Blame Al

I used to be an adamant believer in the calendar's starting with 1. So, I'd always be up there saying that any decade, century, millennium started with said 1 and that anyone saying, "0," was just a doofus. That belief of mine held strong, damn near impenetrable until Dec. 30, 2009. That was when I listened to NPR commentator, Daniel Shore, ruminate over the naming of the past 10 years.

I always called the decade the "Double Naughts" or the "2Gs," but Shore mentioned, "The Big Zero," and nothing had ever sounded so right. I mean, look at the laundry list of loss that Shore catalogued in defense of the new nomenclature:

Enron, Worldcom, 9/11, Ken Lay, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein, WMD, "greeted as liberators," mushroom clouds, extraordinary rendition, "enhanced interrogation techniques," Paul Wolfowitz, Fox News, Abu Ghraib, Katrina! Katrina! Motherfucking Katrina!!!, Mike "You're Doing a Good Job, Brownie" Brown, Halliburton, Blackwater, waterboarding, auto bailout, Wall Street bailout, Bernie Madoff, underwater mortgages, Fannie, Freddie, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, nuclear North Korea, record-breaking national debt, China's our biggest creditors and the makers of our smart bombs ...

Oh, and I could go on. It feels as though this shopping list of endless shit could indeed go on indefinitely (I haven't even included 2009's tragedies). And it was all caused, as one co-worker pointed out, by one man.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Al Gore."

I know. You were probably thinking that the chief meteorologist of this shit storm was Vice President Cheney, but he was only a heart attack-addled bar code on what was supposed to be a losing ticket. And yeah, of course, there was W. But, aside from the Machiavellian machinations of Jeb down in Florida and Justice Scalia's calling the election in the Bush Babee's favor, who really deserves blame for W's ever setting foot in the Oval Office?

You've got to put the blame on Al. Seriously. Think about it!

Clinton, after having survived Lewinsky and impeachment, was more popular than ever. The economy was good. The Dow was hitting all-time highs. Unemployment was at all-time lows. We were paying down the national debt and were actually looking at budget surpluses for the first time in decades. Sure, Clinton's laissez-faire attitude towards deregulation and al Qaeda helped sow the seeds for future 2G troubles. But we didn't know that then. For all we knew, we were riding high times.

And Al Gore should've been able to ride that wave all the way to the White House. All he had to do was run an "I Tup Tipper!" sub-campaign while screaming, "Yo! I'm just like Billy Boy!" every chance he got.

But nooooooo ...

Al was like Michael Johnson in some gold Nikes running as fast and as far away from Clinton's record as was steroidally possible. Al, the Vietnam vet, allowed his patriotism to be called into question by a draft dodger who, at the time, was flying high in the Texas sky in the National Guard. He allowed himself to be called an "elitist"--which he is--by a Connecticut "cowboy" whose family earned their wealth during the railroad boom of the 1860s! He was dumb enough to allow his own intelligence be considered a detriment by a guy who couldn't string two sentences together and said it didn't matter that he didn't know who the president of Pakistan was (yeah, I know, ironic, ain't it?). And don't even get me started on "lock box."





Nope. Al Gore had the 2000 election handed to him on a silver platter, and he threw that bitch away farther than you can throw a Bristol Palin condom. Yeah. A lot of liberals out there blame Jeb and Scalia for stealing Florida and, hence, the election. But it should never have gotten to Florida. It should never have been close. Only Automaton Al's incompetence and constant talking down to America made it the squeaker that it was.

So yeah. I blame Al for losing the 2000 election. Therefore, when I look at the crapfest that was served up to us these past 10 years, all I can see is Gore in chef's apron and hat, beaming, "Whattaya have?"

Sure, 9/11 would've probably happened and we would've invaded Afghanistan. But do you think the former Vietnam vet would've played at war like those chickenhawks in the Bush administration had? Do you think they would've let bin Laden off the hook in Torah Borah? Do you think we'd still be there?

We all know we never would've gone to Iraq. I'm pretty sure we never would've heard of such bullshit as "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation techniques."

And we would've had an administration who actually believed in administrating. We may have been lucky enough to have regulators who would've regulated the financial sector. We might've had an FDA who could've stopped our broccoli and dog food from being contaminated. And we definitely would've had a motherfucking FEMA who would've actually saved all those poor people's lives down in New Orleans.

But we had none of that during the Big Zero. In fact, all we got was zilch! All because of W. And all because Al Gore was too friggin' incompetent to win an election that was basically handed to him.

Thanks, Al!!!!