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The Webby Lifetime Achievement Award: Former Vice President Al Gore

Setting the record straight on one of recent history’s most persistent political myths, The Webby Awards will present Former Vice President Al Gore with The Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of the pivotal role he has played in the development of the Internet over the past three decades. Vint Cerf, widely credited as one of the “fathers of the Internet,” will present Vice President Gore with the award.

For those who don’t know, Vinton G. Cerf joined Robert E. Kahn’s project at DARPA in 1973 and the two of them created the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. TCP/IP is the basic scheme that makes the Internet as it currently exists possible.

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Because he doesn’t have any personal knowledge of the history of the area, Bush has jumped into the middle of one of the nastiest pieces of 20^th century history.

Stalin was afraid of Hitler and asked for a treaty with Britain and France. The treaty was turned down, so Stalin inked a deal with Hitler that cut up the countries bordering the Baltic. The countries given to Stalin by the treaty supported Hitler against Stalin. In the final disposition the Allies gave Stalin control over those areas. Millions of people died as a result of this mess and Bush stepped right into the middle of it.

There are no readily identifiable “good guys”, and “my country didn’t commit as many atrocities as your country” is not a great rallying cry. When Hitler and Stalin are involved there are no good choices. The area only shows up in nasty ethics exams by sadistic professors, or the conversations of drunken graduate students.

Bush has gone so far as to decry the decision of FDR not to go to war with the Soviet Union after the defeat of the German Armies. The decision not to push the Soviet Union back to its pre-World War II borders was a recognition of the reality that the people of the US would not support further war.

Any review of the limp support for the Korean War would show the folly of suggesting that FDR should have opposed Stalin at the end of World War Two. The Soviets took the brunt of the German violence for years and lost tens of millions of people. The Allies made a number of decisions that cost Soviet lives, and Stalin was paranoid to begin with. Stalin and the Russian weather might have been able to defeat Hitler eventually, and the Allies didn’t want to face that possibility.

Remind me again what Condi Rice’s specialty is supposed to be.

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NASCAR is still permitted to use leaded fuel. The lead particles emitted by these engines cause neurological damage: NASCAR makes you STUPID. It may not be nice, or kind, but it is a scientific fact: going to a NASCAR race lowers your IQ through lead poisoning.

Well, we can’t outlaw leaded fuel for NASCAR because it would cost the teams money to redesign their engines, unlike millions of American cars that have already been converted.

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The Labour Party didn’t lose as badly as it might have, only because the Conservatives [Tories] also supported the Iraq War and wants to do things to the British system that a lot of people don’t like.

Britain is broken into 646 Parliamentary seats and you only have to receive the largest number of votes to win, you do not have to win a majority. Parties vote for their leader, and the leader of the party that wins the most seats is the Prime Minister.

In 2001 Labour won 413 seats with 40.7% of the vote, the Conservatives got only 166 seats for their 31.7%, the Liberal Democrats won 52 seats with 18.3%, and the other parties received 28 seats with 9.3% of the vote. If the British used a proportional system as some European companies do the distribution would have been Labour-263, Conservative-205, Liberal Democrats-118, and others-60 with no parliamentary majority of 324 seats.

In 2005 Labour won 356 seats with 35.2% of the vote, the Conservatives got only 197 seats for their 32.3%, the Liberal Democrats won 62 seats with 22%, and the other parties received 30 seats with 10.5% of the vote. If the British used a proportional system as some European companies do the distribution would have been Labour-227, Conservative-210, Liberal Democrats-142, and others-68 with no parliamentary majority.

In Britain people voted for the party that they perceived as best for their pocket books, despite its foreign policy, even with the majority of 32 seats, Blair is going to have to listen to his back bench to get anything passed.

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