I know you don't like when I say this, but you people living in Florida through Louisiana (and points in between) are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer. As it were.
(I said it that way because I figure you won't understand what I mean.)
I think it's funny that I enraged people with my comments on Florida being full of stupid people the other day. And I explained why I said those things (click here), but none of you managed to click on the link (click here) to understand the bigger picture. Apparently, you are even less smart than I was giving you credit for. (click here)
At this point, I should probably point out the obvious because it may ... well, it may not be obvious to you.
You live in low lying country. Sea level rise is far more of a threat to all of you than to any of us. One of your main industries is tourism, and your tax base is increasingly based on retiree movements. Both of these are related to there being a good environment that is protected and secure.
So, and this is especially for you, Floridians, the anti-global warming environmental candidate runs for office, and instead of voting for him, you vote for the oilman Bush.
Yes, yes, yes, I heard you when you whined that fifty percent of Floridians voted for Bush. Sorry, but the fact is, plain and simple, IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THAT CLOSE!!!! Low lying land reliant on a clean environment. Gore should have won by a landslide.
Anyway, the latest news is infuriating and proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the voting populous of the Gulf States put together would not be able to think their way out of a paper bag.
All of the gulf states have been provided with large numbers of national guard troops to help in the cleanup.
All of the gulf states have, apparently, decided to interfere with the cleanup for political reasons and not accept this important help.
Which. Is. Being. Paid. For. By. BP.
Hey, it is not just your gulf. Stop fucking with it. Make your lame governors govern. And, next election, throw them out. Grow balls. Grow brains. Take your minds off your guns and your gods and your cheap-ass beer and start being real citizens. The rest of the country wants its shrimp and you are ruining it for everybody.
Morans...
Oh, the story is here. Read it, and weep. Because this really should make you cry.
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Unfortunately - I believe you are probably preaching to the choir here. What we really need is for more Northerners to move down here.
I know this is beside the point, but "low lying land reliant on a clean environment" makes a pretty good tongue twister.
Greg is just following the logic. Step 1 then 2...
Quite easy to follow along.
*Facepalm*
Ummm.... you misspelled "morons".
Oh never mind (http://tcpm.mrlazyinc.com/files/images/Funny%203/Morans.jpg)!!
caerbannog: Exactly.
As usual, politics is a lot more complicated than we like.
Like Texas, California, and New York, Florida is populous and rich, hence politicians are targeted by moneyed interests. Did you watch Striptease with Burt Reynolds? Totally true, every word.
I can go to the local Shoe Circus (weird enough) and see a "formerly protected" burrowing owl whose home was plowed under by Mel Sembler. The owl wanders around the shopping center looking for his home, but can't find it. If you don't know Sembler, you should.
We also have "The Council of One Hundred" I kid you not. That's what it's called. Basically it's a formal mechanism for controlling the zombie-governor. Again, google it. It's real.
The Awesome Chuck Shepherd (Go CAP!) puts it best on his site. He calls it "the F state"
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw051106.html
Low lying land reliant on a clean environment. Gore should have won by a landslide.
Not to disagree with the main point here, but it should be remembered that in Y2K Gore was not particularly known as a global warming opponent.
"Bill Clinton's Sidekick" is not the winningest image to run with. Even Hillary Clinton needed eight years of scraping out from under that shadow to win anywhere outside of New York.
Did you watch Striptease with Burt Reynolds? Totally true, every word.
No, but I read the book when it came out. There are parallel themes in other business and financial areas in CH's other books as well. I recommend reading all of them, starting with the first: http://tinyurl.com/25a7zao
...and charged with running down (on his riding lawn mower) estranged neighbor David Ervin, who was also on a riding lawn mower. And in nearby Zephyrhills, in October, retiree Bryan Toll became the third person this year to pay more than $200,000 for a manufactured home at the Betmar Village Mobile Home Park....
Yes, go, now, read them all! Read them all!!!! Seriously!
Not to disagree with the main point here, but it should be remembered that in Y2K Gore was not particularly known as a global warming opponent.
Not to disagree with your point which is semi-correct, IIRC, one of his main platform was "no internal combustion engines by XXXX". He had strong environmental themes when he ran against Clinton 8 years earlier as well.
Oh, please. Al Gore wouldn't have been any more serious about the environment than Bush or Obama, at the end of the day. He uses rhetoric like "sustainable development" and "public-private partnership," which tells you all you need to know about how serious he is.
Capitalism is incompatible with keeping the world habitable. Al Gore is in favor of capitalism. His response to capitalism destroying the environment is to found "Generation Investment Management." That is, his goal is to help the people most responsible for our problems make even more money pretending to solve them.
The only person running in 2000 with any credibility on this issue was Ralph Nader. Even if hell froze over and Nader had won the election, it's doubtful he would've been able to do anything significant, either.
Yes, people who voted for Bush are getting the government they deserve, but nobody should be too proud of themselves because they vote for corporate America's blue team instead of their red team. The truth is that we're beyond screwed no matter what we do, and that was probably the case 10 years ago.
Oh, please. Al Gore wouldn't have been any more serious about the environment than Bush or Obama, at the end of the day.
Nobody needed to get extra serious about the environment. All that needed to happen was for the usual regulatory processes regarding OS drilling to be maintained. What happened instead was the effective gutting of the process by the Bushies.
Oh please, indeed.
Ralph Nader is the REASON we are having this leak. He got enough third party votes to have been as much a contributor to the Bush Era actually happening as the corrupt politicians in Florida and the yahoos of the southern tier. Thanks, Ralph.
Yes, people who voted for Bush are getting the government they deserve, but nobody should be too proud of themselves because they vote for corporate America's blue team instead of their red team. The truth is that we're beyond screwed no matter what we do, and that was probably the case 10 years ago.
There is just enough truth in this to convince the weaker minded that it is valid. But it isn't.
Ralph Nader ... got enough third party votes to have been as much a contributor to the Bush Era actually happening as the corrupt politicians in Florida and the yahoos of the southern tier.
As if all Nader votes otherwise would've gone to Gore. Having lived in Fla then & since, I can tell ya: nuh-uh. Many wouldn't've voted at all without RN on the ballot; others had been so burned so often by the Dems they would've lined up behind almost any protest party (remember, Monica Moorehead's Workers World Party total could also have tipped the state to Gore).
The Katherine Harrises and Jeb!s (& successors), and the yahoos, otoh, there you've got your teeth into meat.
Not to mention the Crazies. If you really want to grok the essence of Floridatude, check out Tim Dorsey's Florida Roadkill, et seq., or just note the home base of News of the Weird.
As if all Nader votes otherwise would've gone to Gore.
Hey, are you making this up as you go along? Who said "all"? The polls at the time suggested that more than enough of Nader's votes would have gone to Gore for him to have won that election.
Have you read the Hiaasen books? If not, start with:
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
Skin Tight
Native Tongue
Strip Tease
I feel ya, Greg....
...still waiting for the intelligent species to evolve. Sadly, it may take a few more mass extinctions...
The polls at the time suggested that more than enough of Nader's votes would have gone to Gore ...
Polls about "mighta-beens", taken after the political train had gone off the rails, fail to persuade. Soon after Nixon resigned, pollsters couldn't find enough people willing to admit voting for him in '72 to reach statistical significance, though '72 was a Nixon landslide.
Yes, I have those Hiaasen titles & more (Nature Girl was particularly well-done) on the shelf. Dorsey is less involved with the political nuts'n'bolts, more gonzo: think Hiaasen channeling Hunter S. Thompson.
Pierce, there are a handful of examples of polls gone wild. But the fact is that polling is a methodology that has merit. Polls, in elections, are almost always right. The vast majority of Naderites would NEVER vote for Bush. Many would not have voted at all had Nader not been in the race. The race was lost by hundreds of votes in Florida. No Nader could have easily swung that vote. Nader took close to 3 percent of the vote nationally. As you will recall, Gore won more popular votes, and in six states he lost by less than 5 percent. New Hampshire was lost by Gore by a very tiny percentage.
It can not be said with certainty, but you'd have to be really dumb to bet against a Gore win if any one of a small number of things were different, and one of those things was Nader being in the race.
... if any one of a small number of things were different, and one of those things was Nader ...
Nader was the butterfly flapping his wings in Shaanxi province who drove the proverbial windstorm across Nebraska, as compared to the constants of the Rocky Mountains (yahoos) and Canadian air masses (Jeb! and friends). He played his part, but I still object to the false equivalence of calling him "as much a contributor" to the outcome as the malevolent elephants still standing in the national living room.
Well, true. He was just as much a contributor because in fact, well, he was. But that put him in company with these elephants of which you speak.
Which is, now that I think of it, why Nader was really fucked up to even enter the race that year. Pure self aggrandizement. And he ruined it for everyone. What a guy.
Pure self aggrandizement.
The Greens went off their own rails by nominating him, not least because Nader was imposed as their candidate through a top-down process, totally antithetical to the professed Green way of doing things.
Nader, having few if any serious ties to the Green Party, then turned the campaign into his own crusade, but I don't see his goal as self aggrandizement per se. He seems to have been driven by a hunger for revenge against the Democrats for all the lies and backstabbing they'd dealt him over the last three decades
While a serious Green-qua-Green candidate would have concentrated on building the party in its strongest states (NE & west coast), poising it for future growth & funding, Nader aimed at splitting the D vote, leaving the Greens in shambles. His quest seems more Ahabian than Quixotic, but more like the latter than, say, Jackson, Perot or other ballot-riding ego trippers. (A friend of mine challenged Nader on his splitter effect during a Y2K Q&A; his reply was, "I guess you haven't been lied to enough.")
But he's still a fart in a hurricane in the 2000 picture.
I haven't seen a reason to think things would've turned out substantially different with respect to the environment if Gore had been elected. Maybe it's because I'm too "weak minded." Maybe it's because there's no reason to think such a thing.
On the one hand, we have "I trust Al Gore's campaign promises and his business-friendly approach to the environment. I also believe that regulations would have been enforced, and that the penalties would be greater than the profits from skirting the regulations."
On the other hand, all of those things are implausible. Would Al Gore really have had the political capital to keep campaign promises that weren't in the interests of the people paying for his campaign? Is there any evidence Americans would've favored the environment over "jobs" once the ads started running? When has a "public-private partnership" been anything except a PR campaign that possibly makes the problem it's intended to solve worse?
Supposing Al Gore passed environmental laws and directed the Justice Department to impose fines, would those fines have been larger than the profits from highly lucrative things like, say, selling oil? If the penalty for breaking the law is less than the profit for doing so, corporations will break the law. Hasn't Ralph Nader made that observation?
Keep in mind that Al Gore had served as Vice President in the administration that passed NAFTA, helped turn Haitian farmers into sweatshop workers, etc. It's simplistic to assume life would've been great and everybody gets a pony if Gore had won and the evil Ralph Nader ruined everything.
Don't forget that the Democrats had majorities in Congress during part of the Bush presidency and they went along with pretty much everything Bush wanted. It's the same Congress Gore would've been working with, assuming he didn't actually rile the Republicans enough for them to get control of Congress. What could Al Gore have achieved with a Republican-led Congress?
"Progressives" don't get anything they want because they make it clear from the beginning that they'll support whatever the Democratics want. Even Kucinich voted for Obama's health care bill in the end.
It's better to stay home on election day or vote for Donald Duck than it is to give our political system the illusion of legitimacy.