Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. Al’s Acceptance

The Republicans have asked The Pen to register the Conservative rebuttal to Al Gore’s speech last night and The Pen has accepted the challenge, even though in truth, the competition is hardly fair.

Nevertheless, here goes.

First of all, let’s skip the personal stuff. I mean really, who cares? He ain’t the Pope, and he could hardly be worse than Billy the Wonder Chimp, so let’s just say he’s a decent guy and leave it at that. So are his opponents, so the character issue is pretty much a wash.

However…

“In the Senate and as Vice President, I fought for welfare reform.” - Yeah, you did, but only because the Republicans, who were swept into Congress based in part on the promise to force you and Bill to consider such reform (something you two had been unwilling to do up to that point), made good on their promise.

“Others talked about welfare reform. We actually reformed welfare and set time limits.” - Again… if those “others” hadn’t started talking about it, and then actually sent you a workable bill, which your boss begrudgingly signed, you never would have considered it in the first place. Al is the king of claiming to have generated other people’s ideas (The Internet, Campaign Finance Reform, and on and on).

“It's just wrong for seniors to have to choose between food and medicine while the big drug companies run up record profits.” - Well, of course it is. But I would remind Mr. Gore that it is the pursuit of profit that has resulted in every single medical advance in recent human history. How many prescription drugs would you say were created by scientists busting their asses for a Soviet-State wage in pursuit of a product that would be owned by the government upon its completion? I would be surprised if the answer was even one. You cannot take the profit motive out of the medical research field, or advancements will stop. So, let’s find a way to help out those who can’t afford their prescriptions if we must, but let’s get off the drug companies’ backs for having the audacity to try and make profits off an incredibly valuable product. And while we’re at it, how about demanding a return of tax money subsidies (plus interest) off the first dollar gross from sales of prescriptions developed with taxpayer money.

“If you entrust me with the Presidency, I will put our democracy back in your hands, and get all the special-interest money - all of it - out of our democracy, by enacting campaign finance reform. I feel so strongly about this, I promise you that campaign finance reform will be the very first bill that Joe Lieberman and I send to Congress.” - Yes, he feels so strongly about it in fact, that he’s developed idiosyncratic little habits like giving orders to agents of his administration that result in felonies being committed on his behalf, in an effort to grab illegal election funds.

“Not so long ago, a balanced budget seemed impossible. Now our budget surpluses make it possible to give a full range of targeted tax cuts to working families.” - I’m going to keep making this point for as long as the Democrats want to keep trying to obfuscate it. Returning a budget surplus to the people who gave it to you in the first place is not a tax cut!!! It’s ours, you don’t need it, give it back! It’s really very simple. And if you want to do targeted tax cuts on top of that… fine, knock yourself out. But don’t confuse a tax cut with returning to your citizens extra cash that you took out of their pockets, unnecessarily, in the first place.

“I will never agree to raise the retirement age to 70, or threaten the promise of Social Security.” - OK, so he wants to increase taxes to help seniors pay for prescription drugs, prescriptions which are guaranteed to increase life-expectancy for the average American, and therefore increase the amount of time for which the government will be expected to provide for them through Social Security and Medicare. But, he is unwilling to consider reducing that amount of time (and therefore the tax burden on us young‘uns) on the front-end (when folks need less help), by even a measly five years? Simple math Al, more and more seniors living longer and longer, being paid for by an ever-decreasing tax base. What color’s the sky in your world?

“And let there be no doubt: I will protect and defend a woman's right to choose. The last thing this country needs is a Supreme Court that overturns Roe v. Wade.” - Alright, he’s got us there. I was very, very disappointed to see Shrub bend over and pussy out on the pro-choice issue. I would hope that, deep-down in his heart, George Jr. is pro-choice, but dammit, he keeps giving into the pro-life faction when the chips are down. Which faction, I might add, is made up primarily of impossibly old white guys who can be fairly confident that they will never face the issue of unwanted pregnancy themselves. Kinda like bettin’ on the long shot with somebody else’s social security check in’it?

“Yes, we're all imperfect…. I know my own imperfections. I know that sometimes people say I'm too serious, that I talk too much substance and policy. Maybe I've done that tonight.” - Oh puh-lease! Yes Al, I know what you mean. Some people tell me I’m too much of a saint, that it’s all about selflessness and giving with me. I’m trying to work on that.

“Sometimes, you have to choose to do what's difficult or unpopular. Sometimes, you have to be willing to spend your popularity in order to pick the hard right over the easy wrong.” - Oh come on, this from a man who learned at the knee of a President who licked his finger and held it in the wind before making a decision? Is being your own man and staying true to yourself, despite your critics, the reason why you’ve hired image consultants to make you look like something other than the droning automaton that we all know you to be?

What we learned last night is that Al continues to believe that redistribution of wealth is the way to “lift up” (his words) a democratic capitalist society, this despite forty years of post-Great Society evidence to the contrary. The truth is, the only things that this kind of thinking has resulted in, are attitudes like the one I heard espoused by a Gore supporter giving her view on the Vice President’s speech. Said she, “I think voters are going to decide on the issues and vote for the candidate who will do the most for them.”

Congratulations Al, in only forty years, you and your ilk have managed to completely erase from our collective memory your party-hero’s request that Americans ask not what their country can do for them, but what they can do for their country. Well done.