http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20...

Edited to add excerpts:

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Former Vice President Al Gore is basking in the global spotlight for nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar, but a growing number of Democrats want him to make another bid for the presidency.
He says he is interested in a "different kind of campaign to try to change enough minds" to solve the global-warming problem, but that doesn't stop people from asking.
Mr. Gore spoke to 1,500 Silicon Valley leaders gathered Friday for the annual "State of the Valley" conference, hosted by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network. The audience sent the Democrat questions via text-messaging during the speech. The first on the list, projected on jumbo screens to Mr. Gore's left and right: "Will you run for president?"
He tried to dodge the question, rolling his eyes and inspiring laughter from the crowd, but he couldn't avoid the probing glances in the crowd or the attendee who shouted, "Please?"
"I don't have any plans to run for president, but I appreciate the request," he said, after a pause.
Not everyone is convinced, and "Draft Gore" movements are sprouting across the country.
<...>
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(Edited for big goofs!)

This past week, I, along with ~250 others, were in a training session with Al Gore on the global warming issue. I came back home late on Thursday night and am still trying to recover from the emotional high and calm down enough to write a rational report on it!

It was just amazing -- I am a Professor, I talk for about 75 minutes at a time and do it 4 times a week. He spoke from 8 am one morning to 5:45 pm that day, with two 10 minute breaks and one 1 hour break for lunch (and yet he could not finish his part of the lecture and so conducted another one hour session at 7:30 the next morning!): that is a total of about 8 and a half hours that he was fully engaged with us.

I am trying to say this as dispassionately as I possibly can: but his command of the scientific issues, his intelligent engagement with the audience, his passion for the issue, his absolutely amazing stamina, and above all, the spellbound and yet alert attention that he was completely given by the audience, is just unbelievable.

This past week, I, along with ~250 others, were in a training session with Al Gore on the global warming issue. I came back home late on Thursday night and am still trying to recover from the emotional high and calm down enough to write a rational report on it! It was just amazing -- I am a Professor, I talk for about 75 minutes at a time and do it 4 times a week. He spoke from 8 am one morning to 5:45 pm that day, with two 10 minute breaks and one 1 hour break for lunch (and yet he could not finish his part of the lecture and so conducted another one hour session at 7:30 the next morning!): that is a total of about 8 and a half hours that he was fully engaged with us. I am trying to say this as dispassionately as I possibly can: but his command of the scientific issues, his intelligent engagement with the audience, his passion for the issue, his absolutely amazing stamina, and above all, the spellbound and yet alert attention that he was completely given by the audience, is just unbelievable. Follow me over the fold for the report from the training...

I have followed his career for about 7 years now and was fully expecting to be fairly impressed. But what he did simply blew me away -- and my impression is that mine was not a unique experience. Every single person in that room seemed mesmerized by his performance. They sat through that incredible 10 hour day, followed him then to a dinner/concert, retired gloriously tired and came back with even more enthusiasm at 7:30 the next morning for another dose. The most heartening yet funny moment came when, upon the close of that marathon day session Gore said that in order to leave enough time for the scheduled sessions of the next day, we would have to start the day early, people actually clapped!

First, a little background. When Al released his movie and the book, on one of his rounds promoting it, he apparently casually tossed out, in response to a question about follow-up, that he was going to train a thousand people to help him disseminate the message of the movie and the book! This was just a few months ago. So his staff panicked and started arranging things so this could actually happen. They sent discreet solicitations and were inundated (for their operation size!) with applications from wannabe trainees like me. Anyway, they did their first session in early December and this was the second batch (here in the US; they had done a small one in Australia).

Our class consisted roughly of 250 people from every walk life conceivable, seemingly! We all arrived at Nashville Tennessee on Tuesday afternoon for registration -- they had a small number of volunteers and staff (also small in number) at the desk, who were friendly beyond any normal norm and way too cheerful!

Following registration, there was a get together of the trainees, where we all mingled and got to know each other. There were people from all 50 states (no doubt by design, but still nice to see -- they give us color groups to belong to, so that we could network with people in our region and possibly pool our resources when we were ready to take action. There were at least 10 people from Texas!! And we have made great plans to attack as a group!!!

After that, we walked over to a German place right across the street, for dinner and a reception with the Gores. Everyone was advised earlier to be discreet about taking pictures, but nobody seemed to remember the injunctions -- flashes galore as people clamored to have their pictures taken with him and shake his hand and chat him up even for a few minutes. There is only one reason why I ever want to talk to him and sure enough, I popped the question: "what would it take to convince you to run in '08" -- and his answer was still the same: "I am running a different kind of campaign"

I tried to take the easier route by talking to Tipper Gore -- she was gracious and indulged me for nearly 15 minutes. I spoke to her too about the only thing obsessing me now and that was his run. She seemed quite unequivocal that he will not run. More about this in another diary at a later date...

We retired early that night in anticipation of the big session the next day. After breakfast, we all assembled for a day long material training session conducted by Al Gore. In the morning session, he zipped through his slides (several hundred of them!), in slightly more detail than the movie and with updated material. He made references to latest studies and is thrillingly in touch with the ultimate reality based community (aka scientists
His command of the material in this section is probably well known to most people here from his movie. What is amazing is that I have seen profs presenting work that they have done together with their students, that they sometimes do not show this much comfort with! He is talking about work that is not his and he is much more confident about it! Impressive, but since I had already seen this when he presented at Dallas and in the movie, I knew it would be and I was not disappointed.

It was the rest of the day that was so scintillating. In the rest of sessions that day, he went back over each one of the slides that the trainees are going to be using, which are a subset of his portfolio, in their own presentations, addressing the relevance of the slides, the background science on it, the logic behind its positioning, the way it ties in to the next, the transitions, even the words on which to click to the next! I am telling you, I am not going to recover from this any time soon.

In these elaborate sessions, he also took questions from us. The questions came from every different angle -- logistics, science, politics (of global warming), relevance, controversies, delicacies around particular topics, uncertainty, you name it -- the question was asked. He answered them all with grace and knowledge and humor!!

That evening we all went to BBKing's for a little R&R with friends of the Gores performing. The next day we started in promptly at 7:30 and Al finished up the slide explanations, taking more questions and more comments. The next few sessions focused on presentation skills and honing. These would have been great at any other place, some other time -- but Al was an extremely tough act to follow.

As if there was more icing on the cake necessary, they gave us all a signed copy of his book, a t-shirt, a compact fluorescent bulb, a poster and a grocery bag, all emblazoned with the climate project logo. Oh, and they gave us tiny stickers with the best slogan in the world "Answer the Call"!! The idea is these tiny stickers (again with the CP logo) go on cell phones (get it? :-~)

The big picture is that we will all fan out across the country talking to small groups and our own communities, spreading the message and impressing upon the nation the urgency of the matter. If the energy, enthusiasm and passion of the people there was any indication, you will all be hearing about this in the real world soon.

This diary is getting too long, I will post more details as questions are asked in the comments. Asking technical stuff too, I am also a scientist (though not in the area, I am a computer scientist ) and should be able to address most questions. I am still in a trance...

in life -- such people usually make the right decisions.

How do I know he has that? I can never forget the scene last year on the
House floor when that wretch from Ohio all but called Murtha a coward --
Ford tried to rush her! Later some reporter who was there observed that
Ford was enraged and could not contain himself and if people had not
stopped him in his tracks, he really would have hit her!

Think about it -- why should this young, non-military man get so outraged
on behalf of an unrelated old codger? I find this totally amazing and
revealing of the person's character. Contrast him to old Joementum who
keeps tripping on his shoe laces running to the Senate floor to chastize
Dems for trivial/inconsequential transgressions...

that I never sent him! (His email that provoked it is attached below my rant.)

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Keep on keeping at it! We will soon fulfill all the Bushbots' wishes and be well on our way to the end... Meanwhile, in the real world, poverty is up, real wages for real people is way down (except for the top 1%), abortions are up, and so are the deficit and the debt. You keep on concentrating on 3 individuals: Teddy, Bobby and Billy. Who cares about 300 Million people and the rest of the world, when you can have such fun buying into the standard Rethug distractions of 3 people and their idiocies?

For your sake, I will pray (and I am not even religious!) that none of your kith or kin ever have to come up against these closed-minded, science-rejecting, gun-toting nihilists.

I am actually deeply disappointed in you -- I thought deep down you were fundamentally like me and many others that I like: compassionate, benevolent and liberal (yes, that dreaded word, that I love and your own Jesus was) in outlook. But I am finding it increasingly hard to carry on this banter with you, because while I was merely worried about the Bushies in 2000, I now deeply loath these self-serving monsters and am not really well-disposed towards (especially educated) people still supporting them.

Where is your perspective? What good is your education if it does not give you this fundamental ability to discern? What did Clinton ever do that is demonstrably to the detriment of the vast majority of this country and the world, while at the same time lining the pockets of him and his buddies? This chicken-hawk coterie has sold a bill of goods about what is important (keeping gays from getting married, getting into other people's bedrooms, injecting religion into inappropriate public fora, dictating science curricula, rejecting scientific consensus) and even people like you who should know better, are trumpeting these plunderers' cynical incompetence. I am not sure I can carry on an intelligent banter with you any more since there is nothing that I can say to someone who still holds this administration up...

===========
His email provocation that began this rant:

> The brilliance of our president never ceases to amaze me! He has found a
> died-in-the-wool ultra-conservative (Harriet Miers) for the Supreme
> Court that does not even have a paper trail that can be attacked!
> Finally, the Supreme Court gets the conservative majority that models
> this country's population.
>
> Loonie-Libs the likes of Ted Kennedy (in between Vodka swigs and deep
> water swimming lessons) and Robert Byrd (in between KKK meetings and
> backroom pork deals for West Virginia) will have nothing to pontificate
> about! This should be a real hoot.
>
> All in all, it is truly a great time to live in America. Did that Alec
> Baldwin guy ever move to another country?
>

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/bookclub/2006/...

===== 2 paragraphs from his essay ==============

<...>
That much is straightforward, I think. But it also must be said that Bush incarnates certain potentials long embedded in movement conservatism, potentials that, in combination, add up to a whole drastically worse than the sum of the parts: ignorance of the larger world; deafness toward reason; vindictiveness toward dissidents; cronyism; systematic deception; fiscal recklessness; centralization of power and its abuses. Reagan began the process of conservative consolidation, but Bush has the energy, focus, and vindictiveness that Reagan lacked. He also, not least, had September 11.

The magic has worn thin, but never forget that base Bush is the voice of Bush’s base. Republican control of all branches of government has certainly afforded Bush the means to act on his tunnel vision. It’s a necessary condition. So are the Rove-Ailes-Atwater commitments to what Spiro Agnew (or wasn’t it elder literary statesman William Safire?) once called “positive polarization.” But the will of the bulldozer is essential to understanding the magnitude of the ruination that Bush has accomplished.
<...>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

(Thanks to Eric Alterman for the link -- I never go to the WP by myself these days...)

1. Elected Dems must present a united/consistent/concerted front against the dangerous/suicidal Rethug excesses. At some point, this business of giving them the benefit of the doubt should stop, in order to make it clear to the people (who are usually short of time, resources and the inclination to know the details necessary to be truly outraged) what really is going on behind all the rhetoric (ofcourse, if people were more educated/tolerant, they would find even the rhetoric sufficient cause to revolt). Part of this unity/consistency must also be standing up for each other, especially when they are being unfairly charaterized/caricatured by the media...

2. The media, whom the people by and large, (at least subconsciously/instinctively) trust enough to take their cues from, must start being the watchdogs they are supposed to be on behalf of the people: would we get the sense that anything is seriously amiss in this country if we watched just the evening news and/or FAUX/CNN/MSRNC? If these people (the media) keep equating/conflating serious, felonious behavior of the Rethugs with personal/silly transgressions of the Dems, a casual listener is apt to notice no difference between the two parties.

Neither seems a possibility in the near future...

Over the last few years, his fallback on any baiting is "Kennedy/Chappaquiddick" or "Clinton/BlueDress".

Lately he has taken to sending me all these funny sites spoofing K/C, without any opening provocation from me! And today, he needled me one too many times and here are my two email responses to him!

===============================My first response=======================================
I dont want to stoop to that level, but...

since you keep pointing out this one admittedly grave error in judgement from Ted's past, did you know the following?

1. George Bush had a girlfriend for whom he got an abortion destroying his "child"?

2. Did you know that she later died under very mysterious circumstances?

3. Did you know that the Bush Crime Family (BCF for short in knowledgeable democratic circles) has "suicided" off many of their political enemies?

4. Did you know that the BFEE (Bush Family Evil Empire) has extensive ties to Bin Laden's family (both via the Carlyle group and outside of it) and that Prescott Bush (Poppy's poppy, Connecticut Senator) had extensive financial ties to Hitler and his minions?

5. Did you know that Neil Bush's failed savings and loan was bailed out by the US treasury to the tune of billions of dollars? Did you know Dubya himself raised half a penny in taxes in Arlington to par lay his measly 750k (1%) stake in the Baseball team into a $14 million dollar return? Do you know of Jeb's connections to all kinds of Florida underbelly denizens? Did you know of Neil's serial involvement with prostitutes in the US and Philippines and the messy, ugly divorce that resulted from this?

6. Finally (not because I am out of dirt on the BCF/BFEE, but because I am out of time), did you know that Laura Bush, in a drunken stint with her car, knocked and killed off her best friend's boyfriend?

I can supply you with links for all of these if you are interested in finding out the awful truth about the criminals ruling this country now. But, if you are stuck with one powerless senator's one gross negligence once long ago, I guess we blue state of minders have to suffer through your petty little indulgences while the ranks of the poor and healthcare-less swell, while the troops die and get maimed in the 1000s because the pentagon is too busy shoveling all the money to Halliburton and other cronies, while the arctic shelf melts, and the world waits with bated breath for some responsible adults to shepherd the world's most powerful country, be my guest. You can be conservative and I can respect you for that; but after the unfolding of this maladministration, if you are still (a) cheerleading them and (b) nitpicking on the powerless Democrats, I hope you are content to learn that you will have succeeded in helping take the greatest nation in the world back to the 4th century BC.

Your Kennedy citations would be funny, if the Dems were in power and he was actually saying something about somebody's personal integrity. I would any day choose the personal foibles of the dems over the organized crime that are rethug maladministrations.

Wake up and smell the stench: the Dems do not control anything right now, the Republicans do -- you hold those in power accountable, if you are a responsible citizen; you do not keep picking on people that are at the bottom of the totem pole.

=========
================================My second response==========================================
Sorry for the tone, I think I am becoming very dispirited by the base 35 to 40% support he still seems to get and you were a convenient target, I guess.

While I readily apologize for returning fire on a joke, I do wish you would start to think outside the usual constructs. The transgressions of the elected dems currently are too minor, small in scope, and mostly private. What the elected repubs are doing to us and the world is unconscionable.

If you do consider me a friend, please start thinking about what is happening to our country and the world. Don't fall for this Ted Kennedy bait -- he is too irrelevant, as is every liberal. While every single social milestone has been achieved by them (liberals, that is!), the Republicans have so demonized them on a personal basis and so tarred the word liberal (and yet they want a liberal democracy for Iraq and the ME, go figure!) that there is nothing that the committed liberals can do any more. The revolution has to come from within. Only viscerally Republican people such as you can start to change this deadend dynamic we are in. Think carefully and look wide, please, as your special favor to me (and your children, really: the national debt for instance!).

Here is really reprehensible behavior, if you are looking for one (remember this one I am talking about was not a mistake, it was the conscious product of a great many minds' conscious and conspicuous deliberations!): the Republican conventioneers in 2004 sported purple heart bandaids mocking Kerry -- think about the deeper implications of this kind of behavior vis-a-vis the "we support our troops" mantra that they spout. Here is a clue: there are some 35+ Iraq war veterans running for Congress -- at most 1 (again: ONE) is running under the Republican banner. Considering that the military is touted to be 80+ % Republican, why do you think this might be?

This is a rant that I wrote for another forum -- thought it might be of interest here too!

========================================================================

I guess most people have moved on now from that original discussion. So I am simply going to address some salient points here, especially about keeping perspective.

Any time anything critical is said about Bush, the fall-back for Bushbots immediately is Somalia, Blackhawk and oh, by the way 17 Americans died and Clinton chickened out. If that doesn’t work, then out comes Monica Lewinsky, the ultimate weapon of the chickenhawk supporters.

Here are the facts about Somalia vis-a-vis Clinton: George Herbert Walker Bush sent American troops there to begin with, and I might add, when he was a lame duck for 2.5 months after loosing an election quite decisively. So, Clinton inherited a bad situation foisted on him by his predecessor . Immediately Clinton takes office, the military-GOP cabal comes up with these ginned-up charges of gays in the military and distracts the entire nation from any substantive discussion of the dire choices facing the country. The Clinton gang tried desperately to bring the talk back to the economy on the one hand and Somalia on the other. But I distinctly remember every Rethug that went on TV talking nothing but gays in the military and how they were sapping morale. If these uber-jingoists had any real sense of patriotism whatsoever, they would have tried to guide the newbies in town so as to salvage the national treasure and prestige from a bad situation that was precipitated in part due to their own negligence (in preventing their own lame duck President from making such a long-term consequential decision). In one bad incident then, 17 Americans, count them, 17, die and the suicidally self-serving GOP goes berserk. Back in 1993, barely months into a brand new administration, a situation they inherited has one botched military field operation , and the very crowd that was in part responsible for the situation turns on those who were handed it, and the media and public go along with that spin in their short-attention-spanned blissful ignorance. I don’t know what kind of a twilight zone we are living in, but it doesn’t get any more bizarre, cruel and ultimately self-defeating than that.

So then let us come to Monica, unarguably Clinton’s fault. How many people died as a result of this transgression? How many of Clinton’s cabinet members advised him against it? Did even Hillary Clinton advise him against it? How much did it cost our treasury (in an ironic twist of fate, we cannot even blame that unmitigably horrendous specimen of humanity Ken Starr and his 70 million dollars on this, since that particular rat began his witch-hunt long before Monica was even a fantasy in Bill Clinton’s mind)? How many people’s lives were ruined? What actions did the person most affected by this great sin take?

What is the common theme running through facile Bush/Clinton comparisons? A lack of perspective and a sense of the magnitude and significance of these transgressions.

Bush careens the nation and the world into untenable situations despite vociferous protests from Dems and others who can actually think things through. He willfully ignores even those well-meaning souls who buy into his misguided premises but are more thoughtful about execution. And the worst thing about him and his catastrophic blunders is that he is quite proud of his intransigence. Clinton blundered into private transgressions in areas for which he had absolutely no benefit of any counsel. May be you think we are all born wise, and make judicious decisions completely uncluttered by emotional/physical imperatives at all times, but I think that is a delusional state. The admirable thing about Clinton was and is still that he is willing to listen to other points of view and actual facts about any issue under consideration and make judgements based upon those facts. While the ultimate decision may not exactly be optimal, it is nevertheless somewhere close to being correct.

The essential difference is that Clinton did not let ideology or cussed predispositions interfere with every big and small public policy decision he had to make. And therein lies the big difference between the two – the problem with Bush is not that he makes these colossal misjudgements (unwarranted wars of aggression, bellicose pronouncements completely unsupported by actions, one-size fits all-situations tax cuts for every ill that ails society, amending the constitution for short-term political gain at the risk of turning back the clock several centuries, midnight signings of laws for individuals in trauma that the government has no business adjudicating, utterly pompous, stupid interference with science curricula about which he has absolutely no knowledge; the list is almost endless) but that he will not amend them even after the results of his disaster are pretty clear.

Ultimately though, the differences are not merely between these two individuals – they are merely larger than life epitomes of their respective party leaderships at this point in time. The judiciousness of the good governance approach of Clinton is exactly the same that both Gore and Kerry would have brought to their presidencies too, if the world had been so lucky. Though Bush does typify his own party’s current whatever it takes approach to grabbing and hanging on to power, none in his party would probably have been as proudly and stubbornly monomaniacal as him, I think. The coterie (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove and Hughes) he has surrounded himself with, is as ruthless, but probably lacks the political heft that he has, to follow through.

I believe that a certain benevolence and sense of the common good has to be at the very core of someone who wants to lead the most powerful nation on the planet. That is an emotional core that does not come from learning. It has to be active, it has to be passionate and it has to be the guiding philosophy of any national office aspirer. Not pettiness, not strident rhetoric, not unjustified preening and prancing in a garb that you shunned when it was your time to show up for a cause you believed in…in fact, these are antithetical to the very nature of a leader.

For this reason, it offends my very sensibilities to even discuss Bush on the same par as Clinton/Gore/Kerry. He lacks this minimal criterion for leadership, despite his repeated claims to it – my considered opinion of him after studying him for the past four years is that he is a truly unfeeling person, with neither native intelligence to give him a meaningful moral compass nor a willingness to learn that would enhance ones decision-making abilities. Common good? He does not understand and worse, he does not care.

"People versus the Powerful" and his constant, unremitting references to "Big Oil".

As usual, the media made fun of it and the sheeple, this time including progressive, otherwise intelligent people, went along happily.

I had not followed politics all that much until then; but the difference between Bush and Gore was clear as night and day. Just the intelligence quotient difference would have been sufficient for me.

The Democratic party does need to be dragged away from this corporate money addiction it has gotten itself into (somewhat due to necessity) -- but Nader in 2000 was not going to do it and that was clear for anyone not self-indulgent enough to see that they were helping the obviously worse choice by their actions. There is NO getting around this point: Nader voters should have used their heads instead of their hearts.

In fact, most of the left was irresponsible in that election. For instance, in the home-stretch days of the 2000 election, Florida enviros were making loud noises about some stupid air strip or the other and Gore's position on it, which may have cost Gore far more than the 500+ votes that Gore needed.

The problem for the Democratic party is the fact that most of the activists seem to live in a rarified world were the consequences of their irresponsible advocacies (such as during the crunch times of elections) are not really felt by them, but by those for whom they should be advocating.

It is mind-boggling that those who voted for Nader can still cling to that mind-set. The only rational course of action for the 2000-Naderites now is to acknowledge the error of their ways and learn from the mistake. What is the difference between the thugs maintaining that they are never wrong and this inane insistence from Naderites "that they could not have foreseen how bad Bush would be"? It was not necessary for Bushco to be this bad; the results of 2000 would have been sufficient for you to fess up and say: "sorry, we were stupid enough not to be rational; this was an indulgence, we will henceforward be more thoughtful of the consequences of our actions". This is the way to grow; stubborn adherence to a viewpoint will not advance us or more importantly, our causes.

I am not saying activists should shut up -- but they have to exercise their sense of perspective: when the choice presented to you is between a man who claims that human behavior has no effect on the earth and a man who wrote "Earth in the balance", and you are an avowed enviro...

by 1994, there was absolutely only a ghost of a 60's liberal tendency left in the Dems. What had taken its place was the constant trumpetings of Rush and wannabes on the AM radio about the evil evil liberals. In other words, their work is relevant if Limbaugh's world of evildoers (aka liberals) really existed.

While there were some excesses in the liberal movement in the 60's (the last era of true liberalism), as there are with most incipient movements, the goals espoused by the larger movement (civil liberties for all) were as necessary and noble as any ever championed in human history.

If you look carefully, there has not been a political leader (other than Gore, really) in the last three decades, that has championed progressive causes. We are constantly debating only regressive measures (how much can we restrict personal freedoms? how much can we impose religion on science and in general? etc) and figuring how far back we need to turn the clock. The most staggering set-back is this Intelligent Design imposition -- echoes of the 15th 16th centuries, for shame.

This is the reason why I like the word progressive better than the word liberal -- progressive captures our ideals better than liberal does and in any case, I think the true opposite of conservative is really progressive. It also captures nicely the constitutional ideal "for a more perfect union" -- progressives want to look for ways to better ourselves and our lives: less war, less violence, more individual liberties and a more egalitarian society, progressively better.

There can really be no middle ground between those who want to overrule science and those who believe in science. There is only one correct position there. Similarly, there is no middle ground between people who want to impose their religion on to the public square and those who do not, etc. It is up to us educate people to get there, not forfeit the ground and retreat to a "middleground" that is really located back in the 16th century, simply because the political landscape is against us temporarily...

that makes such a possibility much less likely: they never can get into the kind of lockstep that is needed to pull off the "winning is everything" mindset (just witness the clockwork regularity of the DU circular firing squads

Second, the Democratic party has too many different disparate interests for any one goal to receive too much enthusiasm from all (activist) segments anyway, fortunately!

I think the party's culture is such that it glories too much in its rationality and its diversity to ever get locked into one position.

It is the attitude of the people/leaders of the Dem party that even prompts me to call myself a Democrat -- I actually disagree with many positions of the party, but I sense a willingness to listen that makes it attractive to me.

On the other hand, the argument could be made that when one's character is impugned, the best defense is witnesses other than one-self. Where were the other Dems, when their standard-bearers (who were known to be almost too good to be true: Gore was routinely referred to as a "boy-scout" by those who seemingly knew him well; Kerry needs no other witness beyond VVAW and his whole career) were being so vicously attacked? If your own will not stand up for you, who will, given that you are not yourself a credible defender of your own integrity beyond your actual conduct?

What was done to the reputations of Gore and Kerry did not really demean the media and the Rethugs in my eyes, they each had at least some perverted self-interest -- what was in the silence of/for the Dems? It nearly made me a cynic, an eternal optimist. I have said it many times on this forum and because it is so critically important, I will say it again, until the Dems stand up for each other, it doesnt even matter that the voting machinery is rigged.

Two glaring examples how bad the situation is for Dem Presidential candidates: When Gore had won the popular vote, when innumerable AA's had arguably been disenfranchised in Florida, and in the face of brazen rethug unity, there was Ed Rendell on Chris Matthews' show "Gore should pack it in"! And here you had Kerry, the guy who fought for his country and spoken out against an unjust, unwinnable war, attacked by the troop-supporting whack jobs on the right and nary a peep from the Dems on the talking head shows, which is were visibility for an issue is won. Kerry tried to defend himself and the Dems piled on him, saying he should not have been so serious about it.

If I didnt know better, I would have thought I was watching a bizarre movie...

The wing nuts seem to run better campaigns only because the media will not amplify in their echo chamber the gaffes that the boy-king made in both campaigns. I will catalog them in a later post...

In the short run though, Dems have to engage the conversation and call the wing nuts on their feigned piety, because these irresponsibles have made it a high-visibility issue totally for opportunistic reasons -- we have to now separate the wheat from the chaff before we can turn down the volume. The rest of us who are uncomfortable about this whole business of "whose Godliness is better" discussion have to either grin and bear it or chip in usefully -- we really have no other option. The decent Democratic instinct to leave well enough alone has not worked...

just because someone quotes from the(ir) scriptures. It is ok to invoke that which moves you the most, if indeed it does -- it need not necessarily be perceived to be threatening -- and I speak as a part of a miniscule minority in this country: agnostic, and a Hindu by birth.

The problem comes from people who use religion as a wedge to separate those that believe (in their own version of God) and those that dont. As with obscenity, it is quite easy to see who is being sincere and who isn't: watch if there is follow-through. How many of the right wing nut jobs actually (a) attend church or (b) do any good deeds, in a real and meaningful fashion?

So, the problem is not in the invoking; it is the motivation behind it. And I am saying this fully conscious of the subjectivity of evaluation and the slippery slope problem...