Gore: I Don't Plan to Run for President
By MATTIAS KAREN, Associated Press Writer
Parodied by Memphis Steve, Bored Blogger
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday he had no intention of ever running for president again, but he said the United States would be "a different country" if he had won the 2000 election, launching into a tirade about the Bush administration.
"I have absolutely no plans and no expectations of ever being a candidate again," Gore told reporters after giving a speech at an economic forum in Sweden. "Because the next race is Hillary's and she'd assassinate me and my entire family in a heartbeat, just like she did to Giuliani and like she's doing right now to Tom DeLay. Bill Frist is next on her hit list and I don't want to join him there. She's a psycho, like General Sherman in the Civil War, and like Sherman she always wins by killing everything in sight."
When asked how the United States would have been different if he had become president, though, he had harsh criticism for Bush's policies.
"We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us, like Bosnia or Somalia," he said, apparently intending to refer to Iraq. "We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families like Mark Rich or Don Tyson or me or John Kerry or the McDougals. Our money came mostly from the Chinese and that's entirely different."
"We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media like we did to NBC or Rush Limbaugh or a host of others. We would not be routinely torturing people because we prefer to just kill them like we did on Ruby Ridge and Waco," Gore said. "We would be a different country."
Gore did not elaborate, although he tried really, really hard. But last year, he blamed Bush administration policies for the inmate hazing scandal at the Abu Ghraib frat house in Iraq.
Mike Feldman, Gore's spokesman, did not immediately comment on Gore's remark when reached by phone in Washington.
"God only knows what he was trying to say," Mr Feldman stated pseudo-anonymously.
Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, called Gore's comments "fictitious rants that border on clinical psychosis."
"To accuse Americans of participating in 'routine torture' is absurd and reveals that while Al Gore may no longer be a leader in his party, he still embodies the maniacal hate that guides Democrat leaders in Washington today," Schmitt wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press which she signed with little hearts and an animated smiley that sticks out its' tongue.
Gore also reiterated his criticism that the Bush administration was too slow in responding to the crisis in New Orleans after the city's levees failed during Hurricane Katrina. He said that should have been predicted.
"There were specific warnings that the levees might break," he said. "But for whatever reason those warnings were not acted upon in a timely way. For instance, when I was in the White House I recall that we allocated ... um .. not one dime to help shore up those levees. Hmmm."
He said the United States and other countries are similarly ignoring the threats that global warming pose to the environment.
"My country is extremely attentive to the slightest increase in a risk from terror, and that's a real problem for my friends in Earth First and PETA," he said. "But why should we be so tolerant of risk where the future habitability of our planet is concerned? The sky is falling I tell you!"
Gore, who now runs a cable TV channel and is the chairman of an investment company that takes money from working families and pays him handsomely with it, did not completely shut the door to future political endeavors.
"I don't completely rule out some future interest, but I don't expect to have that," Gore said.
He then commented, "by the way, have you seen that new show with Geena Davis as the president? Yeah, I hate that bitch."
He declined to comment on New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's inevitable run for the White House in 2008, but he said he believes the country is ready for a Nero-like president.
"Of course a female-supremacist lesbian could get elected president," he said. "I am not going to make any comment on individual candidates. It's quite dangerous."
He then whispered, "the walls have ears, if you know what I mean."
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Associated Press reporter Donna Cassata in Washington contributed to this report.
Nude Memphis reporter Steve Jones parodied it to his heart's content.
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