After eight long, tiresome years, President Al Gore won't be missed.

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/14/al-gore-democrats-us-news

No one thought Al Gore would be a loveable president, but, after eight years in the White House, he has gotten truly tiresome. The droning voice, the purchase of an eco-friendly robot dog, the campaign for carbon-free diamonds - all these things were hard to take, and he has been way too smug about reversing global warming. I think we've gone too far in the opposite direction, especially in light of the glacier that recently crushed Wasilla.

I think I started to dislike Gore when he stirred up a media storm after the Feds broke up the terrorist ring conspiring to fly airplanes into buildings back in 2001. He could have let it pass quietly, as Bill Clinton did with the millennium plot arrests in 2000. Instead, Gore held a press conference to milk it for political gain and scare us into a 15 cent per gallon gas tax. But who can afford to pay over a dollar and a half per gallon? No wonder we're resorting to electric cars these days.

To be sure, Gore did accomplish some good things in foreign policy. The Middle East is definitely better off now that Israel and Palestine are separate states. It was clever to transfer the most diehard West Bank settlers to the Gore Biosphere in North Dakota. But in Iraq, even after the demise of Saddam from virulent salmonella, Qusay has proved to be no more agreeable than his father, and Uday is simply out of control. (Grinding up the players of the national football team and roasting the remains on a stadium-sized spit was the nadir of his coaching.) When a group of foreign-policy luminaries - from Bill Kristol to Paul Wolfowitz and Kenneth Pollack - urged Gore to invade Iraq and remake the entire Middle East, the president didn't even listen. That's rude.

Of course, the biggest disappointment was Gore's failure to handle Hurricane Katrina properly. Not only did the massive evacuation of New Orleans prove a costly and time-consuming overreaction, since the levees - fortified in 2003 - held up fine. The emergency management agency also took over 24 hours to set up trailers for evacuees along the Gulf Coast, leaving them without government housing assistance for a full day. And Gore's decision to single-handedly venture into a flattened house in Mississippi and free a trapped two-year-old showed him to be an irresponsible showboat. Sure, President Gore knows CPR, hears like a German shepherd, and has the strength of 10 men - but we didn't need to see it.

[Demit]

1. I am filled with a sense of ineffable longing. Oh, well.

[barbtries]

11. yes, that's it

a sense of ineffable longing. all that could have been history. sigh.

[NJCher]

2. Love it

Very creative premise for a "goodbye bush" column.

The writer is a member of this think tank:

http://www.newamerica.net/



Cher

[zeemike]

3. Of all the words of mice and men,

The saddest are...it might have been.

All of this because one supreme cort justice was more interested in promoting his own ideology than doing justice.

[Enthusiast]

4. Fantastic!

But Al Gore didn't even need to be president to foil 9/11. He proposed we strengthen cabin doors on the airliners well before 2000. But he was mocked by Republicans and Limbaugh for wanting to waste money on such a foolish suggestion. Remember? Why doesn't the mainstream media mention this? It was going to cost like $300 per plane!

[zeemike]

13. You know I had forgotten about that.

But the media was too busy telling us that he claimed to invent the internet and ridiculing his earth tone dress.
Fucking assholes that they are.

[Mira]

5. PRICELESS KICKED & RECOMMENDED

[Soylent Brice]

6. i wanted to laugh, but realized how angry hearing that made me, and

instead, i sulked.

[Autumn]

7. So damn sad

what might have been.

[ejpoeta]

8. i really wonder what the past eight years would have been like had we had al gore.

i mean, would we have a viable alternative energy vehicle. yes, we have the prius, but al gore would have pushed the big 3 to do SOMETHING. then maybe they wouldn't be teetering right now. but then again, we would have had the regulations in place to at least mitigate the economic turmoil that has made it hard to get loans to buy vehicles anyway.

man. there are so many things that might have been different. i am not sure gore could have stopped september 11th, but i bet he wouldn't have ignored the pdb that bush did.

we cannot change what has happened. I wish, like the egyptians, we could scratch out gw's entire existence. but we can't. and we need to remember so hopefully we can prevent it from happening again. the next time during an election people start talking about wanting to have a beer with someone, we can just show a picture of dubya and that may be enough to right the thinking. hopefully.

[progressoid]

9. Ha.

Kind of like that SNL skit he did.

[Shiver]

10. Brilliant!

'Sure, President Gore knows CPR, hears like a German shepherd, and has the strength of 10 men - but we didn't need to see it.'

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I read the whole thing on the website. Was hoping for some mention of Lieberman being removed from the ticket for something incredibly embarrassing and disgusting, though...

[grace0418]

12. This makes me want to laugh and cry all at once.

What a different world we would have.

[LeftishBrit]

14. k&r - and a shocking last sentence!

[Aristus]

15. Reminds me of the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

Doesn't sound like a curse unless you actually ARE living through interesting times, like the last eight years.

Ah, what might have been.

[Uncle Joe]

16. A most excellent column!

Thanks for sharing, Thankfully_in_Britain.:thumbsup:

[DavidDvorkin]

17. Painfully funny.

[Festivito]

18. The stories of Saddam grinding people were slowly retracted.

The people who reported it, later said that they really didn't have any credible knowledge of such occurrence. The articles did not get reported widely, especially since it would have given the public mixed signals after we attacked Iraq.

Carbon free diamonds? NO. Atmospheric CO2 would be made into diamonds under the Gore admin.

I love this type of alternate future projection. Thanks.

Gore would not tout his thwarting of planes into buildings. Republicans would claim he was wasting time and taxpayer money on scatter-brained conspiracy theories. Republicans doubt this kind of attack could actually happen. They liken it to the wasted efforts of Clinton who found various criminals carrying bomb devices they had no hope of detonating.

Could include the DOW, ... being so high and Republicans complaining that they would have increased it faster.

In fact Republicans pushed for the unlimiting of lending large banks could provide and Gore vetoed it.

The world Trade Center has been razed and instead a beautiful new Living Interactivity Concourse is being constructed as a beacon to the new living creature respect movement.

The debt nearly paid and Republicans complaining that so few people actually need Social Security that it should be abolished. Gore promptly increased the payments to the neediest recipients.

Republicans also complain of the US supplying computer connections to the entire world, even remote locations now have satellite internet connections at taxpayer expense of nearly a billion a year. Four dollars per person a year for two years, exclaims a Republican spokesperson, so some Alpaca herder in Peru can text his newest best buddy somewhere in the Sahara dessert -- ridiculous.

The worst is the national health care system. Some were saying that the US would lag behind in pointers such as life expectancy. (Imagine the US behind Canada in life expectancy. That was laughable.) The cost, that even includes visitors to the US is nearly $3,000 per capita it simply too high and cuts need to be made. (Some idiot projects that we would have been paying $7,000 per capita-year and still having over 10% covered by no insurance except emergency care and even that would have bankrupted them. Idiots! I tell 'ya.)

Our trade surplus continues to rise despite efforts to open free trade zones in a host of other areas of the world. The newest, with India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan together focuses on human rights versus the old corporate rights and might redefine the free trade agreements around the world.

Oh, it's fun.

[FourScore]

19. This is GREAT!!!

Thank you so much for posting this.

[ms liberty]

20. KR&B. I am still heartbroken. He would have been one of the greatest. *sigh* n/t

[MasonJar]

21. Oh, what could have been!!!!!!!!!!!! Very clever. This should be on the

front page throughout America.

[Chulanowa]

22. Hahahaha!

"He has hearing like a german shepherd and the strength of ten men!"

[earth mom]

23. Gore should be "the one" being inaugurated next week.

:cry: