I've heard multiple sources reporting that Gore is considering jumping into this thing.

On NPR this afternoon, they were discussing how many of his talking points have turned out to be cogent after all.

Another rumor is that he is to be awarded one of those Nobel Prizes in the next few days. What a great time to announce your candidacy, while you are at the podium accepting one of those puppies (maybe he'll grab a certain adjunct prof from MSU as a running mate?)

This could get exciting.

A southern Democrat would have a real chance to win the whole shooting match, which is why I have been favoring Edwards all along.

If he can grab a couple of those traditional blue states in the south (even two or three) he'd pretty much be impossible for the Repubs to beat, IMO.

Hey, if he decides to get in, he can probably win the Michigan primary, no problem.

Imagine all the airtime you'd get if you are the only choice on the ballot.

I've heard his name too. Regurgitating one of the reports that I heard, that I agree with, is he would only enter if Hillary stumbles. Its Hills race to lose right now.

I guess my question is how much difference is there between them? Or what seperates them for voters? I don't think he'd want to pull from Hill and then have BO sneak up on both of them...or would he?

All I know is this: if Gore enters the race, it's going to put a dent in that plastic smile Hillary is rocking these days.

I vote for the nerdy fuck. Technically he deserves to get the job he won almost 8 years ago. Kinda overdue.

Subject: CNN Breaking News
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to former Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Honestly, I hope he doesn't run. He's found his calling. He's better at what he's doing now than he was at U.S. politics.

I'd still vote for him. There's no better Dem out there than him.

From Time Magazine, via Yahoo


Gore Wins the Nobel. But Will He Run?

By ERIC POOLEY
2 hours, 39 minutes ago

For the past year, Al Gore has gone about his considerable business without showing much interest in running for president. While picking up an Oscar and an Emmy, publishing a very smart book and playing host at a global concert for the planet, he's never done more than tease the idea. And yet all that time, the leaders of the Draft Gore movement have been clinging to a single fervid dream: that Gore would win the Nobel Peace Prize and use it to catapult himself to an eleventh-hour bid for the presidency.

Now the Nobel Committee has done its part, awarding Gore the Peace Prize for being "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted" to combat climate change, according to his citation. (The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was also a joint winner of the prize.) And so, after the obligatory spasms of celebration and the equally obligatory gnashing of Rush Limbaugh's teeth, will Americans finally get to enjoy one of the great spectacles in political history, as Gore's ultimate honor levitates him beyond his leading rival, Hillary Clinton, and into the Oval Office?

Nope.

Let me be clear. If Al Gore gets into the presidential race, I'll eat my copy of An Inconvenient Truth. (The paperback, not the DVD.) I've spent a good deal of time with Gore this year, while writing a TIME cover story about him. I think he's staying out of the race - and I think I know why. But before I get into that, let me offer a few thoughts about what's not keeping him on the sidelines. I don't think Gore is staying out because of all the logistical difficulties that running would entail. Sure, it would be challenging to staff up a national organization and build the county-by-county teams he'd need to compete in the early states. True, he has no shadow campaign lurking in the background and waiting to be deployed. But he could hire one, recruiting first-rate people from other campaigns as they fade; and he could enlist his vast army of grassroots followers as well as his Silicon Valley friends in a rainmaking operation mighty enough to compete against the fundraising prowess of Clinton and Barack Obama. So the logistics, though daunting, aren't what's keeping Gore out.

Nor do I believe that Hillary Clinton is keeping Gore from running. It's true that Gore's late-entry presidential calculus always required Hillary to stumble, and it's true she has not done so - to the contrary, she has extended her lead nationally, edged ahead in Iowa, and taken on an aura of invincibility that has brought the Democratic power structure into line behind her. One hundred and thirty-six thousand people may have signed Draft Gore petitions, but most Dems seem pleased with their current candidates - and especially with the frontrunner. To borrow a phrase from Barack Obama, the Clinton machine is fired up and ready to go, and Gore doesn't relish the idea of being caught beneath its wheels.

But that's not the nub of it either. Hillary is just a sideshow; the main event is unfolding deep inside Gore. Consider: He put himself in position to win the Nobel by committing to an issue bigger than himself - the fight to save the planet. If he runs for president now, he'll be hauling himself back up onto that dusty old pedestal, signaling that he is, after all, the most important thing in his world. Sure, he'd say he was doing it because he feels a moral obligation to intervene in a time of unparalleled crisis. But running for president is by definition an act of hubris, and Gore has spent the past couple of years defying his ego and sublimating himself to a larger goal. Running for president would mean returning to a role he'd already transcended. He'd turn into - again - just another politician, when a lot of people thought he might be something better than that.

And he'd be risking a hard-won happiness. Gore is happier these days because he is living the kind of life he always wanted to lead. He's happier these days because he is free from the excruciating requirements of electoral politics, the glad-handing and the money-grubbing that drove him deeper into himself the more he was forced to reach out. And, finally, he's happier now because he has been vindicated. The Nobel is an acknowledgment that Gore was right about the greatest global threat we face (and that this is the year when most everyone else finally figured out he was right). Winning the Peace Prize may not place Gore among the global saints, the Nelson Mandelas of the world; but it does place him among the laureates who are beloved in some quarters and loathed in others - those highly charged Prizewinners like Jimmy Carter.

That's not a bad place to be, but you won't find Gore gloating about it. This Prize, after all, is a recognition that Gore has done more than anyone else (excepting Mother Nature) to bring about a sea change in public opinion. An overwhelming majority of Americans - 90% of Democrats, 80% of independents, 60% of Republicans - now say they favor "immediate action" to confront the climate crisis. Gore helped make that happen, but he can't take too much satisfaction in it. As he told me last spring, "Time is running out, and we still haven't done anything."

View this article on Time.com

In case anyone was wondering why he is in the Tournament of Cool.

Where do Gore and Hill differ? Would Gore be considered slightly more liberal?

I would say so, especially on environmental issues. Big oil (and the automakers) would probably pull out the stops to keep him out.

thx. Everything seems to be going Hills way right now. He could put a halt to that.

Based on what I read at my dirty pinko liberal websites, Gore would quickly dominate if he entered the race. It's just a question of whether he wants it or not. I admit I'd like to see him in the job, but if he somehow managed to not throw his hat into the ring, and not endorse one of the other candidates, I'd be even more impressed by him. He gives me the kind of vibe you get from some middle-aged dude who's just discovered magic mushrooms.

EDIT: Aaaaahahahahaha, Supreme Court Declares Bush Winner of Nobel Peace Prize (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/12/11451/905)

Where do Gore and Hill differ? Would Gore be considered slightly more liberal?

I'm not even sure you can call Hillary "Liberal". She's a sham for her support of Iraq. I think the fact that she's a woman has the Repubs more frightened than anything.
The more liberal, the better.

Al Gore, UN Panel share Nobel for peace

By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 1 minute ago

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Former Vice President Al Gore, newly named co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said Friday he hopes the honor will "elevate global consciousness" about the challenges of global warming.

Gore, whose documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award earlier this year, was awarded the prize earlier in the day along with an international network of scientists for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.

Shortly after the announcement, he pledged to donate his share of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion worldwide about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

"This is just the beginning," Gore told reporters at a meeting of the group. "Now is the time to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face."

Gore had been widely tipped to win Friday's prize, which expanded the Norwegian committee's interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts that have traditionally been the award's foundations.

"We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

The Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, asserted that the prize was not aimed at the Bush administration, which rejected Kyoto and was widely criticized outside the U.S. for not taking global warming seriously enough.

"We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming," Mjoes said. "The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this."

Two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it any more likely that he will seek the presidency in 2008.

If anything, the Peace Prize makes the rough-and-tumble of a presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has a huge, international platform to fight global warming and may not want to do anything to diminish it.

One of the advisers said that while Gore is unlikely to rule out a bid in the coming days, the prospects of the former vice president entering the fray in 2008 are "extremely remote."

"Perhaps winning the Nobel and being viewed as a prophet in his own time will be sufficient," said Kenneth Sherrill, a political analyst at Hunter College in New York.

Gore, who was an advocate of stemming climate change and global warning well before his eight years as vice president, called the award meaningful because of his co-winner, calling the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the "world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis."

Gore plans to donate his half of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion worldwide about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

In its citation, the committee lauded Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

The last American to win the prize, or share it, was former President Carter, who won it 2002.

At the time, then committee chairman Gunnar Berge called the prize "a kick in the leg" to the Bush administration for its threats of war against Iraq. In response, some members of the secretive committee criticized Berge for expressing personal views in the panel's name.

Mjoes, elected to succeed Berge a few months later, referred to that dispute on Friday, saying the committee "has never given a kick in the leg to anyone."

The White House said the prize was not seen as increasing pressure on the administration or showing that President Bush's approach missed the mark.

"Of course he's happy for Vice President Gore," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "He's happy for the international panel on climate change scientists who also shared the peace prize. Obviously it's an important recognition."

Fratto said Bush has no plans to call Gore.

Eighty-four percent in the U.S. believe world temperatures are rising, according to a poll last month by The Associated Press and Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment. Yet while about seven in 10 said they want strong public and private action to help the environment, fewer than one in 10 said they had seen such steps in the past year.

In its citation, the committee said that Gore "has for a long time been one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians" and cited his awareness at an early stage "of the climatic challenges the world is facing.

The committee cited the IPCC for its two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."

It went on to say that because of the panel's efforts, global warming has been increasingly recognized. In the 1980s it "seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent."

Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, said he and Gore really had 2,000 co-laureates — each of the scientists in the U.N. panel's research network.

"This award also thrusts a new responsibility on our shoulders," Pachauri said. "We have to do more, and we have many more miles to go."

But some questioned the prize decision.

"Awarding it to Al Gore cannot be seen as anything other than a political statement. Awarding it to the IPCC is well-founded," said Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist.

He criticized Gore's film as having "some very obvious mistakes, like the argument that we're going to see six meters of sea-level rise," he said.

"They (Nobel committee) have a unique platform in getting people's attention on this issue, and I regret they have used it to make a political statement."

In his 1895 will creating the prize, the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel said it should be awarded for efforts toward peacemaking and disarmament, and the award now often also recognizes human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment. Last year, for example, it went to the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank for pioneering the use of microcredit to spur creation of small businesses in poor nations.

Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former senior U.N. official for humanitarian affairs, called climate change more than an environmental issue.

"It is a question of war and peace," said Egeland, now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. "We're already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa." He said nomads and herders are in conflict with farmers because the changing climate has brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands.

Honestly, I hope he doesn't run. He's found his calling. He's better at what he's doing now than he was at U.S. politics.

Maybe he's better off not running.

I wouldn't want that job for all the money in the world, especially now.

I'd still vote for him. There's no better Dem out there than him.
There's no better candidate period imo. But America is a country where some people didnt vote for him because he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. So one could argue that overall we don't deserve to get a legit president for our dumb as nails voting skills.

The more choices for the country the better off we'll be.

It's an intriguing thought.

Dude now owns an Oscar AND a Nobel peace Prize.

All he really has to do is show up at the debates with the gold, drop it atop his podium, and answer "scoreboard" to every question.

.

If Gore does run and is elected, its good news for SNL. Cuz Darrell Hammond has him down. Last nights Gore deal was funny, not hilarious, but funny.