Al Gore has returned to the campaign trail in Florida, the state he lost to George W. Bush by 500 votes in 2000 after the Supreme Court stopped the ballot recount.

The New York Times [thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com] reports this time Gore was speaking on behalf of Barack Obama, and was doing so sans Powerpoint.

The vice-president turned presidential candidate turned presidential race loser turned environmental leader turned Academy Award Winner turned Nobel prize-winner had returned to his old stomping grounds to urge voters to go to the polls.

“Take it from me, elections matter, every vote matters,” Gore told the crowds in his typical, laugh-off-the-2000-debacle off-humor.

Gore was with his wife, Tipper, in West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale speaking at rallies today. The site was like a strange flashback from those who suffer post-election fraud stress disorder, which apparently many Floridians do.
“This election is personal to us. We know it was the curse of the butterfly ballot that brought the chaos to the world. … We’re not going to let what happened eight years ago happen again,” the West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel told the Associated Press [ap.google.com].

The question remains, however, if Florida 2008 will look anything like Florida 2000 or if Ohio 2008 will resemble Ohio 2004. That’s why campaigns are deploying an army of attorneys, in addition to their get-out-the-vote volunteers, to both states [blogs.wsj.com] should (when) anything go wrong.

One advantage to this year over eight years ago in Florida, however, is early voting. This cuts down on the chaos inevitable on Election Day. It’s estimated that one out of every three [www.time.com] voters in Florida may cast their ballots early this year, and among those who have, many more are voting for Obama. Obama currently leads in Florida by 20 percentage point.

If the “bandwagon effect” [www.sundancechannel.com] proves true, it may turn out that early voting not only cuts down on chaos and fraud, but could boost votes for Obama.

–Jamie Wong

Sometimes it’s hard to be a cynic.

For years we’ve watched Democrats roll over for their GOP Daddies, cowed into jumping through Republican hoops and frames, either unable or unwilling to go out, grab the populace by the shirt and say, “Follow me!” This lack of spine and, more importantly, ability to be proactive has kept Democratic support uninspired and, therefore, manageable by the GOP. Democrats insist on playing by Republican rules, tempering their actions based on what mean things might be said about them on the teevee. After a while, one gets comfortable with Democratic impotence, like an old pair of slippers that you don’t particularly like, but at least they’re broken in. Democrats are expected to run a certain kind of campaign in certain states and to appeal only to certain types of people. Thinking outside the box might get them accused of being “socialist” or “anti-American,” so more often than not, Democrats come across as Republican Lite, despite evidence that the country is further to the left than Congress on most issues. That Democrats suck less than Republicans is the only thing that keeps them in business. But they do suck, and we’ve gotten used to that.

So, just when my inner cynic starts to raise a ruckus about the potential for Dems to still come up short in a year the Republican brand is as popular colon cancer, Barack Obama goes and breaks a couple of records that make even my jaded jaw scrape the carpet. Like raising $150 million in September [thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com].

To echo Joe Biden, let me repeat that: $150,000,000. One Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars. Ciento y cincuenta millones de dolares. Take the largest monthly fundraising total Obama has had to date – $66 million in August – then double it. Then add several million more. McCain is, naturally, suggesting there’s some scandal afoot, or could be, with all that money coming in. Not that his argument makes any sense. Given McCain’s own gaming of the system he helped create, asking Obama to remain in public financing was like asking him to fight with one hand tied behind his back. With the multitudes of small donors outweighing the large money bundlers, Obama is running the kind of fundraising operation that campaign finance reform was meant to encourage. He’s less beholden to a smaller number of big donors – and therefore less likely to have to do any favors for contributions – because he’s got gobs of cash rolling in from huge numbers of small donors. A corporation or PAC dangling a big check can’t expect a pro quo from someone who can get the quid from hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Speaking of which, there’s that other personal best Obama outdid this weekend when he had a few friends get together in St. Louis, MO.

Police put the crowd estimate at 100,000 people listening to Obama speak on Saturday from under the Gateway Arch on the banks of the Mississippi, in the shadow of the courthouse where, in 1857, Dred Scott was told a black man had no rights. A more intimate gathering in Kansas City later that evening had 75,000 people.

No one has to tell me it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. I don’t need to be reminded about Republican efforts to purge millions of people from voter rolls, or the backlash of generational racism, or the desperation of the McCain campaign’s tactics going into the last two weeks. Republicans are on the hunt, and they may well capture their prey.

But $150,000,000? 100,000 people?

Like Sheriff Brody told Cap’n Quint, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

– Michael Turner

UPDATE: The last tale from talented and late Adrienne Shelley, THE WAITRESS, was recently released on DVD after selected theater theatrical release earlier in 2007. A touching story of love in a comically busy world of three waitresses trying to make ends meet.

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It’s easy to think, “Local food is always the best answer,” and leave it at that; most of the time, it might be right, but new information is emerging that disputes local’s lofty position at the throne of TreeHugging food. The notion of “food miles,” the distance your food has traveled to get to your plate, is absolutely an important consideration, but, as it turns out, we might not be able to let the buck stop there.

In a piece for the New York Times [www.nytimes.com], James E. McWilliams, the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America,” argues that it isn’t as simple as sourcing your food from local farmers, at farmer’s markets and through community-supported agriculture, and calling it a day. While there are undeniable benefits of eating local — unbeatable freshness, which leads to better taste, a more meaningful connection with your food and where it comes from and a more mindful approach to eating, just to name a few — McWilliams believes that, though it’s quite intuitive, fewer food miles (and, you’d think, fewer greenhouse gas emissions) doesn’t necessary mean it’s better for the environment. What?

“It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator,” says McWilliams. “Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call ‘factor inputs and externalities’ — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.” Given these ideas — a more life cycle analysis-type approach — the relative carbon footprint of foods, both local and otherwise, can change very quickly. To wit: lamb raised in New Zealand’s lush clover pastures and shipped to Britain “produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.”

Hmm. So what does that mean for the burgeoning “eat local” movement? It sounds bad, but, says McWilliams, it absolutely doesn’t have to be: “‘Eat local’ advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
“Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.”
For the most part, we think McWilliams gets it right; essentially, what he’s saying can be boiled down to a great quote, also from the Times: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” [www.nytimes.com] There is no room for blind consumption in the green world, and, like many other environmental issues, there is no silver bullet for eating green all the time, and no one method — all organic, all local, etc. — will a perfectly green meal make. Get all the details about this new take on local here in the New York Times [www.nytimes.com].