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Al Gore

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Gore hard at work inventing the internet and global warming simultaneously.

Al Gore was Bill Clinton's Vice President (1993–2001), a significant liberal boogeyman, and inventor of the internet. In the 2000 presidential election, he won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush. He was also a Senator and U.S. Representative from Tennessee.

Gore's defeat in the 2000 election, despite popular vote victory and apparent victory in Florida, which a recount would have disclosed, was a result of a Republican strategy taking advantage of possibly the dumbest trial judge in the State of Florida who consistently delayed ordering a recount of the multiply defective Florida election results. Tom Delay paid for busloads of Republican operatives to engage in a near riot outside of the locked room where votes were being counted. When the sharpest lawyers money could buy finagled Gore v. Harris all the way to the US Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia led the Court into one of its most ignominious rulings in history, which was basically that since so much time had elapsed (due to Republican dilatory tactics) there would have been too much of a rush to count the votes, so they would not be counted.

Contents

[edit] Inconvenient truths

  • Despite all the hoo-hah about Florida, the fact remains that in the 2000 presidential election, he lost his home state of Tennessee. Had he won that state, the result of the election in Florida would not have mattered.
  • His running mate in 2000 was Joe Lieberman.
  • In 1993 he debated H. Ross Perot over NAFTA, and took the pro-NAFTA side.
  • His wife Tipper started the Parents Music Resource Center in 1985.
  • (Related to above) He worked with Strom Thurmond to try to introduce a blank tape tax to "combat piracy"; Thurmond's wife was also involved with the PMRC. Of course, the blank tape tax would have the "unintended" side effect of preventing any artist not affiliated with any major record company from releasing their own albums, or reduce the chance of any new record company forming. It failed due to Frank Zappa.
  • Fred Phelps housed campaign workers for his 1989 Presidential run and Fred Phelps Jr. hosted a fundraiser for his Senate campaign.[1] Fred Phelps naturally turned against him later.
  • His poor campaigning lost him relatively easy states such as New Hampshire. Additionally, both his home state of Tennessee and Clinton's state of Arkansas had gone to the Democrats in 1992 and 1996. This may have been because he tried to distance himself from the popular incumbent President Clinton after the President's impeachment.

[edit] Publications

He is also known for his books and documentaries on politics and the environment:

  • Earth in the Balance (book)[2]
  • Assault on Reason (book)

[edit] Inventions

Al Gore created the Internet in 4004 B.C.[3] worked hard in the Senate on policy initiatives that eventually led to the Internet as we know it. Some may not like it, but it happened.[4] Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, the two men who, as much as anyone, can claim to have invented the Internet, say Gore deserves the credit he claimed.[5]

[edit] Business connections

Gore has also been a member of the Board of Directors of Apple, Inc. and a co-founder of the Emmy-winning cable channel Current TV, which specialized in independently produced short-subject documentary films.

[edit] Awards

Gore was a co-winner, along with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his exposure of the causes and consequences of global warming.[6]

This makes Al Gore the first person to achieve the notable feat of winning the Oscar, an Emmy, and a Nobel Prize — and all within the remarkably short period of one year.

[edit] Military service

Unlike many sabre-rattling chickenhawks, Gore declined a position in the National Guard and volunteered to go to Vietnam. "He said that if he found a fancy way of not going, someone else would have to go in his place," recalled his former housemate, actor Tommy Lee Jones.[7] His father was at the time engaged in in 1970 Senate election campaign, with Gore claiming that his failure to enlist would have adversely affected his father's campaign.[8]

He didn't see much fighting, but at least he wasn't hiding in the Texas Air National Guard or spending the duration of the war dealing with an anal cyst.

[edit] Lampoonin'

Al Gore has been lampooned in various forms of American media for his seemingly textbook liberal agenda. In 2006 he was parodied in an episode of South Park in which he insists on informing the residents of the town about the existence of a "half man, half bear, and half pig."[9] Throughout the episode, attempts by some characters to escape from Al Gore or to remove him from the proceedings end with another character defending him, saying "No, I feel kinda bad for him. I don't think he has any friends." The episode ends with Al Gore attaching a cape to himself and pretending to fly off.

[edit] One in every family

Al is a distant cousin of Gore Vidal, a fact neither liked to acknowledge.[10]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. The Man Who Loves to Hate
  2. And the far more popular "Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth" which was about the importance of protecting the Earth from global warming and the dark wizards that cause it.
  3. snopes: Did Al Gore Claim He Invented the Internet?
  4. See the Wikipedia article on High Performance Computing Act of 1991.
  5. Cerf and Kahn's statement.
  6. "The Nobel Peace Prize 2007". Nobelprize.org. 2009. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/.
  7. Al Gore in Vietnam
  8. For Gore, Army Years Mixed Vietnam and Family Politics
  9. ManBearPig - South Park at Wikipedia
  10. Salon: The other Gore 20 September 2000
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