Al Gore

Al Gore
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45th Vice-President of the United States
Term of office January 20, 1993 - January 20, 2001
Political party	Democratic
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Dan Quayle
Succeeded by	Dick Cheney
Born	March 31, 1948 Washington, D.C.
Spouse	Tipper Gore
Religion	Baptist

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. ( born March 31, 1948) was the 45th Vice President of the United States (1993-2001), succeeding Dan Quayle and succeeded by Dick Cheney, following service in the House of Representatives and the Senate, spanning 1977-85 and 1985-93, respectively. He is a Nobel-prize winner for his work on global warming; Gore spreads alarmist propaganda, proclaiming the end of the world. Gore likes to say that, "The Earth has a fever." He has no degree in atmospheric sciences, meteorology, or climatology. Gore took two science classes as an undergraduate. He got a "C+" in one and a "D" in the other.

Gore was the Democratic Party's candidate for President in the 2000 election, running on a ticket with Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

In his early life, Gore attended Harvard University and (briefly) Vanderbilt University. He also served in the United States Army and worked as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War. He is married to activist Tipper Gore.

Political career

Al Gore followed his father, Albert Gore, Sr. a prominent Democratic Senator from Tennessee, into Congress. His father was a supporter of the New Deal who was finally defeated in 1970, despite having sent his son to Vietnam in order to bolster his campaign.

Al Gore was initially somewhat conservative on social issues, supporting Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court and, along with his wife, opposing offensive lyrics in rock music. But as his presidential aspirations grew, Gore became increasingly liberal.

Gore ran for president in 1988 but was defeated in the primary by Michael Dukakis. Gore then continued to serve in the Senate.

In the 1992 Presidential Election, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton selected Gore as his running mate. They won the election, and Gore was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Gore were elected to a second term in 1996. Gore had little-to-no influence over the Clinton Administration, and almost nothing of significance is attributed to him.^{[Citation Needed]}

As is traditional for Vice Presidents, Gore was nominated as the Democratic candidate in the 2000 Presidential Election. He lost to George W. Bush in the Electoral College after a close vote, in which Gore received more popular votes than Bush, but fewer electoral votes. Gore contested the results in Florida. On December 13, 2000, after an extensive court battle (Bush v. Gore), Gore accepted Bush's election to the presidency.

Al Gore and uncharitableness

See also: Liberal politicians and uncharitableness and Barack Obama and uncharitableness

The political magazine the American Spectator declared:

“

The last two Democratic Party nominees for President have come up short on the charity scale. Al Gore has been famously stingy when it comes to actually giving his own money to charities. In 1998 he was embarrassed when his tax returns revealed that he gave just $353 to charity...

”

Supporters

From left to right: Fred Phelps, Al Gore, and former Kansas Gov. Joan Finney.

In 1988 Gore courted the support of controversial activist Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. In appreciation for Phelps' help and support of Gore, Phelps was provided tickets to the inauguration of President Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Phelps has since changed his opinion about Gore when he joined Bill Clinton on the 1992 presidential ticket. Phelps turned on him and claimed Gore was a conservative icon of the Democratic Party that sold out on some critical social issues. Phelps also demonstrated against Clinton and Gore during the 1997 inaugural.

Current activities

Gore has started an investment firm to invest in environmentally sustainable technology and industries and a cable channel (Current TV), and is an adviser to Google. He was also mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate.

Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.

Gore is the author of The Assault on Reason. He also starred in the 2006 documentary about global warming entitled, An Inconvenient Truth, which won an Academy Award. In 2007, the British High Court directed teachers to inform students to whom they show the film that it "is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument" and to draw attention to eleven specific inaccuracies. Furthermore, the court advised, "If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of ... the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination." Despite the errors, the judge also concluded "four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC.”

Speaking in Manhattan to the fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative, Gore wants to use "civil disobedience" to combat the construction of coal power plants without the ability to capture carbon. Civil disobedience or the call for intentional violation of laws is an extremist point of view. It is believed that he was speaking in regards to Western nation coal plants. No mention of China and their coal production. The gravest threat from coal pollution comes from China, in which two plants are constructed per week and 500 more plants over the next 10 years.

Quotes

• Gore said, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore was one of the Atari Democrats who were given this name due to their "passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse efGore was one of the Atari Democrats who were given this name due to their "passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect." On March 19, 1979 he became the first member of Congress to appear on C-SPAN. During this time, Gore co-chaired the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, along with Newt Gingrich. In addition, he has been described as having been a "genuine nerd, with a geek reputation running back to his days as a futurist Atari Democrat in the House. Before computers were comprehensible, let alone sexy, the poker-faced Gore struggled to explain artificial intelligence and fiber-optic networks to sleepy colleagues." Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have also noted that, "as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises."

• Gore investigated problems in Love Canal and fixed them. The Love Canal controversy began on Nov. 30 when Gore was speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. He was exhorting the students to reject cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens can effect important changes. As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tenn., a town that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue to the attention of Gore's congressional office in the late 1970s. "I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told the students. "I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee--that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all." After the hearings, Gore said, "We passed a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got involved." What sparked his interest in the toxic-waste issue was the situation in Toone--"that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all." After learning about the Toone situation, Gore looked for other examples and "found" a similar case at Love Canal. He was not claiming to have been the first one to discover Love Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies for the hearings.

"I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing. I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue."

"That was the one that started it all. ... We made a huge difference and it was all because one high school student got involved."

"I love Van Jones. I love his work. I love his heart and his commitment and his intellect. I love his mission. He has wisely picked a part of this set of interwoven challenges that should have been addressed much more forcefully by me and others long ago.”

• During an interview with Slate, regarding the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, a question was asked concerning a sense from the Climategate e-mails and from data that was "hidden and hoarded." These truths are the opposite of the case Al Gore made in his book about having an open and fair debate. Gore responded with a lack of command of the most basic details of anything related to Earth and climate. He said,

“

I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. [...] So an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago including somebody’s opinion that a particular study isn’t any good is one thing [...] but where the scientific consensus is concerned, it’s completely unchanged. What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.

”

The most recent emails in Climategate were from November 12, 2009.

Criticism

Cartoon by Greg Sheffield

Ann Coulter claims Gore exaggerated his military service record: "Al Gore endlessly bragged to the media about his service in Vietnam. 'I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we'd fire first and ask questions later,' he told Vanity Fair. And then we found out Gore had a personal bodyguard in Vietnam, the most dangerous weapon he carried was a typewriter, and he left after three months."

In 2007, Al Gore received criticism for his high electricity use. When it was discovered that Gore's electric utility bill is 20 times higher than the average American's many of his detractors accused him of not living up to his own standards. In the year since the 2007 criticism, energy use at Gore's mansion increased 10%. Gore's defenders claim that the majority of that power came from "green", or environmentally friendly, power sources such as solar and wind power. These power sources are much more expensive than traditional power sources such as coal and nuclear power.^{[Citation Needed]}

Also, some conservatives have pointed to Gore's use of a private jet while spreading the message about the dangers of global warming.

Attention has also been called to Gore's profits from mining royalties, specifically the mining of zinc adjacent to his property that he leased in Tennessee, which has released millions of pounds of potentially toxic substances into the environment. The mine has been closed since 2003. New owner Strategic Resource Acquisition is planning to re-open the mine. From The Tennessean (3/12/07):

"Last week, Gore sent a letter asking the company to work with Earthworks, a national environmental group, to make sure the operation doesn’t damage the environment.

'We would like for you to engage with us in a process to ensure that the mine becomes a global example of environmental best practices,' Gore wrote."

However, this was after he had already made $500,000 from the mining operations.

Al Gore's fondness for using buzzwords became the focus of a prank played on Gore by students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996. MIT students distributed a bingo card containing meaningless buzzwords Gore was known for peppering his speeches with, including "infobahn", "knowledge worker", "vector", "high confidence", and "information marketplace". Sure enough, during Gore's speech at MIT, a commotion erupted in the audience when enough buzzwords were said to complete the Bingo card.. Gore's current favorite buzzword is "unified national smart grid", which he promotes in conjunction with his catastrophic global warming prophecies, earning him ridicule as "The Goracle" in a Washington Post article by Dana Milbank. Bjorn Lomborg has additionally criticized Al Gore for framing global warming using buzzword terms as some sort of transcendent generational quest, as when Gore called the so-called "climate crisis" the "chance to experience...a generational mission, the exhileration of a compelling moral purpose, a shared and unifying cause, the thrill of...the restless human need for transcendence."

Fabrications and blunders

• On February 20, 2000, Gore claimed he has “always, always, always” supported Roe v. Wade. However, in 1977, he voted for the Hyde Amendment, which says that abortion “takes the life of an unborn child who is a living human being,” and that there is no constitutional right to abortion. He cast many other votes favorable to the pro-life cause and earned an 84 percent rating over the course of his entire U.S. House career (1977 to 1984) from the National Right to Life Committee.

• On February 4, 2000, Gore claimed, “We had a huge event with 3,000 people at Ohio State University.” In reality, “Officials at that rally said the room where it had taken place did not hold more than 1,200 people, and, given the area needed for the staging erected for the occasion, they estimated the crowd at 500,” according to known liberal media source the New York Times.^{[Citation Needed]}

• On February 2, 2000, on Good Morning America Al Gore claimed, “We won in every single demographic category” in the New Hampshire primary. In reality Bill Bradley carried male voters and voters aged 18-29, according to exit polls.^{[Citation Needed]}

Gore's comment that he "took the initiave in creating the Internet" was criticized in the St. Petersburg Times (Florida):

This was not the first time Gore has overreached. A year ago Gore told reporters that he and his wife, Tipper, at the time when they were college sweethearts, were the inspiration for the novel "Love Story." That came as news to the befuddled author, Erich Segal. [3]

See also

• Al Gore on Breaking News

External links

• Official website
• Al Gore, Ignoble Laureate, Investor's Business Daily, October 5, 2007
• Al Gore News and Commentary from the New York Times
• What Liberals Say - Al Gore, Accuracy In Media