Dead on, Al. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1622015,00.html
"So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response. "
How true.
This is an off-shoot from another conversation. If Gore had been President in 2001, what would have happened differently? I found the most analytical answer here:
Excerpts:
Question: Would President Al Gore have been as militarily aggressive as George Bush?
Answer: Probably more militarily aggressive. Why?
Because Gore's natural opponents (the Republicans) would be goading him and calling him a weak leader unless he was VERY aggressive militarily, while Bush's natural opponents (the Democrats) are restraining him by goading him and calling him a cowboy (and other things).
George W. Bush with Russian President Vladimir Putin
Question: Would President Al Gore have ordered an invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, as Bush did?
Answer: What other response was possible? Of course Gore would have invaded Afghanistan.
Question: Would President Al Gore have ordered an invasion of Iraq?
Answer: The answer has to be "almost certainly." The Clinton administration had a stated policy goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power, and Al Gore would have inherited that goal.
In fact, Gore would almost certainly have invaded Iraq much sooner than Bush did. In early 2002, Republicans were strongly urging Bush to invade Iraq, and Democrats were urging caution. The Democrats won out in the sense that they forced Bush to delay an invasion for a year.
If Gore were President, then both Republicans and Democrats would have been in favor of an invasion, and any delay by Gore would have been attacked by the Republicans as indicating Gore's weakness in foreign policy. Thus, Gore would have been pressured to invade more quickly than Bush.
This is what happens when your sanctimonious ass gets caught saying one thing and doing another. And Suz, not one word about going after the messengers - in this case they broke a story that the mainstream media should have been all over before anyone else.
From opinionjournal.com (The Wall Street Journal), partially quoted:
The Tennessean reported that Gore buys "carbon offsets" to compensate for his home's use of energy from carbon-based fuels. As Wikipedia explains, a carbon offset "is a service that tries to reduce the net carbon emissions of individuals or organizations indirectly, through proxies who reduce their emissions and/or increase their absorption of greenhouse gases." . . .
But how Gore buys his "carbon offsets," as revealed by The Tennessean raises serious questions. According to the newspaper's report, Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management:
Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe . . .
Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he "buys" his "carbon offsets" from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn't buy "carbon offsets" through Generation Investment Management--he buys stocks. . . .
Meanwhile, Gore runs around the country and the world trumpeting "climate crisis" and blaming man's use of carbon-based energy--burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel as he goes. His efforts have served to put climate change at the top of the national and even global agenda, driving up the value of the stocks and companies viewed as "green" or environmentally friendly. Companies like those his investment management firm invest his own and other peoples' [sic] money in. (You can see a list of Generation Investment Management's holdings here, courtesy of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.) ...
So, let's sum this up: Here we have a major American politician who is calling for policies that would impose huge costs on society but appears to be profiting handsomely himself; who is leading an extravagant lifestyle while demanding sacrifices from ordinary people; and who is calling on the media to suppress the views of those with whom he disagrees, while at the same time urging more government regulation in the name of "fairness" to his partisan and ideological allies.
Why is it left to think tanks and bloggers to investigate and expose all this?
Update:
Heh. Gets even better. From BillHobbs.com
Gore's huge electric power usage at his Nashville home isn't the only example of how the prophet profit of environmental doom hasn't always lived as if he believes his message. During the eight years Gore was vice president, he voted in four national elections. Every single time, he and his entourage and security detail and accompanying media flew to Nashville on a large government jet, burning thousands of gallons of fossil fuels and pumping huge amounts of carbon emissions directly into the earth's atmosphere, and then drove in a caravan of fossil fuel-burning vehicles from Nashville International Airport east on I-40 to Carthage, Tennessee, so the local and national TV cameras could get video of him at the voting booth. And then the whole caravan headed back to Nashville for the plane ride back to DC. Traffic had to be halted on Nashville's interstates and side streets every time - sometimes during rush hour - idling thousand of vehicles that just sat there, burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon pollution, just so Gore could create a media photo-op.
He could have instead voted by mailing in an absentee ballot
Most people are just plain stupid! One third of this country believes the government had a hand in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You can stand on a street corner and shout out the most idiotic notion in the world and there will be people lining up to follow. Such is the case with AlGore. What a dolt, and what fools he must think we are. His lifestyle goes unchanged (or accelerates), while he expects everyone else to ride a bicycle to work. Then he lies about his utility usage (which has only continued to increase). If he REALLY was trying to save the environment, he would be scaling back, not creating a ponzi scheme to fool the idiots into believing that he has purchased "carbon offsets" that render his usage as zero. Bullshit! He is buying these credits from a company HE formed. So, you might say he is acutally going to be making money off these "offsets". He is definitely "offsetting".
Thirty years ago it was the coming Ice Age (See NewsWeek 1975 complete with graphs), today it's Global Warming. The real problem is global scientists who are seeking funding for research projects. Create an emergency that only can be solved via massive governmental funding every few years. My study of this issue says that if everyone in the US parked their cars and started walking it wouldn't have an impact on global warming. How about this notion. . . weather cycles!
Update (by Gonzo)
From the Chicago Tribute, April 2001:
The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude.
Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.
A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the
surrounding ecosystem.
No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy.
This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford
This man should have been president. At the Commonwealth club in 2002, he gave a speech that clearly articulated the problems with what we were doing, and what the results would be.
I want to talk about the relationship between America's war against terrorism and America's proposed war against Iraq. Like most Americans I've been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of focused, intense and evil attack that we suffered a year ago, September 11. We ought to assume that the forces responsible for that attack are even now attempting to plan another attack against us.
I'm speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country, which I sincerely believe would be better for our country than the policy that is now being pursued by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century....
I believe that we are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion. If you're going after Jesse James, you ought to organize the posse first. Especially if you're in the middle of a gunfight with somebody who's out after you.
I don't think we should allow anything to diminish our focus on the necessity for avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists that we know were responsible for it. The fact that we don't know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify. We have other enemies, but we should focus first and foremost as our top priority on winning the war against terrorism....
I believe this proposed foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of exactly what may lie before us. Such consideration is all the more important because the administration has failed thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run - even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest at every opportunity that this will be a pretty easy matter. And it may well be, but the administration has not said much of anything to clarify its idea of what would follow regime change or the degree of engagement that it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.
I believe that this is unfortunate, because in the immediate aftermath of September 11, more than a year ago, we had an enormous reservoir of goodwill and sympathy and shared resolve all over the world. That has been squandered in a year's time and replaced with great anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do. My point is not that they are right to feel that way, but that they do feel that way. And that has consequences for us. Squandering all that goodwill and replacing it with anxiety in a year's time is similar to what was done by turning a hundred-billion-dollar surplus into a two-hundred-billion-dollar deficit in a year's time....
I just think that if we end the war in Iraq the way we ended the war in Afghanistan, we could very well be worse off than we are today. When you ask the administration about this, what's their intention in the aftermath of a war, Secretary Rumsfeld was asked recently about what our responsibility would be for re-stabilizing Iraq in the aftermath of an invasion, and his answer was, "That's for the Iraqis to come together and decide." On the surface you can understand the logic behind that, and this is not an afterthought. This is based on administration policy. I vividly remember that during one of the campaign debates in 2000, Jim Lehrer asked then-Governor Bush whether or not America, after being involved with military action, should engage in any form of nation building. The answer was, "I don't think so. I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. We're going to have kind of a nation-building corps in America? Absolutely not."...
One final word on this proposed doctrine of preemption; this goes far beyond the situation in Iraq. It would affect the basic relationship between the United States and the rest of the world community. Article 51 of the United Nations charter approved here recognizes the right of any nation to defend itself, including the right to take preemptive actions in order to deal with imminent threats. President Bush now asserts that we will take preemptive action even if the threat we perceive is not imminent. If other nations assert that same right, then the rule of law will quickly be replaced by the reign of fear. Any nation that perceives circumstances that could eventually lead to an imminent threat would be justified under this approach in taking military action against another nation. In other words, President Bush is presenting our country with a proposition that contains within itself one of the most fateful decisions in our history; a decision to abandon what we have thought was America's mission in the world - a world in which nations are guided by a common ethic codified in the form of international law, if we want to survive.
Edit: fixed year, link.
