Nobel Prize Caps Year of Highs for Al Gore

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Prize Caps Year of Highs for Gore
By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: October 12, 2007

For Al Gore, winning the Nobel Peace Prize today is the latest twist in a remarkable decade of soaring highs and painful lows. In the span of the last decade he went from being the vice president to being the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to winning the popular vote for president only to lose in the Electoral College — after an intervention by the Supreme Court made his 537-vote loss in Florida official. (NOTE: The assertion that Gore lost Florida by 537 votes is, according to any number of sources -- pardon the expression -- crap. NO ONE disputes the fact that more people in Florida went to the polls in 2000 with the intention of voting for Gore. What happened to them, and/or their votes, after that is a black mark on the history of our nation.)

Mr. Gore’s decision to give up the fight after the Supreme Court decision left some of his more die-hard supporters bitter, and he by and large retreated from public view for several years. He rarely inserted himself in the public debate, though he did venture out to speak against the invasion of Iraq before it happened. But, associates have said, it was during that quasi-exile that Mr. Gore broke free of the political consultancy that had come to surround him to find his true voice, returning to the environmental issues to which he had devoted his early political career.

Even before Mr. Gore won an Emmy for his so-called “user generated” cable television network, Current, or an Oscar for his film on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he was growing in stature for another reason: his early opposition to the Iraq war.

He had initially voiced it in 2002 in an address that his newly galvanized supporters now describe as uncannily prescient and unfairly dismissed, though it was seen as a politically off-kilter at a time of great popularity for President George W. Bush.

The awarding of the Nobel Prize to him was certain to further intensify calls for him to enter the Democratic nominating contest for president....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/us/12cnd-gore.html?hp

[Mabus]

1. And we've still got 3 1/2 months left to go

Gore still has a lot left up sleeve. I just saw that the Alliance for Climate Change is going to spend between $100 million and $200 million on a PR campaign for awareness on global climate change.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Great news! nt

[Mabus]

3. I saw it on a CNN scroll

I assume that's why he's having a press conference this afternoon.