Author's posts
Oct 18 2007
Gore is Wrong
Crossposted at Daily Kos
“Gore is wrong”. That’s right. I stole that line. Because it’s true. Al Gore is wrong when he says that fighting Global Warming is a moral issue, not a political issue. It is the biggest political issue in the world today. More than any other, it cries out for a policitcal solution at the highest national and international level. Gore knows this. He can’t NOT know it. He’s gone as far as he can lobbying governement leaders and CEO’s. It’s time to lead, but he needs a movement to make his leadership unstoppable, and to maximize his unique and hard-earned credibility around the world. He’s clearly waiting for that movement to happen, to come forward. And it is. It’s happening. Even the media narrative on him is beginning to change. Now it’s all a matter of timing and momentum. And here’s why…
Oct 17 2007
Will run? Won’t run? How Al Gore can stop the madness
Crossposted at Daily Kos
Sigh. Look, I’ll be brief. I come here this morning, just a peak ’cause I have other work, seriously, and oh my god, what do I find? Three Gore diaries on the rec’ list, one urging Al to run, one offering in-depth analysis the latest poll data from Gallup on Al’s chances, and one that states categorically as “breaking news” that Gore has ruled out a run completely.. Guess which one made my heart stop? Thankfully, having been on this roller-coaster for a while, I check out the comments and sure enough, Gore has said nothing of the kind , nothing new at all, and who really thinks he would break such a huge piece of news to the Europeans before his own people?
One problem that has been raised, and it’s a very valid point, is how will Gore be able to shift gears from repeatedly insisting, these many months, that “I have no intention”, “I have no plans” to run for President to suddenly declaring he’s in? What can he say without losing all credibility and becoming a laughing stock on the evening news? That is what this diary will examine.
Oct 15 2007
Gore uploads three campaign-style videos on Current.com
Crossposted at dailykos
This will be a short, hit-and-run diary. People need to go to Current.com and view the three short videos Gore uploaded last night, one entitled Healthcare is a right,, one called Americans deserve more protection and the third entitled Get the troops home (H/T Lorikat). All Gorites and those with an open-mind, head over to Current.com and view the clips! Then sign up to the site so you can discuss them.
Oct 14 2007
Al Gore Won’t Run: Anatomy of a Meme
Crossposted at dailykos and Truth and Progress
The conventional wisdom that Gore “won’t run” spread almost immedately, starting on the night BEFORE the Nobel Prize announcement. Interestingly enough, that opening salvo came not from the usual suspects on the Right, but from the Hillary camp, via an emissary by the name of Dan Gerstein, on Thursday’s night’s broadcast of MSNBC’s Hardball). But could the facts be more inconvenient, hence more threatening, to all those now pushing the status quo?
Oct 12 2007
Earth to Gore: Time’s up!
Crossposted at Daily Kos and Truth & Progress
Like most of you, my first thought this morning, when I opened my eyes, was “Did he win?” And I came straight here for the answer, only to find ecstatic confirmation in my first bleary glance at the Recommended list. Yes, friends, the dream is beginning to become true, thanks to him, and also thanks to all of you! This is a force 8 tremor on the political Richter scale. But until he announces, his “chances” of entering the race will be endlessly poo-poohed by every Beltway voice, from Right Wing pundits to establishment scribes claiming personal knowledge to unofficial spin easily traceable to the Hillary campaign (Dan Gerstein on Hardball last night, anyone?). But none of all that really matters.
Oct 10 2007
When will Gore announce? It’s about Bali
You read that right. When. Why am I so certain? I have of course no inside knowledge. None. Yet I’ve been certain that he would get in ever since I first saw An Inconvenient Truth, a year and a half ago. And my certainty has only grown since then. Am I delusional? Hardly. I just use a different primary premise for my opinion. Disclaimer: I am not an American. I can’t vote in your election, though I’ve followed your politics almost obsessively ever since watching the 2000 election debacle live on television (Canadians have a front-row seat when it comes to watching you). No, my friends. The timing of Gore’s entry is not so much to do with Hillary, ballot deadlines or any Hamlet-like hesitations on Gore’s part as it is about a meeting of world leaders on climate in Bali in December and all the meetings that will follow in the coming years and that will ultimately decide the fate of humanity on this planet.
Oct 07 2007
“Much of the Amazon basin is burning”
I don’t know about you but where I am, the weather is positively balmy. So warm in fact that this year’s crop of McIntosh apples is two weeks ahead of schedule (and growers are worried it may turn to mush if the nights don’t start turning cold soon) and local grape growers (for making wine, an unheard of occupation in these parts, when I was growing up) are reporting a bumper harvest. People bask in the warm sunshine, but you can hear it in conversations: the “new” weather (it’s been trending this way, the last few years) is kind of unsettling, like some strange, still-faint background noise that disturbs at some subliminal level. You step outside your door in the morning and the thought crosses your mind: July in October, what the fuck? Oh the trees are turning, sure (lots of maples around here) but the colours seem… faded. Just like last year. And the year before that. Geez, the last time I really saw the mountains blazing was in the nineties. Early nineties even. Not enough cold nights, they say… Some mornings it’s positively eerie.
But it isn’t happening only here. That’s the really creepy part. And when you bother to look, what’s going on elsewhere is downright hair-raising.
Sep 27 2007
The Gore Narrative: Why he must run
The “inevitability” meme is beginning to set. Bill himself is being rolled out. Ordinarily this race would be all over but the counting. But the times we live in are anything but ordinary. In fact the urgency and magnitude of the challenge we and the rest of the world are facing call for leadership of historic proportions. I will argue that Hillary is not that leader. Though she is experienced, highly competent and immensely well-funded, she is the epitome of the hawkish, powerfully connected, corporate-funded Washington insider who are masterful only at the art of “politics as we know it”. But most of all she lacks en epic narrative, one that taps directly into the Power of Myth. She is no visionary, nor are any of her rivals. And a vision of unprecedented breadth and power is what these parlous times are crying for. The era of business-as-usual, lesser-of-two-evils American leadership cannot continue. The stakes are simply too high.