al gore, my favorite america-hating idiot nazi opportunist

The corporate (Republican) response to Al Gore’s new movie on global warming is both pathetic and hilarious. When they’re not distorting the science to support their incredibly stupid claims, they’re comparing Gore to a Nazi propagandist. They’re even going so far as to run paid ads that would have you think that Gore is opposed to human exhalation.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it’s being reported that our estimates concerning global warming could be as much as 78% too low. Fortunately, even though he says proudly that he won’t be seeing the Gore’s film, Bush, in a roundabout way, admitted that global warming is real this week. It’s apparently gotten so bad that even he can’t keep denying it… Here, in evidence of that, is a clip from ABC news on the prospect of category 6 hurricanes and how the phenomenon may be further evidence of global warming (as if the melting of the glaciers weren’t enough):

“There is no official Category 6 for hurricanes, but scientists say they’re pondering whether there should be as evidence mounts that hurricanes around the world have sharply worsened over the past 30 years — and all but a handful of hurricane experts now agree this worsening bears the fingerprints of man-made global warming.”

I know I already linked to them above, but, if you haven’t already seen the television ads being run by the conservative-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute, you really need to check them out. Here’s how one ad ends: “Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life.“

And, not to be outdone, Fox News suggests that, with this film, Al Gore could “destroy the economy.”

On the pro-Gore side, there’san American Prospect article that looks pretty good. (I’m only a few paragraphs into it, but it seems to be pro-Gore.) And then there’s this from the Daily Howller:

STILL CRAZY: Al Gore was right about global warming–way back in the 1980s. He was also right on internal combustion. And oh yes, he was right on Iraq, in a prophetic speech in September 02–a speech Joe Klein praised at the time. In a rational world, this would make Gore a reigning star–but we live in the world of a millionaire press corps, and we suffer, every day, from its judgments. On Friday morning, Michael Kinsley heaped torrents of praise on McCain, who was wrong. But how does the pundit corps treat Gore, the man was actually right on Iraq? On this weekend’s Chris Matthews Show, one empty scribe turned to another (Joe Klein), who then said what they’ve said all along:

KLEIN (5/21/06): You know, there’s a big question here. If you read Al Gore’s speech just before the war in Iraq where he came out against it, it’s a brilliant speech. If you saw Al Gore delivering it, he looked like a madman.

Al Gore can be right as much as he likes–but in these strange regions, he’s always a madman. Moments earlier, Matthews had started the hunt. He teed up the vacuous Kathleen Parker by quoting one of her columns:

MATTHEWS: Kathleen, you wrote a column recently–I like the phraseology–you said Al Gore is “one slice short of a loaf.” (Group laughter) I mean, that’s like they say up in Massachusetts, they say things like, “He’s got a few shingles missing from the roof.” What’s your point? Is he a little nutty, are you saying?

So, you got all that? Gore is an idiot Nazi who wants to destroy the American economy. Oh, yeah, he also wants people to stop exhaling carbon dioxide… You can tell how serious a threat the right thinks he is by the amount of shit that they’re throwing at him. It’s absolutely amazing… The thing that pisses me off though isn’t that the right plays dirty, I’ve come to expect that, but that they’ve put short-term corporate profits above the long-term prospects of our nation. I mean, I can accept that they’re selfish, and short-sighted, but not dealing with global warming is just suicide. (Global warming should not be a political issue.)

I don’t want to keep going on about how much I respect Gore, but you have to admit that, in modern politics, it isn’t so often that you see a person step forward and ask his/her fellow Americans to think not just about the immediate future, but where we’re headed, and what kind of world we’re leaving to our children… So, yeah, as of right now, I’m supporting Gore in ’08.