Al Gore performs a breathing exercise...

... when he realizes that Jon Stewart's use of the phrase "voracious over-eater" isn't going to turn into a reference to Gore's obesity:



(My edit, my interpretation of what's going on here.)

Instapundit reviews Al Gore's new book.

The book is "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change." Yeesh. What a title. Drivers. But he couldn't just call it "The Future." That would be dumb. And people love lists. Lists make it seem possible to read a whole book.

So Six Drivers. Sounds almost sexy. Six ≈ sex, and driver seems like a way to refer to one's chakra in old songs like "Me and My Chauffeur Blues."

That's all I have to say because I haven't read the book. It just came out today yesterday. Instapundit got to drive into the future, and having read "The Future," can give a substantive account. So go read his review. It's mixed.

"I don’t think we should talk about Lincoln’s underwear..."

"It’s not appropriate for someone so iconic. Even in the bedroom, Lincoln is never shown in his pajamas. He’s in his shirt and pants."

Joanna Johnston, movie costume designer.

***

"But even the President of the United States/Sometimes must have to stand naked."

Bob Dylan.

***

"How many Bob Dylan songs have the word 'naked' and how many of them can you name?" I challenge Meade with a Bob Dylan test, as I tend to do when I've done a search at bobdylan.com (as I did for the "It's Alright Ma" quote, above).

Meade immediately says "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked," then none of the others — not even "You see somebody naked and you say who is that man?" — and makes 2 wrong guesses:

MEADE: "'Mr. Tambourine Man'... just to dance beneath the naked sky..."

ME: "That's 'diamond sky.'"

MEADE: "The one where the farmer is chasing him out of his house."

ME: "'Motorpsycho Nightmare?' No."

In "Motorpsycho Nightmare," Bob Dylan is just trying to get some sleep — no sign that he's sleeping naked — when Rita — "Lookin’ just like Tony Perkins" (i.e., the murderer in "Psycho") importunes him to take a shower. He's freaked out: "Oh, no! no! I’ve been through this [movie] before." Afraid of getting knifed to death, but unwilling to run off unless her father (the farmer) throws him out (because he promised the farmer he'd milk the cows in the morning), his sees his only option as saying "something to strike him very weird." What he says is: "I like Fidel Castro and his beard."



Beards. Fidel Castro made a beard as off limits to an American president — in spite of Lincoln — as Hitler made the mustache. And here I want to go back to that "Becoming Adolf" article by Rich Cohen that were were talking about a couple days ago:

[Y]ou could not wear any kind of mustache after [WWII], because, running from Hitler, you might run into Stalin. Hitler plus Stalin ended the career of the mustache in Western political life. Before the war, all kinds of American presidents wore a mustache and/or beard. You had John Quincy Adams, with his muttonchops...



You had Abe Lincoln, whose facial hair...



... like his politics, was the opposite of Hitler's: beard full, lip bare. You had James Garfield, who had the sort of vast rabbinical beard into which whole pages of legislation could vanish.



You had Rutherford B. Hayes...



Grover Cleveland...



... and Teddy Roosevelt, whose asthma and elephant gun were just a frame for his mustache.



You had William Howard Taft — the man wore a Walrus!



After the war, the few American politicians who still wore a mustache were those who had made their name before Hitler and so had been grandfathered in. Like Thomas Dewey.



Dewey was Eliot Spitzer. He was a prosecutor in New York in the 1930s (and later governor), the only guy with the guts to take on the Mob. For Dewey, the rise of Hitler was a fashion disaster. Because Dewey wore a neat little mustache. Dewey ran for president twice — losing to F.D.R., losing to Truman. In my opinion, without the mustache, the headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune (Dewey Defeats Truman) turns true. One of the few prominent American politicians to wear facial hair in recent memory is Al Gore, who grew a Grizzly Adams beard after he lost to George Bush, in 2000. The appearance of this beard was taken to mean either (1) Gore would never again run for office, or (2) Gore had gone completely mental.



The decision to grow a mustache or a beard is all by itself reason to keep a man away from the nuclear trigger.

Are we going to decide who deserves out trust based on they look? Come on, Abe. Lose the beard. Okay.

Pick one:

"How does raking in $100 million petrodollars fit with [Al Gore's] life’s mission?"

"Though the deal’s been widely criticized on the right..."

... most of my progressive friends have a more tolerant attitude towards the transaction: "After what happened to him," in the recount of 2000, one friend remarked, "I’d forgive him almost anything." A politically active environmentalist, too, was taking the news in stride: "I don’t think the community is too upset," he said. "My personal sense is he got a good deal."

Al Jazeera hands Al Gore the second-chakra-releasing sum of $100 million.

Wow! Here's this failed, low-rated cable TV project of Al's. What is Al Jazeera buying? It's going to close down Current TV and only seems to want access to the American TVs that receive Current TV, if the people watching those TVs wanted to watch Current TV, which they obviously don't. There are many, many more spots on the cable TV dial, so why buy Gore's channel? Al Jazeera paid $500 million total (Gore's share is 20%). That seems like a crazy amount of money just to get onto cable TV. The idea is — as the NYT puts it — "to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister."

How hard is it to take over an existing slot in cable TV?

News channels financed by Britain, China and Russia are especially hungry for American cable deals. To date, the BBC has had the most success; its BBC World News channel is now available in about 25 million homes thanks to a deal struck last month with Time Warner Cable.

But the takeover of Current brings Al Jazeera to the front of the line. 

But did BBC or those other channels ever try to purchase an existing channel's access? Would $500 million be the going rate? Did Al Jazeera negotiate only with Gore's channel or did they try to get a better deal from some other channel with pathetically low ratings?

In recent weeks, Mr. Gore personally lobbied the distributors that carry Current on the importance of Al Jazeera, according to people briefed on the talks who were not authorized to speak publicly.

So... Al Jazeera was buying the former Vice President's advocacy.

Distributors can sometimes wiggle out of their carriage deals when channels change hands. 

How long is that carriage deal? $500 million worth of long? And it's not even guaranteed? It could turn into nothing?!

Most [distributors] consented to the sale, but Time Warner Cable did not...

Time Warner Cable had previously warned that it might drop Current because of its low ratings. It took advantage of a change-in-ownership clause and said in a terse statement Wednesday night, “We are removing the service as quickly as possible.”

So Time Warner — which serves 12 million of those 40 million homes — is already out. Did Al Jazeera get hoodwinked by the Oscar-and-Nobel-Prize-winning former Veep? He did what he could for them, "personally lobb[ying] the distributors that carry Current on the importance of Al Jazeera." How much more can you buy in this world? You got Al!

Hey, I just thought up a slogan Al Jazeera can use as it promotes itself to the American people: You Can Call Us Al.

Irrelevant benefits to Obama's losing the election, #1.

I write "#1" with confidence, as if I know I'll have additional reasons and this post is the first in a series.

"Irrelevant," because these will not be reasons that ought to have any influence on whether you should vote for Obama or not. (If you want to know what I'm doing and why, that post was yesterday.)

So here's the reason: It will be interesting to see what Obama does with himself if he is suddenly plunged into the circumstance of not being President. If Romney loses, no one will watch him, seeing what he does. He'll melt back into the general population. He's 65 years old. His accomplishments are accomplished. And if he never makes it to the presidency, he'll be a former candidate, not a former President. He doesn't even go back to an existing public office.

When's the last time a major party candidate lost without having a political position to which he could return? Not McCain. Not Kerry. They went back to the Senate. Oh, no! It was Al Gore! He found things to do to interest, entertain, and torment us. He would not be ignored. But he was a young man — young for a presidential candidate — only 52. It's possible that Romney will undertake some grandiose project, but it's nearly impossible to picture him going Gore on us. It's safe to predict that if Romney loses, he'll gracefully concede, wish us all well, and retire into private life, within which he'll be a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, doing manifold good works that will receive no publicity.

But Obama! He's only 51. He was too green to have become President when he did, and he stumbled and lost — if he loses. He had so much promise that he hit the top early, and now all that ability, brought to bear too soon, goes forward into prime years... for what?! That's what's so interesting. We'll get to see what. We only get to see what's down that path if he loses: an irrelevant benefit to Obama's losing the election.

Romney takes the lead in the Politico tracking poll for the first time since last May.

With 49 to Obama's 47%, Romney has picked up 3 points since the last poll, a week ago.

Women propelled Romney’s move into first place in the poll — a majority of which was conducted before the Hofstra debate. Obama’s 11-point advantage a week ago among the crucially important group dwindled to 6 points. The Democratic incumbent still leads 51 to 45 percent with women, but Romney leads by 10 points among men.

Here's Nate Silver's analysis of the gender gap — "'Gender Gap' Near Historic Highs" — published yesterday, using, among other polls — last week's Politico numbers:

The biggest gender gap to date in the exit polls came in 2000, when Al Gore won by 11 points among women, but George W. Bush won by 9 points among men — a 20-point difference. 

Silver had this year's gender gap at 18, with Politico contributing the number 20 to his average of 9 polls. He depicts the gap with 2 Electoral College maps, "recalibrated" to add 9 points to the polls in every state first to Obama and then to Romney, which might represent a hypothetical in which only women vote and a hypothetical in which only men vote, even though Silver doesn't say that — either because it's upsetting to talk about radical disenfranchisement or because the hypothetical would change the country so radically that it would make zero sense to plug in the numbers from existing polls.

In scenario #1 Obama is more ahead than Romney is in scenario #2. Silver's prestidigitations somehow, once again, hearten the Obamaphiles in the NYT readership, but the underlying numbers have shifted. Why, after all these efforts at making women feel especially bonded to Democrats, has the greater gap developed with men going Republican? Perhaps that question contains its own answer: The blatant appeals to women don't win women so much as they lose men.

Rocky Mountain high Obama?

“I’m going to say something controversial here... Obama arrived in Denver at 2:00 p.m. today, just a few hours before the debate started. Romney did his debate prep in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet and you only have a few hours to adjust — I don’t know, maybe....”

Al Gore said on his TV network that apparently somebody watched.

I've also heard that Obama has trouble when you rouse him at 3 a.m. with a telephone call.



And don't bring up the writing on the pajamas. I'm cautioning against that sort of thing now. Stay upbeat, Romney people. Romney sounded like Reagan last night. He's full of optimism and energy. He can speak cogently for 2 hours in the mile-high city, and he can, I presume, answer the phone in the middle of the night.

AND: Just because we're talking about Al Gore and screwing up debates, I want to show you what I find the funniest presidential debate moment of all time:



Bush's head nod is epic, and if you ever want to make me laugh, just look at me with Gore-y triumph and ask "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?"

The dance craze says Obama will win.

Last time we had a dance craze like Gangnam Style — check out Psy in Times Square — it was 1996:

In the United States, the song, and its corresponding Macarena dance, became popular during the same week as the 1996 Democratic National Convention. The song was frequently played between activities, and large groups of delegates and other attendants would be seen doing the Macarena dance. The song and dance became such a part of the convention that Vice President Al Gore, having a reputation for stiffness, made a joke about doing the Macarena dance during his speech. He asked, "Would you like to see my Macarena dance?" He remained motionless for a few seconds, then asked, "Would you like to see it again?"

I tried to find that Gore thing on YouTube, but I only found this:



When the Macarena was the craze, the President was reelected. He beat Bob Dole, whose tagline was "Where's the outrage?" And the answer was "Heeeeey Macarena AAAhAA!" The Democrats danced their way through the convention, and the old man asking for outrage was so out of step with the times.


And now, if you're wondering why Americans aren't outraged — about the economy, about the murder of the ambassador, about the brownshirts that knock on the filmmaker's door at midnight — what is your problem? And the answer is:

I’m a guy
A guy who seems calm but plays when he plays
A guy who goes completely crazy when the right time comes
A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscles
That kind of guy

"It's a horse-riding dance," Psy explained... "So there is an invisible horse, and you're on it."

Invisible horse... empty chair... don't you see? Where's the outrage? There's no one there!

I’m a guy
A guy who is as warm as you during the day
A guy who one-shots his coffee before it even cools down
A guy whose heart bursts when night comes
That kind of guy

We love the guy! Obama! The dance craze tells the story. You read polls, tea leaves, whatever. I'm reading the dance craze. The hilarious, silly dance craze says we don't care about our our troubles. Where's the outrage? Heeeey... AAAhAA.. Eeeey... Oppa... eeeh... oh oh oh oh...

A presidential hypothetical.

Meade and I had what was to me a fascinating conversation yesterday, passing the mental time while we rode a 20-mile bike trail, so I thought you might enjoy batting this around in the comments.

Assume JFK was not assassinated. Now, beginning with the 1964 election and continuing up to 2012, name the candidates for President and Vice President in both parties and who would have won. Fill in with reasons why this happened.

I'll reveal our answers, which is mostly Meade's, after you have some time to talk about it, uninfluenced by us.

UPDATE: In 1964, JFK is reelected, with LBJ as VP. The GOP does not yet do its big shift to conservatism, and its defeated candidate is Nelson Rockefeller (whose VP choice is William Scranton). Barry Goldwater rises up in 1968, and he is successful, defeating LBJ (who has Hubert Humphrey as his VP). Goldwater's VP is William Miller (as it was, in actual history, in 1964), and Goldwater is an immensely successful President, winning the war in Vietnam, leaving civil rights issues to the states (and in the process preserving federalism values, to be used to excellent effect in succeeding years), and foreseeing and avoiding the problems of dependency on imported oil. Goldwater is reelected in 1972, defeating Hubert Humphrey (who has Scoop Jackson as his VP).

In 1976, Bobby Kennedy is the Democratic nominee (with Walter Mondale as VP), and he wins, defeating William Miller (who has Bob Dole as his VP). Bobby gets health-care reform, called "Bobbycare." But Bobbycare goes too far, and RFK goes down in 1980, crushed by Ronald Reagan (whose VP is George H.W. Bush). Reagan is reelected in 1984, defeating Walter Mondale (who has Geraldine Ferraro as his VP).

In 1988, it's Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen against George H.W. Bush and Jack Kemp, and — no big surprise — Bush and Kemp win. But they're in for only one term. Blamed for the economy — stupid! — they lose, in 1992, to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Clinton and Gore are reelected in 1992 (facing Jack Kemp and his VP choice Tommy Thompson).

In 2000, it's Gore (with Lieberman) against George W. Bush (with Cheney), and Bush wins. In 2004, John Kerry (with John Edwards) lose to Bush and Cheney. In 2008, it's John Edwards against Mitt Romney, and Mitt Romney wins. (We won't worry about their VPs right now.) Challenged by Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney is reelected in 2012. And we don't get our first woman President. But the Romney terms come to a close. Now it's 2012, and Hillary goes for it again, only to be defeated in the primaries by another "first," the possible first black President, this fascinating upstart with the funny name Barack Hussein Obama. (But America, having avoided dependence on foreign oil, thanks to Barry Goldwater, never got dragged into crazy interactions with those Middle East countries, and there was never a 9/11 terrorist attack or an Iraq war, or any of those things that would make "Hussein" seem truly odd.)

Speaking of firsts, there's a first coming up on the GOP side, a woman! It's the hyper-competent and stunningly beautiful Sarah Palin. With 8 years as Governor of Alaska, her executive experience and record of accomplishment wow America. (She was term-limited in 2014, and spent the next 2 years running for President.) And so in 2016, we have our big first, the first woman President: Sarah Palin!

Like Ralph Nader in 2000, Gary Johnson could throw the election.

Nader's 97,000 votes in Florida represented the difference between winning and losing Florida for Al Gore, and Gary Johnson could tip Arizona/Colorado/New Hampshire/New Mexico, where he's polling 9%/7%/7%/13% (if the pollsters are including him).

Unlike Nader, Johnson could hurt either of the 2 major-party candidates. It's more likely that he'll hurt Romney, but possibly not in Colorado and New Mexico. He could draw off erstwhile Obama supporters. If you're in a swing state, you have to want to make the point of giving no help to either of the 2 individuals who have an actual shot at winning. It's not enough to simply prefer Gary Johnson. (Take the I Side With test and see if you do align with him.)

Who are these people who not only want to say I prefer Johnson but also I decline to have any effect on the outcome? In 2000, the people who voted for Nader — did you know Meade was one? — perceived no significant difference between Al Gore and George Bush. Many of them went on to view that perception as quite inaccurate.

It's hard to believe the potential Johnson voters will think like that about Obama and Romney, which is why I think swing staters won't go third party this year. But I think the presence of Johnson in the race might affect how Obama and Romney fight in the swing states. Johnson is there as a refuge if the candidate we feel we're supposed to vote for offends us.

"Keith Olbermann was disheartened to discover Al Gore, Joel Hyatt and the management of Current are no more than dilettantes portraying entertainment industry executives."

From the complaint filed today in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

How could Keith have anticipated that Al Gore would turn out to be a big old fraud?!

Here's the PDF of the complaint. Paragraph 31:

Current completely and utterly failed to run a professional news enterprise... Olberman deeply regrets his decision to put his trust in Hyatt and Gore.... Olbermann did not join Current to ruin his hard-won reputation and appear on a show that was an embarrassment.

Keith Olbermann likens himself to a $10 million chandelier...

... and Al Gore's TV network to the absence of a house in which to hang the chandelier.

Olbermann falls further.

Fired by Al Gore's Current TV, less than a year after getting fired by MSNBC. Ouch.

We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet. We are more committed to those goals today than ever before. Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.

Yeouch. Olbermann reacts:

... [Al] Gore and [Joel] Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract.

It goes almost without saying that the claims against me implied in Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently....

In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out....

Oh! The ethics of Al Gore, exposed in a lawsuit brought by Keith Olbermann. I can almost hear the Gore-haters of the world salivating.

Release the chakras!

Bush v. Gore is "the case of the century" because it "truly altered history," even though it "didn’t change constitutional doctrine."

Writes TNR's Jonathan Cohn setting up a discussion of whether this year's big Obamacare decision will be the new case of the century. Well, the century is pretty young, and admittedly Bush v. Gore felt like a huge deal at the time. But "truly altered history"?

Just think how the years after 2001 would have unfolded if Al Gore had been president.

Ridiculous! I can't believe Cohn doesn't know that if the case had gone the other way Gore would still have lost in the end!

George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida's disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 "undervote" ballots that were at the center of Florida's disputed presidential election.

That's the news from 2001. And speaking of 2001, does Cohn actually think that Gore would not have responded vigorously to the 9/11 attacks? 

Anyway, I have close to zero interest in reading what Cohn has to say about this year's big case.

I generally leave the sophisticated constitutional analysis to Jeff Rosen, my (much) more informed colleague. But you don't have to be a legal expert to....

Fortunately, I can do my own legal analysis. I'm certainly not interested in Cohn's. As for Rosen's... I don't need to read that either. I know what he'll say. 

Bob Woodward said "sitting next to Gore is taxing... In fact, it's unpleasant."

He was stuck sitting next to him at the Organization for International Investment’s annual dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in D.C.

The article at the link is minimal, so I can't tell what's so taxing and unpleasant about sitting next to Gore at the Ritz-Carlton, but when I think about the taxing, unpleasantness of Gore, I always drift back to this:



Ha ha. That will never not make me laugh. "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?" That makes a hilarious household catchphrase, whenever anything's amiss: "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?" Try it!

Al Gore blabs inside information about Apple — that the iPhone 5 will go on sale next month.

CNN reports:

Gore has been an Apple board member for more than eight years, and this is the first time we've seen him let slip even the slightest detail on an upcoming product. Given the company's code of secrecy, such an unwarranted statement in a prepared talk -- he wasn't even being interviewed -- counts as a major breach of discipline.

ADDED: Poor Gore! What must he do to get attention? You know he tried that "24 Hours of Reality" thing and virtually nobody watched:

Not content with having invented the internet, the great Climate Science communicator Al Gore appears to have developed still more miraculous skills of late: the ability to turn 17,000 into 8.6 million – just like that.

The figures refer to the number of "views" for Gore's special "24 Hours Of ManBearPig" which this column helped celebrate the other day. Gore claims that as many as 8.6 million flocked to his thrilling festival of climate fear; but a nasty cruel man called Charles the Moderator at Watts Up With That? has "done the math" and reckons the figure is probably more like 17,000. And that, he believes, is a generous estimate...

What? He cooked the numbers? Is that something he would do?

"Al Gore in 24-hour broadcast to convert climate skeptics."

Convert skeptics... convert skeptics...

Does that sound a little religion-y to you?

"Ferocious storms and deadly heat waves are occurring with alarming frequency all over the world."

"We are living with the reality of the climate crisis every day. The only question is, how soon can we act?"

Al Gore is threatening us with reality... TV...." a live-streamed event called 24 Hours of Reality...."



I love the way reality is so propaganda-y when it emanates from The Mind of Gore.

"On September 14th, the world will join hands to create 24 hours of reality..."

That was so weird. It didn't have the slightest feeling of science to it at all.

If you want to maximize the likelihood that your description of a politician's sexuality will be remembered...

... include a specific animal:

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn acted like a "chimpanzee in heat" during a creepy previous grab-and-grope with a French journalist -- an incident with eerie similarities to his alleged attack on a Manhattan hotel maid Saturday, according to an explosive interview.

Other examples? The one that springs immediately to mind and hops up and down yapping until I notice it is:

I squirmed to try and get out of his grasp, telling him stop, don't, several times and I finally told him and said, 'You're being a crazed sex poodle,' hoping that he'd realize how weird he was being, yet he persisted.