Mr. Gore says: ‘You can call me ticked off’ - (NYTimes Book Review)

Sunday, June 3, 2007
Mr. Gore says: ‘You can call me ticked off’

BOOK REVIEW

By Michiko Kakutani THE NEW YORK TIMES


“The Assault on Reason” By Al Gore (Penguin Press, $25.95)
In “The Assault on Reason” Al Gore excoriates George W. Bush, asserting that the president is “out of touch with reality,” that his administration is so incompetent that it “can’t manage its own way out of a horse show,” that it ignored “clear warnings” about the terrorist threat before 9-11 and that it has made Americans less safe by “stirring up a hornets’ nest in Iraq,” while using “the language and politics of fear” to try to “drive the public agenda without regard to the evidence, the facts or the public interest.”

The administration’s pursuit of unilateralism abroad, Gore says, has isolated the United States in an ever more dangerous world, even as its efforts to expand executive power at home and “relegate the Congress and the courts to the sidelines” have undermined the constitutional system of checks and balances.

The former vice president contends that the fiasco in Iraq stems from Bush’s use of “a counterfeit combination of misdirected vengeance and misguided dogma to dominate the national discussion, bypass reason, silence dissent and intimidate those who questioned his logic both inside and outside the administration.”

He argues that the gruesome acts of torture committed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq “were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity — encouraged, authorized and instituted” by Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. And he writes that the violations of civil liberties committed by the Bush-Cheney administration — including its secret authorization of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court order on calls and e-mail messages between the United States and other countries, and its suspension of the rights of due process for “enemy combatants” — demonstrate “a disrespect for America’s Constitution that has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of democracy.”

snip...
Part civics lesson, part political jeremiad, part philosophical tract, “The Assault on Reason” reveals an angry, impassioned Al Gore — a far cry from the carefully scripted, earth-tone-wearing Al Gore of the 2000 presidential campaign and the programmed “creature of Washington” described in the reporter Bill Turque’s 2000 biography of him, “Inventing Al Gore.”

Much the way that the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” showed a more accessible Al Gore — at ease with himself and passionate about the dangers of global warming — this book shows a fiery, throw-caution-to-the winds Al Gore, who, whether or not he runs for the White House again, has decided to lay it all on the line with a blistering assessment of the Bush administration and the state of public discourse in America at this “fateful juncture” in history.

much more...
http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070603/NEWS/706030390

:kick:

Turned out I had enough credits with BOMC to get a free copy.

and there are facts that I had not heard before so I keep wondering where was the media, why doesn't everybody know this.
My sister who is ADHD started on Chapter 3, skipped intro and his founding fathers and emerging technology frame to go
straight to Bush and today.

:-)

I will start reading it as soon as I finish my current book. Can't wait.

that comments on Gore's assertion that the internet is good for democracy:

"... it plays down the more troubling aspects of the Web, like its promotion of rumor and misinformation alongside real information, and its tendency to fuel polarizing, partisan warfare."

How would that be in way any different from our current corporate controlled media? How?

the miasma in which they so profitably operate.

regarding radio and television's dysfunctional effect on our national discourse and deliberation.

Radio did indeed, make it easier for Hitler to use his propaganda to brainwash the German People, just as radio made it easier for Roosevelt to calm a troubled nation during the Depression with his fire side chats.


The persuasive technologies such as radio or television can be used for good or evil, the dysfunction inherent with them lie within their exclusivity, only a few can afford to own a television network, these are the people with the voice or megaphone.

Common sense alone should tell people of their mind altering power, lest you believe the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars spent on advertising, focus groups, mass psychology, polls and the like were for kicks.

It WAS FREAKING BURIED!!! Tenet, Bush, H Clinton, Ashcroft and Obama up front.

I bitched them out, bought it and left.

President Gore should be allowed to take office!!!!!!!