Apparently, instead of just wallowing in the misery that must have attended getting canned by MSNBC back in January, Olbermann has spent part of his hiatus from the public eye rubbing elbows with “top progressive…voices” like Richard Lewis, Ken Burns, and the always adorable Michael Moore (yes, the same Moore who helped raise $50,000 for the ground zero mosque and who still believes universal healthcare will work in America regardless of its miserable showing in Europe and Canada).

Moreover, Olbermann recently announced that Lewis, Burns, and Moore, will all be part of his new show, set to premier on Al Gore’s Current TV on June 20, 2011.

As it concerns Moore, this announcement is very timely because it comes on the heels of Moore’s incredibly ignorant op-ed scribbling – incredibly ignorant even for him – about our actions against the recently deceased Osama bin Laden. It appears that Moore believes our country’s image would have been better served had we captured Osama and brought him back for trial instead of just killing him on the spot.

Yet Moore’s thoughts are so incongruous that in the same op-ed in which he makes his case for a trial, he also wrote that he’s against the death penalty. By extrapolation, this can only mean that if we had in fact brought Osama back for trial, even upon finding him guilty, the most Moore would have wanted us to do for punishment would have been to sentence him to life in prison. (more…)

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Some have asked why I feel that it was okay to record the August 10th White House and National Endowment for the Arts conference call. 

The August 10th conference call was organized and called by the White House and two federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for National and Community Service.  The invitation to participate in the conference went to people all over the country, both inside and outside Washington, D.C., and included editors and contributors to various media outlets.  Additionally, various media outlets announced themselves on the conference call. The media representation included Al Gore’s Current TV, a contributor to Huffington Post, Urb Magazine, Fader Magazine, 215 Magazine, Paper Magazine, Giant Robot, Philadelphia City Paper, Fusicology, MySpace, Global Grind, and Social Brite. 

With members of the White House, public federal agencies, and broad media representation, there was no expectation of confidentiality or that the call would not be recorded by one or more of the many participants in this conference call.   (more…)

The tin-pot dictator, Kim Jong-Il (who has turned his entire country into a Communist Gulag) has snatched a couple of American journalists, dragging them across the border from China to be tried on trumped-up spy charges and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor.  Here is how the North Korean news agency reported it: “The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor.” Isn’t that a great line, “Reform through labor…”?   Given that almost everyone in North Korea is already starving, I suspect that Euna Lee and Laura Ling are not likely to survive twelve years of “reforming” big rocks into gravel.

At the same time, dictator Kim Jong-Il rattles his puny saber and threatens that if any of his ships carrying nuclear materials to other rogue nations are stopped on the high seas, he will consider it an “act of war.”  Well, gee… There was a time not too long ago when the kidnapping of American nationals would have, in itself, been considered an “act of war.”  I imagine that had Teddy Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan been at the helm when Kim Jong-Il took two American nationals hostage, the response would be quite different.   More likely it would have gone along the lines of: “You have 24 hours to return our citizens before we start obliterating your military bases – one every hour until the hostages are set free.  If we run out of military bases and you still continue to hold them then, unfortunately, we’ll have to start on your cities.  Have a nice day.”  Then, like any good parent, we would follow through with our pledge. (more…)

After I came home from the fabulous sold out Maher -Coulter debate, I began to wonder something. The next big show on the MSG Speaker series is the Al Gore show on April 1st. If two circus acts like Maher and Coulter can sell out the Chicago Theater it should be no problem for an elder Statesman like Gore whose mantle holds trophies from the Nobel, Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy organizations. Certainly a man so popular with the elite should have no trouble selling out the joint.

A couple clicks on the Ticketmaster link assured me that there is no danger of a People’s Choice Award on that mantle anytime soon, since the public isn’t buying Gore. With a little more than two weeks before showtime, it is still possible to purchase six seats on the main floor, center stage, row K. Ouch. (more…)