The Swift Boating of Al Gore

From Liberal Values--see original post for multiple links and clearer formatting:

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=1144

It comes as no surprise that the right wingers are responding to Al Gore winning the Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth by attempting to swift boat him with attacks based upon the amount of energy he personally uses. While they still attempt to, it is getting harder for conservatives to deny the science of climate change now that it has become the consensus of scientific thought. This leaves their most common strategy of resorting to smears, knowing that the conservative pundits and bloggers will repeat any claim without any requirement for evidence. No matter that all the documented evidence refuted the claims about John Kerry, and that his accusers were found to be paid partisan hacks with a political agenda--its an attack on a Democrat so it will be passed off as truth.

Just as the Swift Boat liars were found have an agenda, James Johnson and James Boyce have found that those raising the charges against Gore are also Republican partisans. So far they have uncovered the following:

Tennessee Center's President Drew Johnson comes straight out of the right's network, coming from Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute and the right-wing-funded National Taxpayers Foundation.

They are part of the right's State Policy Network. According to PFAW,

"SPN is a national network of state-based right-wing organizations in 37 states as well as prominent nationwide right-wing organizations. Through its network SPN advances the public policy ideas of the expansive right-wing political movement on the state and local level."

As of Feb. 16, the Tennessee tax dept. considers them "not a legitimate organization" because of their misrepresenting themselves involving questions about the group's opposition to a state crackdown on drug dealers.

Think Progress has contacted Al Gore for further clarification. (By the way, if you need evidence of how little regard right wingers have for honesty or rational though, check out the comments by a troll there by the name of Patrick1.) Think Progress received the following answers:

1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:

What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

In a sense purchasing carbon offsets is something that conservatives, who claim to support the free market except when it comes to the real world, should understand. Of course we understand their mind set which makes them not want to understand or acknowledge such a solution.

The mind set in work here is to paint the opponents as extremist crazies and only attack the straw men they create, as opposed to responding to their opponents' actual views. To the conservatives those who of us who oppose the Iraq war as being counter to our national interests are unwilling to defend America from real dangers. Those who exercise our rights to criticize the government are called unpatriotic traitors. Those who oppose the corporate-welfare schemes of the Republicans are called socialists. Similarly, when dealing with global warming they try to obfuscate the fact that this represents the consensus of the scientific community by claiming it is a religion. They claim those who speak of climate change are tree huggers who oppose the advantages of modern life. When they run into those who want to take real world action, such as lowering their carbon footprint and buying offsets while still living an affluent life style, they call them hypocrites for not living as predicted by their phoney stereotypes. Al Gore's sin here is not his actions, but not being the caricature of an environmentalist which they would make him out to be.

And we should put these morans in charge for another 8 years?

It's a defensive tactic used to deflect their own shallowness.

Not one of W or his extended family members serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Same as their foreign policy.

instead of doing anything themselves.

I'm soooooooooooo tired of the "usual" from the Republic Party.

For some reason (probably his association with Clinton), the RW has always hated Gore. Remember 2000? The Love Story smear (in which, Gore repeated one wrong fact that actually originated with his local paper)? The "I invented the internet" smear (which he never actually said and wouldn't have been much of a stretch if he had)? The Love Canal smear (that one wasn't even a misinterpretation, it was a basic lie)?

If he runs, Gore can expect another 18 months of this crap. That said, he seems to have toughened up enough in the last eight years that he could probably give it back as well.

with no results other than having their egoes fed and good vacations.

Gore Helps Airlift New Orleans Victims
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press Writer

Friday, September 9, 2005

(09-09) 19:27 PDT Knoxville, Tenn. (AP) --

Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.

Gore criticized the Bush administration's slow response to Katrina in a speech Friday in San Francisco, but refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew last Saturday and Sunday.

However, Dr. Anderson Spickard, who is Gore's personal physician and accompanied him on the flights, said: "Gore told me he wanted to do this because like all of us he wanted to seize the opportunity to do what one guy can do, given the assets that he has."

In the speech, Gore urged that the Bush administration be held accountable for the government's inadequate relief response, particularly "when the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic floodwaters five days after a hurricane struck."

Bush administration officials have said Katrina's damage could not have been anticipated, but Gore rejected that.

"What happened was not only knowable, it was known in advance, in great and painstaking detail," Gore told the Sierra Club's national convention. "They did tabletop planning exercises. They identified exactly what the scientific evidence showed would take place."

.....

"The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute — food and water running out, no power, 4 feet of water surrounding the hospital and ... corpses outside," Simon wrote.

Gore responded immediately, telephoning Kline and agreeing to underwrite the $50,000 each for the two flights, although Larry Flax, founder of California Pizza Kitchens, later pledged to pay for one of them.

.....

He also recruited two doctors, Spickard and Gore's cousin, retired Col. Dar LaFon, an emergency physician who once ran the military hospital at Tallil Air Base in Iraq.

Most critically, Gore worked to cut through government red tape, personally calling Gov. Phil Bredesen to get Tennessee's support and U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta to secure landing rights in New Orleans.

About 140 people, many of them sick, landed in Knoxville on Saturday. The second flight, with 130 evacuees, landed the next day in Chattanooga.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/09/09/national/a124207D29.DTL&type=printable

Meanwhile:

... acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son."


Too soon forgotten. Good Post!

this very thing the other day. Thanks for posting this.

Why can't we scream this from the headlines?!

Also, they said at the Oscars when the Documentary won that the "An Inconvenient Truth" crew were going down to New Orleans the night before Katrina hit so they were seeing first hand what Global Climate Change was doing.

their mouth to convince the world that he is lying about global warming something disasterous happens that just adds more proof to the issue. All around the world one disaster after another.

The swiftboaters are swifboating themselves when it comes to Gore.

It is sad that two of the best and brightest Democrats were the ones targeted most by BushInc's smear machines running at the height of their power, but eventually they will both be vindicated.

They took those shots for ALL of us. Viva Gore and Kerry.

To right-wingers, the greatest inconvenient truth is that they aren't interested in the truth at all.

They need to shut up and get out of the way. Pardon my incivility. I'm disgusted beyond mitigation.

Original post (with links) at:

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=1145

Halperin’s Team Continues To Report Right Wing Smears as News

In The Way to Win ABC News political director Mark Halperin and John Harris compare Drudge to Walter Cronkite. They describe how Drudge posts things which are unsubstantiated and, since it is posted on Drudge, it becomes news which is picked up by the mainstream media. By having such items which he posts be reported by the mainstream media, Drudge has the influence of Walter Cronkite without the integrity.

If Halperin was a true journalist, the obvious response to this would be to pass on the word at ABC that Drudge is not a reliable source. Instead, despite accurately describing how misinformation is spread by Drudge, Halperin reliably spreads what Drudge posts. Not surprisingly, it appears that ABC News is the first to post tonight’s smears on Al Gore (discussed in more detail in this earlier post.) Of course they don’t mention that Drudge was greatly responsible for spreading the claims of this pseudo-research organization which has been shown to have strong Republican ties. I can only imagine how they’ll repeat all the right wing talking points in The Note.

Thanks for linking this in the Al Gore 2008 group.

The rightwing smear does not surprise me in the least, it is all they have. We need to be swift in rebutting their claims. They will repeat them over and over again until people take it as truth.

Al Gore's Academy Award was a personal achievement for Gore, who has been a lifelong environmentalist and crusader against global warming. But it was also a victory for sanity and that is something the RW cannot tolerate. They fight and and all progress because they know progress is their enemy. The status quo is an oil-guzzling society that lines their pockets with the riches garnered at the expense of our planet. The fact that these jerks are swiftboating Gore means they recognize his achievement and it terrifies them.

Because they both had their ass handed to them - by Daryl Hannah!

I knew Hannity's head would almost explode when he found out Gore had won an Oscar.

I only tuned in to watch how many veins were popping out on his forehead after Sunday night's award program.
It was great.
Ann Coulter spent half of her time choking and swallowing hard because her mouth was so dry she could hardly speak.
She went on and on about global warming and how liberals "want people to heat their home with candles."

Then Daryl said "nobody is talking about candles except you, Ann."

Ann didn't have a comeback!!

It was great.

Man, Daryl is awesome. I like her more and more each time I see her make fools out of those idgits.

I saw a portion of the interview posted on a conservative site where they had video of Ann Coulter bashing Gore. I did object to the manner in which she suggested that environmentalists to be consistent would give up all modern technology, etc. Of course they didn't include Daryl's comeback.

stikes again! Daryl Hannah has guts of steele just to go in that den of toxic vipers.

on global warming because he speaks out on it.

so shows how effective he is becoming in promoting this cause.