Al Gore

Do you have an extra $20? You could end poverty for one person according to a new report by international rights group and charity Oxfam. On Jan. 20, Al Jazeera cheered about this new study. Both Oxfam and al Jazeera failed to actually work out the math of this new claim to realize how ridiculous this “study” actually was.

Al Jazeera claimed that with the income of the world’s 100 richest billionaires, it would be enough to “end world extreme poverty four times over.” So let’s do the math, since Al Jazeera and Oxfam refused to do it for themselves.

Before too much time passes away, I wanted to catch up on an interesting discussion that happened last Thursday on Fox News Channel’s The O'Reilly Factor between the eponymous host and media impresario Glenn Beck. During the discussion, the former FNC host confirmed reports that he had attempted to purchase the failed cable television channel Current, which was started by former vice president Al Gore.

Beck and his company, Mercury Arts, got in touch with Current staff but were almost immediately rebuffed by Gore on account of the fact that he was one of those evil, nasty conservatives. “We never got to the table. We weren’t allowed to the table,” Beck said.

Before Current TV sold itself to Al Jazeera, allowing former Vice President Al Gore to walk away with a reported $100 million, making him (according to Forbes Magazine) richer than the left's designated archvillain Mitt Romney, the network's average audience was between 25,000 and 45,000.

The burning question on the mind of Dylan Byers Saturday afternoon at the Politico -- a question that somehow merited over 2,000 words of content -- was "Al Jazeera America (AJA): Will they watch?" He could have answered his question in eleven words: "Except for segments of America's Muslim community, the answer is 'no.'" Along the way, Byers spoke with former Al Jazeera English (AJE) anchor David Marash, who, per Byers, "still describes it as 'the best news channel on Earth.'" That's odd, because what Al Jazeera English did to him, as described in an interview he had in April 2008 with Brent Cunningham at the Columbia Journalism Review in April 2008 should have caused him to doubt the channel's ability to cover American stories in its new AJA unit with any kind of integrity (bolds are mine):

Dennis Miller had some harsh words for Al Gore Wednesday in the wake of the global warmingist-in-chief's decision to sell his Current TV network to oil-supported Al Jazeera.

Appearing on Fox News's O'Reilly Factor, Miller said, "He’s a bad guy. Ethically speaking, he makes John Edwards look like Sir Thomas More" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The liberal media have spent 12 years feeling sorry for Al Gore.The Man Who Should Have Won in 2000 has had megatons of positive publicity dumped on him, hailing him as the “Goracle.” They cheered as leftists honored him with the Nobel Peace Prize and gave an Oscar to his filmed eco-sermon “An Inconvenient Truth.”

So when Gore sold his left-wing cable channel Current TV to al-Jazeera for $500 million, where were they? Despite the fact that conservatives thought the deal sounded like a ridiculous April Fools joke, the networks had nearly nothing to say. ABC skipped it entirely. CBS and NBC offered a perfunctory sentence on a couple of newscasts.

A new YouGov/HuffPost poll finds twice as many Americans support versus oppose Time Warner Cable's decision to cut Al Gore's Current TV network as a result of its sale to Al Jazeera. 

Far more fascinating, an overwhelming majority of Republicans back TWC's move while Democrats narrowly disapprove of it.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall for this one.

In the wake of Al Gore's Current TV being sold to Al Jazeera, the Islamist world's equivalent of MSNBC, Geraldo Rivera was reminded of Gore's holier-than-thou attitude the last time they met. (audio clip after page break)

CNN media analyst Howard Kurtz isn't happy about Al Gore selling his failing Current TV to Al Jazeera.

In a piece published minutes ago at CNN.com, Kurtz elaborated while he missed potentially the greatest hypocrisy in the deal.

If you think that the DUers at the Democratic Underground or the Daily Kos Kossacks would be mostly outraged over the fact that Al Gore tried to avoid paying his "fair share" of taxes on the wealthy when he attempted to sell his low rated Current TV to Al Jazeera before the beginning of the year, then I have some carbon credits I would like to sell to you. In addition, "Mr. Environment" sold his Current TV to a network that is owned by the oil rich sheikdom of Qatar. So much for worrying about carbon emissions in the atmosphere but, hey, the good news is that Gore can now afford a bigger private jet with his chunk of the $500 million sale which amounts to $100 million.

Although some questions were raised in both forums about the propriety and attempted timing of the sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera, it was overwhelmed in expressions of support for St. Albert as you can see starting with this DU thread which begins on a note of refreshing skepticism: Al Gore, progressive leader one minute, wanting to cash in big time the next...

Jay Leno on Friday took a delicious swipe at Al Gore’s decision to sell Current TV to Al Jazeera.

Chatting with Current’s Joy Behar, the NBC Tonight Show host asked, “Osama bin Laden is your new boss?” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The start of the new year always ushers in new taxes that people are expected to pay rather than find ways to keep as much of their money as possible. At least, that's what liberals claim others should do.

But on Thursday, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly charged that former vice president Al Gore is a hypocrite for attempting to sell his low-rated Current TV cable channel for an estimated $500 million before 2013 brought higher taxes that would diminish the amount of money he'd get from the sale to Al Jazeera.

Al Gore, the man who first introduced the idea of blaming “the wealthiest one percent” for all of America’s ills, is continuing to embarrass himself in the sale of his low-rated Current TV channel to the Al Jazeera.

First, we learned that Current’s management believed that the favorite news channel of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists is closer to its own viewpoints than conservative media mogul Glenn Beck; now comes news that the former Democratic presidential candidate was insistent that the sale to the Qatari channel be completed before December 31. That date was important to Gore because he was trying to avoid the higher tax rates that President Obama has been clamoring for so desperately for years.

Are you tired of having to go to YouTube to watch video of terrorists killing U.S. soldiers? Do you get annoyed when slow download speeds interrupt hearing your favorite Islamist cleric call for infidel blood to restore the Caliphate? Wish you could see suicide bombers lovingly read their last statements in crystal-clear HD?

Well, great news, kids! Al “no controlling legal authority” Gore is selling his far-left vanity network, Current TV, to Al Jazeera – the anti-western terror mouthpiece bank-rolled by the emir of Qatar.

As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, Al Jazeera entered into an agreement to buy Al Gore's failing network Current TV.

Hours later, as a result of the purchase, Time Warner Cable dropped the station with a message reading to viewers "This channel is no longer available on Time Warner Cable."

According to the New York Times' Brian Stelter, Al Jazeera is about to acquire Al Gore's ultra-leftist and low-rated cable outlet Current TV. Stelter reported: "If the deal is completed, Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms."

However, the move may not mean a complete overhaul for Current TV as Al Jazeera may retain some staffers but the very small number of regular viewers should expect to see a lineup change. According to Stelter the channel's "schedule of shows will most likely be dissolved in the spring."

UPDATE: Links added to transcript to give readers background regarding scientific points made by Morano.

Global warming skeptic and founder of the website Climate Depot Marc Morano debated climate change with Bill Nye the Science Guy on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight Tuesday.

Video of the entire spirited discussion follows with full CNN transcript:

NewsBusters reported in October that Al Gore's struggling television network Current was up for sale.

An Austin, Texas, startup named SocialGood.tv came out of hiding this week and announced  that it's raising money to make a bid wanting to move the station from its "far-left talking points" and instead "focusing the programming in a centrist line."

Following up on the announcement last week that Current TV was up for sale, USA Today ran an article on Nov. 5 highlighting some of the failures of the short-lived cable channel founded by former vice president Al Gore.

Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff, writing for USA Today, aptly described Current TV as “quite a disaster area.” He pointed out that it has never been able to “clarify its mission, style or business reason for being. With a history of management quarrels, it often wasn’t even clear who was running the place.” As an example of the problems overwhelming the network, Wolff recapped Current TV’s hiring of Keith Olbermann, which “shortly ended in acrimony and recrimination.” The vitriolic Olbermann, had previously anchored a show on MSNBC -- which had ended abruptly in early 2011. Current hired him the same year, but fired him in March 2012, due to an apparent conflict of interest.

Politico promises readers who sign up for its subscription "Pro" service they they will have "No boring stories telling you things you already know."

Well, there's nothing more predictable and boring than stories about global warming and climate change which appear every time there's a major hurricane, serious flooding, or other weather-related catastrophe. Yet, as will be seen after the jump, the supposedly non-boring Politico Pro front page has two such stories in its top four.

Al Gore's Current TV is up for sale.

According to the New York Post, there has been enough interest in the television channel nobody watches let alone heard of that CEO Joel Hyatt has decided to shop around for offers.

“Current has been approached many times by media companies interested in acquiring our company,” Hyatt told the Post.

Based on her experience as a frequent churchgoer. Obviously.

Libtalker Stephanie Miller on her radio show today used a pithy analogy to describe Mitt Romney appearing to sweat during last night's final presidential debate (audio, h/t, Brian Maloney at mrctv.org) --

For many years, climate realists have pointed to expanding ice in Antarctica as a counter to the claim that decreasing ice in the Arctic is necessarily proof of anthropogenic global warming.

The folks at the Associated Press on Wednesday came up with an unbelievable answer to that in an article unbelievably titled "Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic ice":

Something odd happened to the liberal media after the first presidential debate on Wednesday. They couldn't for the life of them put any postive spin on the president's lackluster performance. There was nothing they could say that could take away from Mitt Romney's clear victory, but then came the excuses. Some blamed Jim Lehrer for his inability to moderate properly, others cited what must've been an incumbent debate curse, there was even some mention of Obama's reluctance to come across as an angry black man.

But the dopiest analysis by far was from former Vice President Al Gore, on his Current TV network -- think an even farther left version of MSNBC with fewer viewers -- who blamed altitude sickness on Obama's poor performance: [ video below after page break ]

Mitt Romney recently told CBS’s Scott Pelley that a leader would “say which of those things that you should take out of the budget that are no longer essential,” and when pressed to be specific, Romney nominated "the subsidy for PBS,” and subsidies for Amtrak, the NEA, and the NEH. This raises one obvious question. In moderating tonight's first general election debate of 2012, can longtime PBS star Jim Lehrer be fair to a candidate who wants to zero out the subsidy for PBS?

In his 1992 memoir A Bus of My Own, Lehrer confesses he could sound like a “PBS superpatriot” in lauding his own newscast. For his own career at PBS, Lehrer professed he loved how Watergate “crumbled” Nixon’s plans to “crumble us” in liberal taxpayer-funded broadcasting:

Leading into tomorrow’s presidential debate, journalists are busy setting expectations for the candidates. On Sunday’s Good Morning America, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos argued that Mitt Romney is under “huge, huge” pressure: “He is behind right now. He is behind nationally, he’s behind in all of the battleground states. This is the last big audience that Mitt Romney is going to have with about four and a half weeks left to go.”

But more undecided voters will be swayed by the media’s post-debate spin about who won and who lost than by any pre-debate expectations. Reviewing the last several campaigns, MRC analysts have found a clear trend of network reporters fawning over the performance of liberal candidates, while harping on any perceived weaknesses or gaffes from conservatives.

One of the most reliable pro-Democratic pundits is none other than George Stephanpoulos — not especially surprising, given his track record as a loyal operative for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, but hardly the objective, unbiased voice touted by ABC News. MRC has documented how, in eight out of the last nine general election presidential debates (every one since he joined ABC News in 1997), Stephanopoulos has gone on his network’s airwaves to claim victory for the Democratic candidate, all in the guise of offering impartial analysis. [Video review below the jump.]

Two weeks ago, Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016: Obama’s America” passed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” for second place on the all-time box-office money list for political documentaries. It now has a box office gross of more than $32 million. But if you’re an independent or a liberal who’s unplugged from conservative websites and talk radio, you’d never know.

You didn’t see D’Souza on CBS or NBC (although he showed up on ABC’s “Nightline” in late night). There were no cover stories in Time or Newsweek. The film opened on just one screen in Houston when it premiered on July 13, and then spread to 10, and eventually to 1,000 theaters in August and 2,000 theaters in September. A cultural sensation, yes – but somehow not newsworthy.

If you had any doubts about the level of zealotry involved in today's global warming movement, they likely will be erased by the goings on at PBS the past few days.

Since allowing well-known climate realist Anthony Watts on NewsHour Monday to voice his views on this controversial issue, PBS has been under attack for doing so (videos follows with transcripts and commentary).