I don’t usually post press release type stuff but Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerilla has Gore Mania, and she asked my to tell everyone about the DraftGore2008 political action committee. If you think Al is the man for the job in 2008, check out their site, sign on as a supporter, and a make a donation.
This is a thread for all things Al. Like Franken, Pacino, Paul Simon….you get the idea.
Can I call you Al?
Only if I can call you Betty.
If he runs he has my vote.
Drafting Gore is just spinning wheels unless he wants it, really wants it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… dream ticket: Gore/Feingold! A political team I could believe in again, at last.
is it just me or is the draftgore2008 link broken?
Or is that a joke meaning that there isn’t a draftgore2008 PAC?
works now.
That was just a figment of your imagination. Try it again.
Al Gore is on Larry King tonight.
Thx for the tip, Howie. At least 1 (probably the only)good reason to turn on CNN for the old windbagger, though I’m sure he’ll make a muck of it with Al. Maybe Al will give him a good smackdown … well, a guy can hope, right?
I’ll run on William Blum’s platform:
It’d be the busiest half-week of my life.
construct a memorial in your honor on the DC Mall. Complete with cacti and jazz music for ambience 😉
I like it already. I’ll suggest that the memorial include a quote that I basically live by:
🙂
http://www.deviantart.com/view/9410862/
(Warning: It’s big.) It shows how the Federal discretionary budget is allocated. The Defense Department gets about $400 billion a year to spend. That’s a lot of money.
Now take a look at this:
http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/
This is the famous Ben Cohen Flash animation that breaks down the military budget in terms of Oreo cookies. Just five. He equates one cookie with $10 billion, so the United States spends 40 cookies on its military every year.
Now, he says, take five of those cookies and spend them instead on things like health insurance for every child in the country and alternative energy research. That leaves us with 35 cookies to spend on defense.
Russia, by contrast, spends 7 cookies annually on its military, and China 5.
While I agree with the sentiment of Mr. Blum’s platform, I think cutting defense by 90% (bringing it down to 4 cookies) is too much to swallow at once. For better or worse there are too many people dependent on that money to make a livelihood, from the grunt in the trenches to the guy designing electrical subsystems for a new fighter jet.
But, I think it would easily be possible to cut it back 12% (five cookies) fairly quickly, and then begin to scale it back to, oh, say a total of 20 cookies. Half of what we spend now. We could do that by turning the military into a national defense force. Quit pretending to be the world’s playground monitor and close our bases in South Korea, Germany and elsewhere around the globe. Station Marines to guard US embassies but otherwise keep our forces close to home to do, oh, I don’t know, actual homeland defense. Repurpose some of those defense contractors into doing things like alternative energy and more efficient transportation alternatives. I’d like to see the rail system revitalized, for instance, but maybe that’s just me.
You could cut back the US defense budget by 50% and still be spending almost three times as much as our closest competitor. Plus it would probably take you at least a week to be assassinated. 🙂
points taken, but how would you make sure things stayed that way? after you were assassinated, someone would come in and change it back… better to change a few hearts and minds first, then initiate bold moves… and that takes time …I’m just saying
I was planning on choosing Ductape Fatwa as my running mate – and make sure he has damned good bullet-proof vests. 🙂
I’ll admit I haven’t thought ahead much beyond that. But it’s still early in the election cycle. 😉
Looks like I’m voting 3rd party. C’mon, somewhere there has to be a candidate who will convince me to vote dem….
Unfortunately, FDR is dead, and Al Gore does not act like he is interested in running. But, on the bright side, IMO any Dem beats the h— out of what we have going now. In other words, we simply do not have the time to fritter away votes on third party candidates that garner 9% of the vote on a good day. Do us both a favor Street Kid and vote Dem. Get involved in the party, and work to make it better. If I see anything that looks better and viable, I’ll gladly swallow these words, but short term at least, that isn’t going to happen.
The election is not tomorrow. One of the dems still has a chance to earn my vote.
brilliant. four more years of neocon hell. even dlc repub-lite would be better. the people killed by them in their next preemptive war will haunt you.
the people killed by them in their next preemptive war will haunt you.
The number more people who die due to lack of health insurance. Of doen’t that matter?
I sincerely hope he doesn’t. He has more important work to do.
He’s developing into a very effective spokesman for a more liberal world view, especially on the environment. We will NEVER even start undoing the evils done by both of our parties until we have a change in how we talk about politics, talk about what kind of world we want.
That’s Gore’s job. TO help drive that conversations. It’s time for new directions in the Presidential race.
Feingold in ’08.
Maybe Gore would be interested in being Feingold/Edwards/whoever’s Secretary of the Interior or maybe Secretary of Energy. Get the US to sign on to the Kyoto Protocols and give Gore’s department some teeth to make enforcement happen. I’d be OK with that.
I think he’d be more valuable in that position than as a candidate. I’d rather he stay outside of institutional politics, though.
Feingold for Supreme Court
In my opinion, Gore has the advantage of higher stature than Feingold inside and outside the party establishment, and that would help in getting things done.
Then, Gore’s experience in resuscitating a sagging economy from his Clinton/Gore years would be much needed in jump-starting what the President-elect will be blessed with come January 2009.
I find that Feingold’s temperament and scholarship suit better for the Supreme court than the Presidency. The former being a lifetime position, we can expect to see him have a tremendous impact on the course of the country from that position.
I would be very much supportive of a Gore/Feigold ticket, but the ideal position for Russ would be on the Supreme Court bench, hopefully appointed by a President Al Gore.
Any thoughts?
I had never even thought of such a thing, but he is an attractive candidate for SC seat.
Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
but you can call me Al…
Gore/Feingold or Feingold/Edwards…either one gets my time, $’s, and vote.
That being said, I really don’t think Gore will run, no matter how much I/we would like to see it happen. He has repeatedly said “no”…I tend to believe him.
We shall see.
Peace
but I’m with you on everything else but the Steve Miller stuff, hehe.
Gimme some al-Kaseltzer.
I like Al Gore. He’s outspoken, smart, and obviously qualified to lead America in a far better direction.
The only thing that I wonder about is foreign policy. Gore’s past, and if he would basically work under a similar paradigm… not in the same vein as the neo-cons but still generally trying to promote/maintain(?) American hegemony at the cost of oppressing people abroad. Any thoughts?
While Gore is not a pacifist, and does want America to maintain a strong military, there is nothing in anything he did or said that suggests that he’d want to extend an American hegemony.
And he is most certainly not into “oppressing people abroad”.
He supported the gulf war because Saddam had invaded and occupied a neighboring sovereign nation. And opposed our own version of territorial aggression in 2002.
In fact, in his Iraq war opposition speech, he was emphatic in his appreciation and respect for multilaterlism and being respected abroad.
His championing work on the internet is another example where Gore was envisioning a greater humanism. Not to mention his current crusade to combat global warming, to save the planet for future generations of all humans, not just Americans.
I would like to invite anyone seriously interested in supporting an Al Gore Presidency in 2008 to also join us at The Gore Portal, A Gore 2008 Draft Movement: http://www.gorenet.org
We are a community of volunteers and activists, unaffiliated with Former Vice
President Al Gore, working to build a movement in support of a Gore Presidency. The
following are our objectives:
I think that the smartest thing Gore can do now is to declare that he is going to run for the President. If he really is not willing to run, it won’t be difficult for him to step aside later, and neither he nor progressives would loose anything with that. If Gore has an impact to make, he would better start doing now with full force and attention. And if Gore eventually would be running, starting now would be much better than playing the “ok-ok-I-am-running-now” game, and that would give him time to dispell old and new smearing myths.
It is pretty clear what would Gore taste if he would be running. Just read the Daily Howler blog. If even such liberal scribes as Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd keep trashing Gore as they did in 1999-2000, continue singing McCain maverick songs, and start demeaning liberal bloggers, what is the hope? Now even David Letterman plays a fool…
But if Gore would declare that he is running now, he can make a no-nonsense no-excuses straight-from-the-gut campaign. Regardless of how he is going to finish, he would make best experiment of what really matter to American voters, and he would force the media disclose itself early.
This is a thread for all things Al. Like Franken, Pacino, Paul Simon….you get the idea.
Hey, I’m an Al! So, it all started at 8.03a Feb 3, 1980 in a hospital just north of NYC…
cool, you’re my elder, but not by much. My bday is the fourth, fifth and sixth words in the song Papa was a Rolling Stone by the Tempations.
My birthday is in a song too! I was born on the day the music died, but 21 years later.