<< WARMING CAUSES DRINKING ~ MAIN ~ TRIAL GOING WELL >>
“AL’S THE GUY”
Time’s Eric Pooley gives it up for Al Gore:
Let’s say you were dreaming up the perfect stealth candidate for 2008, a Democrat who could step into the presidential race when the party confronts its inevitable doubts about the front-runners. You would want a candidate with the grassroots appeal of Barack Obama - someone with a message that transcends politics, someone who spoke out loud and clear and early against the war in Iraq.
I should mention at this point that Pooley’s cover story is titled “The Last Temptation of Al Gore”. Because Gore is so obviously our new Jesus.
In other words, you would want someone like Al Gore - the improbably charismatic, Academy Award–winning, Nobel Prize–nominated environmental prophet with an army of followers and huge reserves of political and cultural capital at his command.
Gore isn’t Jesus ... he’s God! Too bad, according to Pooley, Gore doesn’t want the job:
He says he has “fallen out of love with politics,” which is shorthand for both his general disgust with the process and the pain he still feels over the hard blow of the 2000 election, when he became only the fourth man in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose a presidential election. In the face of wrenching disappointment, he showed enormous discipline - waking up every day knowing he came so close, believing the Supreme Court was dead wrong to shut down the Florida recount but never talking about it publicly because he didn’t want Americans to lose faith in their system.
Nice of him. Remember that line about Al not wanting Americans to lose faith in their system; he’s lately changed his mind.
He dedicated himself to a larger cause, doing everything in his power to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, and that decision helped transform the way Americans think about global warming and carried Gore to a new state of grace.
Enough with the religious theme, already.
So now the question becomes ...
The question becomes: Why doesn’t Time capitalise the “h” in “he” when referring to Al “Last Temptation, Perfect, Transcendent, State of Grace” Gore?
How will he choose to spend all the capital he has accumulated? No wonder friends, party elders, moneymen and green leaders are still trying to talk him into running. “We have dug ourselves into a 20-ft. hole, and we need somebody who knows how to build a ladder. Al’s the guy,” says Steve Jobs of Apple.
Jesus was a carpenter.
[Gore]‘s working mightily to build a popular movement to confront what he calls “the most serious crisis we’ve ever faced.”
Not a single person has been killed by global warming.
He has logged countless miles in the past four years, crisscrossing the planet to present his remarkably powerful slide show and the Oscar-winning documentary that’s based on it, An Inconvenient Truth, to groups of every size and description. He flies commercial most of the time to use less CO2 and buys offsets to maintain a carbon-neutral life. In tandem with Hurricane Katrina and a rising chorus of warning from climate scientists, Gore’s film helped trigger one of the most dramatic opinion shifts in history as Americans suddenly realized they must change the way they live.
Hurricane Katrina arrived during hurricane season in a hurricane area. Why is it mentioned in association with climate “change”?
In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an overwhelming majority of those surveyed - 90% of Democrats, 80% of independents, 60% of Republicans - said they favor “immediate action” to confront the crisis.
The same poll found that people wouldn’t accept even a one dollar gas increase to deal with “the crisis”.
The day that poll was published, in April, I spent some time with Gore, 59, in his hotel room in Buffalo, N.Y. ... I congratulated him on the poll and mentioned the dozen or so states that - in the absence of federal action - have moved to restrict CO2 emissions. Gore wasn’t declaring victory. “I feel like the country singer who spends 30 years on the road to become an overnight sensation,” he said with a smile.
We’ll hear more about Al’s musical thoughts shortly.
On July 7, he will preside over Live Earth, producer Kevin Wall’s televised global rock festival (nine concerts on seven continents in a single day), designed to get 2 billion people engaged in the crisis all at once.
They’ll be engaged in causing it. Next, Pooley watches in moist awe as Al speaks at the University of Buffalo:
He has given this presentation some 2,000 times yet still imbues it with a sense of discovery.
Al discovers more rubes every time.
He laid out the overwhelming evidence that human activity has given the earth a raging fever, then urged the people to respond - “If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate the baby’s flame retardant! If the crib’s on fire, you save the baby!”
The crib! The crib! The crib is on fire!
Then, suddenly, Gore was laying American democracy itself on the couch, asking why the U.S. has been unable to take action on global warming, why it has made so many other disastrous choices - rushing into war in Iraq, spying on Americans without search warrants, holding prisoners at Guantánamo Bay without due process.
This is the same guy who doesn’t “want Americans to lose faith in their system”.
He was getting charged up now. “Our democracy hasn’t been working very well - that’s my opinion. We’ve made a bunch of serious policy mistakes. But it’s way too simple and way too partisan to blame the Bush-Cheney Administration. We’ve got checks and balances, an independent judiciary, a free press, a Congress - have they all failed us? Have we failed ourselves?”
Don’t lose faith, now.
Right on cue, a bright-eyed Buffalo student named Jessica Usborne stood up and asked the Question. “Given the urgency of global warming, shouldn’t you not only educate people but also help implement the changes that will be necessary - by running for President?” The place erupted, and Usborne dipped down onto one knee and bowed her head.
Presumably she was imitating Pooley.
Her dark hair fell across her eyes and her voice rose. “Please! I’ll vote for you!” she cried above the crowd’s roar, which sounded like a rocket launcher and lasted almost 30 seconds, all but drowning out Gore’s simple, muted, five-word response: “I’m not planning to run.”
Thanks for counting all those words, Time magazine. We’d never have managed it ourselves.
Al and Tipper Gore’s home, a 1915 antebellum-style mansion in the wealthy Belle Meade section of Nashville, is laid out a bit like Gore himself: a gracious and formal Southern façade; slightly stuffy rooms when you walk in the door; and startlingly modern, relaxed, informal living spaces to the rear.
Al Gore’s rear has startlingly modern, relaxed, informal living spaces. This I did not need to know.
The anti-Gore crowd zinged him recently because his electricity bill last August was 10 times the local average. The Gores pay extra to get 100% of their power from renewable sources, and their zealous retrofitting will no doubt bring their costs down. But it stung.
People shouldn’t be so mean.
Al Gore and I settle down on the patio, near the swimming pool and the barbecue. “Did some grilling last night with my friend Jon Bon Jovi,” he says. “His new record is great.”
At this point a weaker being might surrender, or possibly even kill himself. I am Australian. I will persevere.
The Assault on Reason will be hailed and condemned as Gore’s return to political combat. But at heart, it is a patient, meticulous examination of how the participatory democracy envisioned by our founders has gone awry - how the American marketplace of ideas has gradually devolved into a home-shopping network of 30-second ads and mall-tested phrases, a huckster’s paradise that sells simulated participation to a public that has all but lost the ability to engage.
Gore forbid Al would want anyone to lose faith in America.
Gore builds his argument from deep drafts of political and social history and trenchant bits of information theory, media criticism, computer science and neurobiology, and reading him is by turns exhausting and exhilarating.
Wow. It must be just like listening to ... Jon Bon Jovi!
One moment he is lecturing you about something you think you know pretty well, and the next moment he’s making a connection you had never considered.
Which is generally an indication you’re dealing with a delusional fellow. Say you’re discussing, I don’t know, the absence of ashtrays in modern cars, and suddenly the guy launches into a rant about his ex-wife and her dentist. It’s a connection you had never considered.
The associative leaps are dazzling, but what will stoke the Democratic faithful are his successive chapters on the Iraq war, each one strafing the Administration for a different set of misdeeds: exploiting the politics of fear ...
Stay away from the politics of fear, Administration! That’s Al’s turf.
... misusing the politics of faith, misleading the American people, throwing out the checks and balances at the heart of our democracy, undermining the national security and degrading the nation’s image in the world ... “I think this started before 9/11, and I think it’s continued long after the penumbra of 9/11 became less dominant,” he says. “I think it is part of a larger shift driven by powerful forces” - print giving way to television as our dominant medium for examining ideas, television acting on our brains in ways that scientists are just beginning to unlock.
An Inconvenient Truth has been showing on Australian pay TV this week. It’s acting on our brains. Curse those powerful forces!
He has never opened up publicly about the Florida debacle, and even in private he avoids the topic. Friends say he thinks the Supreme Court basically stole the election, but he won’t say it ... “It was all about what’s next,” says his friend Reed Hundt, who was FCC chairman during the Clinton years. “He was not willing to be a victim - didn’t want to call himself that, didn’t want people to think of him that way. He didn’t want Americans to doubt America.”
Funny way he has of showing it.
Gore often compares the climate crisis to the gathering storm of fascism in the 1930s ...
That reminds me; isn’t there a gathering storm of Islamic fascism right now? Has Gore got anything to say about that? Anything at all?
He was never quite the wooden Indian his detractors made him out to be in 2000 (nor did he claim to have invented the Internet), but he did carry himself with a slightly anachronistic Southern formality that was magnified beneath the klieg lights of the campaign. And his fascination with science and technology struck some voters (and other politicians) as weird. “In politics you want to be a half-step ahead,” says Elaine Kamarck, his friend and former domestic-policy adviser. “You don’t want to be three steps ahead.”
Ordinary folk are too stupid to keep up. By the way, hyperintelligent Al isn’t smart enough to discover that American cars are sold in China.
“The slide show is a journey,” says Gore, standing beside his trusty screen in a Nashville hotel ballroom. It’s mid-March, and he’s addressing 150 people - students, academics, lawyers, a former Miss Oklahoma contestant, a fashion designer, a linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles. They’ve come at their own expense to learn how to give the slide show. There’s an undeniable buzz in the room, the feeling that takes over a group that knows it’s part of something that’s big and getting bigger.
Scientologists know that feeling.
“We were on tour, doing the slide show, and men and women would come up to Al after,” Tipper says. “Silently weeping.”
Anoint the silent weepers, Al. Anointy nointy.
The weather started getting unmistakably weird ...
Now there’s a scientific observation.
In the ballroom, Gore gives the trainees some advice about the limits of time and complexity. (“Trust me on this. If audiences had an unlimited attention span, I’d be in my second term as President.”)
Inattentive fools!
And then, for the next five hours, Gore walks them through it, slide by slide, deconstructing the art and science, making it clear both how painstakingly well crafted and how scrupulous it is. He relishes the process, taking his time, bathing these people in a sea of data in which he has been splashing happily for years. He punctuates his presentation with pithy attention grabbers - “O.K., here’s the key fact ... Here’s your pivot ...” - and brings to bear much of what he knows about politics. “Here’s something you need to know about for defensive purposes,” he says, explaining the science behind a terrifying series of slides illustrating how a 20-ft. rise in sea level would swamp Florida, San Francisco, the Netherlands, Calcutta and lower Manhattan. The trainees are scribbling hard, arming themselves. Gore smiles.
He’s his own Leni Riefenstahl.
What would President Gore do? Well, on Capitol Hill in March, Citizen Gore offered his ideas. He advocates an immediate freeze on CO2 emissions and a campaign of sharp reductions - 90% by 2050.
Whoa there; 90 per cent by 2050? Kevin Rudd wants a 60 per cent reduction by the same year; only crazy George Monbiot (who desires a 90 per cent reduction by 2030) is aiming at anything near Gore’s society-disabling level. Gore is on the fringe of the fringe.
After Gore presented these views on Capitol Hill, critics assailed them as costly, unworkable economy cripplers. His reply: in a few years, when the crisis worsens, these proposals “will seem so minor compared to the things people will be demanding then.” And, of course, he’s not running for anything these days. He’s in the vision business now.
In the “vision business”, is he? Is that the modern way to describe a permanent hallucinatory state?
He draws from a number of faiths, from philosophy and self-help and poetry and from Gandhi’s concept of truth force, the idea that people have an innate ability to recognize the most powerful truths.
I used to work for the magazine that decided this was cover-worthy. If I worked there now, I’d be fleeing with truth force, let me tell you.
He often cites an African proverb that says, “If you wish to go quickly, go alone. If you wish to go far, go together.” Then he builds on it. “We have to go far, quickly,” he said in April at the Tribeca Film Festival ...
Don’t stop there, Al. How about “We have to quickly go together, far”, “We have to go alone, together”, and “We have to go far and quickly together alone”. C’mon; they’re all good.
Gore is not carrying a mirror.
He doesn’t need to. Time’s cover provides all the views Gore requires. You’ll notice one subject - a subject central to modern Western governance - isn’t directly addressed in this entire piece; despite being a perfect candidate, Gore has something of a blind spot. Far better coverage of the Al phenomenon may be found here.
I was born and raised in the south, I know southern formality when I see it. Gore is a stiff, charmless, smug, puffed up meringue of ambition & entitlement with delusions of intelligence. His parents no doubt hummed “Hail the Chief” while conceiving him. Sure, he refuses to talk about the Supreme Court “stopping the count” on Florida because all the counts of legitimate ballots by organizations hostile to the Bush presidency prove he would have lost anyway.
Sure, he’s been “happily splashing in a sea of data”, because he’s refused all challenges to swim in deeper waters. Here on the “eternal campaign” he can have all the whoop te do, the press adulation, the A-list (O.K. B list) gatherings and dark-haired young ladies dropping to their knees in front of him without actually having to be accountable or productive. Little Prince Albert, happy at last.>His reply: in a few years, when the crisis worsens [blah blah blah]
It’s always in a few years, isn’t it? I’ve been hearing about how everything’s going to get bad “in a few years” because of global warming for nigh on twenty years now.
And in a few years time the climate will be pretty much the same, but there’ll still be greenies running around telling us that “in a few years” everything will have gone to pot.
How long before they’re writing their messages on large bits of cardboard, hanging the cardboard on string around their necks, and preaching in the malls alongside their fellow end-of-dayers?
Posted by Blithering Bunny on 2007 05 29 at 01:13 PM • permalinkRight on cue, a bright-eyed Buffalo student named Jessica Usborne stood up and asked the Question. “Given the urgency of global warming, shouldn’t you not only educate people but also help implement the changes that will be necessary - by running for President?” The place erupted, and Usborne dipped down onto one knee and bowed her head.
Buffalo (or as she spells it, “Jessi lives in Bufallo”) and global warming are as connected as a pastrami and Vicks Vaporub sandwich.
Oh word has it, that in Jessi’s second picture, she wasn’t dancing, she was ready to leap at the guy that had his Johnson out.
An Al Gore candidacy would be the best news possible for the Republicans. Seriously.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 05 29 at 01:35 PM • permalinkAl would be eaten by Hillary Milhouse Clinton’s machine like a grape in a a cuisinart. I don’t see Clinton/Gore ‘08 bumperstickers. Much more fun (and SAFER) to do the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton thing, being the unelected “voice” of a nebulous, but never-the-less-to-be-taken-utterly-serial constituency.
He flies commercial most of the time to use less CO2 and buys offsets to maintain a carbon-neutral life.
Ohgivemeafuckinbreak! A Gulfstream is not “commercial”, Eric, you credulous twat! And he’s buying “carbon credits” from himself. Arrggghhh!
Christ! Did Time simply publish Gore’s press release and put Pooley’s byline on it?
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 05 29 at 01:47 PM • permalinkGore builds his argument from deep drafts of political and social history and trenchant bits of information theory, media criticism, computer science and neurobiology
Sounds like his Kool-Aid had gnats floating in it.
The place erupted, and Usborne dipped down onto one knee and bowed her head.
That would be Jessica Magdalene Usborne?
Great job, Tim; one of the funniest fiskings of this or any other year.
Gore is not carrying a mirror.
That’s because, in order to use a mirror, one has to be able see themself in said reflective device. With The Goreacle™, that’s a major problem.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 05 29 at 02:04 PM • permalinkAt this point a weaker being might surrender, or possibly even kill himself. I am Australian. I will persevere.
Indeed you did. I may not have committed sepuku, but by that point the magazine would’ve surely been out the freaking window. What revolting tripe.
25 years ago, I canceled my subscription to Time when they tried to portray Ronald Reagan as the second coming of Attila the Hun, mercilessly rampaging over the tortured souls of the poor and “underprivileged”. If anything, they’ve gotten worse since.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 05 29 at 02:08 PM • permalink#13 yojimbo
Ah! Nuance. I thought I recognized that reek…
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 05 29 at 02:11 PM • permalink“We were on tour, doing the slide show, and men and women would come up to Al after,” Tipper says. “Silently weeping.”
They left out the best part:
“Just then a woman came up behind Him and touched the hem of His garment; for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch His earth tone Dockers, I will be healed.’ And Al turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ He said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that moment.”
I don’t want to ruin the thread, but this all reminds me very, very much of a similar kind of admiration in some of the then-MSM for a certain ‘idealistic’ charismatic person who fixes for all sorts of problems, back in the ‘30s.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 05 29 at 02:40 PM • permalinkOh, yeah, I think that guy wrote a book, too.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 05 29 at 02:40 PM • permalinkGood fisking and comments, but religious analogies aren’t correct. If you want to understand Al Gore and his followers, the correct model is Jacobites.
Angry and dismayed that the coronation of the True Prince (and only heir of the body to God-King Bill) did not occur on schedule, his followers range the countryside drumming up support from whomever will attack the Usurper. Meanwhile Bonny Prince Al, flaunting his regalia and freely spending other people’s money, goes from manor to palace promising the favors he will grant when he comes to his True Estate. Now we need to identify Culloden Moor, and set up machine-gun emplacements.
Regards,
RicOh ferchrissakes - religious fanatics make me barf.
Next thing you know the Warmies™ will be setting fires and destroying things in order to “save”
the Earththeir House of Worship.Oh, wait….
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2007 05 29 at 02:46 PM • permalink“Did Time simply publish Gore’s press release and put Pooley’s byline on it?”
Of course, #11. That’s what they always do.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2007 05 29 at 02:49 PM • permalinkThe picture of Al at the beginning of the article reminds me of someone . . . let’s see now . . . oh, yes! Vitellius the Glutton.
In the states, at least, the sooner that Global Warming is formally declared a religion, the better off we’ll be. “Wall of separation”, and all that.
I’m with JorgXMcKie. I’m beginning to think Al Gore is the scariest thing to come down the pike in decades. He’s certainly no fan of democracy, as evidenced by his “general disgust with the process”, and his relentless pushing of an agenda that would cripple this country (not to mention the whole world). Even that wouldn’t be so scary, except that this puffy-faced, greasy-haired fencepost of a man somehow manages to get crowds to worship him. And Jorg’s “man from the 30s” had the same kind of hypnotic effect on people.
Oh good goddie god god. It just gets worse and worse. Reading that article reminded me of something I read a long time ago:
The essential characteristic of the Argument from Intimidation is its appeal to moral self-doubt and its reliance on the fear, guilt or ignorance of the victim. It is used in the form of an ultimatum demanding that the victim renounce a given idea without discussion, under threat of being considered morally unworthy. the pattern is always: “Only those who are evil (dishonest, heartless, insensitive, ignorant, etc.) can hold such an idea.”
The classic example of the argument of Intimidation is the story The Emperor’s New Clothes.
In that story, some charlatans sell non-existent garments to the Emperor by asserting that the garments’ unusual beauty makes them invisible to those who are morally depraved at heart. Observe the psychological factors required to make this work: the charlatans rely on the Emperor’s self-doubt; the Emperor does not question their assertion nor their moral authority; he surrenders at once, claiming that he does see the garments—thus denying the evidence of his own eyes and invalidating his own consciousness—rather than face a threat to his precarious self-esteem. His distance from reality may be gauged by the fact that he prefers to walk naked down the street, displaying his nonexistent garments to the people—rather than risk incurring the moral condemnation of two scoundrels. The people, prompted by the same psychological panic, try to surpass one another in loud exclamations on the splendor of his clothes—until a child cries out that the Emperor is naked.
This is the exact pattern of the working of the Argument from Intimidation, as it is being worked all around us today. We have all heard it and are hearing it constantly. . . . [...]
The Argument from Intimidation dominates today’s discussions in two forms. In public speeches and print, it flourishes in the form of long, involved, elaborate structures of unintelligible verbiage, which convey nothing clearly except a moral threat. (“Only the primitive-minded can fail to realize that clarity is over-simplification.”) But in private, day-by-day experience, it comes up wordlessly, between the lines, in the form of inarticulate sounds conveying unstated implications. It relies, not on what is said, but on how it is said—not on content, but on tone of voice.
[The Argument from Intimidation is accompanied] by raised eyebrows, wide-eyed stares, shrugs, grunts, snickers and the entire arsenal of non-verbal signals communicating ominous innuendoes and emotional vibrations of a single kind: disapproval.
If those vibrations fail, if such debaters are challenged, one finds that they have no arguments, no evidence, no proof, no reasons, no ground to stand on—that their noisy aggressiveness serves to hide a vacuum—that the Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.
Ayn Rand, 1964
I would say that someone needs to tell Gore that he is naked, but I think he is a hellish combination of both Emperor and scoundrel.
#32: I agree that the Gore phenomenon is scary, but it’s also contemptible. Only in a fifth-rate, shabby age could a pretentious mediocrity with the dynamism of a lamp post, a goggling, waddling human beachball possessing the intellectual depth of a petri dish and trailing the stench of the natural-born loser like a case of intractable B.O., ever rise to a position where he posed a potential threat to political and economic liberty.
Oh, I’m sorry . . . was that blasphemous?
When did you last hear someone speak the words “silently weeping”?
Sounds like Tipper’s been reading romances.
Posted by Janis Gore on 2007 05 29 at 03:39 PM • permalinkGore/Clinton ‘08. Let them fight it outn for who gets top billing…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 05 29 at 03:47 PM • permalinkThis is awful. This is so biased, it’s partisan. As such it has to go on the oped page. It’s not news, it’s not even analysis. It’s a fucking campaign advertisement written as a gift by a group of pro-Gore partisan hacks.
This is absolutely unacceptable. I demand the writer’s resignation on my ...
What? Someone already said that? That’s my line! Who stole my line?
paco!
Posted by wronwright on 2007 05 29 at 04:07 PM • permalink#41 Paco: Her slight rhetorical excess, combined with her residence in a 1915 antebellum-style mansion in a neighborhood called Belle Meade, leads me to believe that she might be suffering from what we in the Natchez area call “column fever.”
Posted by Janis Gore on 2007 05 29 at 05:07 PM • permalinkI just know that I am not going to be able to keep my mouth shut in the coming era. I will be shot in the back of the head or trundled off to a re-education camp for sure. Of course, re-education will no doubt be considered too carbon intensive, so a bullet to the back of the head it will be, no doubt. Kinder anyways.
He has never opened up publicly about the Florida debacle, and even in private he avoids the topic…He didn’t want Americans to doubt America.
He didn’t want Americans to doubt him, in reality, as he’d also have to open up about the tens of thousands of votes from defence force personnel that he tried to invalidate in the most brazen ever attempt to steal an election.
Posted by Jack Lacton on 2007 05 29 at 05:43 PM • permalinkMrs Skeeter frequently reminds me that there is nothing to be gained by going backwards down a “what if” path.
But perhaps it might be worthwhile to give some thought to what would have happened if Gore had been elected in 2000.
I leave it to our American friends to advise on this, but I have a perception that Gore would have been forced to do something after 9/11.
If Gore does run in 2008, I suggest that this question should be asked loudly and often:
Al, what would you have done on September 12, 2001?In Europe,the Germans are talking of the upcoming G8 to agree to keep the planet’s temperature to less than a two degree celsius increase through the 21st century.
In Canada, parliament is discussing what Canada must do to control the planet’s temperature.
In the US, a Time magazine “journalist” fawns, droolsm and slobbers over the holiness of Al who doesn’t want to run for president ... “oh, if you twist my arm, that’s different” Gore.
Also in Canada, Air Canada now sells an optional carbon credit to those who want to offset the CO2 generated by their flight.
The world has gone mad, stark raving mad.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 05 29 at 06:28 PM • permalinkCan reporters stop repeating the falsehood that Al Gore was an Academy Award winner? Albert Gore did NOT win an Academy Award. He appeared in a film for which the producer won an Academy Award.
The repetition of this falsehood by the MSM turns it into a piece of data people believe with the certainty of truth. Of course, that was merely the first of many falsehoods this reporter embellished into truthiness…
#43
I thought it had some nice stylistic elements. From the verisimilitude of a dodgy fluorescent light: There’s an undeniable buzz in the room… to the sly cinema references: Everybody wants to take him for a walk in the woods.OT…but of significance.
Man with Rare Strain of TB Quarantined
A man with a rare and dangerous form of tuberculosis may have spread the disease to passengers and crew on two trans-Atlantic flights to Paris and from Prague earlier this month, federal health officials said Tuesday.
CDC officials on Tuesday released information about the passenger, and called for people who were on the same flights to get checked for the infection.
“What is unusual is this patient’s TB is extremely resistant to TB drugs,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking at an afternoon press briefing. This is an emerging problem. Normally, when someone has TB, we influence them so they won’t expose others. This person had compelling personal reasons to travel and wasn’t responsible.”
The infected patient flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12, arriving on May 13, on Air France Flight 385. He returned to the United States on May 24, on Czech Air Flight 410, from Prague to Montreal.
The man then drove into the United States. He is hospitalized, in respiratory isolation, according to the World Health Organization. Gerberding said the CDC took the “rare” step of isolating him to protect the public.
As they say, read it all.
If Gore is God, why can’t he returned the climate to “normal” with a wave of the hand. Why hasn’t he smote the Republicans with a single glance of his third eye? Why are people of Darfur suffering so when their saviour is just a bizjet ride away? Why does he use a bizjet? Where was he when the tsunami hit? No use saying he was at home floating around his pool like some vast iceberg.
If Gore is God, he a bloody cruel one. In fact, I think he has deliberately sent global warming to wipe out mankind - including those pathetic souls who lie at his feet in awe. You bastard Gore, stop playing with us!!!!
Al’s not going to run. He’s found a cushier position as St. Al, Patron Saint of Kerfuffle, and he’s going to milk it for all he’s worth. Why bother actually doing something when he can win eternal love and devotion by just talking about it?
Posted by Tungsten Monk on 2007 05 29 at 07:59 PM • permalinkOk, let me get this straight. Gore wants 90% reduction in carbon output by 2050. And then he says that it will seem minor compared to what people are demanding in the future.
But isn’t 100% all we can reduce our output by? Or does he mean that we should start limiting the carbon output of animals and plants?
#50 Skeeter
An interesting question to be sure. Paco is probably right at #56.
At best we would have had a UN led force with many more lives lost with scant effectiveness, and after a long delay since we needed overflight capability with Pakistan and the Clinton Administration had horrible relations with Pakistan.
We would probably still be in some form of a very nasty recession. Greenspan would have greatly increased the money supply and lowered the interest rates but with no productivity gains because there would be no tax cuts and no rationalizing of the workforce.
We would have most certainly been hit again on domestic soil because the same idiots would still be in charge with their anti-intel bias. This would have led to even greater restrictions on our personal freedom(not the hysterical crap that the left whines about). Remember, the first trade center bombing brought us project Echelon which has the capability of monitoring all domestic emails. You can imagine what a combination of 9/11 and further attacks would have done in this area.
And the best part would have been that the hits would just keep coming because there would be no recognition of a worldwide threat or movement in place, simply a series of one-off events.
Gore/Clinton ‘08. Let them fight it out for who gets top billing…
Perhaps I should have expressed that in Aussie terms:
TWO MEN ENTER!
ONE MAN LEAVES… EVEN FATTER!Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 05 29 at 08:23 PM • permalinkI’m used to clueless idiots who will believe the most utter tripe, the world is full of them, but I never thought I see the end of science, which means the end of the modern world as we know it.
The real world isn’t cooperating with the global warming models, so they have resorted to adjusting the data to fit the models. When data has to be changed to fit the theory, it’s no longer science.
The future is starting to look like the Dark Ages that followed the Roman Empire.
print giving way to television as our dominant medium for examining ideas, television acting on our brains in ways that scientists are just beginning to unlock.
And it was only 10 years ago that he finally managed to reconcile himself to movable type. We’ve got to keep this guy alive until 2057 somehow, just to hear him hyperventilate about blogs.
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2007 05 29 at 08:59 PM • permalinkYou wouldn’t think it possible, but it seems Al’s ego is more inflated than his distended paunch- imagine what a colossal pain in the arse he would’ve been if he’d been elected? I reckonhe’d wind up making the Clinto administration look good, maybe even Jimmeh as well.
christ there’s a lot of gullible saps out there- I wish I had the sort of front that you need to fleece these dingbats- I tells ya there’s gold in them thar eejits.
I would say that someone needs to tell Gore that he is naked….. Why would you say such a horrible thing? It made me wish for instant glaucoma, or failing that to prise my eyes out of their sockets with an icecream scoop.
Gore is not carrying a mirror….with good reason, he’d have to be built like Charles Atlas to be able to budge the sort of Hubble-sized concave contraption that would be required to view even part of his cellulite-crammed carcass- that is allowing for the circumstance where he does in fact cast a reflection.
61: Al’s not going to run. He’s found a cushier position as St. Al . . .
That’s a very insightful observation, TM: one has to be elected in order to be President, which means a quantifiable majority of votes in the electoral college; however, one can simply be acclaimed as a prophet, or even as a savior, by a noisy minority. Al clearly fears the potential for rejection in the first scenario - has, in fact, experienced it first hand, and has joined Jimmy Carter as a politician who has become more or less deranged by defeat.
Kinda not really O/T
This letter in The Australian, re The Great Global Warming Swindle, is worth reading, and the comments might be interesting.
see, THAT’s why gorebles doesn’t let reporters into his global warming tub thumps! He doesn’t want to assault our reason…!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 05 29 at 09:44 PM • permalinkGore doesn’t want to be President, because Presidents cannot fly “commercial.”
Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2007 05 29 at 09:56 PM • permalinkThe first Gore administration would have been an interesting one - in the sense of “may you live in interesting times”.
To begin with, Gore would be taking office along with newly elected Senator Hillary!. It was widely rumored that relations between Gore and the Clintons was not good; how true that was, I don’t know, but socially and tempermentally, they were very different people. And given Hillary!‘s ambitions to become president in her own right, she might well have seen Gore as impeding her way.
There’s the further fact that Gore would be tarred with the residue of the Clinton administration. No vice president who succeeded a sitting president has ever been re-elected - from John Adams to George Bush (1), the patten has the same: the second in command is elected, things go sour, and he’s booted out of office. The reason is that the #2 guy was elected on his boss’s coattails; if he attempts to make policy that contradicts what his predecessor did, he’s seen as a traitor; while if he hewes to the line, he’s seen as weak or inflexible.
Also, every administration builds up toxic waste over time: scandal, incompetence, mistakes, bad appointments - they build up over time. Twelve years seems to be about the maximum time that an administration can go before it toxic residue kills it.
And there’s Gore himself: brittle, dogmatic, steeped in self-righteousness yet filled with self-doubt, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
And, of course, his administration’s relations with the Republicans would be utterly toxic, because he’d be widely perceived as having stolen Florida - which, given the Florida Supreme Court’s ad-hoc rewriting of state law to favor the Democrats, is what he would have done. And the Republicans had a firm grip on both houses of Congress.
With Congress in the hands of his enemies, and the Democrats split between Gore himself and Hillary!, Gore would be in serious trouble from day 1. The media, too, would be tepid in its support. The economy would be sluggish, but all of Gore’s proposals would center around his global-warming fantasies of returning us to the paleolithic era; even if not passed, they would utterly wreck national confidence in the economy.
At that point, 9/11 would simply be the coup de grace, both to the US economy and to the Gore administration. He’d be seen as Jimmy Carter squared: a weakling fool. There’d be no way he and Clinton could palm off responsibility for that debacle.
In 2004, Hillary! would brush him aside for the nomination. The Republicans would nominate someone tougher and smarter than Dubya - maybe Romney, maybe Thompson, maybe Giuliani. Definitely not McCain. My guess is the Republican would win - Hillary! would be seen as simply more of the same, and the country would want a change.
Posted by Urbs in Horto on 2007 05 29 at 10:05 PM • permalinkAl cannot possibly reconcile his ‘victory’ on preaching his lies about climate change with his ‘Assault on Reason’ thesis, in Pooley’s words, that the American marketplace of ideas has gradually devolved into a home-shopping network of 30-second ads and mall-tested phrases, a huckster’s paradise that sells simulated participation to a public that has all but lost the ability to engage.
Or do Al’s ideas naturally compete on a higher plane, he being the Oracle and all? What a fucking tool.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2007 05 29 at 10:12 PM • permalink#66, phil_b, I feel much the same when looking at the world around me.
This extract from the article was the classic demonstration of gullibility and bandwagonism:
He laid out the overwhelming evidence that human activity has given the earth a raging fever, then urged the people to respond - “If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate the baby’s flame retardant! If the crib’s on fire, you save the baby!”
What fucking evidence, exactly??? Far from being “overwhelming”, there is no evidence that human activity has contibuted, or will contribute, significantly to global warming. Unless your definition of “evidence” stretches to “projections from over-simplified and selective computer models based on flawed assumptions and tweaked as necessary”.
My only consolation about the gullibility and apparent inability to think critically of so many “educated” people in the modern era, is that they are probably the people who would have been wholly illiterate and innumerate in times past. I guess that’s an improvement, hey?
TFK
But perhaps it might be worthwhile to give some thought to what would have happened if Gore had been elected in 2000.
I leave it to our American friends to advise on this, but I have a perception that Gore would have been forced to do something after 9/11.#50, if Gore had been elected in 2000, foreigners wouldn’t hate the US and 9/11 wouldn’t have happened…
/moonbat
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2007 05 29 at 10:28 PM • permalinkThe sorcerer, Goredoof, looked beyond the battlements of his tower. Below, in a great pit which served as an abattoir, an army of Dorks bustled about their horrible work, slaughtering sheep so that their skins might be made into vellum for the creation of carbon offset grants. Goredoof nodded slowly, deeply satisfied: sheep produce an excess of methane, which thickens the dome of the world and traps heat, in the same way that a tavern roof does, with windows and doors closed, and a roaring fire burning in the great room. It is just to kill them and to convert the hides into their own death certificates, for their blood will help to cool the fever that has beset the world. Beyond the blue mountains and the tall forests, other, two-legged sheep were gathering to do his bidding, so that one day soon he would be able to stretch his hand across all lands, and stir the chill wind that would free him forever from the high cost of air-conditioning his tower. Then, having served their purpose, the bipedal sheep would be dealt with, too.
But as he began to turn from the vista of the setting sun, he spied a tall figure walking among the lengthening shadows of the plain. His hair and beard were snow white, but he walked in the manner of a man in the full flower of youth, and he wore a robe bearing the strange device of an ‘S’ pierced by an iron rod (thusly: ‘$’). The stranger was making his way steadily toward the gate of the castle, and as he approached, Goredoof saw that this was no stranger, but his arch foe, Pokko.
Soon to be a trilogy of novels published by Pacozon.com, and the basis of a series of over-long movies filmed in New Zealand.
Gore will not only run for the Democratic nomination, he will win it.
Put your bets down now folks, he’s the only one mad enough for the netroots nutjobs that control the Democrats these days.
God help us all.
Posted by Apparatchik on 2007 05 30 at 12:14 AM • permalinkWhen did you last hear someone speak the words “silently weeping”?
Maybe the Goracle had been “silent but deadly” just before they reached him and their eyes were merely watering.
Posted by Richard Cranium on 2007 05 30 at 12:29 AM • permalinkGore often compares the climate crisis to the gathering storm of fascism in the 1930s ...
Yeah, so do I, and it usually ends with my shaking my head in astounded disbelief that there are actually people who believe the two are in any way similar.
The associative leaps are dazzling ...None of that restrictive “logic” thing for ol’ Al, no sirree.
I would call Tim’s work a truly righteous Fisking, if not for the fact that the Time article already takes up more than its fair share of quasi-religious imagery and metaphors.
#50 There was an editorial cartoon, wish I can find it. President Gore giving the state of the union speech in ‘02. “...and I intend to send a strongly worded letter to the Taliban just as soon as I get the environmental impact report from ground zero!”
Posted by dean martin on 2007 05 30 at 04:05 AM • permalinkGore should fuck off into the sunset
and thank his lucky stars he lost in
2000.Can you imagine the prick addressing
Islamic terrorism.That’s why he bangs on about GW.
It can’t fight back and it takes
away the fact that Gore has got
a spine like spaghetti.Still, what can you expect from
someone who looks like Al Bundy,
only fatter.Gore builds his argument from deep drafts of political and social history and trenchant bits of information theory, media criticism, computer science and neurobiology
Phark, the lay expert on God, the Universe and Everything.
Is he also working on the Grand Unification Theory in his spare time?What’s the sequel: An Absence of Humility/An Abundance of Gullibility?
Has Flummery dug up a new species of diner•Gore?
One of the few things in my life that genuinely shocked me, is how much the Ionian Greeks figured out (and we only have fragments of what they knew).
These guys figured out stuff that would be lost for more than 2,000 years.
Anyone who thinks the march of science technology and consequently progress is inevitable, is a fool. It’s a fragile system dependant on the goodwill of individuals. Lose that to political (or supposed moral (used to be called religous) issues) and you are lost.
This was brought home to me recently by my brother who is a prominent scientist. He told me we need to reduce our carbon emissions. On investigation he admitted the evidence was shaky, but retreated to the precautionary position - what if we do cause catastrophic warming.
OTOH, I think the Internet has/will save our collective arses. It’s the modern day equivalent of those Greeks sailing from island to island exchanging ideas and letting the people think about them before re-exchanging them.
BTW, There’s a good computer game in there. Is PACO Industries interested?
I’m tellin’ ya, it’s all there… The bloated, self-satisfied smirk, the dead, beady little pig eyes, the aura of messianic smugness and crackpot zeal. Take away Al’s hair dye and Vitalis, add an ascot and a Captain’s hat, and you’ve got the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard.
Only this time he’s building a better boondoggle!
Just read it again. The adoration is frightening, like Gore is the second coming of Christ or the ravings of brain-washed cult follower.
Left me wondering if Pooley managed to recover one of Gore’s stools for worship at home. Can see little gatherings of disciples being ushered into a darkened room to see it, to touch it, as it festers under a single spotlight.
#98 contrail
Thanks for that! The vision of that scene is making me feel quite ill - however your scenario could happen with this writer’s rabid Gore worship
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 05 30 at 10:25 AM • permalinkGore glances over his shoulder at an attentive warmbot.“Bring me the head of Alfredo paco Garcia and this wronwright fellow.I want his head as well . On my desk by 5:00 this afternoon”.“I will not be mocked “he screams, as spittle flies in an arc encompassing every warmbot within a 30 ft. circle…..Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion of “Gore, and the case of the diminutive detective.”.This episode brought to you by our fine sponsor Packard motor company.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
Gore the Bore is a sad item, Tim. You really didn’t need to waste that much column space on him.