Al Gore

I supported Al Gore in his first campaign for the presidency. I met the man at a reception, listened to his speeches, and campaigned like a dog for him, including participating in taking polls, stuffing envelopes, making get out the vote calls, you name it.

When he was selected as Bill Clinton's running mate, I couldn't have been more thrilled. I thought he made an excellent Vice President.

Again, I supported him against Bush and was devastated when he did not win the Supreme Court decision.

I had written him off as a "goner". I had even gotten to the point that I was being irritated by so many urging him to run again this time.

However, this man who is before us today, this man as represented on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, this man, I could support again.

I don't think he will run again. I'm not sure that I would support him over John Edwards if he did decide to run. I think that if you want to be president, then it must truly burn in your belly, not be something you decide at the last minute to pursue.

However, I would no longer completely rule out the possibility.

Al Gore on The Daily Show, Part 1

Part 2

Don't tell...

Tinkerbell:

At a recent U2 concert in Dublin, Bono asked the audience for total quiet.

Then, in the silence, he started slowly clapping his hands, once every few seconds.

Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone:

"Every toime I clap my hands, a child in Africa doies!"

A voice pierced the quiet from the front of the crowd with a broad Irish accent.

"Well, feckin stop doin it, then!"

Immigration

Recently, I've modified my views on immigration. I've come to the conclusion that the only answer is to actually put illegal immigrants on the fast track to citizenship. In fact, to make citizenship mandatory.

Why? Because once they are citizens, their employers must pay them at least the minimum wage, offer them benefits if their other employees are offered benefits, and they will be required to pay taxes and their medical bills along with the rest of us. All of which will solve the disparities of having so many millions of illegal immigrants in our society.

It's not the "illegality" of their presence that is the problem. The problem is that their status as "illegals" allow them to be both taken advantage of and to take advantage of available services.

So, I was especially interested in this additional Krugman column (excerpt):

In 1910, almost 14 percent of voting-age males in the United States were non-naturalized immigrants. (Women didn’t get the vote until 1920.) Add in the disenfranchised blacks of the Jim Crow South, and what you had in America was a sort of minor-key apartheid system, with about a quarter of the population — in general, the poorest and most in need of help — denied any political voice.

That dilution of democracy helped prevent any effective response to the excesses and injustices of the Gilded Age, because those who might have demanded that politicians support labor rights, progressive taxation and a basic social safety net didn’t have the right to vote. Conversely, the restrictions on immigration imposed in the 1920s had the unintended effect of paving the way for the New Deal and sustaining its achievements, by creating a fully enfranchised working class.

But now we’re living in the second Gilded Age. And as before, one of the things making antiworker, unequalizing policies politically possible is the fact that millions of the worst-paid workers in this country can’t vote. What progressives should care about, above all, is that immigration reform stop our drift into a new system of de facto apartheid.

Now, the proposed immigration reform does the right thing in principle by creating a path to citizenship for those already here. We’re not going to expel 11 million illegal immigrants, so the only way to avoid having those immigrants be a permanent disenfranchised class is to bring them into the body politic.

h/t Tennessee Guerilla Women

Bush's Betrayal

Paul Krugman, Trust and Betrayal:

Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

INTERNATIONAL THINKING AT ITS BEST!

My mother just emailed me this, and ya gotta admit, it's amusing.

What is the truest definition of Globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana's death.
Question: How come?
Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whisky, followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles; treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines. This is sent to you by an American, using Bill Gate's technology, and you're probably reading this on your computer, that use Taiwanese chips, and a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by Indian lorry-drivers, hijacked by Indonesians, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen, and trucked to you by Mexican illegals..... That, my friends, is Globalization.

What Keith said...

Here.

As for me, I'm sorry to say I was not surprised. I mean, really. Did we expect them to grow a spine? It's just sad. Sad, that just before Memorial Day, our Congress has signed the death warrants of who knows how many more of our soldiers, not to mention civilians, contrary to the wishes of over 70% of the American people, all to appease a spoiled brat who would piss his pants if a watergun were aimed at him by a two year old.

I've never seen my 80-something mother, a devoted lifelong Democrat, ever be so disgusted and enraged with her party and her government.

John Edwards Speech

John Edwards speech to the Council on Foreign Relations:

"As all of you know, we need a new strategy for rebuilding a strong military for a new century.

Any new strategy must include new preventive measures to win the long-term struggle and fuel hope and opportunity. This includes strong and creative diplomacy, and also new efforts to lead the fight against global poverty. I've proposed a plan to lead an international effort to educate every child in the world. As president, I would increase foreign assistance by $5 billion a year to make millions of people safer, healthier, and more democratic, and by creating a cabinet-level post to lead this effort.

Any new strategy must improve how we gather intelligence. From my years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know how difficult this can be. We must always seek to protect our national security by aggressively gathering intelligence in accordance with proven methods.

Yet we cannot do so by abandoning human rights and the rule of law. As two former generals recently wrote in the Washington Post, "If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable ... we drive ... undecideds into the arms of the enemy." And we must avoid actions that will give terrorists or even other nations an excuse to abandon international law.

As president, I will close Guantanamo Bay, restore habeas corpus, and ban torture. Measures like these will help America once again achieve its historic moral stature -- and lead the world toward democracy and peace."

This kind of speech, plus his healthcare plan is why I support Edwards.

Native or Indian?

Okay, I'm still here for the time being and I have a question. American Indian or Native American?

I'm watching Tavis Smiley interview Dick Wolfe on PBS and he just said that that the "politically correct" terminology was now American Indian instead of Native American.

Who says so? When did this happen? He says it's settled because the Smithsonian opened a museum named The Museum of the American Indian.

So what? I'm part Cherokee and part Catawba and I'm sure that my great(+)grandmothers had nothing whatsoever to do with the West Indies, or India.

I don't know that either offends me personally, however, we are referring to peoples native to the continents of the America's, so Native American simply sounds more correct.

Sorry, folks, but I am dealing with serious issues surrounding my illness and the devastating financial repercussions ensuing from this most rich of all nations inability to provide healthcare for it's citizens in need.

The only bright spot in my life right now is that my doctor is attempting to get me into a National Institute of Health clinical trial which will pay my transportation to Bethesda and resultant medical care.

So, since it is believed that I am suffering from one of the rarest diseases in the world, there is, at least, that.

Vote Democratic!

And don't lose me. I will return again. When, I cannot say.