American Spring

Al Gore:

“We need to have an American spring,” he said. “Non-violent change, where people from the grassroots get involved again. Not in the tea party style. There are people who are genuinely upset in the tea party, I understand that, but that movement was funded with seed money from right-wing billionaires, the Koch brothers, and promoted on Fox News and turned into a stalking horse for this right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on this country for a long time.”

“This country is in trouble,” Gore added. “Our democracy has been withering on the vine. This has been going on for some time.”

Wisconsin. Even though they try to burn down the opposition. But even Governor Walker has to creep away from his plan to shut DMV offices in Democratic areas.



(Lyrics)

Bits and bobs...

Sarcastic responses to signs.

What a president Al Gore would have made....

Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons

Permaculture...

..a simple system for designing sustainable human settlements, restoring soil, planting year-round food landscapes, conserving water, redirecting the waste stream, forming more companionable communities...

No photoshopping? How will beauty product corporations keep women buying crap to do the impossible?

Dead boars and green toxic algae

Al Gore saves the world

On September 14, Reality needs you.

Every day, millions of dollars are spent trying to convince you that climate change isn't real. Or that humans don't cause it. Or that the biggest polluters are trying to solve the problem.

But climate change is a reality. And big polluters -- drawing from the playbook used by the big tobacco companies years ago -- are trying to fool citizens and consumers around the globe by denying proven science. So how can we get the world to embrace reality? How can we share the truth about the climate crisis?

Meet The Climate Reality Project. On September 14, in a 24-hour event spanning the globe, we're introducing a brand-new organization with one clear goal: to bring the facts about the climate crisis into the mainstream by engaging everyone -- especially leaders like you -- in a conversation about how to solve it.

But enough talk for now. Former Vice President Al Gore helped create this video to explain where we are going. Watch it:

Mini blog sprinkles

I KNEW it! Explains why some of us really do act like thuggish cavemen!

Take care not to be bitten by a coral snake.

Via Steve Bates, Al Gore does NOT say,"I told you so."

Bart Stupak is really stupid. Really.

Google earth 3D is really cool.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part one trailer.

The picture of religious oppression.

A rare 'king of herrings' giant oar fish is found in Swedish waters, first time since 1879. Dead, of course.

Blog sprinkles

Bryan of Why Now? remembers the veterans.

Dogs and kids welcome back home returning soldiers while Senator Tom Colburn (R-OK) blocks a veteran's care bill. Losing vets who don't have health care.

David Horsey's cartoon is fantastic as usual:



Excellent interview with Vice President Gore about his new book.

The good, the bad, and the horrific about sex workers.

Blackwater's crimes beginning to be defined:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly comments on the collapse of the Senate as a functioning legislative body:

Facing extraordinary crises and challenges, the United States has a legislative branch that is barely able to legislate at all. The system can see the problems, but is struggling badly to address them. The first step in changing the way Congress operates is creating the demand -- most of the public has no idea that the Senate no longer operates by majority rule. Public frustration can lead to proposals, which can lead to debate, which can lead to solutions.

Phila of Bouphonia on the stupid Stupak amendment:

The idea that a woman must play second fiddle to a fetus, on the grounds that some enterprising sperm cell planted a man's flag inside her -- as though it were a submarine claiming drilling rights in the Arctic Circle -- is scientifically illiterate, theologically dubious, ethically unworkable, and morally incoherent. And I'm sick unto death of the idea that the ever-so-precious tax dollars of these oh-so-sensitive control addicts mustn't be spent on abortion. Especially since my equally strong feelings don't entitle me to opt out of funding two grotesque wars, or detention centers and border fences for immigrants, or the state oppression of women and gays; or paying the salary of a reactionary fuckhead like Bart Stupak; or providing high-quality healthcare to politicians who refuse it to others.

Phila's wonderful flag imagery reminds me of this:



Canadian teenager survives three days on an ice floe.... with polar bears.

Also from the Guardian:

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat keeps an eye on the promised closing of Gitmo.

15 funny pet videos.

All they have left

Is their old shtick of pointing a finger and mocking Gore.

And it is now stale and boring and flat and flaccid and unprofitable. And they have no clue we are no longer laughing with it but at them: (my bold)

Associated Press reporter Laurie Kellman, on Al Gore's appearance before a House committee considering global warming legislation:

"I have read all 648 pages of this bill," Gore bragged, a boast that would surprise no one who caught his teacher's-pet performance in the 2000 presidential race. "It took me two transcontinental flights on United Airlines to finish it."

The schoolhouse metaphor is appropriate, if not for the reason Kellman thinks. There are perhaps only two groups of people who view knowledge as a flaw, and ignorance as an asset: Seventh-graders, and the Washington press corps.

For those who mock global warming

By pointing to the US's severe winter storm, here's what's happening in Australia:

South-eastern Australia is experiencing its worst heatwave in decades, with temperatures in excess of 43C (109F).

Health officials in South Australia say the searing heat may be to blame for an apparent increase in the number of sudden deaths among the elderly.

In neighbouring Victoria state, bush fires have destroyed at least 10 homes.

Nearly 500,000 people in the state are reported to have lost their power supplies, following severe pressure on the electricity grid.

An explosion was also reported at a substation in Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city.

"It is an extreme week. The system is not made to operate where you've got temperatures in the suburbs of 46C," said the head of Victoria state, John Brumby.

Commuters are facing long delays after the blackouts added to the problems on the rail network. Hundreds of train services were cancelled after the heat buckled tracks.

The phrase global warming is unfortunate as it should really be called climate change. The weather will become more extreme at both ends of the gauge, extreme heat, extreme cold. There will be more droughts, floods, fires. Meanwhile, glaciers are losing their ice and the poles are melting, the oceans are acidifying, creatures are going extinct.





Even if we negated our carbon footprints right now, this shift in climate will still continue for decades. We can thank the Bush administration for eight more years of delay in addressing this.

George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan.

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.

One official who witnessed the extraordinary scene said afterwards: "Everyone was very surprised that he was making a joke about America's record on pollution."

But maybe we can hope:

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore urged President Barack Obama and other world leaders to seal a quick deal to fight global warming despite the pervasive financial crisis.

Gore called Obama "the greenest person in the room" for making environmental funding a big chunk of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill passed by U.S. lawmakers this week.

"I think it's important for the world leaders gathered here to fully appreciate the magnitude of the change in U.S. leadership," Gore said.

The former U.S. vice president and environmental advocate, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, referred to frustration in many countries at the Bush administration's refusal to sign international pacts on reducing emissions of carbon, blamed for global warming.

Repower America

Sign the petition:

As a constituent, I am writing to urge you to champion clean energy in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.

This economic recovery package contains programs that are important down payments on the path to repowering America. These investments will create high-paying new jobs for millions of Americans, demonstrate the readiness of clean energy across the country, and provide long overdue solutions to the climate crisis.

Tackling our economic, security and climate challenges will not be easy or instantaneous, but the next few weeks are a critical first step.

Whether this first step is taken is in Congress' hands. I hope I can count on your support.

Al Gore

What a president he would have made.

(I have to post this pic again...)

A holiday movie

To make us dream of what might have been.

Via Avedon Carol of the Sideshow, It's a Blunderful Life!

Standing accountable before history

For not acting.



Thank you for all that you have done,(President) Al Gore.

Strange...

Bush really isn't smiling, is he?

Gee... only NOW do you realize what horrors you've foisted on the American people?

Thanks a whole hell of a lot, you enabler:

Barry Richard, the lawyer who “achieved fame for his successful representation of George Bush in the Bush v. Gore recount suits, is set to give a speech blasting the Bush administration Saturday night” at the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys’ (NAFUSA) annual conference.
[snip]

...I’m a constitutional lawyer. I am concerned with the Bush administration’s assault on American liberties … how the administration deals with habeas corpus and the administration’s posture on electronic surveillance. This administration has gone farther than any other.”

Compare and contrast

(Picture via Pygalgia)

If he won't declare he's running...

We'll just put his name on the ballot for him!:

Al Gore still hasn't definitively ruled out a bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president -- and until he does, one hopeful California group is assuming no news is good news.

California Draft Gore, a grassroots political action committee, has hatched a plan to get their reluctant candidate off of theoretical fantasy polls and onto a real-life primary ballot.

Capitalizing on a provision of the state election law which allows for any name to be placed on a ballot provided enough signatures in favor of that candidate are secured, volunteers will begin scrambling next week to get 26,500 registered Democrats -- 500 from each of California's 53 congressional districts -- to sign off on the former vice president before a Dec. 4 deadline.

Maybe he won't notice until it's too late....

After all these years

It still hurts.

I began this article but could not get past the first page: Vanity Fair's article about Going after Gore, the media's savaging of Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign.

If Gore had become president.... we'd have had a president who would have paid attention to the historical paper on Osama bin Laden. If 9/11 had still occurred, President Gore would have rallied the world to assist in hunting Osama down. If invading Afghanistan was necessary, President Gore would have finished the job, making sure the Taliban had no foothold and working with all involved to make a functional government. We would not have attacked Iraq.

We would not have attacked Iraq. We wouldn't be in this mess. We wouldn't have so many American soldiers, so many innocent Iraqis dead and mangled, so many more terrorists now committed to hurting the United States.

So many other things, no ignoring the Constitution, no removal of the wall between church and state, no indifference to the rule of law, no ruin of the environment, no warrantless spying, no torture, no Gitmo, no Abu Ghraib, no depleted uranium poisoning, no trashing of treaties, mocking the Geneva Convention, breaking of the military...

After all these years.

It still hurts to think of what might have been if the media had not sold its soul to the Bush cabal and delivered us into hell.

Gore is full of hot air

According to this hurricane expert:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.

"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech.

Doesn't matter if Gore just happens to have science on his side, Dr. Gray. I believe you are the one filled with wind, sir.

Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor who had feuded with Gray over global warming, said Gray has wrongly "dug (his) heels in" even though there is ample evidence that the world is getting hotter.

Update: Bryan at Why Now? has more:

I’m well aware of Dr. Gray and his work. For years he provided some of the best predictions for tropical weather that were available. He built an excellent model based on the information he had, and made his name on that model. The problem is that the model doesn’t seem to work anymore. The assumptions on which the model is based are now untrustworthy.

[snip]

Dr. Gray’s model is not working, and is not likely to work unless changes are made to reflect the changes in the global climate, changes that are visible in lost sea ice and melting glaciers.

Update 4/9: Sinfonian of Blast Off! has this reaction:

Gray's views are becoming more and more isolated as the scientific evidence for global warming mounts. Clearly, any so-called expert who compares Al Gore's "fanaticism" to that of Hitler has more than a few screws loose. And yet the media, whom he attacks for their story-making, continue to publish the piss-poor prognostications that he proffers from his lab in Fort Collins, Colo., a location that, as you all know, is notorious for hurricanes. In fact, last year he had to downgrade his prediction twice during the hurricane season, which is kind of like betting on the other team at halftime when your team is down by four touchdowns.

The idiot announcer called it a heated exchange

But I'd call it an extremely polite rolling over with the steam roller.

Barbara Boxer never raised her voice.

What Al Gore did during Katrina

Was extremely presidential even though FEMA tried to BLOCK him several times:

Award-winning vice-Prez Al Gore chartered a plane in Sept. 2005 and flew with it for 2 roundtrips to New Orleans to rescue and medEvac 100s of patients from Charity Hospital and bring them to Tennessee. The VP declined interviews while he was shuttling the evacuees that Saturday September 3 and for a 2nd return flight he made the next day, but the doctors who flew with him talked about the experience.

Gore had to work around a sequential blockade by FEMA, which naturally denied his team permissions, repeatedly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP)- Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.

... [Gore] refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew last Saturday and Sunday. . . .

Compare and contrast:

Al Gore uses electricity!

This is obviously a hypocritical thing to do.

I bet he breathes air, too, damn him!