That Paragon Of Opportunity

I am not a fan of Howard Dean. In fact, I am not certain I even like him. This sort of admission is rare for me; I make a real effort to like people. But there is just something about Mr. Dean's irrational pugnacity that I dislike; he evokes in me the same sort of reaction I get when I hear James Carville or Paul Begala speak: I sense that they will say ANYTHING in order to win.

And to curtail any criticism that I am partisan in my dislike, let me say I am also no adorer of John McCain. But I do find myself liking McCain more this morning precisely because of what Howard Dean said in a release sent to the Democratic Party faithful:

"The American people have been waiting for a president who understands the challenges they face, not another out of touch Bush Republican who promises four more years of the same failed leadership. John McCain can try to reintroduce himself to the country, but he can't change the fact that he cast aside his principles to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush for the last seven years. While we honor McCain's military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader who offers real solutions, not a blatant opportunist who doesn't understand the economy and is promising to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years." [emphasis mine]

John McCain a "blatant opportunist"? Really?

One wonders how Mr. Dean can be so wrong. For surely John McCain was not being opportunistic when he made his apparent statement that the US would be in Iraq for a 100 years: this odd sort of opportunism can only be seen as a man who marches to the beat of his own very singular convictions. Isn't the blatant opportunist that guy who jumps on a sudden, popular mood-swing and shouts that he's been feeling similarly? Isn't a blatant opportunist that guy who embraces the popular, especially that padded by recent polls? What's so opportunistic in telling the American voter that Iraq might be a 100-year struggle? And what's so opportunistic about being a Bush supporter in matters of national defense? Isn't President Bush loathed by everybody on the planet? Does Howard Dean even know what it means to be an "opportunist"?†

Oops!

But the facts on the ground, as they might say in military circles, give the lie to Mr. Dean's over-wrought pronouncement. John McCain was not saying that American troops should or would be engaged in military conflict in Iraq for 100 years. He was saying that he could justify an American presence in that country for 100 years, a presence identical to that which the Americans have in South Korea and Germany, you know, a post-conflict presence as peace-keeper, humanitarian and deterrent. Amazingly, Howard Dean and many anti-war protesters forget or ignore the real fact that Harry Truman's troops are still in Korea and Germany (not that they are really Truman's troops, but you get the picture). Plus, it is clear Mr. Dean is choosing to mislead because he hears in Mr. McCain's words a real threat: McCain is telling the truth, while Mr. Dean and those he wants to influence not only stop their ears, they muzzle those who speak plainly, even those in their own party.

But thanks be to ABC News' Jake Tapper (and the WSJ's James Taranto), for directing me (indirectly) to this quote from Howard Dean from 2004, when Dean was stumping for John Kerry:

"The real issue is this: Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?"

Dean, perhaps blinded by his own sycophancy, clearly gives us fodder for ridicule, for clearly his man in 2004, John Kerry, never rose above the level of a blatant opportunist, at least when it came to throwing up his war credentials as points of honor. If John McCain is an opportunist for reminding us that he has military street cred, then what was John Kerry in 2004? (Taranto makes this point to greater effect, by the way.)

But more importantly, nothing proves that the blatant opportunist in all of this is Howard Dean himself.

Oops!

And to top things off, Mr. Dean mocks Mr. McCain's apparent lack of economic erudition. That's rich, indeed.

Isn't it self-evident that when Americans consider the paragons of all things economic, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Howard Dean are not the first -- or even the second, fifth or tenth -- names that come to mind?

Oops, again.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

†(Special thanks to Mort Kondracke, who made similar points last night on "Special Report.")

Breaking Great Wind In The Storm's Eye: Al Gore And The Democratic Party

Former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, needs the world to melt away.

As you know, and as I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, Al Gore, with the help of his friends at Apple Computer, Inc. (where he sits on the board of directors), has recently released a film, An Inconvenient Truth. Ebert & Roeper have given the film Two Thumbs Up. I will skip the science part of the whole debate for today, and I will admit that I have not seen the film, though I intend to. What I want to point out is that Al Gore has done something utterly precarious: He has pinned his whole political life on a swirling, whirling, convecting and advective maelstrom of gas. In short, he has put his career on the line for a bunch of variables, hoping to win our plaudits by the hoped-for triumph of one constant: The planet is getting warmer.

Trust me when I say this: Al Gore is doomed if the planet begins to get cooler. He is doomed if the polar caps are indeed getting deeper in their cores as they are shrinking on their edges (as some have posited). He is doomed if November 2008 is bitterly cold, especially if September and October are cold, too. His career will be so much vapor looking for one constant particle around which to coalesce; yet if the rarefied air he hopes to coalesce in should become utterly clean of any particles, his raindrop will never form, and he shall be lost in the gases he fears.

I am not suggesting that he is wrong for being concerned about global warming, or that humans impact the environment in often grotesque proportions. I am saying that he is wrong for politicizing this whole "crisis", this "planetary emergency", as he calls it.

But what I am really saying is that the Democratic National Party is doomed for the exact same reasons. You see, they have embraced Gore's "science" completely: They have endorsed his view and made it a plank in the Democratic Party's weather observation deck. Gore is The Man right now, and he has got to be relishing the attention. Egads, he was even The Man at the Cannes Film Festival.

Yesterday I received this email titled "Gore-bashing" from Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean. Let me remind you that Democrats repeatedly refer to the Republican leadership as "fearmongers". Here's the email:

Dear Fellow Democrat,

Hurricane season has arrived -- and two fresh studies point to a link between global warming and an increase in the number and power of storms like Hurricane Katrina.

What are Republicans doing about it? They're smearing former Vice President Al Gore.

One right-wing pundit compared Gore to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist. Another right-winger, who's been on the payroll of corporate special interests, likened Gore's pursuit of solutions to global warming to Adolf Hitler's pursuit of genocide.

I'm sending Al a note this week telling him to keep fighting, to keep standing up for the truth no matter how vicious the attacks. I thought he might like to hear from you, too. …

Facts are facts. Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence. But it also presents a historical opportunity to rise above politics and act boldly. Despite right-wing efforts to silence him, Al Gore has articulated one of the great moral challenges of our time and tried to move people to act.

This should not be a political issue. We need a conversation about climate change and its consequences. But special interests in Washington have a tight grip on the Republican leadership, and an entire network of corporate-funded front groups has emerged to deny reality and attack the messenger.

They hope that scorched-earth political tactics will cover up the reality that the scientific debate is one they've already lost.

Vice President Al Gore deserves our thanks for his courage and leadership. …

Did you know the National Academy of Sciences joined academies in the other G8 countries last year by concluding that global warming requires "prompt action"? Or that insurance companies are fleeing coastlines and charging huge premiums to avoid taking more losses from massive hurricanes? How about the fact that climate researchers have a new worry: that we could cross a tipping point that sends sea levels rising by 20 feet by the end of the century?

If you didn't know, that's by design. Corporate special interests are deeply invested in keeping us hooked to the status quo -- high gas prices, inefficiency, and dependence on foreign oil.

That's why last year, in the middle of a record-breaking hurricane season, Republicans in Congress and the White House gave oil companies $6 billion -- even as those companies ran away with the largest corporate profits in American history. And that's why we still have yet to see the Bush administration stand up and do anything to stop global warming.

Enough is enough, and people know it. Al Gore is demonstrating exactly the kind of courage and moral clarity that Democrats will bring when we take back Congress and win elections up and down the ballot this year.

The inconvenient truth is that global warming exists -- and thanks to Al Gore, it's now more likely that America will come together and do something about it.

Sincerely,
Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

And, according Dr. Dean, here are the two offensive quotes regarding Mr. Gore:

Citations

"You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't go see Al Gore's films to see the truth about global warming."
--Sterling Burnett, DaySide, Fox News, May 23, 2006.

"Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews."
--Bill Gray, as quoted in The Washington Post Magazine, May 28, 2006.

Now, I have no idea who Sterling Burnett (?) or Bill Gray are, but to Dr. Dean, this amounts to an all-out right-wing attack on Al Gore. And if you don't think that Dr. Dean's letter suggests that the Democrats have politicized this issue, then recall with me what happened May 31 when a group of concerned citizens protested outside the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center. What was their beef (excuse the references to methane)? That NOAA has been "covering up the growing scientific link between severe hurricanes and global warming." And NOAA is doing this in a gross conspiracy along with the Bush Administration and EXXON! Don't believe me? Then read this statement from the protest's organizers. It is clear that the protesters are not members of the Republican Party.

(Let me point out that real scientists would not say that there is a "growing scientific link" between anything. There is an alleged "climatological, meterological" link or "growing atmospheric-chemical" link. But a "growing scientific link"? That's middle school stuff.)

And lastly, look at this from the Democratic National Committee. It pretty much proves what the Democrats have in mind.

***

Why has Al Gore hitched his wagon to a melting polar ice cap? Simple. It is a perfectly hot topic right now, and it is perfectly ambiguous. It is the sort of scientific "fact" that can be used for glorious political gain, because it is one that has the appearance of certitude and yet is, by all honest accounts, a field of broad uncertainty. Moreover, Al Gore has hitched his wagon to so much gas because he wants to distance himself from "Big Oil", you know, the REAL source of global warming and the impending calamity. And the Democrats have hitched themselves to the very same vapors.

THAT is why they desperately need the planet to get hotter, at least for a couple of more years. They need the calamity in order to save not only all of us, but all of them. They need the planet to melt so badly they can see water already rising in New York. They are so knee deep in it that they might just propose putting life jackets in voting booths.

It is a bit of a joke when we hear Democrats insist that this "crisis" should not be a partisan issue. Of course it should: The Democrats have made it one. They are the real scientists after all, a fact well-established now that they've shown the Republicans to be all about Intelligent Design (which is about the philosophy of science, the very foundations of it, and not about science per se; which is a fact lost on critics of Intelligent Design). And it is the Democrats, long critics of Big Oil, who have laid the blame for most of the global warming on that giant industry.

Of course, there is great irony watching all those liberals, so concerned about global warming, flying over to Cannes to watch Al Gore's film. Gore also scarred the sky in a trans-Atlantic crossing. And now he flies around the globe, telling us all that the atmosphere is fragile and is becoming our enemy.

An Inconvenient Truth is exactly that.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Al Gore photograph courtesy of CBS News (via Google photos)

Technorati tags: Al Gore, Global Warming, Climate Change, An Inconvenient Truth, Environment, Democratic Party, Democrats, Howard Dean, DNC, Big Oil

My prediction was wrong, in part

©Bill Gnade/2005

OK. So I am not prescient. A week has passed and I did not receive, at least in this weekly news cycle, a single rebuttal regarding my claims that the religious left is bent on creating its own theocracy in America (see The Religious Left Is No Less Threatening posted below). Particularly, my expectation that Unitarian Universalists (UUs) and its association (UUA) would assault me in defense of their unarguable intrusion into politics has not come to pass. But I am bold to say: the silence is deafening.

Before the reader concludes that I am claiming an undue influence on local affairs, perhaps an explanation is in order. The regional Unitarian society in southern NH is large, vociferous, reactionary, and aggressive. There is no want of political activism in the hearts of this bunch, nor is there any lack of stridency. Thus, when I suggest that this group's silence is deafening, I do so believing that its silence is politically deliberate. There is no doubt the Unitarians saw and read my commentary. They hardly miss a trick. Besides, the editor of the paper which printed my letter is a Unitarian, as is her family.

What do we know about the separation of Church and State? I, at least, know that it is not possible. Religion and politics are inextricably entwined. There will never be, nor can there ever be, a secular state.

But let us assume that there is a possibility of secularism. Let us further stipulate that the religious right is jamming Christian theocratic polity down America's throat. And let us stipulate, for sheer fun, that the Democrats are here to protect us from theocracy, as they so unflinchingly claim.

Hear what the head of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, had to say about the wonderful secular tent under which he presides:

"We need to talk about Christian values and how they're Democratic values. Jesus taught to help the least among us. He spent his life reaching out to the disenfranchised. The Democratic Party is the party of that value, not the Republican Party."

OK. So here we have the head of the DNC not only quoting Jesus, but telling us that it is the DNC, the alleged protectors of secularism, who are the true followers of Christ; and that Jesus' values are identical to the DNC's.

I implore anyone, anywhere, to find an analogous leader in the Republican National Committee that has spoken so theocratically.

Right after the 2004 General Election, members of the Democratic Party were citing New Testament passages in radio and TV appearances. Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Al Sharpton, John Kerry, Jesse Jackson - each of them quoted scripture, and how that sacred writ was most obediently followed by their holy party.

Unitarians, interestingly enough, almost called for a national day of mourning after Bush won the election. In fact, the UUA president William Sinkford insisted that his fellow UUs allow themselves only eight days to mourn before getting on with life.

Locally, the Peterborough (NH) Unitarian Society posted on its wayside pulpit (the sign in front of a church) for its traditional Election Day sermon: "Post-Election Healing." That this sort of sackcloth and ashes mentality swept through the entire UUA community is indisputable, thus proving that the grief in that community was one of discovering that the UUs' hope for a liberal religious state had once again been thwarted.

Why the silence to my charges? Simple. It is politically expedient to the UUs not to draw attention to their hypocrisy. And, again, what is that hypocrisy? It is this: That the Unitarian Universalist Association and its member congregations are a Church committed to the religious ideal that religion should be separate from politics. That this irrationality is not highlighted more frequently in the media is startling and telling. It is the one of the most intellectually self-cancelling beliefs imaginable, and yet it is touted as sophisticated, nuanced and progressive.

In short, it is just plain dumb.

Contratimes