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Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur.[1] He is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA basketball team,[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban ___________________________________________ Mark Cuban Backed De Palma's 'Redacted' to Promote New Movie Distribution Business By Lynn Davidson, September 4, 2007 Why does a small-budget movie like Brian De Palma's “Redacted” matter? Because of the ripple effects. The media have reported the film as "a ferocious argument against the engagement in Iraq for what it is doing to everyone involved.” Meaning the media are taking these deeply anti-war, anti-military storylines as De Palma intended, as a serious discussion of...

No knock on his "good friend" Jeff Bewkes -- or on Superman -- but Ted Turner wishes that he was running Time Warner so that he could make some changes at Cartoon Network and CNN, the cable news channel he founded 29 years ago. At CNN, he wants "less fluffy news and more international news," especially about China, Turner says in an interview set to run on Bloomberg TV on Friday. "Less talk, more news," he says. As for Cartoon Network, Turner tells anchor Betty Liu, "If I had control of it, I'd put 'Captain Planet' on at a top...

Ralph Nader has been many things: lawyer, consumer-rights bulldog, political activist and perennial third-party presidential candidate. He has now added a new title to his business card: fiction writer. His latest book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a 700-page populist fantasy in which a small group of billionaires and media moguls — led by Warren Buffett and including Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue — pool their massive resources to reform the U.S. With the help of a $15 billion war chest and a p.r. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group successfully...

August 14, 2005 -- LONDON — The $21.3 billion United Nations oil-for-food scandal has now widened to include the brother of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Kobina Annan, the Ghanaian ambassador to Morocco, is said by investigators to be "connected" to an African businessman at the center of the scandal. The probe into Kobina's dealings are at an early stage and he has not been interviewed. However, investigators are understood to suspect that Michael Wilson, an African businessman, and Kobina had a business relationship at the time of the scandal. A source close to the investigation said: "We believe Kobina Annan...

The New Jacobin Elite | Print | Written by William F. Jasper    Wednesday, 24 June 2009 06:00 The Socialist Party of Great Britain is celebrating the reissuing of Peter Taaffe’s book, The Masses Arise: The Great French Revolution 1789 -1815. “Its republication by Socialist Publications, in time for the 220th anniversary of this great event in July 2009, is extremely timely,� says the party’s website. A different page on the party’s site promoting the same book instructs readers: “An understanding of the French Revolution remains crucial for all revolutionaries. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky studied it intensely to gain an...

SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education. The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change. Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah...

Friday May 8, 2009 Pro-Abortion Organization Upset by LifeSiteNews' Coverage of Development and Peace Recognizes and supports CCODP's funding of pro-abortion movement By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman UNITED STATES, May 8, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An abortion advocacy group in the US has criticized LifeSiteNews for exposing the involvement of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP) with the funding of pro-abortion, homosexualist, and anti-Catholic groups in foreign countries. "RH Reality Check," a blog created by Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation for the purpose of promoting abortion "rights," has published an article by a contributor who recognizes that, indeed,...

"Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but in 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. Civilization will have broken down." -- CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS's Charlie Rose, April 1, 2008. Mark Levin presents the "Dan Rather Award for Stupidest Analysis", Ted Turner wins it, Ed Meese accepts on Turner's behalf.

Like. Hi! I’m all excited today! I just started this blog! At 71! Which is so funny, since I'm such a luddite (wow! I didn't even know I knew such big words)...I'm a big fat technophobe. Like. I didn't even start shaving my armpits until my friend showed me how to do that last summer. Like. I also didn’t even google anything until my friend taught me how this past summer…because…well…I'm dumber than Nancy Pelosi!

A top United Nations official who once served on the White House National Security Council has been picked for deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, a move that would place two women at the top of the department for the first time. President Barack Obama's nomination of Jane Holl Lute, a retired Army major who worked on the NSC under President Bill Clinton, was announced Friday by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Napolitano and Lute are the first women to hold their positions. Since it was launched in 2003, the department has had three secretaries, two men and one...

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Last week during a FoxNews interview with Bill O'Reilly, Ted Turner, who founded what has become (in their own words) "the world's largest cable news network "claimed that Fidel Castro's Stalinist regime has never killed anyone. O'REILLY: Fidel Castro, do you admire the man? TURNER: Yes. O'REILLY: Now he has murdered people. He's imprisoned people. There are political prisoners now. He won't let his people use the Internet. Nobody can use that. And you admire the guy? 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...

"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."

“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.”

Here is video of bizarre CNN Founder Ted Turner appearing on Meet the Press where he told Tom Brokaw he saw the "crash" of the automotive industry coming years ago and declared that the "days of big automobiles" and "fossil fuels are over." Ted Turner has a history of saying outrageous things. The day may come when there will be viable alternatives to "fossil fuels," but their day is far from over. . . . . (Watch Video)

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...

DUBAI, Sept 12, 2008 (AFP) - A senior Saudi cleric has issued a religious decree saying the owners of television networks broacasting "depravation and debauchery" may be killed, Al-Arabiya television reported on Friday. "The owners of these channels propagate depravation and debauchery," said Saleh al-Luhaidan, chief justice of the supreme judicial council, the highest judicial authority in the ultra-conservative Saudi kingdom. He made the remarks on radio in response to a caller who asked him to give an opinion on what he said were "immoral" programmes on Arab television during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a source at...

The current food shortage is going to get worse before it gets better – at least that’s the way the founder of CNN sees it. Ted Turner was interviewed by CNBC’s Bob Pisani on the April 25 “Closing Bell.” He addressed the recent food shortages causing rationing and riots all over the globe and said it’s just a sign of things to come. “There are a lot of different problems being caused by an ever-increasing number of people in a finite-sized world,” Turner said. “The resources of the planet just can’t keep up with the demand and I’m afraid this...

Joe D’Aleo posted this chart on icecap.us a while back and I wanted to make sure you see it. Click on the chart for full size. “This is the latest decadal plot from February 1998 to February 2008 of global temperatures from Satellite (UAH MSU lower troposphere) (blue) and land and ocean variance adjusted surface (Hadley CRU T3v) (rose) plotted with Scripps monthly CO2 from Mauna Loa (green).”You can easily see the downward trend in temperatures over the past decade and the increase in CO2 over the same time period of about 6%. A decade definitely is not a long...

By now I'm sure you have heard about Ted Turner's comments on Charlie Rose the other night. He's concerned about global warming. Oh .. poor Ted. Things are just getting too hot for him, and clearly his brain is starting to cook. Anyway ... Today Ted said that if we don't do something about global warming in about 40 years most of us will be dead and the rest of us will be living in Somalia or Sudan eating each other. He also said that there just too many people in the world. Too many people? OK .. we did...

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...

Asked at the National Press Club's luncheon on Monday “what do you see as the future vision for CNN now that Fox is gaining in market share and popularity?”, CNN founder Ted Turner leaned into the microphone and, prompting laughter and applause, produced a loud sputtering sound as he blew air through his lips with his tongue sticking out slightly -- aka "blowing a raspberry" or issuing a "Bronx cheer." "... the right-wingers have every right to have a network of their own and they've got one.”

CNN founder Ted Turner, the largest private landowner in Nebraska and the United States and the nation's largest bison rancher, said Wednesday that he is about done buying new ranches. He said he would like to reach 2 million acres nationwide before he dies — about 40,000 acres more than he currently owns. "I'm almost done. I've got enough," said Turner... The 69-year-old billionaire, philanthropist and conservationist said he isn't interested in free-standing ranches anymore, only "reasonably priced" parcels adjacent to his current operations, which include five ranches in Nebraska near Gordon, Oshkosh and Mullen. The ranches cover 425,221 acres,...

Ted Turner's men didn't flinch... When the auction was over, they walked away with what they came for: 26,300 acres of prime ranch land, at a cost of nearly $10 million. "It hasn't taken long to find out he's serious," said Duane Kime, a rancher and Turner neighbor who was outbid by about $100,000 by the CNN founder. But what exactly is Turner serious about? The question gnaws at folks here and in other rural areas of the country ... Turner has amassed 2 million acres over the past two decades to become the largest private landowner in the country....

End of an era for TBS, Braves, fans For three decades, Braves games have been beamed around the country on TBS. They became America's Team — but Sunday, America will watch for the last time. All across America Sunday, thousands of people like Bill DeArmond of Winfield, Kan., will say goodbye to an old friend. For three decades, they have watched the national telecasts of Braves games on TBS, turning Atlanta's baseball team into — at least for a while — "America's Team." Today, America will watch for the last time. The Braves' season finale at Houston marks the end...

Veteran actress and feminist Jane Fonda has been slammed for not paying her female employees working in the actress' radio network Green Stone Media. The twice Oscar winner and the radio network's co-founder Gloria Steinem have been accused of "putting their own reputations above their female employees' finances." According to the New York Post, Fonda and Steinem are 'refusing to pay severance, and the founders won't file for bankruptcy protection because it would publicly embarrass Jane and Gloria.' However, the 'Klute' star's spokesperson has denied the reports and said that the accusations are unfounded. "This is pure speculation. There is...

<p>PULITZER prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler sent out an e-mail yesterday announcing that his wife had dumped him for billionaire Ted Turner.</p> <p>Elizabeth is Butler's wife of 12 years, Elizabeth Dewberry, 44, an author in her own right, who might be attracted to Turner, 68, because the media mogul resembles the grandfather who molested her as a child, Butler writes in the shocking e-mail.</p>

Lawyers for media mogul Ted Turner persuaded a district judge to issue a restraining order blocking Gallatin County from paving a five-mile stretch of road that runs through Turner's sprawling Flying D Ranch south of here. Attorneys for Turner Enterprises Inc. obtained the order from District Judge John Brown. It bars the county from paving a segment of Spanish Creek Road. Commissioners said the county has been planning to pave the road for years. To save money, the county was planning to use millings - essentially ground-up rubble from other road projects - provided by the Montana Department of Transportation...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

The 100-year tenure of the McMurtrey Family at a pioneer ranch in Cherry County ended June 26 with a public referee auction at Valentine. R.E. "Ted" Turner purchased the property by offering the highest bid. Turner bought the 26,332 deeded acres for nearly $10 million... The opening bid was $290 per acre. It was the largest ranch land auction ever held in Cherry County, according to Eric Scott, Cherry county attorney. The auction was ordered by the Cherry County District Court. Erba "Hub" McMurtrey built his ranch starting with Kinkaid homesteads with three McMurtrey Brothers in 1908. Ranch acreage increased...

My spouse was watching "Adult Swim" on the Cartoon Network this past week. They ran a commercial promoting their web site, complete with fun little games a visitor can play. One particular game they promoted was called "Bible Fight". The video clip of the game they showed depicted an 2-D animated Jesus Christ "fighting" against his mother Mary and the baby Jesus. Mary fought with kicks, and Jesus Christ used his cross to hack Mary and the baby Jesus up. I couldn't find a good pic of that, but here is one of Jesus getting ready to fight "Noah" OR...

Some of the world's wealthiest are going green, spending their own greenbacks to protect the environment and fight global warming. In honor of the 37th annual Earth Day this Sunday, we are highlighting our picks for the 11 greenest billionaires. These moguls have made significant commitments to the environment, whether through investment in technology, commitment to earth-friendly living or simply by raising the world's environmental awareness. Among the green billionaires are high-profile folks like Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT) co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Gates' investment firm invested $84 million in California's Pacific Ethanol (nasdaq: PEIX), which makes ethanol from corn;...

NEW YORK - The name of Court TV is getting disbarred. Turner Broadcasting said on Tuesday that it will rename its cable channel to reflect a more action-driven lineup. The new name won't be revealed until summer and will take effect at the start of next year. Turner has been aggressive in branding its cable outlets to set them apart from competitors. TBS is geared to comedy and TNT does drama, for example. "We believe the brand needs to catch up with the programming," Koonin said. The move is being made despite a 31 percent increase in ratings this season...

Cable-industry legend Ted Turner has traveled the globe urging friendship instead of fighting. He even donated $1 billion over the past nine years to the United Nations to promote world peace. But don't ask him to share warm feelings about Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., or Time Warner Inc., which purchased Turner Broadcasting System Inc. in 1996...

Excerpt - LITTLE ROCK — Former president Bill Clinton said Monday that he remembered the moment he realized he made the shift from a world leader to a philanthropist. "One day I was shaving in my house up in New York and Ilooked at myself in the mirror, and I thought, 'My God, I've become an NGO (non-government organization),'" Clinton told a crowd of 300 people gathered at his presidential libary in downtown Little Rock. ~ snip ~ "My climate-change initiative is being funded by Barbra Streisand and Rupert Murdoch," Clinton said, delighted by the unlikely alliance between the actress...

Ten years ago they were bigtime winners and looked the part. Ted Turner was the embodiment of a swinging, swaggering billionaire with ideas springing from his brain like coins falling from the pockets of a pair of pants hung upside-down. His all news channel, CNN, was prospering and when he made a speech, everyone leaned forward and listened intently. Nobody broke up. And ten years ago, George Steinbrenner beamed as the Joe Torre era began, and the Yankees, no longer the Bronx Zoo curated by Billy Martin, started to run the table of playoffs and World Series. The Boss had...

Posted by Brad Wilmouth on September 30, 2006 - 15:28. During an interview aired Friday on CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, when asked by host Deutsch how he would go about fighting terrorism, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that "you don't win people over by bombing them, you win them over by being friends with them," and soon recommended giving Muslim extremists what they want as a solution to terrorism. Turner, who in 2002 claimed that Israelis were guilty of "terrorism" against the Palestinians, on Friday's show advocated "being more even-handed in our dealing with the Palestinians and...

The last intervention in public affairs Ted Turner made was a month or two back, when he recounted what an agreeable vacation he had in Kim Jong-il's North Korea. (I sent him a postcard saying, "Wish you were still there.") He's now weighed in on the ayatollahs and his line's pretty straightforward: Why shouldn't Iran have nukes? "They're a sovereign state," he said. "We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel -- they've got 100 of them approximately -- or India or Pakistan or Russia. And really, nobody should have them. They aren't usable...

While Muslims were busy threatening to kill the Pope, Rosie O’Donnell – talk-show host, constitutional scholar and celebrity airhead – was busy comparing conservative Christians to Islamo-fascists. On ABC’s “The View” last week, O’Donuts smeared committed Christians while trivializing the suffering of Islam’s many victims. Responding to the comments of her co-host that militant Islam is a threat to free people everywhere, O’Donnell – famous for her keen intellect – shot back: “Just a minute. Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state.” Actually , we...

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was among the "dumbest moves of all time" that ranks with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia, billionaire philanthropist Ted Turner said on Tuesday. The founder of CNN and unabashed internationalist also defended the right of Iran to have nuclear weapons and the effectiveness of the United Nations and, in a jocular mood, advocated banning men from elective office worldwide in a Reuters Newsmaker appearance. The U.S. invasion of Iraq has caused "incalculable damage" that will take 20 years to overcome "if we just act reasonably intelligently." "It will...

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, CNN creator Ted Turner and former Sen. Sam Nunn pledged $50 million to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency Tuesday to create a uranium stockpile. The aim is to discourage countries from developing their own nuclear programs. The reserve would ensure supplies of low-grade fuel for nuclear power plants around the world. One example of a program they hope to discourage is in Iran, which critics fear is ultimately aimed at developing weapons. The Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative is hoping its financial pledge to the International Atomic Energy Agency will prod governments into action on creating the...

Campbell, Turner Throw Support Behind Sekula-Gibbs Campaign by Bob Dunn, Aug 21, 2006, 07 13 am Tom Campbell and Tim Turner, two Republicans who each campaigned to replace Tom DeLay in the race for Congressional District 22, have endorsed Houston Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs as a write-in candidate for that seat. Campbell, who made his endorsement on Saturday, came in a distant second to DeLay in the March primary, then ran as a replacement candidate after DeLay announced he was leaving Congress. “Shelley Sekula-Gibbs is honorable and competitive and worthy of my support,” Campbell said on Saturday. Turner, a Houston businessman,...

DaimlerChrysler has pledged $500,000 to help former President Bill Clinton and Ted Turner build a “peace park” designed to “promote regional peace and stability” in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. The pledge is part of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which is a global program to fund projects that focus on such things as “religion, conflict and reconciliation.” It is unclear how the park will inspire North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who is now poised to test a missile that can reach the United States, to embrace “peace and stability.” The CGI revolves around an annual...

The Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block has picked former CBS series "Pee Wee's Playhouse," the channel said Monday. The late-night network purchased the rights to all 45 episodes of Paul Reubens' quasi-children's show, which aired from 1986 to 1991. CBS cancelled the series after Mr. Reubens was arrested in an adult theater and charged with indecent exposure. Since, reruns of the series have been rare. Adult Swim said many of the episodes have not been aired since their original run. Adult Swim will launch the series July 10.

Ted Turner Bids Media Conglomerate Adieu Without Usual Flare ATLANTA (AP) -- Ted Turner was uncharacteristically understated Friday as he departed Time Warner Inc., the media conglomerate that swallowed his cable network company and slowly sidelined him as a mover and shaker in the businesses that he helped to create. The CNN founder told Time Warner shareholders at their annual meeting he regrets not being able to do more for them. "I just wish the last five years I could have made a bigger contribution," Turner said. "I hung in there as long as I could. I've done my best."...

Federal regulators have voted to impose severe restrictions on salmon fishing off the coasts of Oregon and Northern California to protect dwindling populations in the Klamath River. The Pacific Fishery Management Council decided to close about 700 miles of coastline to commercial salmon fishing for most of June and July. Those are generally the most productive months of the season.

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Ted Turner took shots Tuesday at the media for its coverage of sex and violence, at himself for losing control of the news network he founded, and at the Bush administration for going to war in Iraq. The outspoken billionaire philanthropist made his comments as he was being honored for promoting global understanding. "There's an awful lot of superfluous news, the pervert of the day and someone that shot seven people at a fraternity party," Turner told a crowd gathered at a downtown hotel. "Who needs it all?" Turner, 67, said he regrets losing control of...

Sheep don't mix well with grizzly bears and wolves. Now they won't mix at all on more than 70,000 acres in the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness. A 74,000-acre sheep grazing allotment south of Big Timber in the Gallatin National Forest has been permanently closed and the ranchers who used it for generations have been paid to move their sheep elsewhere... The agreement is the eighth -- and second-largest -- in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in recent years that has led to the retirement of about 300,000 acres from grazing. The latest involves the Ash Mountain and Iron Mountain allotments used for generations...

Gnawing leisurely on the remains of a moose carcass, the wolf pack's alpha male seemed unaware that mortal danger was coming ever closer. Suddenly the eight-member rival pack burst into view. The alpha scrambled to his feet, but too late. Howling and barking, the enemy chased him down and mercilessly attacked, killing the hapless victim within a couple of minutes. It's not unusual for the gray wolves on Isle Royale National Park to target each other, said John Vucetich, a Michigan Tech University wildlife biologist who witnessed the carnage from an airplane in January. But the rival pack's brazen invasion...

Ted Turner and Carla A. Hills to Step Down from Time Warner's Board of Directors February 24, 2006 New York -- Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) today announced that R.E. "Ted" Turner has decided not to stand for re-election to its Board of Directors and Carla A. Hills, a former US Trade Representative, will step down in accordance with the Board's retirement policy. Both will continue to serve as Directors of Time Warner until the company's 2006 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Time Warner's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dick Parsons said: "Ted Turner's legendary record as a media pioneer and...