A longer look at the transcript of Ted Turner's April 1 interview with Charlie Rose on PBS shows that not only did he warn of horrendous climate change, he also pushed relentlessly for dramatic curbs on population growth.  People must be limited to one or two children apiece for the planet to survive:

CHARLIE ROSE: What is possible? Tell me what`s possible to do?

TED TURNER: It`s possible that in 15 or 20 years we can completely redo it. If we -- we have to mobilize. This is how important it is, and how important that we do it quickly. We have to mobilize the same way we did when we entered World War II in 1941. We have to fully mobilize everything we have and put it into changing the energy system over, and not just here in the United States, but all over the world.

It`s going to be the biggest business project in the history of world. Fortunes, billions of dollars are going to be made. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to be employed.

We`re going to have clean air. We`re going to have so many benefits from it. It`s not going to cost us anything once we get going with it. It`s not going to cost us anything.

In yet another in a disgraceful series of indecent journalistic collaborations, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Hillary Clinton's Think Progress actually quoted al Qaeda's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri to discredit Republican presidential candidate John McCain (video embedded right, use scrollbars to properly center).

I kid you not.

Our story begins on Thursday when Think Progress managing editor Amanda Terkel posted an article actually entitled "Al Qaeda’s Zawahiri Rebuts McCain: It’s ‘In The Interest’ Of Al Qaeda To See Iran Fail" (emphasis added):

Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaks at the North Dakota Democratic Convention in Grand Forks, N.D., Friday, April 4, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Hillary Clinton campaigns at Liberty High School in Hillsboro, Ore., Saturday, April 5, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

The New York Times on Saturday exposed another lie that Hillary Clinton has been telling on the campaign trail about a pregnant woman in Ohio that supposedly died because she was refused care at a hospital due to being uninsured (embedded video of her related speech right, h/t Hot Air).

The hospital in question is now refuting these claims, and asking the junior senator from New York to "immediately desist from repeating this story."

Given the firestorm Hillary came under two weeks ago for her Bosnia sniper fire fib, one has to wonder just how much attention media will pay to this recent yarn deliciously uncovered by the Times (emphasis added):

Amazon.com sells millions of books, CDs and other products each year. So, we can't necessarily expect the online retail giant to be morally responsible for every single last product and, where its book offerings are concerned, we shouldn't ask them to become censors. But, selling a product someone else created and producing the product yourself are two different things. And, in this case, we might be seeing Amazon.com actually printing an anti-Jew, anti-US, "truther," Holocaust denial book with their BookSurge subsidiary company. One wonders if Amazon.com is even aware they are suddenly in the business of publishing anti-semitic books?

And this early warning system is where education serves a chief role. Our schools are supposed to serve as the gatekeepers of what a society deems in good taste, important or necessary to learn. Our schools are also supposed to serve as a critic of sorts to teach students what to avoid or, if not avoiding, teach where certain philosophies that might prove harmful fit into world history. In other words, if Marx is discussed, the evil he is responsible for should be highlighted. If “Mein Kampf” is assigned, the results of Hitler’s hate should be a principle subject.

For those interested in a political giggle this fine Saturday, I recommend a cute sketch done by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart Thursday evening (embedded right).

First, Stewart lampooned Chris Wallace for placing a "24"-style ticker on the screen to illustrate how long it's been since the host of "Fox News Sunday" challenged Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama to come on his program.

Next, Stewart went after "Hardball's" Chris Matthews for his shameless cheerleading for Obama.

Yet, in the end, Obama had the last laugh, deliciously at Matthews' expense (viewers are cautioned about mild vulgarity in the clip):

Is it just me, or is the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa doing an end-zone dance because she thinks that the recession Old Media has been pining for has finally arrived?

Someone needs to remind her that one negative quarter, if it even occurs, does not a recession make.

In an early-Saturday story on the economy, Aversa treated the recession as a lock in her first paragraph, even though the fifth paragraph betrayed uncertainty (bolds are mine):

It's no longer a question of recession or not. Now it's how deep and how long. Workers' pink slips stacked ever higher in March as jittery employers slashed 80,000 jobs, the most in five years, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 5.1 percent. Job losses are nearing the staggering level of a quarter-million this year in just three months.

Washington Post writer Linton Weeks recently wrote a fascinating big-picture essay about the long, sad decline of sincerity and sentiment in America, symbolized by the public loathing of the 1975 Morris Albert pop song “Feelings.” It wasn’t merely the whoa-whoa-whoa chorus that drove the criticism, he suggested, but the mere act of the singer putting the heart on the proverbial sleeve that became phony, cheesy, hopelessly square.

It’s been said before that we live in an age of irony, and irreverence is king. But Weeks added the irresistible term “Snark Ages” to characterize it: “The revolt against sincerity -- the Snark Ages, still upon us -- began as a rebellion against corny, over-the-top displays of emotion in movies, songs, TV shows. But the rebellion spiraled out of control, and any public expression of emotion, no matter how sincere, was a target for mockery. Old war movies and romantic dramas, taken seriously the first time around, were consumed by a younger generation as farce -- as ‘camp.’”

Here's a deliciously inconvenient truth: five days after Nobel Laureate Al Gore told CBS's Lesley Stahl that folks who don't believe man is responsible for warming the planet are "like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the Earth is flat," the BBC proclaimed "Global Temperatures 'To Decrease.'"

You really can't make this stuff up.

Putting a cherry on top was Investor's Business Daily which published an editorial hours later entitled "The Chill Is On." But, before we get there, let's first hear from the BBC (emphasis added throughout, picture courtesy AP):

So it comes down to this:

Memphis vs. UCLA

Kansas vs. North Carolina

Strangely, this tournament has not brought in the TV ratings of many in the past. Why do you think that is? Has this been a good tournament in your eyes, especially with the great run by Davidson? Or, was there too many blowouts and too few upsets? That aside, isn't this really a fantasy Final Four? All number ones there at the end battling for the National Championship? Does it get any better than this?

As to the games, ignore your pools and pre-tournament preferences: do the Hawks have a prayer against the Heels? Are the Heels the most dominating force in this tournament in quite some time? Are there any superlatives that accurately describe Tyler Hansbrough? Honestly, who's the last player to this dramatically impact the game of college b-ball?

To game one, isn't this likely to be the better of the two games? The current line is Memphis -2. Do the bookies have it right?

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: according to the Democrats and their media minions, this is the worst economy since Hoover was President -- unless, of course, you're a former Democrat president and a Democrat senator running for the White House:

In the past eight years, Bill and Hillary Clinton earned a combined $109 million, with the former president collecting nearly half of that money as a speaker hired at times by companies that have been among his wife's most generous political supporters..."We've come a long way from Harry Truman," said Leon E. Panetta, a Clinton administration official who now directs the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, referring to the "man from Missouri" who left the presidency to live a modest lifestyle in his home state. "In many ways, it is becoming the American story. A lot of people who have devoted their lives to public service, who lived hand-to-mouth during months of public service, are suddenly able, after public life, to find some rewards."

Is this big news that conservatives should be all over, or should we capitalists applaud their high-earning ways? Or, is this the height of hypocrisy for a couple campaigning on how nobody in this country can get ahead without massive federal assistance? Will this impact the nomination and election processes?

On yesterday's Hardball, Chris Matthews, smelling a rat, was livid when he learned that the Clintons had failed to file or release their 2007 tax return. But on today's Good Morning America, Kate Snow managed to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of the Clinton's delay. Far from depicting it as a means to evade the promulgation of inconvenient facts, Snow painted the procrastination as proof of the Clintons' humanity. Compare and contrast . . .

HARDBALL APRIL 4TH

DAVID SHUSTER: As far as the details we do not have the details from last year. We don't have those specific consulting fees for last year.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I was predicting [that] . . . now Joan [Walsh of Salon.com], it seems to me everybody wanted to know where the Clintons got their income. Is there any sticky income? We're not getting that information. The one thing we were promised to get.

Now playing defense for Team Obama: Karen Hawkins and Christopher Wills of the Associated Press, as carried in the Washington Post ("Obama Found a Home in His Church") on Thursday.

Call it a Wright-wash -- Hawkins and Wills managed to avoid any mention of the main tenets of "Black Liberation Theology" (details after the jump) that form the foundation of the belief system of the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC). Until recently (though TUCC's Pastoral Staff page at its web site still does not reflect the supposed change), TUCC was headed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose preaching moved presidential candidate Barack Obama to join the congregation 20 years.

The AP pair also managed to avoid any mention of often inflammatory items in weekly bulletin articles published by the Church.

Nowhere in the story's 1,200-plus words was there any mention of the Church's belief system, which was outlined by McClatchy's Margaret Tavel on March 20: