At tonight’s Emmy Awards show, the audience cheered Sally Field’s acceptance speech, which recognized the mothers of U.S. troops. “Surely this [award] belongs to all the mothers of the world,” she stated. “May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised. Especially to the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm’s way, and from war. I am proud to be one of those women.”

Field then continued, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no –” But the Fox Emmycast cut off her sound and pointed the camera away from the stage, silencing the rest of her sentence: “god-damned wars in the first place.” Watch it:

Digg It!

Tonight, Al Gore won an Emmy for Current TV, his global television network that allows viewers to “create and influence what airs on TV.” The audience gave Gore a long standing ovation as he and his Current TV partner, Joel Hyatt, walked onstage to receive the award for “interactive television services.” From Gore’s thank you speech:

[W]e are trying to open up the television medium so that viewers can help to make television and join the conversation of democracy and reclaim American democracy by talking about the choices we have to make

Watch it:

In February, Gore’s film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Oscar for Best Documentary.

Digg It!

Transcript: Read more

Neil the Ethical Werewolf observes:

The silver lining behind Democratic capitulation on Iraq, to talk like a mathematician, is that it reduces the 2008 election to a problem previously solved. 2006 showed us that we can destroy the GOP in an election where public anger about the continuing Iraq War is the big issue, and in 2008 we’ll be replaying that scenario with 7 more GOP Senators up for re-election than last time.

Nobody seems to want to mention it because it’s impolite, but I think this is almost certainly a factor in the congressional politics of Iraq. Not only are Democrats afraid of taking certain kinds of political risks to end the war, but they see no prospect of a political upside to ending it. There was a fairly overwhelming belief in Washington in mid-to-late November 2006 that Republicans would start moving to end the war in January. It didn’t happen, but then came the belief that they would start to abandon ship in September 2007, which also didn’t happen. But given that Republicans aren’t doing what everyone expected them to do and reducing their political exposure on Iraq by winding the war down, Democrats are disinclined to go out on a limb to do it for them.

In his new book, The Age of Turbulence, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan asserts, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows. The Iraq war is largely about oil.” Today on CNN’s Late Edition, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) said he agreed with Greenspan “to a large extent,” adding, “I think it is very remarkable that it took Alan Greenspan all these many years and being out of office for stating the obvious.” Watch it:

UPDATE: Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected Greenspan’s claim. “I wasn’t here for the decision-making process that initiated it, that started the war,” Gates said. But he added, “I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don’t believe it’s true.”

Transcript: Read more