. . . Has been pushing the apocalypse idea for so long he’s beginning to believe it.

On Friday, Al Gore’s sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth” – “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” – arrives in movie theaters across the country. But there’s another inconvenient sequel worth noting and, like most sequels, this one is even worse than the original.

Gore’s hypocritical home energy use and “do as I say not as I do” lifestyle has plunged to embarrassing new depths.

In just this past year, Gore burned through enough energy to power the typical American household for more than 21 years, according to a new report by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The former vice president consumed 230,889 kilowatt hours (kWh) at his Nashville residence, which includes his home, pool and driveway entry gate electricity meters. A typical family uses an average of 10,812 kWh of electricity per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It gets worse.

You don’t believe it? Read on.

(Oh, and that pudgy crack. Well look at this:

It pains me to look at that tight collar.

. . . and why Trump would do worse than aim as high!

What does all this mean for Mr. Trump?

Perhaps simply that being unpopular with “the tastemakers of Washington” needn’t necessarily translate into a presidency without enduring, admirable, and even historic accomplishments.

. . . from the ever-thoughtful and thought-provoking IRA STOLL,

An awful movie, extremely well done. Subtitle would be “a defense of assisted suicide.” From start to finish, it’s a set-up, preparing us for the most antiseptic horrible ending you could imagine.

Handsome young daredevil hedonist hit by motorcycle in rush-hour London traffic had everything, lost it in a minute except for his and his parents’ enormous wealth, including ownership of a huge castle on a huge park-size estate.

Here he suffers in style but suffers nonetheless, but here he also finds joy and happiness which distracts him from his plans to end it all, thanks to a young local who, desperate for work, takes the job of his non-medical professional companion.

She’s a natural, a true diamond in the rough, wholesome, cute, lively, full of love and kindness for her fellow man. The actors deliver in a skillful production, and we the viewers are gripped by the (melo)drama of it all as she gets through his defenses and by charm and intelligence and sheer brightness and lovingness of personality and character gives him a new lease on life.

But a lease is not a sale, and he succumbs in the end to his wish to be relieved of life itself, immensely grateful for the respite she provided and having set her up financially and psychologically for a better life than she could have had or would have dreamed of having, while he drifted off to nothingness.

Is that all there is, Peggy Lee sang years ago, and the movie endorses that message. Life is good until your spinal cord is cut in two, at which point you’d best sever it all and die forever after — a new Hollywood ending, a variation on or new version of Porky Pig’s “Th-Th-The, Th-Th-The, Th-Th… That’s all, folks!”

It’s a fairy tale with a new ending. They all died unhappily ever after.

Oh my, I recommend the Free Beacon but did not mean to paste its whole front page here.

Another bad use of an Opera extension. Sorry.

Not in so many words, but what are we to make of this, from his apostolic exhortation In March of last year, Amoris Laetitia?

No one can be condemned for ever, be-
cause that is not the logic of the Gospel!

I had a column several decades past in National Catholic Reporter in which I (satirically) said Vatican Council 2 must have abolished mortal sin, because everyone was going to communion at mass, whereas before the council many held back, not having gone to confession.

I mentioned it to a Jesuit friend a few months ago, assuming he knew I had been attempting satire, and he erupted in a responding email message, among other things saying he “could go to hell” himself.

It was a stunning reply in view of his clearly upright, indeed distinguished long life as a Jesuit, but he was deadly serious.

As for what Francis said about it as quoted above, it is unsurprisingly among “key doctrinal errors” from Amoris, cited by Matthew McCusker, Deputy International Director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, speaking at the Rome Life Forum on 6 May 2016. The above statement follows this from the same document, “The way of the Church is not to condemn anyone forever.”.

McCusker found it:

very difficult to make sense of these statements, because . . . it is precisely in the gospels that Our Lord Himself speaks many times about the possibility of men and women being condemned forever as a result of sin; “depart from me you cursed into the everlasting fire” he represents himself as saying on the day of judgment, “and these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.” (Mt 25:41, 46).

And, the Church, while always desiring and working for the conversion of sinners, nonetheless will refuse the sacraments indefinitely to those who fail to repent of grave sin.

It’s confusing, to say the least. Indeed four cardinals sent “dubia” (doubts) about this and other parts of Amoris to Francis, asking to meet with him — in the spirit of Paul “withstanding Peter to his face” in the matter of enforcing Jewish dietary and other laws on Gentile Christians — but Francis has not met with them and has not responded to their questions.

I’ll take this for a lede ‘graph, trusting you will too:

On climate change, Democrats believe they know to the 10th decimal place that Earth is on the brink of an apocalypse. But by their own admission this week, they don’t have a clue about which way the wind is blowing with the American voter.

Not for lack of trying, mind you . . .

Why did we lose, why did we ever lose????