Al Gore Saves the Planet!

He's on a renewed campaign to save the planet. The Democratic Party, however, is on it's own. At least for now. Big Al has bigger fish to fry. In this interview with Leslie Stahl on CBS's 60 Minutes, Al, for the 100th time tells the media he's through with politics, and doesn't see himself running for President again. He's still an uncommitted superdelegate and won't say who he's for in the Democratic Primary. More importantly, he and Tipper have donated all the profits from An Inconvenient Truth and his Nobel Peace Prize toward an advertising campaign to stress the importance of doing something now about Global Warming.

If you listen carefully, it's an almost political answer when asked to confirm what one of his lawyers said about the Supreme Court's Decision regarding the 2000 election. He says "it doesn't feel right" to ascribe political motives to the five judges in the majority. I leave you to draw your own conclusion. One of the best quotes of the interview, he chuckles when Stahl tells him that one of the people who don't believe humans are the cause of global warming is the current Vice-President. He asks, "Dick Cheney?" And then goes on to say:

"I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off."

I'm glad he's saving the planet, but it's too bad we don't have an Al Gore helping to save the Democratic Party from itself. Maybe things will work out and he won't be needed, and that's a good thing because he's busy.

Breaking News: Siegelman Free Pending Appeal

Dan Abrams of MSNBC and Crooks and Liars are reporting that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be freed tomorrow pending appeal. The initial 60 Minutes story is here. An indication that the judge in the case believes there were some irregularities in the bribery case that landed the governor in jail. Those irregularities point squarely in the direction of Karl Rove and the US Attorneys scandal. The scandal involves the politicization of the US Attorney General's office and lead to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Politico is calling it a victory for the blogosphere.

Democracy is a Scary Thing

First I have to apologize for some of the editorial commentary in the titles of this video. It was the best Youtube video I could find of this clip and I didn't record the show myself so I couldn't put my own clip up. Last week I put up the second of a couple clips of an informed voter. The first one I titled, An Informed Voter is a Beautiful Thing. The scary, but absolutely necessary thing about Democracy is that everyone gets a vote, informed or not. It shouldn't be any other way, of course, but it's one of the tricky things about democracy.

Last week on the death of William F. Buckley, Keith Olbermann reminded us that Buckley once said that the uneducated shouldn't be allowed to vote. But a democracy that doesn't allow all to participate is not a real democracy. The challenge of our system of government is to find ways to engage voters in the process and to encourage people to be informed. Some may look at a voter like the one in the CBS clip and blame him for what's wrong with our system. Obviously he bears some responsibility for being informed as a voter, but the responsibility as a whole lies with all of us and with the system as a whole. I think if anything can be blamed it's an attitude. And I lay at least some of that blame on CNN.

Ok, I'm not blaming them alone, but something I call the CNN mentality. The kind of fast food, consumerist, couch potato attitude we have, as Americans, about being informed. That we can sit on our ample arses, and I include my own ample arse along with the rest of them, and believe that we can be informed. That is that someone can inform us, and all we have to do is consume it. Being informed is an active proposition. Like getting in shape, or eating healthy. You have to do something yourself in order to get your body in shape, no one can do it for you and it is the same with the mind. And you have to do it constantly, it's not something you accomplish and are finished.

The essential element of being informed is critical thinking. That we examine everything that is presented to us with a critical eye. That we question it. That we check sources and compare them with other sources. That we make sure the things we are being fed through the media make sense. I call it the CNN mentality because of their tagline which epitomizes the mindset. You don't hear it so much these days during this election season. It has largely been replaced with "the best political team on television" which I paraphrase as the best political team in show business. But their regular tag line is, or at least was, "the most trusted name in news."

What does that tell us? To sit back on our couch and relax as this trusted name tell us what's going on in the world. It's easy to be informed. Let CNN do it for us. Just pick up the remote. It is the equivalent of those scam diets that tell you that you can loose weight but you can eat what you want and you don't have to change your habits. BS. I know because I am spending way too much time sitting here doing this. The tendency then is not to think and not to question.

They have the avuncular Wolf Blitzer in the mold of the icon Walter Kronkite. Someone who is easy to listen to and easy to trust. But this my friends is the fast food of being informed. And we are all so busy and have to make a living and there are so many sources out there, many of them full of misinformation, that it's easy to grab that quick and easy McNews. We all do it. I am guilty as any.

But we all have to push ourselves to go a little further. Don't do it all at once. It's just like exercising. You can't run a marathon the first day. You don't want to get a brain cramp. Start small. Question something you hear. Find another source. Get your google and Wikipedia on. One further word of advice. People, if cable news is the SuperSize meal of being informed, email forwards are the twinkies. The are sweet, easy to consume, and addictive. But they will make you a mental lard ass. If you question everything you get on cable news, or anywhere else, doubly question anything that comes in an email forward. What's the source? Does it make sense? Check it against other sources.

Our democracy can only be as strong as the voters who participate in it. Uninformed voters make a weak democracy. Informed voters are mentally strong and therefore of necessity, make our democracy stronger. BTW, the entire video of the 60 Minutes video above is here. You can watch it online.

A Note on CBS Video:
I could have embedded the video it here, but there's one problem. And that's that CBS has such a convoluted scheme of protecting their video from download that it won't show up if you're using Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) as your browser. That's a problem because almost 30 percent of users have IE7 and I don't know if it will show up in IE6 or IE5. Amateurs at video like CBS should let their videos go on Youtube and forget about it. Instead they have geeks come up with a scheme that eliminates a good portion of the browsers on the market. Probably a sign of their commitment to allowing people to embed their videos on blogs and web sites in the first place. Ok I shouldn't blame it all in CBS. It's at least half Microsoft's fault. After all, it works in Firefox.

-Fight the powers.

Help Speak Out for Don Siegelman

A post at the blog at-Largely.com is targeting attacks by the Birmingham News on Don Siegelman, the unfairly indicted former Alabama Governor. I should make a practice of calling him what he his, because he is in effect a political prisoner of the Bush Administration. If you agree with the post, they are asking that you email or call the Birmingham News and let them know how many people know and care about this case of injustice. I plan to write them now.

-Fight the powers.

Rove Holds Up "Free Don Siegelman" Banner

A pretty gutsy gotcha by Bradblog contributor Alan Breslauer. Rove denies the allegations made by Dana Jill Simpson Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes. Hit the Bradblog link to hear what he says. In denying the allegations Rove says "I'm a myth." And, "Anything you can't explain, blame on Rove." I'd like to see him use the myth defense before congress.

In Case You Missed It: 60 Minutes on Don Siegelman

Here's the 60 Minutes piece on Don Siegelman in two parts, above and below. It aired during the Oscars so you might have missed it. Not only that but with the McCain lobbyist/not really a sex scandal, Obamania, and the many faces of Hillary Clinton this weekend, a story like this could get overlooked.

It is understandable, after all, it's only about the president's chief political adviser politicizing the legal arm of the US government and making a former state governor a political prisoner. I mean, it's not like Bush got a blow job from an intern in the White House or anything. If that happened we'd have to go through another one of those pain in the a** impeachment trials. That'd really suck (no pun intended). But back to the Oscars, Jon Stewart was great wasn't he?

More on Don Siegelman, Cuba, Castro and Irony

The video above is from a 2004 interview with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman discussing irregularities in vote counts when he ran for re-election. A few posts back I wrote about new revelations regarding Siegelman's conviction on bribery charges being featured on 60 minutes Sunday. About how Republican lawyer Jill Simpson admitted doing "opposition research" for Karl Rove to catch Siegelman in a compromising position.

A few days ago I posted this video about the irony of George Bush scolding the Castro brothers for holding unfair elections. If it turns out that Rove and his minions through the US Attorney's office targeted Siegelman with a politically motivated prosecution, convicting him on trumped up charges, we will have another irony to add to the list. George Bush will have what amounts to a political prisoner.

With regard to Cuba and Fidel Castro what we'll have is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. And one more way that the Bush administration has sullied the reputation of the US in the eyes of the world, by doing the kinds of things I learned in Civics class in High School only happened in Communist countries and under dictatorships. But then I never really bought a good portion of the crap they taught us in Civics as we fought an unjust war in Vietnam and beat down peaceful student protesters and civil rights marchers.

Is that why we shouldn't do things like torture prisoners or spy on our citizens? So that when we lecture Communists, dictators, terrorists, and militant religious extremists about it, we don't look like total hypocrites? I was probably absent when they taught that in Civics class. There is a second part to the video above on Youtube. The video below is an interview of a lawyer supporting Siegelman and outlines what was wrong with his prosecution. It is also in several parts. Click on either video to see them on Youtube and see the additional videos.

-Fight the powers.

Is Rove the Teflon Turd Blossom?

So far Bush's Brain has managed to survive stories of spreading scandal to sink the re-election bid of Texas Governor Ann Richards, and the 2000 presidential candidacy of John McCain. He was suspected of some involvement in Plame-gate. And he is the suspected mastermind behind the effort to use the US Attorney's office politically for the benefit of the Republican party in a scandal that sunk the career of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Yet Mr. Rove has managed, so far, to escape any serious legal entanglements as a result of those suspicions. Some of Rove's nefarious dealings are revealed in this 60 Minutes piece to air this Sunday, and may finally lead to some legal trouble for him. Will charges of dirty dealing finally stick to Rove. Or will he turn out to be the the Teflon Turd Blossom?