There is a crap article floating around Right Wing media right now accusing Al Gore of being a hypocrite on energy conservation (on Al Gore consuming 20 times the energy of a normal household).

source: tennessee right winger propaganda think tank

"Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”
Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES)."


You can tell by the website that it's a right wing republican think tank. When a think tank is for less taxes for big business and corporations, against charter school programs, and espouses "personal responsibility" (aka do away with social welfare programs), it's pretty obvious what political agenda they are proselytizing. Plus, they're in Tennessee, notoriously red and anti Gore state. The silly smear campaign was also posted on the Drudge Report! The most conservative neo-con mouthpiece ever.

People's energy bills are not public documents are they? How did this think tank obtain Al Gore's energy bills?

Rebuttals......

Mr. Gore buys carbon offsets and runs his home off of entirely green power. So, technically, he is probably entirely carbon neutral, because for every bit of CO2 he puts into the air, a forest is built with his money to sequester that CO2.
source

Gore's family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

source

And then just do some simple math- if you have a 20 room house, clearly you're going to be using more electricity than the average american. The average american is on minimum wage probably living in a one bedroom apartment and not driving a car.

Should he move to a smaller house? Probably. Is that realistic to expect of our politicians? Hardly!


And you know what's really sick? I looked up the case to find out the truth about what's going on and came across this Fox News link:
(fair and balanced my &^%!)

"Former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes — who said during the 2004 campaign that he helped a young George W. Bush enter the Air National Guard to avoid the Vietnam draft — is back in the news.

Barnes' name appears on a list of about two dozen celebrities who allegedly did business with Hollywood madam Jody "Babydol" Gibson. The Los Angeles Times reports Barnes has no explanation why his cell phone number is in Gibson's files, and told them, "I have never met or talked to this broad in my entire life." His office later released a revised version of the statement, substituting the word "woman" for "broad."

—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report."


Anyone who challenges Republican policies is immediately attacked for something totally irrelevant. Sorry to be a blue snob, but all I can think is that Republicans know that they are in power because most Americans are ignorant idiots with an attention span of 3 seconds. So any time they are challenged, they bring up sex, drugs, and stealing money to distract the public. Unfortunately the 30 second news bit has done its damage by the time there's an opportunity for rebuttal. No one wants to hear the rebuttal anyway, because invariably its nuanced.

That's the problem with Republicans anyway! It's black and white. The masses think that Dems equivocate or "flip flop" because most are just too ignorant to digest complexity and would rather be inhaling GMO at Wendys or guzzling beer in front of the game than reading a newspaper.


great rebuttal

"Who are these people? Well , a quick check of Alexa reveals their web site gets no traffic. Are they legitimate? Well, again, they claim to be non-partisan but only link to far-right and conservative groups so regardless of what their status is with the IRS, this is a conservative, strongly-leaning Republican organization.
...
Tennessee Center's President Drew Johnson comes straight out of the right's network, coming from Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute and the right-wing-funded National Taxpayers Foundation.

...
As of Feb. 16, the Tennessee tax dept. considers them "not a legitimate organization" because of their misrepresenting themselves involving questions about the group's opposition to a state crackdown on drug dealers."

Obama, Osama.... who cares? Brown people are all terrorists anyway, right?

Watch Fox News make fools of themselves as the Republican propaganda machine:


(He's Black! His middle name is Hussein! He was raised a Muslim! He attended a terrorist training camp in Indonesia! We're getting all of our information from Hillary Clinton!)

Watch CNN totally debunk the smear campaign by Fox News:


The school is public, has female and male students of various religions, and teaches from a national curriculum.

Proof of Fox Propaganda:

According to an October 2003 PIPA study, viewers of Fox News were the most likely to believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that the world was favorable of the US' war in Iraq. (see page 13: Variations in Misperceptions According to Source of News)

"Fox News watchers were most likely to hold misperceptions—and were more than twice as likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three." Fox News viewers had a misperception rate of 45% compared to NPR viewers' rate of 11%.

The media is the fourth arm of government and MUST continue to play its crucial role as a watchdog of government excesses. Bush's recent attacks on NPR funding are further proof of the polarization of media for partisan ends. Democrats must take a stand at the propagandizing of our fellow citizens. The time has come for our party to have a backbone and to stop equivocating!!!!!

More information/ Sign a Petition:

Can you sign this petition asking the Democratic Party of Nevada to drop Fox as its partner for the presidential primary debate?

The full text of the petition is: "Fox is a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel. The Democratic Party of Nevada should drop Fox as its partner for the presidential primary debate."
Clicking here will add your name to the petition:

"In the United States, about 40 percent of dogs - around 17 million - are considered overweight (5 percent to 20 percent over ideal weight) or obese (20 percent or more over ideal weight), according to 2002 data from the American Veterinary Medical Association."

Pfizer recently launched its new drug, Slentrol, to combat the widespread problem of canine obesity. Pfizer is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, with revenue of over $51 billion USD in 2005. Almost all of this revenue is made off drugs and medical conditions that Pfizer markets to consumers in rich countries, conditions of privilege such as high cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, and heart disease.

Of its drug for fat dogs, Pfizer claims , “Slentrol has the potential to revolutionize the approach to weight management in obese dogs by giving veterinarians an additional tool when diet modification and increased exercise are difficult to implement successfully.”

Perhaps pet owners who cannot exercise their dogs should reconsider whether they are truly competent or responsible enough to care for a living being. Common sense would lead to the logical conclusion that if your dog is fat, feed it less food.

Pfizer is charging “$1 to $2” USD per day, i.e. $365- $730 a year. $365 is more than the yearly income of 1/3 the world’s population. Of course, people living in poverty are hardly Pfizer’s concern, since through its patent processes and unethical testing on citizens of developing countries, the pharmaceutical company routinely deprives such people the human right to health services.

Pharma would have you believe that they need all this profit to keep researching and developing drugs. Unfortunately drugs for “third world conditions” are paid for by US taxpayers $ going to the NIH and then to the research universities. Pharma then buy the rights to the drugs and processes; for example, D4T and Yale, Xalatan and Columbia. Then they charge whatever they like, because they’ve got patents for almost two decades meaning no one else can legally produce the drug. Once the patent is up, they recombine the same ingredients and patent it again.

Ostensibly Pfizer prizes fat American dogs over thousands of men women and children dying each day of diseases that don’t even affect the West anymore- dysentery, malaria, HIV/AIDS, polio, measles, etc.

Forget the dying brown people for a moment (Pfizer certainly has). Pet food costs less per day than Slentrol does. It doesn’t make any sense. Plus the side effects are disgusting- dog vom and diarrhea. It seems to be more expensive and more labor intensive to drug out these poor dogs.

Slentrol is almost as ground-breaking as Glaxo Smith Kline’s new drug for “restless leg syndrome,” “With 2005 sales of $2.2 billion, Pfizer Animal Health is a global leader in discovering, developing and marketing medicines and vaccines for companion animals and livestock, including beef and dairy cattle and swine.”

--
Check out Cesar the Dog Whisperer from National Geographic and
what he has to say about his work and dogs:

"I rehabilitate dogs. I train people. The worst kind of owner is the one
that blames the dog for everything. It's not the dog's fault. The dog
doesn't premeditate. For the owners, that's the highest form of denial. But
I pop their bubbles.."