U.S. Can Unilaterally Withdraw from TPP and NAFTA Whenever the President Chooses

Senator Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 promising to use the threat of presidential unilateral withdrawal to force renegotiation of NAFTA

by Gaius Publius

I mentioned something in passing, on the way to make another point in this piece, that deserves to be a point on its own. Neither NAFTA nor TPP are "set in stone." Each so-called "treaty" (in fact, these are executive or congressional-executive agreements) has a Withdrawal clause that allows for any signing nation to unilaterally exit the agreement at any time.

And if I hear Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama correctly in the clip above, the president has that unilateral authority. Neither talks about "going to Congress to get authorization." Clinton would certainly know, as would Al Gore, who was quoted by the moderator, since NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton with Gore at his side as vice-president.

From the NAFTA text:

Article 2205: Withdrawal
A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

From the TPP text:

Article 30.6: Withdrawal
1. Any Party may withdraw from this Agreement by providing written notice of withdrawal to the Depositary. A withdrawing Party shall simultaneously notify the other Parties of its withdrawal through the overall contact points designated under Article 27.5 (Contact Points).

2. A withdrawal shall take effect six months after a Party provides written notice to the Depositary under paragraph 1, unless the Parties agree on a different period. If a Party withdraws, this Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

This means that even if President Obama gets Congress to pass TPP and then signs it, the next president, whoever she or he is, can unilaterally exit each agreement.

Just because these deals are signed, doesn't mean they can't be unsigned at any moment. Something to keep in mind, both during the lame duck session and during the next administration. After all, both major-party candidates now say they oppose TPP.

Put Them on Record About the Withdrawal Clause

The time to put each candidate on the record with respect to the Withdrawal clause is now, since now, before they have your vote, is when they are most inclined to say yes. If you wait until after the election, good luck.

Or, to put it more generally, Gaius' Rule of Acquisition #47 states: The best time to trade with someone is before they have what they want from you, not after. That's also my Theory of Change (number 47).

GP
 

If the campaign is going to be a "feelings" fight, is the handwriting on the wall?

"What is truly revealing is [Antonio Sabato Jr.'s] implication that believing something to be true is the same as its being true. Because if anything, that was the theme of the Republican Convention this week. It was a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over facts."

-- John Oliver, on last Sunday's Last Week Tonight

by Ken

Is it possible for one and the same person to be the one who talks a would-be jumper out onto the ledge and the one who gives him the hope he needs to come back down from it? I'm all too afraid it is, which is why I'm trying to come to grips with horrors like a Supreme Court reshaped by President The Donald.

Yes, sure, The Donald's rhetoric reeks of the apocalyptic, which makes it odd to accuse him of being the candidate of "hope," while Hillary Clinton is the candidate of, well, whatever -- more of the same, say. Nevertheless, it looks to me as if an important segment of the electorate is having a ball being frothed into a rage (I'm sure modern-day brain scientists could explain the basic chemical brain processes that make this so pleasurable) while also being seduced by the promise of Making America Great Again.

Nobody would have been more surprised than John Oliver was to find the theme of the Republican Convention "accidentally" summed up by that "IMDB-page-awarded actor" Antonio Sabato Jr., "who delivered a relatively restrained speech before opening his heart regarding President Obama to ABC News."

ANTONIO: First of all, I don't believe that the guy is a Christian. I don't believe he follows the God that I love and the Jesus that I love.
REPORTER: You believe that President Obama is a Muslim?
ANTONIO: Absolutely.
REPORTER: Is that what you're saying?
ANTONIO: Absolutely.
REPORTER: And that is based on what you feel in your heart.
ANTONIO: Yeah, that's what I believe, yeah. And you know what? I have the right to believe that. And you have the right to go against that, but I believe it.

The key point here, John argued, isn't that Antonio is wrong about President Obama being a Muslim, or even that Antonio is an idiot. I've put what he found "truly revealing" here atop this post: Antonio's "implication that believing something to be true is the same as its being true. Because if anything, that was the theme of the Republican Convention this week. It was a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over facts," reaching its apex in the newly anointed candidate's acceptance speech.

Feelings about all sorts of things -- about crime, about the economy, and on and on -- feelings that the feelers are entitled to believe, just as Antonio says, but that don't become any more true, when the facts are otherwise, no matter how strongly they're believed.

It's what I've been grousing about here for years under the rubric of "reality substitute" -- the legacy of Ronald Reagan, that reality can be whatever you want it to be, whatever makes you feel best, even if "feeling good" for you means flying into apoplectic rages over those damn liberals. Yes, "reality substitute" requires using real names, real places (as if most Americans would know the difference between real and fake place names), and even situations with some sort of factual link or cladding. But from there, you can paint the reality you wish to acknowledge living in. Or let your favorite demagogue do it for you.


ENTER NEWT GINGRICH, THE ONE AND ONLY

Yes, it's America's own beloved former House Speaker Newt, rising to the challenge of defending The Donald's brand of "reality substitute." Confronted with the statistically demonstrable fact that violent crime is down in the U.S., Newt throws out statistical exceptions to the clear overall numbers, then retreats from, or perhaps rises above, mere numbers.

NEWT: The average American, I will bet you this morning, does not think crime is down, does not think they are safer.
INTERVIEWER: But we are safer, and it is down.
NEWT: No, that's your view.
INTERVIEWER: It is a fact.
NEWT: But what I said is also a fact.

Which brings an explosion from John: "No, it isn't! No, it isn't! It's only a fact that that's a feeling people have." And he puts up a graph showing the U.S. violent crime rate descending from 1990 to 2015 and comments, "It's not a fucking Rorschach test. You can't infer anything you like from it."
Which doesn't stop our Newt.

NEWT: The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right, but it's not where human beings are.
INTERVIEWER: But what you're saying is --
NEWT [starts to talk] --
INTERVIEWER: But hold on, Mr. Speaker, because you're saying that liberals use these numbers, they use this sort of magic act. These are the FBI's statistics. They're not a liberal organization.
NEWT: What I said is equally true. People feel more threatened.
INTERVIEWER: They feel it, but the facts don't support it.
NEWT: As a political candidate, I'll go with how people feel, and I'll let you go with the theoreticians.
JOHN: He just brought a feeling to a fact fight.

BUT JOHN, AREN'T CAMPAIGNS ALWAYS "FEELINGS FIGHTS"?

Especially now that consultants have taken over the strategizing? What is modern campaign science about if not identifying feelings among the electorate which can be manipulated for political gain -- and not just manipulated but actually engineered?

And among the feelings there are some that are not just understandable but legitimate, like the feeling more and more Americans have that the economic system has been gamed against them, that geopolitics and the world economic order have been so effectively targeted to benefit the neoliberal elites that there isn't much left over for anyone else. Of course the notion that The Donald is any sort of solution is laughable, but it's a feeling that doesn't lend itself well to "Let me have some more of the same." That's a feeling that wasn't helpful to Al Gore after the two terms of Bill Clinton's presidency, and Gore hadn't been demonized to anywhere near the extent that Hillary Clinton has been.

Nor does it seem to matter that Hillary has been reduced to a caricature that probably bears only occasional resemblance to any actual person, let alone the candidate herself. It sticks. While it's true that The Donald is facing some pretty heavy media scrutiny of his own, the reality of it seems to me that none of that, however true, apparently holds much interest for potential Trump voters, whereas anything bad that can be said about Hillary, however far-fetched, has an impact on her potential voters.

I have the greatest difficulty imagining what a Trump presidency would be like, but increasingly less difficulty imagining that we may find out.

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Remember Current TV? You know, Al Gore? Keith Olbermann? Will anyone notice when it gives way to Al Jazeera America?

If you've been silently concerned about what's been happening lately on (or to) Current TV, you can stop worrying.

by Ken

My goodness, was Current TV really concocted seven years ago? This is from nytimes.com "Media Decoder" Brian Stelter ("Al Jazeera Acquires Current TV"):

Al Jazeera on Wednesday completed a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore and his business partners seven years ago.

Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms. Current is available in about 60 million of the 100 million homes in the United States with cable or satellite service.

Rather than simply use Current to distribute its English-language channel, called Al Jazeera English and based in Doha, Qatar, Al Jazeera will create a new channel, called Al Jazeera America, based in New York. Roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States, while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English.

In the interest of accuracy, it should be recorded that Current came into existence -- um, how to say this? -- well before some of us had any awareness of it. Decoder Brian walks us through the history.

Current was conceived in 2005 after Mr. Gore and another co-founder, Joel Hyatt, bought the small cable news channel Newsworld International. Current’s owners, along with Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, include several venture capital firms and two major distributors, Comcast and DirecTV.

After several years in obscurity showing viewer-submitted videos and documentaries, Current tacked to the left in 2011 with the hiring of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. A year later, Mr. Olbermann was fired, but a liberal minded channel made in his image remained. The channel now simulcasts liberal radio shows in the morning and features news-talk shows in the evening by Joy Behar, Eliot Spitzer, Jennifer Granholm and others.

Alas, "none of the shows have drawn significant audiences."

On a typical night in 2012, about 42,000 people were watching the channel, according to Nielsen. Mr. Spitzer quipped to a reporter from Mediabistro last month, “Nobody’s watching, but I’m having a great time.”

At the end of October, Current confirmed that it was considering selling itself. Mr. Hyatt said in a statement at the time, “Current has been approached many times by media companies interested in acquiring our company. This year alone, we have had three inquiries. As a consequence, we thought it might be useful to engage expertise to help us evaluate our strategic options.” . . .

In recent months, uncertainty has plagued the staff of Current, which is based in San Francisco. Mr. Spitzer, the 8 p.m. host, remarked that someone needed to buy the channel. Ms. Granholm, the 9 p.m. host, renewed her contract for just three months. Plans for new programming at other hours have stalled. After the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., the channel replayed the gun documentary “Bowling for Columbine” dozens of times.

Brian reports: "Representatives for Current TV and Al Jazeera did not immediately respond to requests for comment. There was no immediate word about the sale price."

Current’s programming will continue for about three months. Then an international feed of Al Jazeera English will be simulcast on the channel. Sometime later in 2013, the rebranded Al Jazeera news channel, with 60 percent American programming, will start.

Current's slide into obscurity is already well in progress. Indeed, reports Brian, "Current is hard to find on many cable lineups, and some analysts say it’s at risk of being dropped by some companies because of low ratings." However, even its present presence --

would give Al Jazeera a foothold on the country’s cable and satellite service lineups. Then Al Jazeera could revamp the channel and promote it as a new American-based news source.

The source of all this information, by the way, is "people with knowledge of the deal who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly." Whether the "people with knowledge of the deal" were authorized to speak anonymously to the NYT Media Decoder is unclear.

“Al Jazeera is planning to invest significantly in building ‘Al Jazeera America,’ a network focused on international news for the American audience,” the Current chief executive Joel Hyatt said in an e-mail to staffers on Wednesday evening. Referring to Mr. Gore, he said, “Al and I will both serve on the advisory board of Al Jazeera America, and we look forward to helping build an important news network.”

The plan will bring Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, into closer competition with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

For Al Jazeera, the acquisition is a coming-of-age moment. A decade ago, the Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing video tapes and messages from al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now it is acquiring an American channel.

“They really want to be able to compete for American viewers, and they have to find some way to get on,” said Philip Seib, the director of the center on public diplomacy at the University of Southern California and the author of “The Al Jazeera Effect.”

Mr. Seib said access to Americans is important both for economic reasons, for the channel’s advertisers, and for “the journalistic legitimacy of their venture.”

To date, the country’s cable and satellite distributors have been reluctant to carry Al Jazeera English. It is available in just a handful of cities, including New York and Washington. To change that, Al Jazeera has lobbied distributors, called for a letter-writing campaign by supporters and promoted its widely praised coverage of the Arab Spring.

Acquiring Current TV, and thus its distribution deals across the country, solves this dilemma for Al Jazeera, at least partially. . . .

Al Jazeera intends to open new bureaus across the United States to support the American programming. The news operation currently has bureaus in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago.

It seems safe to assume that involvement by Keith Olbermann is not anticipated -- by anybody anywhere. Say, has anybody heard from Keith lately?

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Cenk Uygur and the Young Turks follow Keith Olbermann to Current TV, which looks like a win all around

Current TV's caption for the clip (yes, it's a clip!): Current TV and Cenk Uygur are launching an original TV version of The Young Turks, which has become the world's largest online news show. Uygur's uniquely progressive and topical commentary about politics and pop culture will air each weeknight at 7/6c.

by Ken

When Cenk Uygur (of the Young Turks) had his parting of the ways with MSNBC, declining to take what was apparently a pretty decent amount of money for doing not much of anything, or much of interest to him -- perhaps most of all, it would have been for being a good soldier and going quietly.

The problem, you'll recall, was emphatically not Cenk's ratings, which were pretty good and improving quite dramatically once he got the idea of shaking off as best he could the nattering "suggestions" coming from above and as much as possible doing the damned show the way he thought it should be done. No, the problem was that he just didn't fit in with a media establishment whose overriding concern, it appears, is protecting its own, "its own" including the pols those media are supposed to be covering. And Cenk didn't have a chance to develop a base of his own, as Keith Olbermann had done and Rachel Maddow did with amazing rapidity, with which to hold off the management snipers; he didn't even have the benefit of a contract. I found Cenk's explanation at the time (see the above link) quite convincing, and was convinced -- and remained convinced -- that he acted with extraordinary honor for someone whose interest wasn't self-promotion but bringing the kind of uncompromised political reality to basic cable.

Of course even the seemingly entrenched position Keith Olbermann had developed at MSNBC didn't protect him at the end from the wearing down of management pressure to play nice with its pol-pals. And with Keith's reemergence on Al Gore's Current TV, a number of people wondered at the time of Cenk's departure from MSNBC whether there might be a new TV home open to him. And now it's happening. On Tuesday Current TV announced that The Young Turks are coming to the hour before Countdown with Keith Olbermann, with a third nightly program expected to announce "in the near future."

The AP's Frazier Moore reported:

"Cenk has really demonstrated a unique talent for translating complex daily events into a narrative context that reveals deeper meanings and engages his audience," Current chairman Al Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press, "and he has connected, in particular, with a young demographic interested in what's going on in the world." . . .


"I have no interest in doing a pro-Establishment show," Uygur said, "and that's not what I'll be doing at Current." . . .


Gore drew a contrast -- and not for the first time -- between Current and its rival networks owned by large conglomerates. (MSNBC is controlled by Comcast Corp.)

"We're independent," Gore said, "not just in spirit and in tone, but, more importantly, in reality."

Gore called himself "a big fan" of Uygur's MSNBC show, saying, "He demonstrated that his phenomenal success on the Web translates easily and well into the television format." . . .


Current President David Bohrman spoke of using "The Young Turks" as a way to develop new connections between online and TV.

"We can do that with Cenk and his passionate followers who are online now," said Bohrman.

He made a distinction between the show Uygur hosted on MSNBC and his upcoming Current program.

"We'll be bringing the Turks as well as Cenk," Bohrman said. "The group, with its free-wheeling dynamic, isn't really the Cenk you saw on MSNBC."

The time frame for The Young Turks on Current is "by year-end."

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If Al Gore Campaigns Against John Barrow Will It Help Our Society To Deal With Climate Change?

My doctor's always trying to persuade me to use these radical-- and often deadly-- treatments that Western medicine pushes on unsuspecting patients that fall into their clutches. He always tells me how young I am and how I can live to be 100. I'll pass. I was just reading Thom Hartmann's book this morning, Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture. So far hasn't has gotten into the relative attributes of Mozart and Lady Gaga. But I did read about what the world would be like if my doctor was right and I lived to be 100. Boris Worm is a scientist at Dalhousie University in Canada. In 2006, the NY Times reported on findings he and colleagues from all over the world made pointing to the unraveling of marine ecosystems and a global collapse of all species currently fished.

In an interview, Dr. Worm said, “We looked at absolutely everything-- all the fish, shellfish, invertebrates, everything that people consume that comes from the ocean, all of it, globally.”

The researchers found that 29 percent of species had been fished so heavily or were so affected by pollution or habitat loss that they were down to 10 percent of previous levels, their definition of “collapse.”

This loss of biodiversity seems to leave marine ecosystems as a whole more vulnerable to overfishing and less able to recover from its effects, Dr. Worm said. It results in an acceleration of environmental decay, and further loss of fish.

Dr. Worm said he analyzed the data for the first time on his laptop while he was overseeing a roomful of students taking an exam. What he saw, he said, was “just a smooth line going down.” And when he extrapolated the data into the future “to see where it ends at 100 percent collapse, you arrive at 2048.”

“The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I said, ‘This cannot be true,’ ” he recalled. He said he ran the data through his computer again, then did the calculations by hand. The results were the same.

“I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what the future will bring, but this is a clear trend,” he said. “There is an end in sight, and it is within our lifetimes.”

You might not care about the invertebrates-- or even the traif or the sharks-- but Hartmann is quite persuasive in explaining how whole ecological systems work and how you can't pull out pieces here and there and expect the whole thing to continue functioning. No more salmon, tuna, seabass, cod, monkfish, talapia, mahi mahi, anchovies, herring, trout, sole, flounder, snapper... Hartmann:

With a human population pushing seven billion and the number of humans who eat a meat/fish-rich diet (versus mostly a plant-rich diet) moving from under a billion to more than three billion (each consuming between ten and thirty times the basic protein necessary to feed the livestock, and each producing between ten and thirty times the waste upstream as the result of factory and fish farming), the capacity of the planet to carry this huge burden of human flesh is rapidly becoming exhausted.

As with wild fish, wild areas are vanishing, along with their incredibly species-rich habitats, leading to the loss of more than a hundred species a day worldwide. Rain forests-- the richest source of biodiversity on land, the source of 20 percent of the planet's oxygen, and a major regulator of the world's weather-- once covered 14 percent of the planet's land surface; they now cover a mere 6 percent and, without major interventions, may be entirely gone (or thinned to the point of practical uselessness) within thirty to forty years.

They already make that imitation crabmeat out of pollock, sugar, sorbitol, wheat or tapioca starch, egg whites, and vegetable or soybean oil (as well as the carmine, caramel, paprika, and annatto extract to give it a realistic reddish color) but with the pollock scheduled to be out of stock by 2048 too, they'll have to revise the recipe. More tapioca starch? And even if they come up with some kind of fish substitutes we can consume as pills or liquids... well, it just won't be the same and, what are they going to do about the damn oxygen?

Yesterday Al Gore came up with a radical approach in a NY Times OpEd: defeat all the politicians who are burying their heads-- and our future viability-- in the sand. Sounds rationale.

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy-- the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

...[E]ven though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants-- especially carbon dioxide-- have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting-- and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing-- much less reduce them... The political paralysis that is now so painfully evident in Washington has thus far prevented action by the Senate — not only on climate and energy legislation, but also on health care reform, financial regulatory reform and a host of other pressing issues.

This comes with painful costs. China, now the world’s largest and fastest-growing source of global-warming pollution, had privately signaled early last year that if the United States passed meaningful legislation, it would join in serious efforts to produce an effective treaty. When the Senate failed to follow the lead of the House of Representatives, forcing the president to go to Copenhagen without a new law in hand, the Chinese balked. With the two largest polluters refusing to act, the world community was paralyzed.

...From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis — inconvenient as ever — must still be faced.
The pathway to success is still open, though it tracks the outer boundary of what we are capable of doing. It begins with a choice by the United States to pass a law establishing a cost for global warming pollution. The House of Representatives has already passed legislation, with some Republican support, to take the first halting steps for pricing greenhouse gas emissions.

Later this week, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are expected to present for consideration similar cap-and-trade legislation.

I hope that it will place a true cap on carbon emissions and stimulate the rapid development of low-carbon sources of energy.

We have overcome existential threats before. Winston Churchill is widely quoted as having said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.” Now is that time. Public officials must rise to this challenge by doing what is required; and the public must demand that they do so-- or must replace them.

Great OpEd. But has Gore or anyone else convinced voters in Oklahoma who are set to re-elect climate change denier Tom Coburn? Has Gore or anyone else convinced voters in North Carolina who may be set to re-elect climate change denier Richard Burr? Has Gore or anyone else convinced voters in Louisiana who are set to either re-elect climate change denier David Vitter or replace him with climate change denier Charlie Melancon? Yes, Melancon, a putative Democrat-- same party as Gore-- and he's part of the problem, not part of the solution. Only eight-- yes, 8-- House Republicans voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26, 2009: Mary Bono Mack (CA) who was unwilling or unable to even persuade her husband, Connie, that this was important and nonpartisan, Mike Castle (DE), Mark Kirk (IL), Leonard Lance (NJ), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), John McHugh (NY), Dave Reichert (WA) and Chris Smith (NJ). It passed, barely, 219-212, with 44 Democrats, mostly Blue Dogs, joining the pave-over-the-planet crowd led by John Boehner and Eric Cantor. Will Al Gore help Blue America defeat John Barrow and replace him with an environmental leader (Regina Thomas)? The Indiana Democratic Party machine is about to saddle us with anti-environmental fanatic Brad Ellsworth, guaranteeing that Indiana voters concerned about these same issues Gore claims are so essential for the very survival of humanity, will have no choice whatsoever on election day, since the two Republicans running, a sleazy lobbyist in the pocket of every special interest under the sun (Dan Coats) and a certifiably insane apocalypticist whose only policy agenda-- aside from bothering gay people-- is to bring on the Rapture (John Hostettler), are actually worse than Ellsworth (who is already an "F" on these issues!

Al Gore Rocked The Stadium

Al Gore was excellent tonight. You can read his whole speech here. You should.

My favorite lines for anyone without the attention span it takes:

1- Eight years ago, some said there was not much difference between the nominees of the two major parties and it didn’t really matter who became President.

Our nation was enjoying peace and prosperity. Some assumed we would continue both no matter the outcome. But here we all are in 2008, and I doubt anyone would argue now that election didn't matter.

Take it from me, if it had ended differently, we would not be bogged down in Iraq, we would have pursued Bin Laden until we captured him.

We would not be facing a self-inflicted economic crisis, we would be fighting for middle income families.

We would not be showing contempt for the Constitution, we’d be protecting the rights of every American regardless of race, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation.

And we would not be denying the climate crisis, we'd be solving it.

2- ... John McCain, a man who has earned our respect on many levels, is now openly endorsing the policies of the Bush-Cheney White House and promising to actually continue them, the same policies all over again?

Hey, I believe in recycling, but that’s ridiculous.

3- With John McCain’s support, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have led our nation into one calamity after another because of their indifference to fact; their readiness to sacrifice the long-term to the short-term, subordinate the general good to the benefit of the few, and short-circuit the rule of law.

4- If you like the Bush/Cheney approach, John McCain's your man. If you want change, then vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

5- Barack Obama is telling us exactly what he will do: launch a bold new economic plan to restore America’s greatness. Fight for smarter government that trusts the market, but protects us against its excesses. Enact policies that are pro-choice, pro-education, and pro-family. Establish a foreign policy that is smart as well as strong. Provide health care for all and solutions for the climate crisis. 

6- Instead of letting lobbyists and polluters control our destiny, we need to invest in American innovation. Almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Edison said, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

7- ...the last eight years demonstrate that the special interests who have come to control the Republican Party are so powerful that serving them and serving the national well-being are now irreconcilable choices.

8- We can tell Republicans and Independents, as well as Democrats, why our nation needs a change from the approach of Bush, Cheney and McCain.

After they wrecked our economy, it is time for a change.

After they abandoned the search for the terrorists who attacked us and redeployed the troops to invade a nation that did not attack us, it’s time for a change.

After they abandoned the American principle first laid down by General George Washington when he prohibited the torture of captives because it would bring, in his words, “shame, disgrace and ruin” to our nation, it’s time for a change.

When as many as three Supreme Court justices could be appointed in the first term of the next president, and John McCain promises to appoint more Scalias and Thomases and end a woman’s right to choose, it’s time for a change.

You think the Republicans will have someone like Al Gore to speak for them? Hillary Clinton? Bill Clinton? Bush is looking for an excuse to not even attend the St. Paul HateFest. Tonight Barack Obama and the Democrats filled 75,000 seats in Mile High Stadium. McCain is begging people in Ohio to come to get a glimpse of his ticket; 10,000 seats and they'll be lucky to get 5,000.

My friend Danny, who first turned me onto The Ramones, long before they recorded their first album, thinks Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer gave a great speech and that Obama should have made him his running mate. Here it is:



Sandy Pearlman just called me from Ashland, Oregon to ask me to add his name to Danny's sentiments about Schweitzer.

Al Gore: 100% Clean, Renewable Electricity In 10 Years

Tomorrow he'll be savagely attacked by Big Oil's media and political shills

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. The future of human civilization is at stake.”

-Al Gore

Today Gore made the kind of visionary speech I wish Obama had the confidence-- or the inclination-- to make. Gore was talking about the good of our country, our civilization, our world, about every single one of us, regardless, obviously, of political inclination. His bold and powerful ideas would even save... James Inhofe. But no political candidate would dare say what Gore said today-- that we're going to have to abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly sources of power, or risk losing our national security as well as our creature comforts. He's calling for a concentrated national effort to face the biggest challenge that faces mankind.

He said the goal of producing all of the nation’s electricity from “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” within 10 years is not some farfetched vision, although he said it would require fundamental changes in political thinking and personal expectations.

“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative,” Mr. Gore said in his remarks at the conference. “It represents a challenge to all Americans, in every walk of life-- to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.”

I expect lip service from frightened little politicians, hysterical vitriol from the paid off Oil Industry shills-- from Rush Limbaugh to John Cornyn-- and a national conversation that will take part beyond just the corporate media and tired Beltway Establishment. Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr took the lead in praising Gore's speech. I assume Obama and McCain are waiting to see what the other says before they comment. Neither bothered showing up, of course.

It can be done and it must be done. 100% clean, renewable electricity in 10 years is a far more worthy goal than bombing Iran.

Here's a video of the entire speech:



This one is much short and... more to the point.

Ask President Nixon: How do you feel about Al Gore sharing the Nobel Peace Prize?

"Former vice president Al Gore and a United Nations panel that monitors climate change were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for their work educating the world about global warming and pressing for political action to control it."
--Howard Schneider and Debbi Wilgoren, on washingtonpost.com this morning

We didn't even have to contact former President Richard Milhous Nixon to Ask President Nixon for comment about Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize. The old dickster couldn't wait to unburden himself:

Jesus God in heaven! It was bad enough when that little prick Jimmy Carter glommed onto a Nobel. That whining, holier-than-thou showboat. I mean, anybody can give the world peace by just not making war. What's the trick to that?

I did it the hard way, though, by making damn sure every crackpot Commie knew I'd bomb the bejeezus out of anybody looked at old Uncle Sam the wrong way. But did anyone give me a Nobel Prize? No-o-o-o!

Little Al Gore?! His old daddy was bad enough--a whining liberal loser. But Little Al? The guy who managed to get elected president and then watch the other slob take his place in the White House? And the other slob was an ignorant pile of protoplasm like the little Bush boy. Only thing that saved him was his daddy sent my old people--my old people and my kind of people, people who know how to get things done--into Florida to save his sorry ass.

I always thought the little Bush boy's daddy was a Grade A creep--it was like you could run your hand right through where he was standing and there wasn't a damn thing there. But the little Bush boy, jeez! They might as well have put an eggplant in the Oval Office.

Little Al Gore! You remember when he had to have some woman dress him in beige so people would think he's more of a man? Christ, if they gave a Nobel Prize for whining, that they should give to Al Gore.

The only good thing about it is that it's got to fry the little Bush boy's patoot, and his incorporeal daddy's, seeing the guy who beat him get the Peace Prize. He's probably saying, "Well, if they give him the Peace Prize, I should at least get the War Prize!"

Christ, is that W dumb or what? He probably thinks a Nobel Prize is what Prince Charles gives his horse-faced wife every two or three months. Of course, that W's such a pansy, he probably hasn't done that since, well, has anybody DNA-tested those idiot Bush twins to see if they're actually related to him? The idea of even Laura the Librarian getting in the same bed with that lump is enough to make a dead president croak.

IN PREPARATION FOR THAT SCHLEPP TO THE SEERSUCKER STORE TODAY...

As Ken points out below, another Seersucker Thursday is almost upon us. It just sort of creeped up when no one was lookin'. Compliments of our pals at PoliticsTV and The Young Turks, here's some music you may find as appropriate as we did to listen to while you're getting ready to brave the heat before going out on this, the last shopping day before Seersucker Thursday, 2007. Share with us-- and the whole nation (minus 28% of insane people)-- a bit of a dream, a dream the whole world is more or less praying for. And, although infinitely better than the Air Canada ad jingle-- or, for that matter, any Celine Dion song-- I have a feeling these particular musicians may be part of the 28% who might prefer a third Bush/Cheney term.

In any case, here's Sweet Home Gore-Obama:



And, along those lines, every day can be Seersucker Thursday with humor like this:

President Bush, First Lady Laura and Dick Cheney were flying on Air Force One. George looked at Laura, chuckled and said, "You know, I could throw a $1,000 bill out of the window right now and make somebody very happy." Laura shrugged her shoulders and replied, "I could throw ten 100 bills out the window and make ten people very happy." Cheney added, "That being the case, I could throw one hundred $10 bills out of the window and make a hundred people very happy".
Hearing their exchange, the pilot rolled his eyes and said to his co-pilot "Such big-shots back there. I could throw all of them out of the window and make 256 million people very happy."

The pilot underestimates-- by several billion.

Does Al Gore really have to run for president to get us to pay attention to the harsh truths he has to tell about political (and other) realities?

"What [Gore] is telling us today--with the moral authority of a man who many believe was wrongly barred from the presidency--is that American democracy and indeed American society are in danger from the authoritarians of the right. Without much polite varnish, he warns that self-serving plutocrats and self-righteous theocrats have nearly banished reason from the public square; their machinations disable us as we try to confront the enormous problems that threaten our future. According to Gore, Americans cannot adequately protect the nation from terrorism because our ideas about national security have been distorted by fear and falsehoods. Nor can we address what he calls 'the carbon crisis,' potentially 'the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization,' because the truth about global warming has been obscured by industrial and government propaganda."
--Joe Conason, in his L.A. Times review of Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason

Kudos to the L.A. Times. Normally you would expect a book as explosive as the former vice president's appears to be to be assigned for review to a neocon hack, or at the farthest left to a neolib one like the New Republic-ans. It's hard to think of anyone further from that mold than Joe Conason, who is the plainest-speaking of plain-speakers.

It's not surprising, in fact, that Joe begins by addressing this age-old question of politicians unwillingness or inability to say straight-out what they mean:

Why do our leaders feel that they can speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth only after they have left politics? After spending nearly half his life in public office, from which he was separated involuntarily in the 2000 election, Al Gore knows the answer. As he explains in his new book, the American political system has degenerated into a rigged game that suppresses honesty and rewards deception.

Gore, of course, was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. The fact is, if on the campaign trail he paid more attention than we wished to the handlers who counseled blandness, as Democratic political handlers usually do, he spoke a lot of plain truth in his years in government. But Gore the truth-teller got little credit--and Joe tells us that in the book that he "employ[s] the same didactic method that used to provoke irritation or even ridicule during his hotly contested presidential campaign."

Yet Gore's professorial style, with its touches of sarcasm, omniscient tone, erudite asides, and yes, its occasional exasperated sighs, elicits a different response today than it did seven years ago. Many of the same publications that once poured scorn on him now offer up paragraph after paragraph of admiring prose.

It doesn't hurt to have been proved right, as Gore has been, most notably on the issue of global climate change, with the suggestion that "those who mocked him were fools in the first place and that we can continue to ignore him only at our own peril."
But Gore himself has changed, Joe stresses:

Always unusually smart and farsighted, he nevertheless spent most of his public career emphasizing the expedient and conventional rather than the critical and visionary as nearly every ambitious politician must. Liberated from those constraints by defeat, he kept silent until fall 2002, when he spoke out forthrightly against the invasion of Iraq.

The tentative, calculating, painfully moderate approach of the past was gone, along with all of the baggage of the Democratic Leadership Council that he had helped to found.

We all know that Al Gore is never going to be Mr. Charisma. There's a suggestion in Joe's review that he doesn't in fact place great stock in charisma, and has a frustratingly keen awareness of the difficulty of dealing with substance in American political life:

His insistence on detail and thoroughness, which may seem like a personal tic in an era of sound bites, is rooted in his conviction that most Americans have little understanding of the world in which they live. He worries that mass alienation from politics and immersion in the entertainment culture along with poor civic education have created a population that is woefully uninformed.

Joe notes that Gore "remains remarkably optimistic that the emerging technologies will enable democracy's advocates to triumph":

At a time when we are learning that political responses tend to be more emotional than rational, as he surely understands, his stubborn faith that we will someday return to reason is touching. That faith inflected his political career, for better and for worse. It does not explain why this most qualified and courageous Democratic candidate has--so far--decided not to run for president again.

I don't know how successful a candidate even now Gore would make, or how effectively, if elected, he would be able to deal with the 24/7 Right-Wing Noise Machine. But it does sound as if he has some important things to say about our political system, and I'm putting the book on my reading list.

CAN AN OSCAR WINNER BE PRESIDENT? I PRAY TO GOD THE ANSWER IS YES-- IMAGINE A PRESIDENT WE COULD BE PROUD OF INSTEAD OF THE TURD WE HAVE NOW?

Former vice presidents... what ever happens to them? They play golf and stage hissy fits at John Mellencamp concerts like Dan Quayle? Not Al Gore. He's accomplished more since he left office than when he was in it-- and now he's being heralded as a "rock star" and the "coolest ex-vice president. Almost everyone I know who talks about who they support for president has the same qualifier... "unless Al Gore runs."

DWT endorsed him in 2005 and 2006; this will be our 2007 endorsement. We hearby endorse the only American ex-vice president to win an Oscar (and soon to win a Nobel Peace Prize). My guess is that with the exception of al-Qaida-- who will do anything to keep the Republicans in power-- the entire world is rooting for Gore to win the Nobel Prize and the presidency. Will he run?

Al didn't only win the Oscar tonight because every sane person on the planet wants him to be president. Did you see the movie he made? It kicks ass. "An Inconvenient Truth," is basically Al giving an hour and a half slide show about global warming. It's the third-highest-grossing documentary ever, with a worldwide box office of $45 million, right behind blockbusters "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "March of the Penguins."

"He is more popular now than he ever was in office, and he knows it," says Laurie David, one of the producers of "Inconvenient Truth" and a Hollywood environmental activist (and wife of "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David) who has traveled around the world promoting the film with Gore. "He's a superhero now."

Everyone I know, inside politics and outside, wants Al to run for president. Imagine someone like him who we've come to admire and trust as a human being, someone concerned with the welfare of our planet, instead of... some beady-eyed triangulator who has one thing going for her: better than a Republican. According to a recent story in the Boston Globe "Gore could raise large amounts of money very quickly based on his record and name recognition, and his statements about the 2008 race haven't foreclosed the possibility of reconsidering at a later date. Several observers, including supporters and detractors, say they could envision a political drama in which the current candidates become sullied over the Iraq war and liberal voters call for Gore to enter the race."

If tonight's Oscar doesn't do it, the Nobel Peace Prize should.
The fear and hatred from the extremists and neo-fascists is so hysterical that it is clear that Gore is what they are most afraid of. And for good reason. There are half a dozen Draft Al websites (like this one and this one) and, unlike Democratic pols such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, he has a long and clear record of opposing Bush's attack on Iraq. "In 2002, Gore roundly denounced plans for an invasion at a time when few Democrats did so, saying in one of many speeches attacking the war, 'The chaos in the aftermath of a military victory in Iraq could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently have from Saddam' [Hussein]."

Despite what George Clooney said when introducing the nominees for Best Supporting Actress, I think Al will run, will win and will help us save ourselves from the catastrophe that ensued when the presidency he won in 2000 was stolen from him. The world is ready for Al Gore.