Fox News: ‘Blame Al Gore For Your Rising Food Prices’
Fox News: ‘Blame Al Gore For Your Rising Food Prices’
Yesterday on Fox News’s Hannity’s America, host Sean Hannity attempted to blame Al Gore for skyrocketing global food prices:
But how did the food shortage become so acute so fast? The growing consensus is that the crop deficit is directly related to the increased demand for production of, quote, “earth friendly” bio fuels, an effort pushed by none other than the vanquished vice president Al Gore and all in the name of quote, “saving the planet.”
Fox News also promoted the segment on its website with the headline, “Gore’s Grocery: Blame Al Gore for your rising food prices.” Watch it:
Hannity pins ethanol production — and hence, the entire food crisis — on Gore by pointing to a 1998 statement in which the then-vice president said he was “proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in Congress.” But as Ellen at News Hounds points out, Hannity failed to mention that more recently, Gore has endorsed cellulosic ethanol over corn-based ethanol.
Additionally, there is no one cause for the food shortage. Biofuel production has been a factor but is not solely responsible. The real culprits are: changing diets, global warming and drought, high energy costs, and investors fleeing the dollar and going into commodities.
Later in the segment, Hannity once again attempted to smear Gore by falsely stating that he said Tropical Cyclone Nargis was a consequence of “global warming.” As The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson pointed out, this allegation is based on a doctored clip of an NPR interview with Gore.
Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »
Right-wing echo chamber promotes doctored and deceptive audio clip of Al Gore.
Right-wing echo chamber promotes doctored and deceptive audio clip of Al Gore.
Earlier this week, the Business & Media Institute (BMI) – a right-wing front group founded by Brent Bozell – spliced and doctored an NPR interview of Al Gore in order to allege that Gore said something which he did not. The organization published a false headline which blared that Gore called the Myanmar cyclone a “consequence” of global warming. Drudge promoted it on his site:
But in the NPR interview, Gore asserted that melting polar ice caps — not cyclones — were a “consequence” of global warming (which is unequivocally due to global warming). BMI inverted Gore’s comments to make it seem like his remarks about the cyclones followed from his remarks about “the consequences of global warming.” Yesterday, Fox News promoted the doctored clip to make the same false allegations about what Gore actually said. The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson, who broke the story, has the full details here.
Gore: It Is ‘Obscene’ That Bush Has Dismissed ‘George Washington’s 200-Plus Year Prohibition On Torture’
Gore: It Is ‘Obscene’ That Bush Has Dismissed ‘George Washington’s 200-Plus Year Prohibition On Torture’
On April 9, ABC News reported that in 2002, President Bush’s most senior advisers approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics. Days later, Bush confirmed to ABC he “approved” of the tactics. Since the ABC report, the media have largely ignored the story. Morever, it took 14 days for a reporter to raise the issue in a White House press briefing.
During an interview this morning on NPR, former Vice President Al Gore criticized Bush for approving the techniques, calling it “obscene,” adding that his use of signing statements is “a raw assertion of authority outside the boundaries of the law”:
GORE: Ultimately the guarantor of our freedoms are the people. And these kinds of outrages, a president saying that he has the right turn George Washington’s 200-plus year prohibition against torture and torture anyone he wants with his assistants gathering in the basement of the White House — according to recent revelations — personally reviewing the kinds of torture techniques being used prisoner by prisoner, its obscene.
Listen here:
Highlighting Bush’s “arrogation of authority,” Gore also noted that the Bush administration has “refused to comply with the Supreme Court decision” requiring it to regulate “global warming pollution” under the Clean Air Act.
While Gore called Bush’s abuses of power “outrages,” the media does not seem to be as concerned. However, the House Judiciary Committee provided a bright spot today, voting to subpoena David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, to compel him to testify about the administration’s interrogation programs.
Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »
Graham Claims McCain Has Done ‘Even More’ Than Al Gore On Global Warming
Graham Claims McCain Has Done ‘Even More’ Than Al Gore On Global Warming
An online ABC News article on the “surrogate wars” of this year’s presidential election quoted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), an ardent supporter of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) candidacy, saying that McCain has “earned a reputation…of doing things that put the country ahead of party.” As an example, Graham cited McCain’s environmental record, claiming that it’s stronger that former Vice President Al Gore’s:
“He’s not going to run away from President Bush but at the end of the day, John McCain has earned a reputation, and has the scars to show it, of doing things that put the country ahead of party,” Graham said, noting McCain has differed with the party on immigration, his desire to close Guantanamo Bay, and enacting robust climate change policies.
“Climate change is the road less traveled but he’s traveled it even more than Al Gore,” Graham said. “Al Gore has talked about it and deserves great recognition but he was around here a long time and never introduced a bill.”
On its face, Graham’s claim is laughable. But digging deeper into the substance, it rings of pure absurdity. In fact, Gore held the first congressional hearings on climate change in the late 1970s, well before McCain was even elected to Congress.
In 1997, Gore helped broker the Kyoto Protocol which called for nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the passing of a Senate resolution stating that the U.S should not join Kyoto, Gore symbolically signed the protocol in November, 1998. While McCain voted for the resolution condemning Kyoto, he claims today that “we have an obligation” to cut greenhouse gases but still thinks the U.S. “did the right thing by not joining the Kyoto treaty.”
Moreover, the evidence shows that McCain is confused on environmental issues. He now supports ethanol despite previously criticizing it. McCain has talked tough on capping carbon emissions but failed to even vote on key Senate legislation addressing the issue. Furthermore, he doesn’t seem to understand his own position on cap-and-trade:
In the Republican debate in Florida, he denied that his cap-and-trade program included a mandatory cap on carbon. (One wonders what he thought that first word was doing in there.) He has said he won’t support a cap-and-trade bill unless it includes extra support for nuclear power (because nuclear power is low-carbon), not seeming to grok the fact that the whole point of a cap-and-trade program is to raise prices on carbon, offering a de facto subsidy to all low-carbon options.
While Gore was starring in the Oscar winning global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change, McCain has been trying to build an environmental record that is just strong enough to anger conservatives and fool the media into continuing to call him a “maverick.” But the reality is that McCain’s record falls well short of the leadership Gore has shown on the issue.
Gore warns Wall Street of ’subprime carbon’ industry.
Gore warns Wall Street of ’subprime carbon’ industry.
In remarks before a “high-profile business crowd,” Al Gore compared the financial risks facing investors in carbon-based industries with the meltdown in the house market for subprime mortgages given to people with blemished credit records or low incomes. Gore said:
You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you — as my longtime good redneck friends in Tennessee say, I guarandamntee you — that if you really take a fine-tooth comb and go through your portfolios, many of you are going to find them chock-full of subprime carbon assets. […]
The assumption that you can safely invest in assets that come from business models that assume carbon is free is an assumption that is about to go splat. … You have lots of assets, many of you do, in your portfolios right now that truly do deserve that epithet “subprime.”
Bolton On Global Warming Conference: ‘If Anyone’s Isolated Here, It’s Al Gore’
Bolton On Global Warming Conference: ‘If Anyone’s Isolated Here, It’s Al Gore’
Recently, former Vice President Al Gore — to “rapturous” applause — slammed the Bush administration for being “principally responsible for obstructing progress in Bali” by opposing mandatory greenhouse gas caps.
Yesterday on Fox News, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton criticized Gore, claiming that he is “wrong” on the climate change issue. Bolton claimed that the U.S. was pursuing the right path by refusing to support mandatory limits on climate change, since Canada, Japan, Russia, and China also oppose them:
Well, not unusual for Vice President Gore to be wrong, either, as he is in this case. Of the G8 industralized democracies, four — the United States, Japan, Canada, and Russia — share our view. .. If you look at the developing countries, Brazil, India, and China all oppose these targets as well. So, the notion that this is the fault of the U.S. is wrong.
If anybody’s isolated here, I think it’s the Europeans and Al Gore. … This is a U.N. conference after all, and that’s principally what people like to do — blame us for all the problems.
Watch it:
Bolton is part of the fringe, discredited global warming denial community that claims there is still a debate on the causes of global warming. Just last month, he told the New York Times:
I don’t think the world has a correct temperature. It goes up and it goes down.
In 2005, he “recommended scrapping” over 400 passages from a 38-page U.S. draft prepared for a U.N. climate change summit, even requesting that “respect for nature” be cut from the document.
Bolton’s environmental cluelessness is underscored by his belief that India and China, two of the heaviest greenhouse gas emitters, are a model for the U.S. to follow at Bali. Furthermore, as “the only major industrialized nation to reject the Kyoto treaty, [the U.S.] is widely seen as the outcast of Bali,” noted the LA Times.
Bolton seems to think his ideological penchant for U.S. unilateralism can be used for war in the Middle East as well as climate change.
Al Gore’s Nobel Speech: Rumors Of My Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated
Al Gore’s Nobel Speech: Rumors Of My Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech this morning in Oslo, Norway, Al Gore remarked that he shared a fate with Alfred Nobel — the creator of the Nobel Prize.
Gore noted that Nobel, who had been derided by the press as “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention of dynamite, later “made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace”:
One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention — dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace. Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.
In his Nobel speech, Gore referenced the fact that seven years ago this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Bush v. Gore:
Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken — if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.
Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.”
Watch a portion of Gore’s speech:
Gore said that seven years from now, if we fail to address the climate crisis, there is a chance that the North Polar ice cap will have vanished:
[T]he earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.
We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now.
Read the full transcript of his speech HERE.
Snow Slams Gore’s Book, Says It Should Be ‘Reprinted’ Because It Calls Out Bush’s ‘Deception’
Snow Slams Gore’s Book, Says It Should Be ‘Reprinted’ Because It Calls Out Bush’s ‘Deception’
In his new book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore wrote that Bush’s efforts to connect Iraq to 9/11 were an example of the administration’s willful “deception” of the public:
When the administration is told specifically and repeatedly by the most authoritative sources that there is no linkage, but then in spite of the best evidence continues to make bold and confident assertions to the American people that leave the impression with 70 percent of the country that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda and was primarily responsible for the 9/11 attack, this can only be labeled deception. [p.108]
This afternoon, White House press secretary Tony Snow took issue with this passage. “[Bush] has never tried to make” the connection between Iraq and 9/11, Snow said. “And what [Gore] is doing, it’s been tried by a lot of other people, which is to take something the president hasn’t said, expose it as a, quote, lie, and then beat him up for it. … The president’s been straight about the intel.”
Snow attacked Gore’s book, saying, “I don’t know if they’re going to do a reprinting of the book to try to get the facts straight. The fact-checkers may have to take a look at it.” He added, “These are highly complex publishing issues and I can’t be an expert on them.” Watch it:
To justify the war, Bush informed Congress on March 19, 2003 that acting against Iraq was consistent with “continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”
As ThinkProgress has repeatedly documented, Vice President Cheney cited “evidence” cooked up by Douglas Feith and others to claim it was “pretty well confirmed” that Iraq had contacts with 9/11 hijackers.
More generally, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the administration encouraged the false impression that Saddam had a role in 9/11. Bush never stated then, as he does now, that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11. Only after the Iraq war began did Bush candidly acknowledge that Iraq was not operationally linked to 9/11.
UPDATE: In a conference call this afternoon, Vice President Gore responded to Snow’s attack, saying: “Unlike the President’s State of the Union address, this book was actually fact checked.”
Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »
Sawyer’s Interview Focuses On Media’s Obsessions With Gore, Reaffirms Thesis Of His Book
Sawyer’s Interview Focuses On Media’s Obsessions With Gore, Reaffirms Thesis Of His Book
In his new book, The Assault on Reason, which will be released tomorrow, Al Gore explains “why logic and reason and the best evidence available and the scientific discoveries do not have more force in changing the way we all think about the reality we are now facing.” Gore explains that part of the explanation lies in how much television viewing time is devoted to coverage of “serial obsessions,” such as the Anna Nicole Smith and JonBenet Ramsey.
In her interview with Al Gore this morning, ABC’s Diane Sawyer displayed the media’s propensity to focus on their “serial obsessions” rather than substantive issues that currently affect the country.
Sawyer’s first question to Gore was “You’re not going to tell me again that you have no plans to run, are you?” Gore quickly disposed