Lou Dobbs has resigned from CNN, and his final show aired last night. The departure is reportedly on amicable terms.

That said, this is a good time to recall that Dobbs and his employer were at very visible loggerheads a decade ago. In fact, yesterday's move by Dobbs is not his first resignation from the network. Here is Brent Baker's June 9, 1999 CyberAlert item describing what happened:

Lou Dobbs gone from CNN. Forced out by CNN President Rick Kaplan, or just frustrated by him? In a surprise announcement at the end of Tuesday’s The World Today, anchor Jim Moret informed viewers:

"And finally tonight, farewell to a colleague. Lou Dobbs, President of CNNfn and anchor of Moneyline, is resigning to launch a new Internet venture. Dobbs said he is ‘grateful to Ted Turner and CNN News Group Chairman Tom Johnson for the opportunity to have helped build CNN and cnn.com into a first-class television news and interactive institution.’ Lou Dobbs had been with CNN since its inception 19 years ago. He will start up space.com, a Web site for news, entertainment and educational content about space."

No mention of Kaplan and an on-air dispute the two had a couple of weeks ago about whether to carry live a Clinton speech may explain why. As Clay Waters of Bridge News first informed me, the May 25 Page Six column in the New York Post revealed:

As readers of Cal Thomas’s latest syndicated column already know, the Media Research Center is releasing a new report today on the media’s coverage of communism, timed to coincide with the 20 anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Monday. Sad to say, but before, during and after those momentous events two decades ago, many in the liberal media continuously whitewashed the true nature of communism, or suggested free-market capitalism was somehow worse.

For our report, Better Off Red?, Scott Whitlock and I combed through the MRC’s archives; the quotes (and 19 audio/video clips) we pulled together show some liberal journalists utterly failed to accurately depict communism as one of the worst evils of the 20th century, and often aimed their fire at those who were fighting communism rather than those who were perpetuating it. The full report has more than 70 quotes; here's a sample from the Executive Summary:

■ Before it collapsed, these journalists insisted those enslaved by communism actually feared capitalism more. "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy," CBS anchor Dan Rather asserted in 1987.

The Hollywood Reporter relayed that CNN founder Ted Turner granted an interview to Bloomberg TV Friday and unsurprisingly, he still aches to run CNN, where he wants to see "less fluffy news and more international news," especially about China. "Less talk, more news," he said. But he also still wants to run Cartoon Network, where he could bombard the children with his old eco-propaganda cartoon, Captain Planet:

As for Cartoon Network, Turner tells anchor Betty Liu, "If I had control of it, I'd put 'Captain Planet' on at a top time period so that kids would see the environmental superhero instead of just Superman."

Turner also believes that newspapers are an outdated pile of solid waste:

"You're chopping all these trees down and making paper out of them and trying to deal with all the waste paper. It's the biggest solid waste problem that we have."

Ted Turner's picture really should appear in the dictionary for the entry "useful idiot."

The CNN founder -- who has previously called North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-il "sincere" and "non-threatening" -- today told NPR's Diane Rehm that the Chinese government's one-child policy has been mostly successful, without being "draconian" (as reported by TheRightScoop):

This is a quote from Ted that goes virtually unchallenged from Diane:

“We do have the example of China, and they’ve done it without, uh, draconian, as far as I can see, draconian steps.”

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One of the highlights of the evening last night at the 2009 Media Research Center Gala and DisHonors Awards for yours truly was radio host Mark Levin, who served as an awards presenter.

With stinging humor, Mr. Levin zinged journalists and liberal pundits left and right -- or should I say lefter? -- so I took the liberty of taking some of the best lines and editing it down to a nearly 4-minute long video.

Click the embedded video at right to enjoy. An audio version is available here.

The Media Research Center (MRC) today proudly announces that HBO's Bill Maher is the "Winner" of Quote of the Year for tastelessly suggesting that Sarah Palin's teenage daughter Bristol was the actual birth mother of her infant son, Trig. Maher was selected by the more than 800 attendees of the MRC's annual DisHonors Awards Gala, held last night at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Maher-- winner of the Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin -- beat out MSNBC's Chris Matthews (the Media Messiah Award), CNN founder Ted Turner (the Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis) and ABC's Bill Weir (the Obamagasm Award).

Praise the Lord and pass the video clips!

What do Bill Maher slamming Pope Benedict XVI as the criminal head of a pedophilia ring, Washington Post's Sally Quinn defending anti-American Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Ted Turner founder prophesying environmental apocalypse have in common?

They are just three of the most outrageous quotes from the mainstream media in 2008 and were featured on the December 23 "O'Reilly Factor" in a segment with MRC's Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham.

You can view the segment in the embedded video at right.

Tuesday’s The O’Reilly Factor on FNC showed a pre-recorded interview with CNN founder Ted Turner, in which O’Reilly got Turner to admit that he and Jane Fonda, who both opposed America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, had ignored the slaughter of millions by the Khmer Rouge communists in Southeast Asia after America’s withdrawal from the region. Turner: "You got me. I didn’t really think about it. You know, it didn’t make the news very much at the time."

The CNN founder, who was appearing to promote his biography, "Call Me Ted," readily admitted to "admiring" Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and expressed doubt when O’Reilly argued that Castro had murdered many people. Turner: "Well, I admire certain things about him. He’s trained a lot of doctors, and they’ve got one of the best educational systems in the developing world, and, you know, he’s still popular with a lot of people down there. He’s unpopular with a lot of people, too." After O’Reilly injected, "But he’s a killer. He’s a killer," Turner responded: "He’s not, that has never, to my knowledge, that’s never been proven."

But Turner only reluctantly praised President Bush after O’Reilly argued that Bush "has saved more lives, sent more money, and provided more medical care for the citizens of all the countries of Africa than any human being that’s ever lived." Turner: "I think he made a lot of mistakes, too, but you can’t, he did some good things, but I think you basically, he’s got a good heart."

“The KGB, I think, was an honorable place to work” with “worthwhile” achievements, CNN founder Ted Turner contended in an interview aired on Sunday's Meet the Press in which he blamed the U.S. for starting the battles with Vladimir Putin “by putting the Star Wars system in Czechoslovakia and Poland” and, when host Tom Brokaw recalled that Leonid Brezhnev reacted to Jimmy Carter's outreach by invading Afghanistan, Turner retorted with moral equivalence: “Well, we invaded Afghanistan, too, and it's a lot further -- at least it's on the border of the Soviet Union.” Brokaw called it “naked aggression on the part of the Russians at the time,” prompting Turner to charge: “Well, going into Iraq was naked aggression on the part of the United States.”

Turner, who did the sit-down as part of the media tour for his new book, Call Me Ted, defended Putin's KGB background by comparing it to someone who worked for the FBI:

We have an FBI and, and, and, and, and we're not prejudiced against somebody who's worked at the FBI. It's an honorable place to work. And the KGB, I think, was an honorable place to work. And it, it gave people in the former Soviet Union, a communist country, an opportunity to do something important and worthwhile.

Yeah, like oppressing people in captured nations and running gulags to suppress political dissent.

As CNN founder Ted Turner appeared as a guest on Sunday's Meet the Press, after NBC host Tom Brokaw expressed concerns about trying to deal with Vladimir Putin's Russia after what happened when President Carter tried to deal with former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Turner compared the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan to America's invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Iraq invasion "naked aggression" by the United States. Turner even tried to argue that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was more defensible than America's invasion of Afghanistan because "at least it's on the border of the former Soviet Union." When NBC host Tom Brokaw took him to task for trying to "justify" the USSR's actions, Turner responded, "Why can't I try and justify it?" Turner also contended that the old Soviet KGB was "an honorable place to work" like America's FBI, and claimed that it gave Soviet citizens "an opportunity to do something important and worthwhile."

TED TURNER: Well, we invaded Afghanistan, too, and it’s a lot further, at least it’s on the border of the Soviet Union, or the former Soviet Union or Russia. A lot of these countries have changed names several times.

TOM BROKAW: But, Ted, don’t try to go there in terms of justifying that. I mean, it was, the fact is that the Russians, it was a naked aggression.

TURNER: Why can’t I try and justify it?

BROKAW: Well, it was naked aggression on the part of the Russians at the time.

TURNER: Well, going into Iraq was naked aggression on the part of the United States.

On tour with his new book Call Me Ted, CNN founder Ted Turner unloaded more of his typical liberal nuggets on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS Tuesday. He pounded Bush’s pro-life position on the UN Population Fund: "We said we were going to pay, but the Bush administration never issued the checks. So women are dying of unsafe abortions." He still had old Cold War lessons: "I learned that the Russians, if you're nice to them - if you treat people with dignity, respect, and friendliness, they'll almost always reciprocate the same way." He trashed Fox News for backing war in Iraq and then claimed they "backed off of it."

Many people have probably forgotten how dramatically Turner has supported the cause of population control and abortion. He hasn’t changed his mind:

SMILEY: To your point now about overpopulation or the world's population, what do we do about that, if anything?

TURNER: Family planning. Have one and two-child families.

SMILEY: That's very controversial, as you know.

 

Ted Turner was not only interviewed, but celebrated on PBS – on April Fool’s Day. The prank was apparently on PBS. It was as if Turner had a subversive mission, to prove that PBS isn’t just for smart people. True to form, Turner walked off a cliff of rhetorical excess on the "Charlie Rose" show, charging that global warming was going to grow so severe, that in a few decades, most of humanity would be extinct. "We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten -- not ten, but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals."

 

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.

You’ve seen the Ted Turner quote from the April 1 Charlie Rose show about global warming turning what’s left of us into cannibals, but the point should still be made that PBS and Rose treated him as a statesman and a scholar. The host oozed all over him at the show's end: "You're a remarkable man..I enjoy your company. I think the life you've lived with passion, independence, a sense of great, great, and deep concern about the world we live in is remarkable."

What Turner said in reply was highlighted by Rose at the beginning of the hour: "I love this planet. It's worth saving. I mean, it's worth saving.You know, I know we're the same people that did the Holocaust, but we also did the Mona Lisa and Beethoven`s Fifth Symphony. I mean, there is so much -- this world -- we can't turn it into a cinder. We've got to protect it for ourselves and for our children. And it's worth fighting for. And that's all I'm doing, is trying to fight to help save humanity."

Rose was so indulgent of Turner that he goaded him into singing "Over the Rainbow" and "My Old Kentucky Home" and told him "it was good."

After the cannibalism talk, it was more amusing to see this exchange about his feud with Rupert Murdoch, and how he hasn't been caught saying anything stupid:

Picking up on absurd statements CNN founder Ted Turner made on Tuesday's Charlie Rose show on PBS, comments first reported late that night on NewsBusters, FNC's Bret Baier, filling in for Brit Hume, reported on Thursday's Special Report how “Turner believes that inaction on global warming will lead to cannibalism,” that he “went on to ridicule the U.S. military” and that he described Iraqi insurgents who are killing Americans as “patriots.”

The Drudge Report on Wednesday morning linked to the NewsBusters post and Rush Limbaugh played the “cannibal” clip on his radio show later in the day.

In an e-mail conversation today with Greg Gutfeld, the Fox News Channel "Red Eye" host pointed out to me that he joked about cannibalism as a solution to environmental woes, and this, mind you, months before Ted Turner came out clucking about how global warming will make us all cannibals.

Some might say Gut is a voice crying in the late night wilderness, but maybe he actually is a prophet. From his July 20, 2007 item at HuffPo (emphasis mine):

Many of our most thoughtful environmentalists are telling us that our planet is facing an unfathomable calamity. The combination of unbridled overpopulation and increasing greenhouses gases puts us on a path to destroy Mother Earth...unless we do something now. [...]

I have examined this problem closely and realize there is a simple answer to this dilemma. If overpopulation and consumption of animals cause major harm to our planet, then we can simply eradicate both threats through cannibalism.

Let's eat each other.

[...]

Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals.” He also applied moral equivalence in describing Iraqi insurgents as “patriots” who simply “don't like us because we've invaded their country” and so “if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing.” On not taking drastic action to correct global warming:

Not doing it will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.

Turner ridiculed the need for a big U.S. military, insisting “China just wants to sell us shoes. They're not building landing craft to attack the United States,” and “even with our $500 billion military budget, we can't win in Iraq. We're being beaten by insurgents who don't even have any tanks.” After Rose pointed out the Iraqi insurgents “have a lot of roadside bombs that kill a lot of Americans” and wondered “where do you think they come from?”, Turner answered:

I think that they're patriots and that they don't like us because we've invaded their country and occupied it. I think if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we'd be doing the same thing: we'd be bombing them too. Nobody wants to be invaded.

Audio: MP3 audio clip (1:00)

Something from what I like to call the forgive but never forget file. From the MRC.org CyberAlert archives, March 7, 2001:

Ted Turner insulted attendees at Bernard Shaw’s retirement party, asking those on Ash Wednesday with a smudge on their foreheads if they were "a bunch of Jesus freaks," FNC’s Brit Hume reported Tuesday night.

Hume revealed during his "Grapevine" segment on Special Report with Brit Hume:

During a Monday November 19 appearance at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, CNN founder Ted Turner charged that the Bush administration has "turned a lot of our friends into enemies," as he contended that when President Bush came into office, "we were friends with just about everybody in the world." Turner remarked, as documented by Raleigh's newspaper the "News and Observer": "Making friends where there used to be enemies is a very important thing to do. ... That's why I'm so sorry about this administration. Because we were friends with just about everybody in this world -- the United States was -- when this administration came to power. Now, we've turned a lot of our friends into enemies. ... I think the country with the most friends is the one that wins in the end." (More quotes follow)

In a recent Web interview with "Foreign Policy" magazine, dated October 2007, which focused on environmental issues, CNN founder Ted Turner claimed that global warming presents a greater danger to the world than Iran. Turner: "Iran does not put us in peril like global warming does." In a September interview with "GQ" magazine, Turner had similarly downplayed the nuclear threat from Iran as he argued that America's nuclear arsenal poses a greater threat to the world: "I'm much more worried about our nuclear arsenal than theirs. Iran, at best, can get a few nuclear weapons. We have tens of thousands." The CNN founder further suggested that global warming is to blame for the drought in the Southeast, and contended that the same Al Gore who refuses to debate scientists on global warming is as "smart as a whip." (Transcript follows)