NY Times Op-ed by boy-would-it-be-different-if-he’d-been-in-office-the-past-6-years guy.

“We — the human species — have arrived at a moment of decision. It is unprecedented and even laughable for us to imagine that we could actually make a conscious choice as a species, but that is nevertheless the challenge that is before us”…more Gore.

CNN has a great set of pages they set up on Impacting Your World. It has links to charities and helps steer people to giving to those wonderful causes.

What it doesn’t have is another concept: try to get people elected that can put the full charitable power of the United States behind ending poverty, contributing to stable governments, and spreading the western sentiments of tolerance, equal rights, and democracy. These concepts have been watered down as we have been doing them quid pro quo for so long that just doing them because they are American values has lost its meaning. We must support the good people in nations without sending in shipments of weapons that destabilize the very visions we hope for.

Supporting the amazing candidates is a long term prospect at fixing the ills of the world, but without it we have the moneyed interests and failed policies overshadowing any charitable giving we can do individually.