More Al-Foolery

In this installment of the Chicago Sun-Times, Al "Screamin' Mad" Gore and his Save the World GlowBull Warmening Circus are taken to task. Global warming tends cool down a bit under cold analysis of the facts.

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.

Science and Reason according to Al Gore's medical dosing cycle is the proper context of course.

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

Winding up for the intellectual smacker pie, one has to ask this question, "What didn't he know and when didn't he know it?" The answer is, "Yes, all the time."

For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit.

Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes. [Emphasis mine]

This is the deadly "Gore claims ... Yet" formula, known to cause liberal asshats to rend their own flesh in agony before their heads explode. I wish my hemorrhoids were shrinking as fast as Gore claims the glaciers are.

Don't you know we're all going to die in ten years if we don't *insert liberal mantra here* right now this very moment and even then it may be too late??!!??

I kinda derailed my train of thought because for a minute I thought Gore was blaming global warming for causing more tomatoes. I'm okay now. But I really like tomatoes.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa." [Emphasis, again, is contribution to Gore's debacle.]

Gore claims... and misses again. This passage is a variation of the "Gore claims .... Yet" formula. "However", however, is equally devestating.

Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s. [Emphasis, well, you know...]

The "Gore argues .... But" format is the terminal stage. No other contradictory element need be introduced after this. Global Warmening is now in meltdown, but not from the heat. Eventually a lack of oxygen will starve this inconvenient calumniation of science, this distortion of truth, this, this, this... pile of shit.

I dare say the Danes have also incurred the Wrath of Gore for refuting his illogical, inescapable, financially induced, spectacularly inaccurate, cross-my-offsets-and-hope-to-die scientific conclusions. Also know as bold ass lies.

Each of these cases provides an opportunity for Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell.

And ruin his retirement portfolio? Are you crazy?? This carbon offset BS is the sweetest scam Al Gore has managed to pull since his zinc mine was listed as a major environmental polluter.

THE WRATH OF GORE

Yeah, yeah I know. My PhotoShop (free knock off) kung fu is weak... Can any one fix this?

The Real Cost Of Al Gore's Retirement Plan

The Sunday Times ran a story regarding the unintended consequences of poorly designed environmental policies.

FOOD-PRICE inflation so severe that central banks are forced to raise interest rates to growth-stifling levels; corn prices so high that poor Mexicans can’t afford their tortillas; massive deforestation to make way for more corn and palm oil; poor farmers pushed off their land to make room for carbon-offsetting plantings paid for by rich jet-setters;

Just to name a few.

These are some of the unintended consequences of hastily conceived environmental policies. In America, President George Bush has decided that we can plant our way out of dependence on foreign oil. He envisages a future in which America’s fuel will come from planting above ground rather than drilling below it. In Europe, Angela Merkel and Tony Blair have hit upon carbon trading as the solution to global warming, and the man whose mirror assures him that he is the greenest of them all, David Cameron, has a wind turbine on his roof to generate enough electricity to power his hairdryer.

All these measures are jerk knee responses to a non-problem. There's a saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Out climate ain't broke, I really doubt if man can break it. But our economies can tank if wrong models propagate wrong business decisions.

Speaking of the Academy Awards, the stars, starlets and wannabes participating in this exercise in self-adulation poured into the hall from their limousines and private jets, but assured us that the entire flood-lit affair was carbon neutral. They had purchased what are known as “carbon offsets”, a system by which they pay others to curtail carbon emissions, or fund renew-able-energy sources. These deals, which are running at an annual rate of about $100m and rising, according to Business Week, “have become one of the most widely promoted products marketed to cheque-book environmentalists”.

The notion of carbon offsets are horrendous. They don't solve anything (there's nothing to fix anyway) and allow a privileged elite to make demands on the rest of mankind that they themselves are unwilling to follow.

Small problem. The offsets were purchased from TerraPass, holder of a portfolio of offset projects, which include a garbage dump in Arkansas managed by Waste Management. TerraPass has purchased thousands of tons of gas reductions resulting from Waste Management’s decision to burn off the methane produced by decomposing trash. But the company’s managers and state regulators told Business Week that the decision to burn off the methane had “nothing to do with TerraPass’s efforts”. Or with the offsets purchased by the Hollywood greens.

Hypocrites. Liars and hypocrites are driving these environmental debates.

There are more such stories, but you get the idea: the reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions claimed by those intent on being green without changing their lifestyles are often bogus — they would have happened without the purchase of offsets.

It's like being on a diet and still bingeing on baked goods and chocolate. You just buy "fat offsets" from starving Sudanese. Then you can state how many calories you've dropped by the number of bony corpses your offsets are producing.

Rich American agribusinesses are also cashing in on the huge subsidies made available by the government’s decision to subsidise ethanol and biodiesel production from corn, sugar and other crops. Ethanol from corn is a particular favourite of all the presidential candidates vying for votes in corn-growing Iowa, with the honourable exception of John McCain, who knows a boondoggle when he sees one. Crop prices are up, and so are land values.

Government subsidies are not free. You pay for them - someone has to pay for all the freebies the government dishes out. It's just that the rich agribusinesses are suddenly paying a lot less. So you, the American taxpayer, have to make up the difference.

The result is a problem for central banks. In the past, spikes in food prices have been seen as temporary, usually weather-related, and requiring no reaction from the inflation-controllers. But this rise might be a plateau rather than a spike: chickens and cattle are more expensive to feed, so farmers are keeping fewer of them, driving up the price of eggs, beef and dairy products. This food inflation is felt most keenly in poorer countries, where food accounts for a larger part of the average budget than in the developed world. But even in the richest countries, central bankers are wondering whether to raise interest rates to cool growth sufficiently to offset the effects of rising food prices.

I keep track of our household finances through a computer program. Our food costs have risen 10% in one year - and we're not suddenly eating steak and lobster. Some of this is due to increased petroleum costs, but we have a daughter living out of the house now We should be spending less, not more.

But think before you legislate. The EU introduced an emissions trading scheme that California intends to copy — and watched greenhouse-gas emissions rise by 30m tons, or about 1.5%, because too many permits were issued. Europe’s four biggest power producers pocketed €8 billion (£5.4 billion) from the sale of their excess permits, and UK generators an estimated £1 billion. That doesn’t mean all such trading schemes are flawed, but it does suggest that haste makes more than a little waste.

What a freaking mess! It's a scam! Nothing was done to reduce emissions. This is a boondoggle invented by corporations and their hand picked politicians to scam more profits for doing nothing. And Al Gore is the leader of the pack.

All the profits realized by those power companies were drawn from other businesses who just ate the cost, right? Wrong! They raised their prices so that you, the consumer, would pay for it. Could this be one of the reasons why energy costs are going up so fast? And yet, with all this fiscal activity, no improvements have been made in the amount of emissions released into the atmosphere.

Rinky Dink A Mine Fulla Zinc

Al Gore's fiscal interests in one of the most polluted mines in the country are coming back to bite him in the ass. Can you say hy-poc-racy? I knew you could. From the WSJ Opinion Journal:

The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist.

Like a drunken sot arising from a week long binge, the NY Times scrapes the dried snot off its upper lip, pulls its urine stained trousers up from below its knees and finally remembers that it is a newspaper that is allegedly reporting, well, news.

Last Tuesday, the Times reported that several eminent scientists "argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points [on global warming] are exaggerated and erroneous."

*Belch* The Times then orders another round or six, pukes on the beer nuts and slides off the stool. And while it is again relieving itself contentedly into its trousers:

The Tenessean reported yesterday that Mr. Gore received $570,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm. The mines, which closed in 2003 but are scheduled to reopen under a new operator later this year, "emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal."

Looks like the Times and Al Gore both have problems with nasty discharges. I'm looking for a company that sells dead trout offsets.

Uncle Al won an Oscar for his movie, "An Incontinent Inconvenient Truth" where at the very end of the movie, Gore asks the audience,"Are you ready to change the way you live?" Al sure did. He buys offsets, or rather, he has the people at Generation Investment Management buy them for him.

Mr. Gore's office responded by claiming that the Gores "purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero." But CNSNews.com reports that Mr. Gore doesn't purchase carbon offsets with his own resources, and that they are meaningless in terms of global warming.

Meaningless, pointless, useless - that just about describes carbon offsets. The more you think about it the less sense it makes.

The offset purchases are actually made for him by Generation Investment Management, a London-based investment firm that Mr. Gore co-founded, and which provides carbon offsets as a fringe benefit to all 23 of its employees, ensuring that they require no real sacrifice on the part of Mr. Gore or his family. Indeed, their impact is also highly limited. The Carbon Neutral Co.--one of the two vendors that sell offsets to Mr. Gore's company, says that offset purchases "will be unable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions . . . in the short term."

But there's no time!! Gore is Agent Jack Bauer of Frothing Moonbat Central. These people and their incontinent truth are literally shitting themselves over the prospect of massive global flooding unseen since the last time Ted Kennedy relieved himself while swimming in the pool at the Y.

No time! It's already too late! But the Carbon Neutral Company, "If You've Got Carbon, Then Clean Out Your Blowhole" even has a carbon calculator designed to relieve you of worry, guilt and assets. Even though we'll all drown, fry or whatever before one offset cancels one snowflake I'll be breaking my ass to shovel next year.

The Times quoted Don Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, as telling hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America that "I don't want to pick on Al Gore. But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data." Mr. Easterbrook made clear he has never been paid by any energy corporations and isn't a Republican.

That's okay. Al Gore has never let a fact get in his way, or a dollar get out of his way for quite some time.

Then there is the Gore zinc mine. Mr. Gore has personally earned $570,000 in zinc royalties from a mine his father bought in 1973 from Armand Hammer, the business executive famous for his close friendship with the Soviet Union and for pleading guilty to making illegal campaign contributions during Watergate. On the same day Al Gore Sr. bought the 88-acre parcel from Hammer for $160,000, he sold the land and subsurface mining rights to his then 25-year-old son for $140,000. The mineral rights were then leased back to Hammer's Occidental Petroleum and the royalty payments put in the names of Al Gore Jr. and his wife, Tipper.

Sounds like another retirement plan. And I don't begrudge the man a penny of that. His daddy wanted him and Tipper to have a little something to fall back on and that's just fine and dandy. But don't get all in our faces about pollution when you can go fishing in Al's river and pull out a three headed catfish that has a glow-in-the-dark pecker.

The Gore mines were no small operations. In 2002, the year before they shut down, they ranked 22nd among all metal-mining operations in the U.S., with total toxic releases of 4.1 million pounds.

Four million pounds of toxic releases. That's over 2,000 tons of poison Al has allowed to be dumped into Tennessee rivers. I won't hold my breath until the Times publishes this story. But if a republican was responsible for this? We'd never hear the end of it.

A new mine operator, Strategic Resource Acquisition, is planning to reopen the mines later this year. The Tennessean reports that just last week, Mr. Gore wrote SRA asking it to work with a national environmental group as it makes its plans. He noted that under the previous operator, the mines had, according to the environmental website Scorecard, "pollution releases from the mine in 2002 [that] placed it among the 'dirtiest/worst facilities' in the U.S."

Well Al, I hope you enjoy the Oscar sitting up on your mantle 'cause you sure won't enjoy where I'd like to put it. But it would at least shut one of the holes that you pollute from.

More On Gore

In the previous post I took a look at Al Gore's preposterous claim that he is not profiting from the carbon offsets that he does not buy from his London investment firm, GIM, Generation Investment Management. He does make a profit (most likely a pretty healthy one) for two reasons: the investment cost him nothing because it is an offset donated by GIM, and GIM seems to have some pretty smart people running the show.

• David Blood, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is Managing Partner;
• Mark Ferguson, previously co-Head of Pan-European Research at Goldman Sachs Asset Management and a Global Equities Portfolio Manager, is Chief Investment Officer;
• Peter Harris, previously head of International Operations for Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is Chief Operating Officer;
• Peter S. Knight, formerly Managing Director Met West Financial, lawyer, Chief of Staff for Senator Al Gore (D-TN) from 1977-1989, and Campaign Manager for President Clinton's successful re-election in 1996, is President of Generation U.S.;
• Colin le Duc, previously Director of Research for SAM Sustainable Asset Management in Zurich and strategy consultant for Arthur D. Little in London, is Head of Research; and
• Uncle Al, Chairman, manly inventor of the intertubes and manly ex-Vice President of the United States. Knowing full well that carbohydrate offsets would not be available until he invented them in the year 2011, Gore demonstrated manly love for his wife by inserting his tongue down her esophagus at the 2000 Democratic Convention and removing the sugar laden Moon Pie from her stomach that she had eaten off stage just moments prior.

The biographies of the Board members are here. We already touched on Peter Knight and his narrow avoidance of a federal investigation when Janet Reno was fortuitously distracted by a comely co-ed intern from George Mason.

But what else is going on here? The spokesman for GIM, Richard Campell, gave us a clue. The confusion, Campbell said, arose because GIM pays to offset the energy use of its operations and the personal emissions of its 23 employees, including Gore. And of course the bigger carbon footprint you leave, the bigger the offset and the more money that is donated to your account for investment.

We do not invest in any activity of carbon offset. That's nonsense. We are a fund management business that does sustainability research," he added.

But the offset is an investment in an eco-frienfly business? Who is receiving the dough if the investment pays off? Campell is silent on this. But their website isn't so silent. It gives a clearer picture of what they're about than their spokeman.

Long Term Focus: A majority of a company's value is determined by its long-run performance. Investment results for long-only equity strategies are maximized by taking a long-term investment horizon.

That doesn't sound like research to me, sounds more like a 401k.

We Buy High Quality Businesses:Dominant market positions, strong entry barriers, predictable future, pricing power, and secular growth trends.

Hmmmmmmm. No research here.

At the Right Price: Key to our success is our price discipline and the ability to buy companies at sufficiently attractive prices to deliver performance.

Nope, no research here either. Then there's this:

LONDON, February 26
-- Northern Trust has been appointed by Generation Investment Management ("Generation") to provide full investment operations outsourcing for its assets under management. Northern Trust now provides custody, trade services,fund accounting, transfer agency, performance measurement and clientreporting across Generation's fund range domiciled in Dublin and Delaware,and investment administration support services for Generation in connectionwith its global separate account business.

I'm not a financial wizkid and I sure don't know what this means. I thought GIM had all this experience?

As a new firm, we had the opportunity to partner with Northern Trust early on to position our business operations strategically for future growth," said Peter Harris, Chief Operating Officer of Generation. "One of the key advantages for us in partnering with Northern Trust is the benefits we receive from a well run, established global business with large resources and deep expertise. We want to focus on managing our clients' assets and delivering superior investment performance: outsourcing to Northern Trust enables us to do this whilst providing the outstanding operational support we require as we grow our business."

This still sounds like 401k stuff to me. Anyone out there lend a hand? Partnering to receive benefits from a "well run, established global business" and one with "deep pockets espertise"?

Northern Trust Corporation (Nasdaq: NTRS) is a leading provider of investment management, asset and fund administration, fiduciary and banking solutions for corporations, institutions and affluent individuals worldwide.

I hate to be redundant, but this does not sound like a research company. And notice the use of "affluent individuals worldwide." Sounds to me like rich people with guilty consiences seeking offsets.

Northern Trust, a multibank holding company based in Chicago, has a growing network of 84 offices in 18 U.S. states and has international offices in 13 locations in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. As of December 31, 2006, Northern Trust had assets under custody of US$3.5trillion, and assets under investment management of US$697 billion. NorthernTrust, founded in 1889, has earned distinction as an industry leader in combining high-touch service and expertise with innovative products and technology.

Global Warming is Gore's Retirement Plan

From an article in Investor's Business Daily:

Environmentalism: Gore's carbon footprint may be the size of Godzilla's, but he eases his conscience with 'carbon offsets.' He buys them from himself. And every time someone else buys them, Big Al gets richer.

This carbon offset scam is just that - a scam. It produces nothing, it does not reduce carbon emissions and it only serves to line the pockets of those hooked into the econoscam.

Say you want to fly your Gulfstream private jet across the country regularly to Hollywood premieres instead of taking a Greyhound bus. You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like invest it in windmills and solar panels to 'reduce' carbon emissions by an equivalent amount. Your are then declared 'carbon neutral' as you continue to pollute.

So while the hippie is happily polluting, the not-for-profit is stealing it. Or you can own the carbon offset business itself and pay yourself to use that private jet. Plus a nice salary as executive director or any other title that pops into your thieving brain.

Speaking of carbon offsets and shell games, guess where Gore buys his carbon offsets? Well, he buys them from a firm called Generation Investment Management LLP, a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3 corporation. The chairman and co-founder is Al Gore. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself. Others who buy these offset are really buying stock in Gore's growing business. You, too, can green up his portfolio, if not Earth itself.

And there's the rub. The shell game is already set up, the screaming loons are in motion to stifle debate, the scientists have been bought through grants and the UN smelled the bribes a thousand miles away and- through the IPCC - are partners in the scam.

The number of companies jumping into this market has multiplied. In 2006, at least 60 sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from a dozen firms selling offsets worth $6 million in 2004. That's a lot of green.

That's a lot of stupidity, and a lot of hippies with guilty consciences. And they want to force you to join them.

Skeptics of this scheme — perhaps we should call it a scam — include, interestingly enough, Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford and a member of a group working on the reduction of greenhouse gases for the U.N.'s International Panel of Climate Change. 'What these companies are allowing people to do,' said Rayner, 'is to carry on with their current behavior with a clear conscience.'

This is not about conscience or the climate, it's about cash.

Gorebucks that is.

3/13/07 UPDATE:

One of the commenters (thanks Fred) was kind enough to leave this link to the Cyber News Service, where the company spokesman denies that Gore is profiting from carbon offsets.

Al Gore is not profiting from his crusade against global warming, a spokesman for an investment firm co-founded by the former vice president said Tuesday.

Gore's London-based employee-owned company, Generation Investment Management (GIM), purchases -- but isn't a provider of -- carbon dioxide (CO2) "offsets," said spokesman Richard Campbell.

GIM is strictly an investment firm that considers how eco-friendly corporations are in assessing long-term sustainability, Campbell told Cybercast News Service by phone from London.

Fair enough. We'll listen.

The confusion, Campbell said, arose because GIM pays to offset the energy use of its operations and the personal emissions of its 23 employees, including Gore.

So, the firm will cover the cost to offset the energy use at Gore's home, or his global jet travel, as it would the offset cost of any other employee, Campbell said.

So the confusion is that Gore doesn't profit from his crusade but that GIM pays for the carbon offsets so that Gore doesn't have to? Gore still derives a benefit from GIM, namely, Gore can say that he lives a "carbon neutral" lifestyle but doesn't have a pay a cent for it because the company he founded pays for it. Ahhhhhh, I think I smell a profit here. The profit being that cheapskate Gore skates on the carbon offset and pockets the difference.

The fact that Gore's Nashville home runs up electricity bills averaging $1,200 per month was publicized last week by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

I don't spend that much for electricity in a year and a half. But I don't claim to be carbon neutral either. And who runs GIM that enables Al "I Hate Carbon" Gore to make this claim at no cost?

The president of GIM's U.S. operation is Peter S. Knight, who served as Gore's chief of staff in the U.S. Senate and later as campaign manager for the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign in 1996.Knight is a controversial figure.

In 1999, Republicans on the House Commerce Committee asked then U.S. Attorney Janet Reno to investigate whether a $1 million payment to Knight from a Tennessee developer was an illegal contingency fee for helping get the Federal Communications Commission to move to the development.

Knight and the developer, Franklin Haney, said the payment was for legal fees for Knight's work on several projects. Reno declined to investigate.

I can't speak for the reader, but this certainly does not inspire confidence in me. And since Gore refuses to disclose his income, there is no way to see what other "benefits" Gore is reaping form his association with GIM. But there are other considerations. GIM is an investment firm that takes money that Al Gore doesn't give them and "invests" it for him in eco-friendly businesses.

> We buy high quality businesses and management teams whose securities are attractively priced to deliver excess returns over the long-term.
> Generation's strategy is to invest in long-only, global, public equities with a concentrated portfolio of 30-50 companies.
> We Buy High Quality Businesses: Dominant market positions, strong entry barriers, predictable future, pricing power, and secular growth trends
> With High Quality Management Teams: Culture of Integrity, respect for shareholders, well managed for the long term
> At the Right Price: Key to our success is our price discipline and the ability to buy companies at sufficiently attractive prices to deliver performance

My take on this is simple. Remember Hillary Clinton's spectacular success in the futures market?

On October 11, 1978, the future First Lady, a neophyte investor with an annual income of $25,000, opened a commodity-futures account with a deposit of $1,000.

Her first trade was the short sale of ten live-cattle contracts at a price of 57.55 cents a pound: a commitment to deliver in December of that year 400,000 pounds of cattle with a market value of $230,200. One day later, she bought the contracts back at a price of 56.10 cents, just 0.15 cent above the low of the day, pocketing $5,300 for a return of 530 per cent.

Mrs. Clinton continued to be a net winner at the game. By the time she closed her trading account ten months later, she had racked up $99,541 in profits, a spectacular 10,000 per cent return on her initial investment of $1,000. Either Mrs. Clinton was a better trader than the legendary George Soros, whose best-ever annual return in thirty years of trading was 122 per cent, or she was led by an invisible hand.

Looks like Al Gore did learn something from the Clinton's after all.

He learned how to cover his scheming ass.