While many of us are focusing on the reports of Al Gore liberating his chakras with a masseuse in Portland, more serious members of our online community are fascinated with the notion of liberating our carbons. I expect that if you are not a regular reader of the New York Times, you are puzzled by the reference. Andrew Revkin, that paper's climate guru, kindly shared with his readers his song on the subject:

It took a thousand generations for our species to rise. But gathering and hunting was no way to get by. We yearned to sticks. Then someone [1] came along and said, "Hey, try lighting this." He opened up the ground and oil. He said, "Come liberate some carbon. It'll make your blood boil."

Liberated carbon, it'll spin your wheels. Liberated carbon it'll nuke your meals. Liberated carbon, it'll turn your night to day. Come on and liberate some carbon, babe,  it's the American way.

Now I got peat swamp fossils running my TV. BP's black label burns in my S.U.V.
 We can light up the planet like a Christmas tree.
They say that things are getting hot but, hey, we've got A.C.

Liberated carbon, it'll spin your wheels. Liberated carbon it'll nuke your meals. Liberated carbon, it'll turn your night to day.
Come on and liberate some carbon, babe, it's the American way.

Pump those electrons and that gasoline. No sweat or hurry, just turn on a machine. We sent an army to the desert to keep this country free, And to liberate some carbon, baby, for you and me...

Liberated carbon it'll spin your wheels. Liberated carbon, it'll nuke your meals. Liberated carbon, it'll turn your night to day. Come on and liberate some carbon, babe, it's the American way.

1. Who has done more to clean up spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico?
A) The scientific team assembled by Steven Chu, one of two Nobel laureates in the most brilliant Cabinet in American history
B) Kevin Costner, writer/director of The Postman

2. Who has done more for America's war effort?

A) The Democratic establishment, as led by foreign policy elder statesman Joe Biden
B) Rolling Stone magazine

3. As President, Barack Obama refrains from seeking swift retribution for criticism of his government's policies if it comes from:
A) The governor of an American state

B) A Republican Congressman
C) A member of the American press corps

D) One of his own supporters in the American military

E) The President of Mexico, Iran, or Venezuela

4. Who responded to a humanitarian emergency on the Gulf Coast by donating millions of dollars from his personal fortune?

A)The internationally beloved President Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate

B) Subhuman monster Dick Cheney

5. Match the President with the number of rounds of golf they played in office: 
A) Bush 39, Obama 24

B) Bush 24, Obama 39

6. What was widely considered the most unethical act by a contender in the 2008 presidential election? 

A) Barack Obama's repeated lies about his close working relationship with the admitted terrorist who helped him write an autobiography

B) Barack Obama's acceptance of assistance from a close professional associate (since convicted of several federal crimes involving appointments of cronies to state government positions) in the purchase of his house
C) Barack Obama's negotiations with a state government official (now on trial for several federal crimes) to get a crony appointed to a government position

D) Barack Obama's endorsement of the mayor of Detroit (who has since pled guilty to two felony charges and pled no contest to one count of felony assault against a police officer, in addition to indictment on nineteen counts of felonies in the federal system)

E) Barack Obama's flouting of federal election law to the point of accepting a $2,300 donation literally given in the name of Mickey Mouse

F) Sarah Palin's description of a fund established to defray her legal expenses as "official" rather than "personally approved"

7. When the President talks about "whose ass to kick" and members of his administration use terms like "boot to the throat," they are referring to

A) Foreign nations which have engaged in multi-year efforts to undermine and overthrow American-allied governments, including the deliberate murder of hundreds of American military and civilian personnel

B) A multinational corporation which through arguably criminal negligence allowed an accident which killed several people

8. What did Barack Obama consider "an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law"?

A) Placing the rights of senior creditors as established in hundreds of years of precedent in American civil and common law above the interests of his political allies who were junior creditors in a bankruptcy case
B) Enforcing the shockingly low ceiling on oil company liability set by statute, despite the political payoff he would get by demagoguery in the aftermath of a disaster
C) Setting up a civilian trial for a foreigner who has already confessed to war crimes against the United States during a trial conducted by the US military under the authority of a Congressional statute which the Supreme Court upheld as Constitutional 

I needn't be lectured by a so-called "conservative" who has aided and abetted in this perversion of the American political experiment. Sullivan's disgusting; ends-justify-the-means obsession with the personal family life of Sarah Palin breached every ethical and journalistic boundary known to the cosmos. Between airing Palin's hacked private emails and making a cottage industry out of challenging the maternity of her son, Trig, sometimes the word "irony" or "hypocrisy" is not descriptive enough.

To highlight the absurdity of Sullivan's outrage, perhaps his submission entitled "The Palin Emails" can grant you insight into a demented mind. Before divulging them in at least five separate posts, he wrote: "They've leaked, of course. And they're not pretty."

And they weren't meant to be public either, Andy.

To think I was once his biggest advocate, but now he's an incomprehensible 'marm. In the transparent world of conservative journalism, conservatives admit their biases; in the world in which Sullivan now curries favor, he sidles up to the ends-justify-the-means left that exposed his sexual tastes in order to put him in his place.

Kathleen Parker, June 30, 2010: If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president.

Newsweek, February 26, 2008: Obama is a female candidate for president in the same way that Bill Clinton was the first black president. It was Toni Morrison who first had the insight.