Could Gore have f*cked us anywhere near as bad as Bush has?

I didn't think you were angry, I thought you let him off easy. At least if you use his style as a thermometer.

You're hilarious Finn!! I drew no mustache, I just posted it for your enjoyment

Anon

I just wanted to jump in real quick to tell JAO that the Ann Coulter crazy-bitch-dance was the funniest thing I've seen in ages...if conservatives really don't like childish name calling, they should disown her.

Very well, I'll instruct my attorney to strike her from my Will. Does that make your day any better. Actually, I have no idea who the Coulter person is, nor do I care. Anyone who has nothing better to do with their lives than watch the Commentariate, is to be pittied. Those who go the extra step and critically watch those Commentators whose partisan views they detest may well be candidates for the asylum.

For god's sake, read a book.

A book like this one Ash??

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=72764


Anon

If you have the good fortune to not know who she is, I'd suggest you do your best to continue in blessed ignorance of her and her bile-spewing ways...She is Damn Scary.

I agree with you, actually, regarding the uselessness of watching the political commentators; but I do still own a television and it ends up tuned to Fox News occasionally (over my strenuous objections). When this happens, I quickly leave the room, clutching escapism in the form of the book I'm currently reading; but at times I have been helpless to resist watching her out of sheer fascination. I think it's rather reasonable to at least be aware of who some of the major pundits are, on both sides.

It kinda sounds like my real name and when I was 13, one of my best friends started calling me Gezzy, so that's it.


I don't dare ask what you were thinking

I've got my own thermometer ;-)

Here are a few politically useful books I think folks might benefit from (in no particular order):

Hamilton, Madison, et al., The Federalist Papers
Machiavelli, The Prince and The Discourses
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels
Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations
Mills, John S., On Liberty ... so short that is usually found in collection

The various works of Jeremy Bentham, John Locke, and Voltaire make good reading and are useful foundation works. Good, authoratative, biographies are available for most of the Presidents. Political biographies tend to be pretty bad when written within 20 years after the subject President's death. On the other hand, its informative to see that the same sort of partisan hyperbole has been present since at least the Revolution of 1800. Finding objective, well researched histories that don't suffer from the same sort of myopic prejudices can be difficult when the events written of are still sharp in public memory. For instance, I'm not sure that the definitive history of the Vietnam years has yet been written.

Herman Kahn (U]Thinking the Unthinkable[/U], and On Thermonuclear War), isn't strictly speaking a political writer, but his contributions to conducting serious public policy analysis makes him important to read.

Since we are now recommending books, I suggest you pick up "Blinded by the Right" by David Brock.

Hey, that sounds like an interesting read, glitterbag.

Hey, I just checked out that book to! Sounds good I'll have to check it out.

I found the book interesting. But I should warn you that Brock admits to reporting rumours as facts and that he didn't practice honest journalism when he wrote the Troopergate article. He ran with the story no matter how nebulous or threadbare the source. In this book he attempts to ease his guilty feelings and I can't really help but wonder if he took liberties in "Blinded" as well. If nothing else, there are some great stories about Christopher Hitchens, Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge and others that will have you rolling.

We all know what the Bush administration said about Saddam Hussein after 9/11. But do you know what they said about him before 9/11?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6456.htm

It has been said that Bush and the neocons that influenced him had every intention of invading Iraq prior to 9/11. The big question was how to sell it to the American public. 9/11 gave them the answer, play on their fears.

Gore, IMO, would not have done this. He would not have been influenced by the conservative neocons. There would not have been an invasion of Iraq. It was not on the agenda of the Democrats.

Bush has shown himself to be a weak and incompetent leader. In his time in office, to date, he has not cast one veto. Despite runaway spending by his Republican congress and ineptitude of the military under Rumsfeld, no vetos and no changes have been made. He just goes along for the ride.

So far this month 50 American soldiers have been killed. It's nice to know that our men and women are dying so the Shiites of Iraq, who were rebelling against Saddam Hussein, would not be persecuted, tortured and killed.

I agree xingu!

Gore movie puts heat on Bush





Boring Al Gore has made a movie. It is on the most boring of all subjects - global warming. It is more than 80 minutes long and the first two or three go by slowly enough so that you can notice that Gore has gained weight and that his speech still seems out of sync.
But a moment later, you will be captivated, then riveted and then scared out of your wits. Our Earth is going to hell in a handbasket.

You will see the Arctic and Antarctic icecaps melting. You will see Greenland oozing into the sea. You will see the atmosphere polluted with greenhouse gases that block heat from escaping. You will see .photos from space of what the icecaps looked like once and what they look like now, and, in animation, you will see how high the oceans might rise. Shanghai and Calcutta swamped. Much of Florida, too. The water takes a hunk of New York. The fuss about what to do with Ground Zero will turn to naught. It will be under water.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is a cinematic version of the lecture that Gore has given for years warning of the dangers of global warming. The case Gore makes is worthy of sleepless nights: Our Earth is in extremis. It's not just that polar bears are drowning because they cannot reach receding ice floes or that "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" will exist someday only as a Hemingway short story. It's rather that Hurricane Katrina is not past, but prologue. Katrina produced several hundred thousand evacuees. The flooding of Calcutta would produce many millions.

You cannot see this film and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000. Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma. For instance, his insistence on abstinence as the preferred method of birth control would be laughable were it not so reckless. It is similar to Bush's initial approach to global warming. It may be that Gore will do more good for his country and the world with this movie than Bush ever did by winning in 2000.

Gore insists his presidential aspirations are behind him. "I think there are other ways to serve," he told me. No doubt. But on paper, he is the near-perfect Democratic candidate for 2008. He won the popular vote in 2000. He opposed going to war in Iraq, but he supported the previous Gulf War - right both times. He is much more a person of the 21st century than most of the other potential candidates. Gore could be a great President. First, he has to be a good candidate.

In the meantime, he is a man on a mission. Wherever he goes, he finds time and an audience to deliver his (free) lecture on global warming. It and the film leave no doubt of the peril we face and neither do they leave any doubt that Gore, at last, is a man at home in his role. He is master teacher, pedagogue, know-it-all, smarter than most of us, better informed and, having tried for and failed to gain the presidency, has raised his sights to save the world. We simply cannot afford for Al Gore to lose again.