Al Gore 2008

is there any doubt?

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:34:14 GMT

Is there any doubt that this man could have been President AGAIN?

On Gore and the Nobel

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:26:41 GMT

There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000. By every just measure, Gore won the presidency in 2000 only to have George W. Bush steal it from him with the critical assistance of the US Supreme Court. It's worth taking a few moments today to consider where the country and world would be without that original sin of this corrupt presidency.

And yet this is a fitting bookend, with Gore receiving this accolade while the sitting president grows daily an object of greater disapproval, disapprobation and collective shame. And let's not discount another benefit: watching the rump of the American right detail the liberal bias of the Nobel Committee and at this point I guess the entire world. Fox News vs. the world.

And not to forget what this award is about even more than Gore. If half of what we think we know about global warming is true, people will look back fifty years from now on the claims that "War on Terror" was the defining challenge of this century and see it as a very sick, sad joke -- which rather sums up the Bush presidency.

But more than thinking only of what might have been, where can we go from here?

--Talking Points Memo

The Family Guy: The World with President Gore

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 05:02:49 GMT

The Family Guy: The World with President Gore

NY Times on Al

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:42:31 GMT

The last time Al Gore appeared publicly inside the United States Capitol, he was certifying the Electoral College victory of George W. Bush. He returns on Wednesday, a heartbreak loser turned Oscar boasting Nobel hopeful globe trotting multimillionaire pop culture eminence.

For Mr. Gore, who calls himself a "recovering politician," returning to Capitol Hill is akin to a recovering alcoholic returning to a neighborhood bar. He will, in all likelihood, deliver his favorite refrain about how "political will is a renewable resource" and how combating global warming is the "greatest challenge in the history of mankind." He will confront one of his fervent detractors, Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who derides Mr. Gore as an alarmist.

He will also embrace old friends, pose (or not) for cellphone photos and greet the legion of climate change disciples who swear by the "Goracle" as a contemporary sage.[..]

Almost everywhere he goes these days, Mr. Gore is met with the fuss of a statesman. His hair is slicked back in a way that accentuates the new fullness of his face. At the hotel, Mr. Gore's perma-smile folded his narrow eyes into slits as he milled his way into a ballroom. Afterward, he accepted his customary standing ovation, slipped out a back door and into the back of a Lincoln Town Car, looking almost presidential.

source: NY Times

Also video of his recent testimony:

AL GORE: Global Warming Testimony before Congress 3.21.07
http://www.politicstv.com/blog/?p=1937

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:16:42 GMT

Al Gore is testifying before congress today. His testimony in the House began in 9:30 am EST, and is still running as I type. You can find a webcast of it here. He'll testify before the Senate starting at 2:30 pm EST. There's meant to be a webcast here, but I can't find it. The Senate hearing will be broadcast on Cspan3, and you can find a live webcast of cspan3 here.

Where else do we find this kind of intensity among Democratic politicians?

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 02:16:18 GMT

Wow, I'm really impressed by this Gore speech from 2004--I'd previously read some excerpts of the speech, but I'd never actually seen it before. Gore doesn't sound like any politician I've seen recently--it's refreshing, I think, and look at how prescient he is, as usual:

Lukovich Cartoon

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:56:45 GMT

oscars

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:05:47 GMT

In case anyone is interested...

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 05:46:42 GMT

I just made these two icons and thought I'd post them here--
Feel free to use them if you want to. Just credit and comment.

I loved the jokes at the Oscars about an important 'announcement' and the way the orchestra cut him off like that- a wonderful moment. I wasn't expecting him to announce at the Oscars- it wouldn't have been an appropriate arena but I did enjoy the hints and I'm still holding out hope...

Al Gore at the Oscars

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 04:03:29 GMT

If you watched the Oscars, Gore went on the stage two times. Once, to thank Hollywood for listening to his message, standing beside Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo did ask Gore about running for the '08 elections twice, but, of course, Gore did not make his formal announcement about running. Yet, he did not provide a firm no. Then, An Inconvenient Truth won for Best Documentary. I'm beginning to think less and less of Gore's plans to run for '08, even though it is what I would want most.

Melissa Etheridge also won for Best Song so that makes it 2/2 for An Inconvenient Truth.

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 01:04:07 GMT

I got a letter from Al Gore responding to my letter asking him to run in 2008! Of course, the letter said that he currently has no plans to run but thanked me for the support. This'll be a nice thing to have around if he does run and wins.

The rest of you should write letters too!

bummer

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:39:06 GMT

Gore rules out bid for US White House in 2008

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 03:28:40 GMT

This sounds to me like a political manifesto which will lead up to a presidential campaign. This is an awesome way to start such a campaign, and I am already inspired:

The Assault on Reason

Book Description
A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degration of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason

At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, most frequently named two Bush television ads that played to fears of terrorism.

We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.

How did we get here? How much damage has been done to the functioning of our democracy and its role as steward of our security? Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason shows us, we have precious little time to waste.

Gore's larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason's enemies, to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds, and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future. Drawing on a life's work in politics as well as on the work of experts across a broad range of disciplines, Al Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking.

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:26:26 GMT

Former Gore campaign staff met in Boston to discuss a 2008 campaign to draft Al. The former staff were careful to point out that Gore himself was not involved. Here's the AP article.

How many 2008 Presidential candidates are nominated for a Nobel Prize and an Oscar?

Quick poll action

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:14:29 GMT

One of the biggest hurdles to getting anything done about global warming and climate change is skepticism about the phenomena themselves. Politicians can look at polls and say "my constituents don't think it's happening, so why should I do anything?"

If you have a moment, drop by jacksonsun.com and fill out the front-page poll, which asks "Do you believe global warming is a serious, man-made crisis?" The Yes vote was up by 9 points at one point this week, but the deniers are gaining ground, and are within 5 points as I type this.

(If you wait about 5 minutes, you can vote a second time, or third time, etc., which is how I suspect the vote has started closing in within the past 24 hours. You can help turn the tide.)

I should note, this is a newspaper in Jackson, Tenn., where Al Gore's mother grew up and an uncle still lives.

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 06:23:22 GMT

I haven't been on LJ as much of late, and I apologize for being a bit lax in posting to this community.

I expect that Gore will run. I know he's been saying he "has no plans to run"--notice that is carefully phrased not to completely rule out running.

There's a ton of support for Gore on http://www.dailykos.com

If you'd like to encourage Gore to run, you can try writing a letter--I did and sent it to:

The Office of the Honorable Al Gore
2100 West End Avenue
Nashville, TN 37203

RS article

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:40:17 GMT

There is an article on the Rolling Stone site about why Gore should run in 08, and why he can win.

Not running :-(

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:52:59 GMT

I am not planning on running for President. I'm not trying to be coy. I kind of fell out of love with the political process.

— Al Gore

asked about possibly making another run for the presidency

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 02:28:58 GMT

It seems to me that if we want Al Gore to win in 2008, one of the things we can do to support that now, is to lend support to his position on Global Warming, and specifically, to do all we can to support individual investment in Green Technology and companies in whatever way possible.

Just as Bill Clinton and Al Gore are getting high level financial commitments to Clean Technologies, we should be out on our own supporting Clean alternatives within our own circles.

People who see the potential economic and personal financial gains inherent in a fossil-free economy will vote for Al Gore in 2008. A person who, in the near term, hopes to take part in the energy equivalent of the 90's tech stock boom will certainly vote for the guy who can demonstrate the vision to make it happen.

Do you know a person who owns stock? Convince them that it may just be worth it to invest $1000 in a clean energy company.

Just a thought.

The "Goldwater Girl" for President

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 23:15:23 GMT

I find myself moving closer and closer to reluctant support of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy to be elected President of the United State in 2008, despite my conviction that she probably would have great difficulty in defeating the likely Republican candidate, the pro-war John McCain. This is because I perceive the invasion and occupation of Iraq to pose the gravest dilemma—one of war and peace--facing this deeply flawed and conflicted culture. There will be no serious addressing of such cosmic questions as the destruction of the human environment on this planet if the evil fascistic and theocratic Republican “war on terror” is not stopped.

I recognise that much of Hillary’s positions regarding our military adventurism is opportunistic and hawkish. Nevertheless, it is also intelligent, informed and objective. She, at least, is willing to publicly recognise that what is presently transpiring in Iraq is a catastrophe of unparalleled dimensions—one that threatens to undermine liberties AND “national security.” She KNOWS that what the brilliant British travel-writer and colonialist administrator Rory McCarthy outlines here is based on REALITY. He is someone who has always tried to write seriously and dispassionately about the morass:

When I lived as a correspondent in Baghdad I saw two different realities unfolding before me. Inside the Green Zone, the heavily-fortified US and British political headquarters, you had diplomats, generals and Iraqi politicians arguing over the details of interim constitutions, election laws and the process of running a new, fragile government. This was one Iraq, and the one that was most written about and discussed in the wider world; a narrative in which our governments played a central role and the Iraqis were mere figures in the background. You might have been convinced into thinking this was a country that was moving forward, however slowly.
Then there was a second, much larger reality, which was what was happening on the streets in the rest of Iraq, the area that the American military referred to as the Red Zone. There, the picture wasn't nearly so good, progress wasn't inevitable and instead a slide into extremist Islamic rule and civil war had begun.

For a long time it was frustrating that the first narrative always had the upper hand, that the galling accounts of life from ordinary Iraqis went so often unnoticed. Finally though, it looks like the two realities are beginning to meet.

Last month the outgoing British ambassador to Baghdad sent home a confidential memo to ministers warning that a "low intensity civil war" was now the most likely outcome and that Iraq could even break up along ethnic lines. This week, leaks from both American intelligence and the British military have painted similar pictures of an Iraq which, far from becoming that beacon of Middle East democracy as once advertised, is instead fuelling a new generation of radicalism. The US National Intelligence Estimate called it a "cause celebre for jihadists", while a British Ministry of Defence thinktank described the war as a "recruiting sergeant" for extremism.

Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time of the 2003 invasion and a strong advocate of the war, last night admitted the situation was "dire" and blamed mistakes by the US administration. Today, in a report on the front page of the Guardian, we learn how even senior British military officers realise now that there is a limit to what their soldiers can achieve in Iraq. They want to pull troops out of southern Iraq - where 7,500 British soldiers are still deployed - to focus on Afghanistan, which has suddenly raised its head again as a nasty and ever-more violent conflict.

Once the US and British military used to say they wouldn't pull out until they had handed back Iraq to its own properly-trained security forces one piece at a time. That goal began to evaporate even in the early days. I remember hearing an American general announcing in November 2003 that Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim provincial capital just west of Falluja, was progressing so well it would soon be handed to Iraqi police control. The handover never happened and Ramadi grew into one of the insurgency's most violent redoubts.

Now it is becoming gradually more evident that the presence of around 140,000 US, British and other international troops has failed to halt the slide into brutal factional war or the emergence of hardline Islamic movements in local positions of power across the country. The very presence of foreign troops - the occupation - has been a root cause of the conflict. But that conflict has progressed so far, that even if all the troops left tomorrow the violence that shapes Iraq will reign unchecked for years to come. It is a mark of how disastrous the Iraq war was that only now, three years on, our governments are beginning to admit to the chaos they and, of course, the Iraqis are facing.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rory_mccarthy/2006/09/rory_mccarthy.html

The neo-conservative, but liberty-loving web columnist Andrew Sullivan has repented of his earlier enthusiasm for this war, and has developed new respect for Hillary Clinton, particularly on account of her opposition both to the Bush Administration’s relentless whittling away at our Constitutional liberties, and to it’s flouting of our nation’s human rights responsibilities according to international law. He has begun to call her the “Goldwater Girl,” on account of her new-found awareness of her earliest political roots in libertarian “conservatism”—the conservatism of Burke. Andrew has recognised that it is the neo-conservatives—not the Democrats—who are the “Jacobins” of our day:

Sullivan quotes Clinton:
”On every issue, there are big differences but the biggest difference is the disregard for our constitutional democracy, the disdain for checks and balances, the denial of accountability that marks this president and vice president, and that's really our entire system being put at risk. Maybe we can dig ourselves out of the hole on fiscal responsibility, energy and health care before it's too late, but we cannot afford to have our Constitution shredded and our country's commitment to freedom basically thrown out after centuries of setting the standard by which others are judged.

There are a lot of people, not just Democrats, who know we have to change direction in our country. I have so many Republicans coming to my events [who] say things like 'I didn't sign up for all this,' and the 'this' would be a long list depending upon their particular concerns. They're coming, because frankly, they're patriots, and they don't want this administration to continue leading us down into a blind hole like they are, undermining our future, failing to invest to make us safer and stronger and richer and smarter, more competitive, fairer for the future," --Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This administration wants a fight; and we need to give it to them. They have bungled the war, trashed the constitution, wrecked the fiscal future, deeply damaged America's reputation, and profoundly corrupted conservatism as a coherent political philosophy. I don't care what we have to do to get rid of them, but we must by every peaceful, lawful means imaginable. They have gone too far. Vote them out.</b>

Here is Senator Clinton’s great speech, perhaps the finest one she’s ever given—the one that convinces me that she is on the right side in this terrible struggle for the nation’s soul:

"The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days [of the Revolutionary War], years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn't that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it's easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners:

"Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren."

Therefore, George Washington, our commander-in-chief before he was our President, laid down the indelible marker of our nation's values even as we were struggling as a nation – and his courageous act reminds us that America was born out of faith in certain basic principles. In fact, it is these principles that made and still make our country exceptional and allow us to serve as an example. We are not bound together as a nation by bloodlines. We are not bound by ancient history; our nation is a new nation. Above all, we are bound by our values.

George Washington understood that how you treat enemy combatants could reverberate around the world. We must convict and punish the guilty in a way that reinforces their guilt before the world and does not undermine our constitutional values.

Now these values – George Washington’s values, the values of our founding – are at stake. We are debating far-reaching legislation that would fundamentally alter our nation's conduct in the world and the rights of Americans here at home. And we are debating it too hastily in a debate too steeped in electoral politics.

The Senate, under the authority of the Republican Majority and with the blessing and encouragement of the Bush-Cheney Administration, is doing a great disservice to our history, our principles, our citizens, and our soldiers. The deliberative process is being broken under the pressure of partisanship and the policy that results is a travesty," - Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton, in a great speech.

And Sullivan writes:
“Readers know my long-standing suspicion of all things Hillary. But her speech today is a speech that rings with the sound of an opposition finally - finally - finding its voice. It is a speech a future president might make. Maybe it just was.”
</ljcut>

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/09/a_great_speech.html

Torture by any other name is just as vile
ANDREW SULLIVAN

THIS EVIL, LYING BASTARD OF A PRESIDENT IS AS CLOSE TO THE DEVIL HIMSELF RULING OVER US AS WE’LL SEE IN OUR LIFETIMES.

He should be not merely defeated, but repudiated, and his terrible legacy totally eliminated!

Last week America’s political classes found themselves forced by the Supreme Court to confront the issue of whether the United States has legally authorised the torture of terror suspects in its prisons.

That has been the issue for five years now, ever since the Bush administration unilaterally evaded the Geneva conventions and, on the president’s executive authority, tortured several Al-Qaeda suspects in CIA custody.

It blew up when the Abu Ghraib photographs emerged, showing that torture and abuse had spread like a cancer through the ranks of the military, with hundreds of documented cases in every field of combat.

It was almost halted last December by the McCain Amendment, which the president subsequently declined to enforce. It came to a climax last week in a confusing blizzard of legislative verbiage. Both sides are still fighting over what exactly the Senate-Bush deal meant, which means that “the programme” will apparently continue.

Of course, the narrative I have just used is disputed by the president. He stated very recently: “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorised it — and I will not authorise it.”

So we are reduced to fighting over a word, “torture”. President George W Bush’s preferred terminology is “alternative interrogation techniques” or “coercive interrogation” or “harsh interrogation methods”, or simply, amazingly, his comment last Thursday that a policy of waterboarding detainees is merely a policy to “question” them.

Suddenly I am reminded of George Orwell. One essay of his, Politics and the English Language, still stands out over the decades as a rebuke to all those who deploy language to muffle meaning. One passage is particularly apposite:

“A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”

It is time to concede that in America right now the atmosphere is bad. Here is Bush defining torture in a speech he gave in June 2003: “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control.”

So what is “severe physical or mental pain or suffering”? The president does not apparently believe that strapping someone to a board, tipping them upside down and pouring water repeatedly over Cellophane wrapped over their face is severe suffering.

The CIA confirms that most suspects cannot last much more than 30 seconds of the drowning sensation. But no marks are left. So that is not “torture”.

We are then informed that almost all the “coercive interrogation techniques” used by the Bush administration are not torture. One is called “long time standing”. Basically, it entails forcing a prisoner to stay standing indefinitely, by prodding him if he tries to rest, or shackling his wrists to a bolt in a low ceiling or a railing.

At first the detainees in CIA custody were required to be so restrained for a maximum of four hours without any rest. Then a memo from Donald Rumsfeld , the defence secretary, came down the chain of command: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?”
Why indeed? It certainly sounds mild enough.

But here is a description of what it actually means in uncorrupted English: “There is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands only while being interrogated — because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down.
“It can be set up in another way — so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn’t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to deprive a person of all his strength and to force him to testify to anything at all.”

What wimp wrote that? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who documented “long time standing” as a method used by the Soviet Union in the gulag.

“Sleep deprivation” also sounds mild enough to avoid the moniker of “torture”. Here is one account of such an alternative questioning method, in which a prisoner “is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget . . . Anyone who has experienced the desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it”.

Again, which whiny liberal wrote those words?

The answer is Menachem Begin, former Israeli prime minister and a former terrorist himself. He is also describing the methods used by the Soviets in Siberia, where they imprisoned him in 1939.
We know that one prisoner in Guantanamo Bay was forced to go without sleep for 48 of 55 consecutive days and nights.

He was also manacled naked to a chair in a cell that was air-conditioned to around 50F and had cold water poured on him repeatedly, until hypothermia set in. Doctors treated him when he neared permanent physical damage.

According to the president of the United States, this is not “severe mental or physical pain or suffering”. This is an “alternative interrogation method”. This is not torture. it is “the programme”.

And so Latin words fall upon the West’s moral high ground “like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details”.

If only George Orwell were still alive. If only all of this weren’t actually true.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2371815,00.html

Please, help to destroy this terrible Administration, help to end these terrible policies which are utterly destroying our nation’s honour. Vote Democrat in the fall and support Hillary Clinton for President, since she, apparently, is the only prominent Democrat who will actually furnish us with a coherent opposition program.

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 04:08:35 GMT

A brief article on Global Warming with some news that is new to me.
The planet's temperature is highest it's been in 12,000 years. That's scary. Scarier still when you realise that it's now within 1 degree Celsius of the maximum temperatures of the past million years.

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 10:38:14 GMT

"For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes - including those for social security and unemployment compensation - and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes - principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would be, in other words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution." - Al Gore

That's from the transcript of yesterday's address at NYU.

Also, some of you might be interested in Robert Reich's blog. He was Clinton's Labor Secretary, and posts occasionally on the US economic situation. Earlier this year he said he'd like to see Al Gore elected in 2008. The LJ sydication feed is here: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/robertreich/profile

Gore to Give Major Policy Address at NYU

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:07:05 GMT

Former Vice President Gore to Give Major Policy Address at NYU On a Bipartisan Approach to Solving the Climate Crisis.

Today, 12:30 PM EST, Vice President Gore will present a new, bipartisan approach to solving the climate crisis and challenge America to take bold new steps to secure the nation's future. The speech can also be viewed as a live webcast. Go to NYU's homepage, www.nyu.edu , and follow the links. The speech will remain archived afterwards.

Also, over at the Washington Post:

Although saying he has no plans to run for president in 2008, former vice president Al Gore has nonetheless left the door ever so slightly ajar. It's a good bet that door will swing open a good bit wider come next May.

That is when Gore is scheduled to publish his next book. With no fanfare, he signed a few weeks ago with Penguin Press to write "The Assault on Reason."

As described by editor Scott Moyers, the book is a meditation on how "the public arena has grown more hostile to reason," and how solving problems such as global warming is impeded by a political culture with a pervasive "unwillingness to let facts drive decisions."

I saw both of these over at http://draftgore2008.org/

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:53:23 GMT

Hi, I'm Ron. Is anyone here actively participating in any other Draft Gore communities or groups? Are you interested in participating? I'm asking because, looking around the net, all the places I've seen seem rather dead, including the one I volunteered/donated to last month.