MIAMI GARDENS, FLA - Kendrick Meek, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, continues to consolidate support from Florida Democrats as he receives the endorsements of Rep. Mark S. Pafford (D-West Palm Beach), Rep. Darren Soto (D-Orlando), and Rep. Scott Randolph (D-Orlando). Statements by Rep. Pafford, Rep. Soto, Rep. Randolph and Kendrick Meek follow:
Rep. Pafford (D-West Palm Beach) said, "Kendrick Meek's career has always been defined by his commitment to the people of Florida. Like me, he has stood in opposition to big oil and offshore oil drilling to protect Florida's coastlines. Kendrick also understands the importance of protecting another natural resource: our children. As a father I am grateful that Kendrick fought to restrict class sizes so that our children can excel. I am honored to give Kendrick my support and will continue to fight with him for Florida."
"Kendrick Meek has a long and reliable record of supporting issues Hispanics care about, including a strong economy, advancing education through smaller class sizes, equality, and fair wages. He was a strong supporter of Justice Sotomayor's nomination and is against the Arizona style immigration law, issues important to our community. Kendrick Meek has asked for our support and I am honored to stand by him in Central Florida," said Rep. Soto (D-Orlando).
"Kendrick Meek has been protecting the people of Florida since his days as a Florida State Trooper. He's not afraid to stand up and speak truth to power. In his opposition to HB 1143, Kendrick stood for all women as a champion of choice. Kendrick is committed to securing justice for every Floridian, not just the ones with big pocketbooks. I am proud to stand by Kendrick and endorse his candidacy for the U.S. Senate," reported Rep. Randolph (D-Orlando)
"I am honored to have the support of these three outstanding public servants. They have each fought tirelessly for the state of Florida and aren't afraid to stand their ground on tough issues. These three men work relentlessly to protect the people of Florida because they understand what's at stake. They are leaders who have strong roots in Florida and in their communities. I value their vision and their insight as principled men of character. Florida is fortunate to have them and I am honored to receive their support," said Kendrick Meek, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
Our campaign has also picked up the support of Al Gore, as he writes.
Florida has had its share of close elections, but this Senate race really ought to be a landslide. And it would be if people just look hard at the facts.
Kendrick Meek is the only one in this race who has consistently opposed offshore drilling. He is the only one who will ensure that we all have quality health care, and the only one who will focus on helping working Americans, rather than wealthy corporations.
Here is the bottom line: We have to help make sure Florida voters have all the facts about Kendrick and his opponents.
We've got just 42 days until Election Day, and Kendrick needs your help so he can keep his ads on the air and tell it like it is. His opponents are getting all the help they need - from corporations and special interests. Kendrick relies on you-his grassroots supporters. He needs you to make a donation today so he can raise $75,000 before the critical September 30 end-of-quarter deadline.
Click here to make an immediate donation to Kendrick's campaign. He needs his grassroots supporters to help him raise $75,000 by the September 30 deadline.
As you know, I'm working hard to raise awareness about the serious threats to our environment. One reason it's so hard is because the polluters don't want any protections for the environment that might reduce their profits, so they have managed thus far to kill climate change legislation that would have protected our children and grandchildren.
Unlike his opponents, Kendrick Meek never has been and never will be in the pocket of these special interests. He was against offshore drilling long before the terrible oil spill in the Gulf, and he's always worked to protect our beaches and wildlife, research and develop energy sources like solar power, and promote a better environment.
With Kendrick in the U.S. Senate, we can rest assured that there's somebody in Washington looking out for us. But that will happen only when he can raise the funds to stay on the air until Election Day-just 42 days away. You are an integral part of Kendrick's campaign because he relies on you for support, not oil companies and special interests.
Please make a donation to Kendrick's campaign today and help him reach his goal of raising $75,000 before the September 30 deadline. If he reaches this goal, I know he'll be able to win in November.
Once people get the facts, the choice will be clear and Kendrick Meek will be the new United States Senator from Florida. With your help today, we can make sure the facts get out.
Sincerely,
Al Gore
We are also having a Rally for Kendrick Meek with former vice president Al Gore.
THURSDAY, SEPT. 30TH
DOORS OPEN: 4:45PM
TAMPA LETTER CARRIERS HALL
3003 W CYPRESS ST
TAMPA, FL 33609
RESERVED TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLINE AT http://www.kendrickmeek.com/al...
OR CALL 877-354-6335 FOR DISTRIBUTION LOCATIONS
Several days after the 2008 presidential election, the New York Times produced a famous map of voting shifts since 2004. Most politics buffs have seen this map; according to it, Appalachia "voted more Republican, while the rest of the nation shifted more Democratic."
There is something else occurring here, however, which the map hides - and which almost nobody has perceived. This trend goes strongly, strongly against conventional wisdom.
To unearth this trend, let's move back one election - to former Vice President Al Gore's 2000 tie with former President George W. Bush. Before going below the fold, I invite you to guess - which states did Mr. Gore do better than President Barack Obama?
Climate skeptics found plenty of reasons to dig out their dreary critiques this week, between the continuing controversy over erroneous reports from the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and the record-breaking snowfall on the East Coast. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and his family built an igloo which Inhofe then dubbed "Al Gore's house" in the streets of Washington, D.C. The Virginia GOP ran ads attacking the state's Democratic representatives for their support of cap-and-trade and urged voters to "tell them how much global warming you get this weekend." And skeptics across the world claimed that the smaller mistakes in IPCC reports undermined the organization's broad conclusions on climate change science.
Let's plow through this slushy thinking before it piles up too high.
Snow still happens in a warming world
In the winter, it snows, and one snowstorm does not overthrow all of climate science. "Perhaps it's time for a refresher," wrote Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. "'Weather' and 'climate' are not the same thing. Weather is what happened yesterday or may happen tomorrow; climate patterns occur over decades."
"We can absolutely expect climate change to bring blizzards in places that don't normally see a lot of blizzards, like Washington, D.C.," chimes in Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. "Climatologists expect just this sort of 'global weirding': less predictable, more extreme, more damaging."
Cold temperatures, even record lows, do not contradict the extensive body of evidence that global temperatures are rising. As Hiskes points out, erratic weather patterns support climate change theories, and the coming seasons will feature more newsworthy weather events. Chalk up the snowfall that shut down the federal government for almost a week as a bad sign, akin to harsh storms like Hurricane Katrina.
Climate science stands despite IPCC errors...
The IPCC messed up. The international organization is meant to gather and review the body of climate change science and produce definitive reports on that field. But in past reports, the organization included a few facts unsupported by real scientific research. Mother Jones' Sheppard runs down these mistakes: the IPCC cannot back up its claims about the rising sea-level in Holland, crop failure in Africa, and the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
The bottom line, though, is that these errors do not affect the reports' main conclusions. As Sheppard explains, "The controversies over the IPCC's data haven't challenged the fundamental agreement among the vast majority of scientific bodies that climate change is happening and caused in large part by human activity."
...but that does not excuse the IPCC's behavior
The IPCC cannot use that broad consensus as a defense, however. The organization needs to maintain both an impeccable reputation as a scientific body and its independence from political pressures. At The Nation, Maria Margaronis argues that in the climate arena, science and politics have been wedged too closely together.
"On a subject as politicized as this, it's not surprising that scientists have been found guilty of hoarding data, smoothing a graph or two, shutting each other's work out of peer-reviewed journals," she writes. "The same goes on in far less controversial fields, where what's at stake is only money and careers. ... Every research paper and data set produced by climate scientists or cited by the IPCC is now fair game for the fine-toothed comb, whether it's wielded honestly or with malicious intent. Nit-picking takes the place of conversation."
Margaronis suggests that scientists admit to uncertainties and open up their data, while the rest of us stop looking to them as unimpeachable oracles on climate change. But as long as skeptics jump on a researcher's every doubt as a refutation of all climate science, that's not likely to happen.
Brace for impact
Negative attitudes about the IPCC and the snow are not idle threats to climate reform. As Steve Benen writes at The Washington Monthly, "It seems mind-numbing, but Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) said snowfall in D.C. has had an effect on policymakers' attitudes."
As cheap as they are, stunts like Inhofe's seem to dampen lawmakers' political will to pass real climate change legislation. Apparently, the Senate, already tip-toeing away from the cap-and-trade provisions passed in the House, can't talk about global warming when there's snow on the ground.
Foot-dragging like this costs the United States money and credibility. Administration officials are already downplaying expectations for the next international conference on climate change, to be held next winter in Mexico. And if the Senate gives up on a comprehensive climate bill and passes a weaker provision, the country will ultimately pay the price in higher deficits.
At Grist, David Roberts declares, "Good climate policy is responsible fiscal policy." His evidence? Reports from the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate's comprehensive climate legislation (known as the Kerry-Boxer bill) knocks $21 billion a year off the deficit, according to the CBO. The watered-down alternative increases the deficit by $13 billion a year.
Encounters with the arch-skeptic
Citing snowfall as an argument against global warming-and against passing climate change legislation!-is not the only half-baked idea climate skeptics throw around. As Joshua Frank notes for AlterNet, "There are usually a range of issues these skeptics raise in an attempt to cast doubt on climate change evidence." Frank offers a primer of responses to common complaints-i.e. humans don't contribute to global warming, that carbon emissions aren't to blame, either, that climate science cannot accurately measure global warming.
Keep this resources handy. It only takes one event, like this week's snow storm, for those misguided arguments to surface.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Today is "Young and Future Generations Day" here at the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen, and I'm here with my wife Wahleah and our two-year-old daughter Tohaana. Along with thousands of other young people, we're doing everything in our power to convince world leaders to commit to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding international agreement based on a target of 350 parts per million (ppm), which is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Less than 400 miles away in Oslo, Norway, President Obama is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." If ever there was a time and place to live up to that honor, now, in Copenhagen is it.
Four former Nobel Peace Prize winners have endorsed a target of 350ppm. On December 12th, 2008, at the international climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Al Gore (2007 winner) said to a huge crowd: "Even a goal of 450 parts per million, which seems so difficult today, is inadequate. We need to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million."
On Wednesday, President Obama pledged to cut U.S. carbon emissions "in the range of" 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. Obama also confirmed that he will attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen next month, as Aaron Wiener notes for the Washington Independent. But here's the catch: It's a one-day deal. Obama is only planning to stop by Copenhagen on Dec. 9 before flying to Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize. The climate talks, on the other hand, span Dec. 7 to Dec. 18.
Last year, Blue Dog Leonard Boswell received a left-wing primary challenge from former state Representative Ed Fallon. Boswell's central, and perhaps only, message to left-wing and new media-focused Democrats was his endorsement by Al Gore. Desmoinesdem explained at the time:
Accompanying these messages, Boswell's campaign has made sure to remind Iowa Democrats that Al Gore supports Boswell, whereas Fallon supported Ralph Nader for president in 2000. A photo of Al and Tipper Gore, along with a letter from Gore endorsing Boswell, are prominently displayed on the front page of the Boswell campaign's website.(...)
Last Thursday another glossy mailer from the Boswell campaign arrived in my mailbox. This one focused on Gore's endorsement of Boswell, with a large photo and a letter from the former vice-president. Here is an excerpt from that piece (all bolded passages were bold in the original):
Leonard Boswell, a remarkable congressman and my friend, is facing a serious primary challenge.
Whether the issue is global warming or increasing the minimum wage, making college more affordable or expanding health care to every American, Leonard Boswell is on the front lines of these issues, working hard for Iowans every day.
Democrats and Republicans on the committee took turns criticizing the legislation. Their chief complaint is that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rather than the U.S. Department of Agriculture, would be in a charge of the credit program through which farmers could get paid for practices that store crop residue in the soil or otherwise reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
"As this bill stands today, I can't vote for it," Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Ia., told Vilsack. "I don't know of anyone else in the committee who can."
Al Gore is arguing that the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation has "the moral significance equivalent to that of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s." Now, Leonard Boswell, along with seemingly all other Democrats on the Agriculture Committee, is hijacking climate change legislation unless it removes the EPA's authority to determine carbon offsets. Note that this is already on top of the bill's provision to eliminate the EPA's ability to regulate carbon itself, which is actually a step backward for climate change regulation in the Unites states.
The reason I bring is up is that, whenever groups like Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace criticize Waxman-Markey for not going far enough, they are immediately smacked down by bloggers like Joe Romm at Climate Progress for failing to offer up "politically realistic" alternatives. However, if this is all about political realism, then why are we seeing the following from Al Gore and Climate Progress in response to the Agriculture Committee's actions:
Al Gore has not made a single public statement about either Leonard Boswell or the Agriculture Committee, despite what they are currently doing to Waxman-Markey.. This is even though Boswell largely owes his position in Congress to Al Gore. One might think that political realists would use this past support to try and influence Boswell in some manner.
Climate Progress have never even mentioned Leonard Boswell once for the more than three years of their existence
according to Google. In fact, Climate Progress has never directly attacked the actions of the Agriculture Committee in the same way that it has repeatedly, and sometimes viciously, attacked environmental groups that criticize of the bill from the left. All Climate Progress is doing about the Agriculture Committee's actions is putting up articles declaring that the House will pass the bill, and a guest post very politely telling farmers why it would be super swell if they supported global warming legislation.
As such, here is my message for the self-proclaimed political realists who are supporters of Waxman-Markey:
The Democrats on the Agriculture Committee are probably, as a group, the most electorally vulnerable Democrats on any House committee. Some of the Democratic members of this committee, like Leonard Boswell, owe their continuing presence in Congress to people like Al Gore, and certainly to hundreds of progressive donors who would be upset about what Agriculture Committee Democrats are currently doing to climate change legislation. As such, either start directly attacking these vulnerable Democrats in progressive media and Democratic fundraising circles for what they are doing to Waxman-Markey, or stop priding yourself on your political realism.
If Waxman-Markey really is so unbelievably awesome, as both Al Gore and Climate Progress keep arguing, then we should be doing everything possible to pass it. Instead, Al Gore and Climate Progress seem to be giving the Democrats on the Agriculture Committee a free pass on significantly watering down the bill. I have no idea this is happening, but it certainly isn't because they are using all available, politically realistic means to pass Waxman-Markey.
Start playing some hardball, or stop telling us that we are about to get the best climate change bill politically possible.
Congressional Democrats have scored positive, or even, favorable / approval ratings according to all eight polling firms that have conducted public opinion surveys on them since the Inauguration. These figures are remarkable because, in most polls, they are the first positive approval ratings from Congressional Democrats since early 2007 (and, in some cases, since early 2002, after the September 11th attacks). However, it is not just Congressional Democrats who have seen a dramatic improvement in their image since President Obama took office. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also entered stratospheric, 2-1 positive territory on favorabliliy over the past few months.
Check out Clinton's favorability ratings compared to this time one year ago (more in the extended entry):
Next week Barack Obama will nominate key members of his energy and environmental team and among the likely choices are some to be happy about including Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu.
On Tuesday Obama met with Al Gore and, sandwiched between comments on the Blagojevich case, succinctly outlined most of the big plan I summarized a few days ago:
(transcript below)
I think it is clear from these comments that Obama is not aiming for incremental change. To achieve the kind of change Gore talks about, a switch to clean power in ten years, will require not only implementation of technologies we currently have but new breakthroughs. That's what makes Chu's appointment so encouraging: he leads the lab that has been working on the breakthroughs.
Still, there are skeptics who say the cost and the time necessary for a conversion to cleaner power make this undoable during a severe recession. More on that below.
Even as King Coal is trying to put a $6 billion coal plant in Virginia, Al Gore and a whole lot of DC green groups are beginning a campaign to point out that there is no such thing as clean coal. Their web site is This is Reality. This is part of a larger movement to wean us off of fossil fuels, which Congresswoman Donna Edwards has already endorsed.
The Reality campaign is the first TV campaign to go after the coal industry directly, and hopefully it will demystify this industry's power.
The campaign schedule has been pretty intense over the last week and will continue to be so until the BIG day on Tuesday, November 4th. I want to congratulate everyone for putting so much effort into this year's election, not just for an individual campaign, but for the entire Democratic ticket. I've seen people in every community throughout the 5th district working to make sure the message is getting out.
I want to remind everyone it is important that we finish strong. Don't take anything for granted, ignore the polls and work like the polls show our candidates 5 points down. Remember, while all indications show Barack Obama will be our next president, if we believe the polls, Al Gore would be concluding his second term or we would be working to re-elect President John Kerry right now.
One of my biggest frustrations with Democratic leaders is their refusal to embrace the energy policy Al Gore outlined this summer, which could "end our reliance on carbon-based fuels" in the next decade.
Barack Obama has offered an energy policy that's a big improvement on what George Bush has done. Unfortunately, Obama still supports more investment in so-called "clean coal" and has not ruled out expanding nuclear power.
On the plus side, Obama also calls for generating 10 percent of our country's electricity from renewable sources by 2012--which sounds great until you learn that the U.S. has already surpassed that goal.
Here are statements from Al Gore at the Clinton Global Initiative.
This is a crisis that is happening NOW. Scientists around the world are practically screaming from the rooftops to stop it.
"If you're a young person, I believe we've reached a point of civil disobedience" ...to do things like take down coal plants.
Civil disobedience from young people doesn't just happen, it requires leadership from older people willing to put their ass on the line. the US is now assigning the military directly on US soil "to help with civil unrest and crowd control". Does he think that young people are just out and out stupid? The other side has the guns and the authority to use them.
Anonymous Liberal, who some of you may remember from his occasional pinch hits for Glennzilla, makes a point worth highlighting, The Media's Moment of Truth:
This election is a test of the political media in this country. If journalists can't find a way to dissuade the use of flagrant dishonesty as a tactic, they will have failed this country miserably.
Some people don't seem to like that I am not totally enthralled and inspired by the remarkable speeches at the Democratic convention so far. While I think the speeches have been decent, it is true that I am not enthralled. In the extended entry, I explain why, and also explain what I am looking for in these speeches.
Although he uses an old-timey analogy, I think Ed Rendell is generally correct in his assessment of Obama's wordy, intellectual speaking style:
"He is a little like Adlai Stevenson," Rendell mused. "You ask him a question, and he gives you a six-minute answer. And the six-minute answer is smart as all get out. It's intellectual. It's well framed. It takes care of all the contingencies. But it's a lousy soundbite."
"We've got to start smacking back in short understandable bites," he said, noting "Everybody is nervous as all get out. Everybody says we ought to be ahead by 10, 15 points. What the heck is going on?"
Even though one of the attractions to Obama in the nomination campaign was that he seemed to be a charismatic speaker in the style of Jack Kennedy or Bill Clinton, there have been numerous times during this campaign where I have wondered if we just nominated Gore or Kerry again. Obama does not do a good job of fitting his speeches or answers into sound bites. Many of his ads have reminded me of the five-paragraph essay you were probably taught in freshman composition. There are times when he seems to over intellectualize his framing of policy on the stump in a manner that is reminiscent of Gore or Kerry.
However, I have to disagree with Rendell on the utility of such a speaking style. While it doesn't seem to be helping Obama in this campaign, I am just as tired of having to dumb things down in order to win elections as I am having to appeal to socially conservative whites. Further, the intellectual lucidity of Bill Clinton is often overlooked because he won, but he often gave lengthy, intellectual answers to questions, too. It isn't necessarily a problem.
We nominate smart candidates with strong grasps of policy, and we should be proud of that, not afraid. We shouldn't think that we have to dump nuance and gravitas just to appeal to voters. America is not such a an incredibly provincial nation of xenophobic anti-intellectuals that those qualities will always be negatives. After all, Clinton, a Rhodes scholar, won twice. Also, the nation voted for Al Gore, and John Kerry only narrowly missed. Intelligence is not necessarily an electoral loser.
The problem comes in when our candidates talk this way, but give our opponents a pass for not talking this way. Bush was framed as an idiot, and he looked dumb compared to both Gore and Kerry. That hurt him in the polls, and it can hurt McCain in the polls, too. Obama can keep talking like Stevenson, or Gore, or Kerry, or whoever, but he needs to make McCain pay for his frequent gaffes about his knowledge of policy and international relations. Obama's speaking style will help him as long as McCain is regularly mocked for not grasping important details. People don't want another idiot in the White House. This is a line of attack we should pursue, not wring our hands about looking like the smartest kid in the class.
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