly depressed. She tells me that outside of giving birth, she has never felt joy, and that did not last, as the joy was soon consumed by anxiety. It does not occur to her that the fact that she can lift a cup of coffee to her mouth, unassisted, is something for which to be grateful. If you said it to her, she’d roll her eyes and say, “well, of course,” but knowing that the ability to feed oneself, or shave, or breath without help is a good thing is not the same as really understanding the gift of independence. And if you cannot understand that gift, you can’t feel proper gratitude for it. And if you can’t find things for which to feel grateful, everyday, you will never feel a sustained joy, or even a deep-but-unsustained joy.

But if you can feel gratitude, even if it gets a little wet and teary sometimes, then you are on the track to owning real joy. You are blessed.

I dislike the cooking and work of Thanksgiving, but I love what is behind the day. Today, while I am chopping celery and mashing root veggies, I will be whispering up all of my thanks to God, for all of the myriad blessings He has bestowed on me, including the very humblest ones: I can cook. I can use a knife and fork. I can walk on my own power; I can raise a cup of coffee to my lips, unassisted. I can move my fingers with a fair amount of speed, to articulate my gratitude for my profession, and for your kind visits.

I love my life!

Feel free to ponder the things you’re thankful for and share them in the comments section. See you Friday. Or Thursday night, perhaps!


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 1:18 PM
The_Anchoress

Last year, I was out of ideas for vegetables, and blegged a few recipes.

Then Gabriel Malor at Ace got into the mix and we had a lot of fun with folks exchanging recipes. Let’s try that again!

This year Gabriel is giving us another one for the sweet tooth, and I’ve already put the ingredients on my list. Check out his Pumpkin Cheesecake Dip! It’s a dessert I think my littlest nieces will love (it’s fun to dip cookies!) and it’s nutritious, too. Got yer Beta-Carotene, yer protein, dairy…good stuff!

Here is one if you’re reading this at work and have no idea what to bring tomorrow. You stop off at the store, pick up a few things and you’re off and running:

MASHED TURNIPS AND CARROTS

2 lbs carrots
2 lbs turnips (or rutabagas)
light cream
butter
brown sugar (optional)
salt
pepper

Peel the carrots and slice them any way you please – you’re going to boil the hell out of them, anyway.

Peel the turnip and do the same. DO NOT try to peel the turnip with a veggie peeler, you’ll just break your hand. Take a sharp knife and carefully cut the rind away. Carefully is the operative word. I still have a scar on my left hand from the slippery knife.

Boil, boil, boil the veggies until the turnips are soft.

Drain water (try to catch the drainage into a pot and then freeze it; it’s a wonderful veggie broth base for soup)

Using a mixer (or by hand if you are a glutton for punishment) mash veggies, adding butter, salt, pepper and a little light cream, or milk, to taste. Since these are not “thick” veggies, you don’t want to add too much liquid, or the whole thing gets watery.

The brown sugar is totally optional. If you add it, be sparing – use 1/4 of a cup or so – it gives a sort of glaze to the whole affair, but it’s not essential.

This is a delicious way to sweeten turnips, and it is a very “Irish” sort of dish. I particularly like it when serving fresh ham, but it’s a staple on our Thanksgiving table, too!

Related: Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Feel free to leave your own veggie recipes in the comments section!

And pray your Thanksgiving is not like this one


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 12:16 PM
The_Anchoress

Via Instapundit (again), this is a pretty remarkable chart.

Nick Schulz looks at difference between Obama’s cabinet and all other presidents beginning with Teddy, with a background in the private sector. He writes:

When one considers that public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15% and 19% of the population, the makeup of the current cabinet — over 90% of its prior experience was in the public sector — is remarkable.

To which one can only add: how can you respect or relate to the private sector, when you have so little exposure to them? How can you help the private sector when you don’t think they have anything worth listening to?

Remaking America.


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 11:45 AM
The_Anchoress

This would have been even better if they’d have managed to mention carbon-offsets and private jets (see how easily they go together?) but I still think this is pretty good on short notice:

(Via Glenn Reynolds who seems to be gettin’ on the NY TIMES’s last nerve!)

Related:
Alarmism and Fraud
Rand Simberg
Taking apart the smoking gun
Climate Emails and the Politics of Science
Climate and Transparency
Climategate and the Social Validation of Knowledge
It’s all Bush’s Fault


Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 2:16 AM
The_Anchoress

I love, love, LOVE this dress on Michelle Obama. It is beautifully designed, flattering, elegant and effortless-looking.


Michelle Obama wearing Naeem Khan, AP Photo Susan Walsh

And Mrs. Obama’s posture, which sometimes seems a bit slouchy, is perfect. She makes an altogether superb picture as First Lady.

I know the gaga press considers everything she wears to be perfect, but Michelle Obama has been hit-and-miss, to me.

This is a hit; a very palpable hit!

And I know, I know…the economy is in dire straits, and yes when unemployment is high, a First Lady can certainly run the risk of seeming insensitive if she is perceived to be spending too much on clothes; even the most applauded fashion sense can suddenly seem out-of-touch when one wears $540 dollar sneakers to a food bank, or are rumored to be buying thigh-high-boots. No one wants to be tagged as an Eva Peron, wearing excessive baubles and haute couture, while the people are underwater.

But, you know, this was a State Dinner welcoming India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur, and on such an occasion, we want our First Lady to look drop-dead gorgeous; it honors our guests, and it does right by America, too. Sometimes, you have to spend the money, and this is well-spent, indeed.

It’s nice that Mrs. Obama chose a dress by India-born, U.S. based Naeem Khan. But it’s even nicer that Naeem Khan looks so great on the First Lady.

More of that flattering silhouette, please, Mrs. O, and that wonderful color. The big rubber belts are really played out.

Oh, and the President looks good too; the tux fits well. I do wish he’d learn how to stand with his hands to his side, though. The body language is sort of, goofy adolescent-at-the-prom.

More Dinner Details here

Fausta has more details on the dress.

I always said MO would look best in gold.


Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 5:36 PM
The_Anchoress

There is a lot to read about Climategate, but none of it is in the Mainstream Media, with the exception of the Obama-Administration described “not real news” organization. That would be Fox News, which is covering the story.

The New York Times, in a stunning bit of hypocrisy, says they won’t report on Climategate because they didn’t like the way the information was discovered. To the NY TImes, the real story, if they ever deign to cover it, will be about the method in which the story was found, and the ends not justifying means.

There is a valid nit to pick over hacking and how it threatens not just programs but governments and individuals. But when an entire global movement, with accompanying financial interests and public bullying has been founded on “science” that is -at the very least- now confirmed to be “unsettled,” that information, regardless of how it was brought to light, needs to be reported on and investigated.

The NY Times’ prim distaste for the means of disclosure on this issue rather reminds me of a few years back, when someone leaded a memo from the Senate Intelligence Committee, whereby Sen. Jay Rockefeller suggested strategies to undermine “Bush’s war,” and the mainstream media ignored the content of the memo, while waxing indignant over the leak.

The standard media, it seems, only like leaks when they serve their own agendas, or take down their perceived enemies, foreign and domestic.

So, they don’t like this Climategate Story, not at all. Troubling links and trouble, trouble for the narrative.

Let me tell you why the press is blacking out the Climategate story:

In a nutshell, Climategate is a destroyer of world-views. As someone who has always maintained that the AGW hype was a matter of politicians and grifters seizing an opportunity to use unsettled science as a means of getting filthy rich while imposing harsh measures against human freedom, I am very familiar with the world-view of the alarmists. Whenever I wrote about the “hoo-hah” of AGW (and particularly of Al Gore’s stupendous, international fake-out and hypocrisy), my email would load up with people telling me I was “a stupid hick,” unschooled in scientific method (just like Al Gore) and therefore unentitled to opine on anything, so I should just “shut up” and “go away” and of course, I was a “nazi.” These emails occasionally ended with a diatribe against George W. Bush for good measure, and suggested he and I were both “criminals” against humanity. One person even accused me of being Barbara Bush, in disguise.

All of that was standard-issue hate, but nowhere as amusing as the occasional “Sinner, fry in hell” emails I will get from a Jack Chicker, so I stopped reading them long ago.

But I also had a journalist I admired, and who I still consider a friend, privately and gently suggest that if I doubted the truth about AGW then I was as deluded (and perhaps as evil) as a “holocaust denier.”

Yes. The left went that far. The press went that far. They embraced this unsettled science, this unproven theory, with a fervor of moral righteousness; to dispute AGW was to be a bad and stupid person, even if were a dissenting scientist.

To question the point of “environmentally sound” lightbulbs that give bad light and create a dangerous and toxic risk when they break was to “not get the point,” which was that the planet was “dying” thanks to Hanukkah candles and incandescent lightbulbs.

To suggest that large-numbers of privileged people flying scores of private planes to exotic locals, gorging themselves on fine fare while deciding how the common folk ought to live, in order to “save” the planet from AGW was bizarre, wasteful and hypocritical in an era of video-conferencing, was to be sniffed at as “insipid.” Didn’t one understand the power of the Gore Indulgence carbon-offset? Just pay some money to the man with the absolute moral authority on all things green, and your sins are covered. Somewhere, a tree is planted.

The scam of AGW was permitted to gain the foothold it did, because of George W. Bush.

It’s Bush’s fault: if Bush had not fought back when CBS News called Florida for Al Gore before polls in the panhandle had closed, if Bush had not taken Gore’s selective re-count to the Supreme Court, if Bush had just taken those hanging chads like a man and allowed Al Gore to ascend to the presidency (as he’d been groomed to do before he sighed and fumed his way through debates, put his common sense into a lockbox and stumbled into the Buddhist convent, discovering the existence of “no controlling legal authority,”) whether the Vice-President actually won or not (the NY Times eventually admitted “not”) then Al Gore would not have had to seek redemption and his fortune in climate hucksterism, and the left would not have had to over-indulge him in it, overcompensating in order to “kick Bush in the leg.

That’s basically it. The AGW/Climate Change question became a rigorous boondoggle that got out of control not because the scientist who first suggested a connection between human carbon emission and a change in climate were bad people, or that the question was not worth asking, but because bad people then took the uncertain hypothesis, put it on media-fueled steroids, demonized anyone who disagreed with them, made it political -so much so that even the scientists got caught up in the good/bad, smart/stupid, Gore/Bush, Left/Right identifiers- and found real power there; they allowed the AGW movement to become the dubious centering pole upholding the giant circus tent of their worldviews.

As such, it is not permitted to be shaken. Shake the centering pole, and everything could come tumbling down: Oh. My. Gawd! If the Gore-doubters were right about this, what else might they be right about? And if they’re all stupid, and I’m smart, but they’re right and I’m wrong . . .

Implosion.

If the true-believers of AGW got this wrong, and they’d attached it to all of their politics, all of their hate, all of their superiority, then everything is in a free-fall.

And this is why the mainstream media cannot possibly report on Climategate until they have an acceptable counter-narrative that they can haul out in order to either debunk the story or soften its edges, even as they break the news.

The press, who spent a huge portion of their credibility convincing America that President Bush was a “liar” and a “power-abuser” and an “arrogant chump who made the world (read Chirac and Schroeder) hate us” and then spent the balance of their capital carrying into office a man whose every utterance comes with an expiration date, who seems to have very quickly abused his power and has treated our traditional allies (who were partnering well with the United States from 2004-on) with contempt or disinterest. The press really cannot afford to admit that almost nothing they have said in the past 9 years has escaped ideological or political framing to suit their agenda. Implode, they will.

So the story must not be told, until it can be told from their self-protective angle which is undoubtedly under development as you read this.

This reminds me of Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, back when Iraq had its first successful election -when even the press could not snarl too much at the pictures of women in hijab pointing their purple fingers in the air as they grinned. “What if Bush was right,” Stewart mused, with a horrified expression.


“What if Bush – the president, ours – has been right about [Iraq] all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may – and, again, I don’t know if I can physically do this – implode.”

There is an anvil-heavy irony to all of this. Part of the smart/stupid, left/right narrative was built on the fantastic strawman that the AGW-doubters on the right were “enemies of science,” that first they were not allowing science to use human embryos for experimentation, and now they were daring to doubt the most imperative scientific advice in the history of mankind.

But if the excesses of the weather-sciences are about be discredited to the degree that -as some worry- may “bring all science into dispute”, then that harm comes not from the right, who simply dared to question, but solely from the left, who refused to permit questions, openness, transparency.

Well, let’s get to the bottom of all of this, and then let us try -if it is possible, any longer- to become a saner world, say I.

Let Al Gore keep his ill-gotten booty and his stupid Academy Award and his worthless Nobel Peace Prize, and let him go away, somewhere, to an abode that is at least as “green” as President Bush’s despised ranch in Texas.

Let people once more get on a commercial air flight without being pestered about how they are guilty of earth-murder.

Let’s name the grifters, disassemble the dubious global policies that have been hovering for landing in Copenhagen, admit that the greatest threat to the world and its people is predicated on bombs and hate rather than some feckless, unprovable idea, and then let’s prepare for the cold, cold winter with some good old-fashioned oil-drilling while we finally begin to debate a nuclear future.

In truth, I just want my incandescent lightbulbs back, please.

Related:
Start Here: This is plain fascinating
PJM -Martin: Climategate violates social contract of science
PJM- Murray: 3 Things You Must Know about Climategate
Monbiot: AGW Rigged?
RCP: The Fix is In
CBS: looking into the leak, natch
Melanie Phillips: Green Totalitarianism
Andrew Bolt: The Global Conspiracy
James Delingpole: The Great British Climate Fraud
Obama’s Science Czar: Involved in Climategate?
True Believer: “Shaken” by Climategate

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