TBT: The Brutal Truth

Gore'd Out Of His Boots

Extended Thoughts: RawStory dishes out a full transcript of Al Gore's speech. Also, a very belated thanks goes to John & Mike at C&L and for the frontpage love and their readers. I was so attentive to eating brunch while absorbing every morsel of Gore's speech that engaging in any other activity would've been a distraction. Sorry if any C&L visitors may have gotten the impression of me live-blogging the event. That would've been impossible -- aside from probably sucking at it, this was one of those events where I felt my obligations as a citizen outweighed my obligations as a blogger and thus Gore deserved my full and undivided attention. There's much better live-bloggers in the 'Sphere and, as good as their talents are, I don't believe they would've done this event justice. Even RawStory's transcript itself loses Gore's passion and conviction which can only be experianced by hearing and watching his speech.

As Greenwald puts it, Gore pointed out in crystal clear fashion that one would have to be either living under a rock or within an amniotic bubble of willing denial to not see how Bush's nefarious spying scheme broke the law as well as how his complete lack of a conscience (and a spineless opposition party pretending to be Democrats) continues to let him do so.

It's the most arrogant and blatant disregard of the Constitution we've seen from an American president since the days of Tricky Dick. The sad irony there is, fortunately for us all, a great monolithic, profit-driven, Entertainment Industry-based Corportocracy hadn't had complete control of the media yet. The press did their jobs airing Dicky's incriminating audio tapes and Barry Goldwater promptly done his civic duty by tossing Nixon unaplogetically under the bus.

What an utter sad state of affairs in this nation when we find ourselves at today -- reliving history where the honor of being a modern-day Goldwater goes not to any current Republican or Democrat holding office but to a statesman some 6 years into retirement while the corporate press can't be bothered to give it a single whit of live coverage?!? Apparently profiting off our potential concerns of an overturned tanker is more important that the continued bastardization of our Constitution by a President whose unchecked power today makes Stalin and Hitler turn in their respective graves (as their souls in Hell gnash their teeth).

And even when they do manage to devote live coverage to the event (as CNN's "The Situation Room" done so from what I could glean from C&L's HaloScan), the best they can do is spin it in a negative fashion making ridiculous claims that Gore's speech was nothing more than a pre-campaign stump speech for 2008. Apparently, Wolf Blitzer saw Al Gore hang around taking bows, shaking hands, and kissing babies at the end of his speech.

However, what I saw at the end was Al Gore utter a brief but sincere thanks and then promptly exit stage right even to the surprize of the near-capacity audience who expected Gore to come back and bask in the standing ovation. After watching an empty stage for 20 seconds, the crowd started to gather their things and leave. Thus, I'm left with no other alternative but to continue to believe that Blitzer's perscription on his eyeglasses indeed ran out somewhere around 1992, and he's been wandering the CNN newsroom blind as a bearded, persistantly vegatative, fruitbat ever since. If I didn't feel Jack Cafferty deserved his salary, I certainly wouldn't be enriching CNN's corporate coffers with my continued viewership, that's for sure (and Jack strikes me as a guy who has a characature of Blitzer wielding a tamborine and coffey mug full of pencils stapled to the wall of his cubicle, garnering hushed chortles from passers-by).

Color me not surprized by the MSM's coverage.

Double color me not surprized by The RNC's response:

Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, shot back: “Al Gore’s incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as our lack of balls to have him tried for giving aid and confort to the enemy and fed to the lions. Why does he hate America so much?!?"

Triple color me not surprized by Alberto Gonzales, who quickly put to bed Gore's call for a special counsel to investigate the legalities of Bush's "Operation Shamrock II":

KING: Back to former Vice President Gore asking for a special counsel to investigate, would you object to that?

GONZALES: Object?!? Damn straight, I object! I don't wanna go to prison and share a bunk and a bump in the night with Scooter. Sheesus, Larry - you've seen what Fitzgerald's done to Karl. Jenny Craig couldn't get those results even if she was trafficking in cocaine. From its inception, this program has been carefully reviewed by me - *cough* I mean, the lawyers at the Department of Justice and other lawyers within the administration and we just want to let George run rampant in the jungle until the time is ripe to dissolve Congress, and send the entire judicial branch home in time to watch the premier of Ms. Alito's made-for-TV movie on LifeTime.

Our options, as Peter Daou explains, are rather limited and I'm leaning towards the uphill struggle bit. Cajoling the hell out of the corporate MSM, their sponsors, and their shareholders would be a fine start (works for L. Brent Bozell - keeps him out of the unemployment lines but not out of lawsuits from professional wrestling moguls) and I certainly wouldn't begrudge anyone to drop a dime on their elected Representatives as well as tighting the screws a notch or two on Harry Reid and Howard Dean.

Just don't trust Nancy Pelosi ...

posted by Sizemore at 12:46 PM

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