Here's To You Al Gore

[Uncle Joe]

Coming to Terms
By Carol Tannenhauser

Al Gore. Whose vice president was he? Oh, right, Bill Clinton’s. Whose husband was he? It seems so long ago — 1992 — when the Clintons and Gores burst onto the political scene to the soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop [Thinking About Tomorrow].” I’m afraid, Al Gore (Can I call you Al?), we did. And tomorrow has arrived.

(snip)

I remember Al Gore as being dour. Other problems seemed more pressing at the time — climate change was theoretical, hypothetical, and very far away — until this summer, when the extreme weather Gore predicted in his 2006 book and documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” “seems to have arrived all at once,” said The New York Times.

Canada is burning and we’re inhaling its secondhand smoke. Vermont is counting inches of mud, not snow. Phoenix is hovering around 118 degrees, and, according to USA Today, “Alaska is baked.” CBS News reported that “Heat records are being shattered all over the U.S. South, from California to Florida. But it’s far more than that. It’s worldwide, with devastating heat hitting Europe along with dramatic floods in the U.S. Northeast, India, Japan and China….The Earth is in uncharted territory.”

(snip)

I was happy to hear that Al Gore is still advocating — “He’s been shouting from the rooftops about the risks of global warming more or less nonstop,” said The Times — and to be reminded that he won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for his efforts. “Gore is probably the single individual who has done most to rouse the public and the governments that action had to be taken to meet the climate challenge,” the Nobel Prize Foundation wrote, “and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

(snip)

https://www.westsiderag.com/2023/07/24/monday-bulletin-heres-to-you-al-gore

[Thunderbeast]

1. We can thank Jeb Bush, Roger Stone, Sandra Day O'Connor

...among many other lying Republicans...

for the theft of the 2000 election.

Al Gore's election would have dramatically changed history.

None of the catastrophic events of the GW Bush Era.

Maybe no 9/11.
No Afghanistan
Certainly no Iraq
No Sam Alito
No John Robert's
No Gitmo
No Abu Ghraib torture chambers

[Upthevibe]

4. Thunderbeast..........

I can't describe the depth of sadness I feel when I think about the what could have happened, what wouldn't have happened, and the completely different world we may be living in had if not been for the 2020 election outcome. I mean that's what brought us to Democratic Underground.....Our outrage and our despair.

I remember the night of November 7, 2000 so well. I was the Director of Graduate Services for a large career college. The graduation had been scheduled for that night (one of two per year). Fortunately, the Assistant Director was more than happy to run the ceremony. I only needed to show up and give a quick welcome to the graduates and their families.

I had the radio on to live coverage. When I got out of my car to run into the meeting room at the hotel where the ceremony was, Florida had just been called for Gore and I was beyond excited! After that, I was going to friends' who were having an election party. By the time I got there, Florida had been taken away.. Some of my friends were in tears. After the party, when I got home, Florida had been called for Bush. I literally cried myself to sleep. When I woke up, Florida was back in play.

We all know what happened during the following weeks............

[brush]

2. Elections definitely have consequences. And the nation always seems...

to take several steps back when republican presidents get elected...see trump and W Bush most recently.

Gore or Kerry over Bush and the world's history would've been changed for the better. And of course the trump era have been and continues to be disastrous.

[lapfog_1]

3. In 1997 or so I was a "back bencher" in a couple of meetings chaired by the VP

This was in relation to the contract with that was designing and implementing the EOS DIS system for NASA. EOS ( Earth Observation System ) was a collection of satellite and remote sensing data platforms as well as stationary weather collecting platforms that were relaying raw data to NASA from around the planet. Ice data, ocean temperature data, land data, cloud data, etc.

The contract to collect the data was so far behind that we had remote sensing satellites sitting in clean rooms ( at an outrageous cost ) because we had no place to store the data they would collect and send to earth. As the Project Lead for an alternate mass storage system ( not then used by EOS DIS ) I was there because my Center Director and Branch Chief asked me to attend the meetings to offer our services to the EOS project. We had already been in contact with the DAO ( Data Acquisition Office ) and had done some trial experiments with the storage system that I had been responsible for developing for NASA.

VP Gore and the Director of NASA were in the room. Gore was very knowledgeable about what was needed and he was very direct with the vendor and the NASA program managers. He wanted the data and he wanted the satellite put into space.

We were all very energized by the meeting and the project of collecting and storing the data was transferred to my system, however the software to distribute the data to the various universities and other entities stayed with the prime vendor and their sub-contractors.

I was very impressed with VP Gore... and could not believe that he did not take office as President. I feel like had he done so, we might be in a different situation now.

[twodogsbarking]

5. I knew a man who worked in the WH during the Clinton years.

He said Gore was the smartest of everyone.

[orthoclad]

6. I'm still disgusted

that he finally surrendered in 2000, "for the good of the country".
Lotta good.
9/11. Patriot Act. Mass surveillance. Endless war. Extreme Court. Losing the climate battle.
Sure did a lot of good. The first of our big "high road" mistakes.

[Uncle Joe]

7. To my way of thinking

Al Gore's respect for the rule of law (even as he disagreed with the decision) make it infinitely more difficult for *rump to flout it.

I believe Al could've been one of our greatest Presidents but context is critical and had he become President under the conditions of going against the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation would've been so divided, it's possible worse may have happened.

[orthoclad]

8. I find it hard to imagine a worse outcome than

the last 23 years of history, short of full nuclear war, and followed by the resultant consequences of 2000 for the next few decades. Or centuries. There would have been turmoil and confrontations in 2000, but the Right was less prepared and organized then. Now, as a consequence, we have an even more radical Supreme Court in power, and a well-organized Right prepared to launch another coup, with the lessons of 2021 in mind.

Trump has no respect for law, in any case. He's a lifelong predator. His backers and cult also have no respect for the rule of law. The Right respects only power. This is Dodge City poker with guns under the table and aces up the sleeve, and the world's at stake.

Gore set an "honorable" precedent, but the Right has no honor. Picture Greene's revenge porn.

Hindsight makes it easy for me to speculate, but we have to learn from history, or we repeat it.

[Uncle Joe]

9. As a nation we have seen worse

The Internet had less influence then, leaving the corporate media even more powerful than they are today.

The corporate media more than any other institution had it in for Al primarily because of their overwhelming financial conflicts of interest which of course they never disclose (d) to the public.

Cut off their fossil fuel money, never!

They wanted Bush all along, I don't believe every single Democrat would've supported Gore either had he bucked the S.C. certainly a larger share of Independents wouldn't have.

A Gore Administration would've been relentlessly trashed by the corporate media from the get go.

I totally agree *rump has no more respect for the law than he does for anything or anybody, which is zero.

However for some Republicans and even more Independents, Gore's example can't be ignored when juxtaposed to *rump.

[orthoclad]

10. I think the last time we saw worse was WWII

It's damn few Rs who might respect Gore's example. Most of them got primaried out last year, and replaced by the likes of Boebert, Greene, Gaetz.

Don't the corporate media relentlessly trash Dems anyway, while they gave Trump $5 billion worth of free publicity in 2016? I don't think there would have been much difference.

1/3 of eligible voters don't vote. I don't think they're right-wingers; most of those are already committed to the fash-adjacent R pols. What would motivate them to come out in droves?

[Uncle Joe]

11. Korea, Vietnam, McCarthyism, the 60s;

a decade of relentless political assassination.

I think at least some of those Rs that got primaried last year and their supporters won't be voting Republican if it's *rump or someone from the Nazi wing of the party.

The Republican party is split big time, the oligarchs now know their brand is toxic, that's why they're creating the "No Labels Party."

The corporate media would support going to a war with Iraq based on lies for oil money, so a Gore Administration; as a primary opponent of the fossil fuel industry in 2000 would've been public enemy number 1 for them.

Today, the world is much different, much of what Al and the scientists said would happen is happening ever more blatantly with increased frequency, they simply can't ignore it anymore.

The Internet is definitely more powerful and influential with increased access to information for the people making them less likely to be brainwashed by corporate media propaganda, that's why Musk bought Twitter, he wanted to control that power and influence or cut it off.

The people are more aware as a result of the Internet's growth, Al was the major political champion of this as well.

Cheaper renewable energy is gaining wealth, power and influence today as a result and is becoming more of a counter balance to the fossil fuel industry.

Climate change solution policies, Medicare for All or a reasonable facsimile, education debt relief, a four day work week, a living wage, lessened wealth/income disparity.

I believe one of the largest segments of that one third are younger Americans, Bernie Sanders has put his finger on how to get them to vote, if we want them to.

[orthoclad]

12. Yep, there are issues that could

bring out new voters.

I'm thinking of global effects, beyond the US. For instance, a million Iraqis died, by some estimates. But 3 million Vietnamese died in that war, and many millions of Koreans in that war. And now we have Ukraine, a WWI-type battle. But WWII was a major inflection point in all the issues facing us now.

We have the ability, knowledge, and means to drastically slow the rate of climate change; we can house, feed, educate, and heal the entire nation. We need the will, and the power.

[Uncle Joe]

13. That's what Al says "Political Will Is A Renewable Resource"

[DemocracyForever]

15. GOP controlled Supreme Court

went against we the people to not count the votes in heavily democratic voting counties in Florida in order to install their personally preferred GOP candidate in the White House who was such a disaster which is what created Trump . How more anti-democracy and unconstitutional is that?

[DemocracyForever]

14. He didn't surrender!

Al Gore did all he could short of tarting a civil war. Everyone else who could've and should've acted refused to do so. Imagine if the roles had been reversed and it was Bush behind by 537 votes with 170,000 republican votes not counted, do you really think that Senate republicans would've done nothing like their Senate counterparts did? Think again