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Self-Interest 1, Dogma 0: Al Gore Is Out Of The Closet Again
Townhall.com ^ | February 3, 2013 | Austin Hill

Posted on 02/03/2013 5:12:44 AM PST by Kaslin

Our former U.S. Vice President Al Gore just sold one of his business holdings and earned a bit profit – and he contradicted himself while doing it.

Gosh, I am shocked! Aren’t you?

The headlines tell us that Gore is being pummeled with criticism from his fellow liberal-progressives because he sold Current TV, a television network that he co-founded, to Al Jazeera, a television network based in Qatar. In the liberal-progressive worldview, this transaction is problematic on two accounts.

For one, Gore did business in an oil-producing country (Qatar), and for liberal-progressives, this is an un-forgivable sin. In their view, it simply doesn’t matter that the civilized world (the United States included) runs on oil, and needs a lot of it every day. It also doesn’t matter that everyone who is reading this right now (liberal-progressives included) is likely using a computer that is made, in part, with oil-based plastics, and may even be consuming electricity that was generated by – gasp! – oil.

These realities generally don’t matter for liberal-progressives. On the contrary, it is simply accepted as an un-examined “truism” that oil companies are evil, and the production and consumption of petroleum-based products violates the orthodoxy of environmentalism. This is the first reason Mr. Gore’s transaction is being criticized.

But Gore’s business dealings in Qatar are regarded as bad for yet another reason: they appear to have been extremely profitable for him. Worse still, Gore appears to have intentionally violated his own dogmatic hostility towards the oil industry in pursuit of his profit-making.

For liberal-progressives, businesses exist to serve the “collective interests” of “everybody” – however one might define those things. And if an individual business owner or company makes “too much profit” (again, the definition of “too much” is ambiguous), yet another un-forgivable sin has been committed.

Common Western thought on economics, shaped largely by about five thousand years of pre-American civilization and Adam Smith’s ground-breaking philosophical work “The Wealth of Nations,” teaches that every human being naturally pursues their own self interest. This becomes obvious when we take an honest look at how most of us live today.

For example, most of us who work, quite rationally seek to earn as much as we can in exchange for our labor. Likewise, when we acquire products and services provided to us by others, we generally try to get the best product or service at the best (read “lowest”) possible price. This is not a matter of being greedy – it’s a matter of being a good steward with one’s money, time and talents.

Similarly, when we take money that we have earned and invest it in a business venture – such choices generally entail the risk that the venture might fail and we might lose all our investment money – we quite rationally hope to produce a “return,” or a profit, from that investment. When viewed this way, there is seemingly nothing immoral, certainly nothing illegal so far as we can see, with Mr. Gore’s business deal.

The most problematic point in all of this is that so many American liberal-progressives seem to not understand these most basic, natural realities of self-interest and economics. Perhaps equally as disturbing is the fact that, apparently, many liberal-progressives have never before noticed the serious inconsistencies between Al Gore’s words and behavior.

For well over a decade Mr. Gore has preached the gospel of hostility towards oil companies and predicted cataclysmic disasters because of its consumption, while flying around the world on energy-inefficient private jets and being shuttled across town in fuel-guzzling limousines. He commands that the world practice energy conservation, while for many years he sold so-called “carbon credits” from his own for-profit corporation. And in 2007 an investigation conducted by the Nashville Tennessean newspaper revealed that the home that Gore and his then-wife Tipper shared at that time consumed approximately twenty times the amount of energy consumed by most comparably-sized households.

The travesty of Al Gore is not that he’s done business in an oil producing country, or that his business dealings have produced profits. It is that his public life has largely been a charade for the past many years, and he has perpetuated a culture of false assumptions which has now become a culture that is turning against him.

Will liberal-progressives learn from this, before they crown their next iconic “leader?”


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: algore; aljazeera; aljazeeragore; capitalism; currenttv; goreon; jazeeraalgore

1 posted on 02/03/2013 5:12:52 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
How quickly we forget!

Al's Dad, the segregationist democrat Senator and full-time Soviet operative, and his Mommie Dearest the communist lawyer, endowed young Al, Jr. with a set of very larcenous genes, which have little to do with ideology. After the the thievery, it was a given that the home religion was Marxism, albeit in a very lucrative form.

Senator Al Sr.'s biggest source of illicit income was a sweetheart under-the-table deal with Armand Hammer, the Soviet Union's business agent in the US. (AMTORG) Together, he and Al Sr., engineered the federally funded exportation of billions of dollars of American goods and technology to the Communists, with Al Sr. taking a very hefty cut every time on everything from pharmaceuticals to agricultural machinery. Suffice it to say that Al Sr. and Mommie Dearest left the young and even then quite idiotic Al Jr. very well fixed indeed. E.G., several thousand acres of prime Tennessee agricultural territory for starters. Al Jr. made millions from just tobacco alone!

Segregationist Senator Al Sr. was also famous for his "Cattle Auctions" scam, among many other fund-raising coups. Those wishing to bribe him were invited to yearly "auctions" of bovine breeding stock which went for absurdly high prices. After the "winning bid," the livestock in question never left the Gore premises. You see, right after one pretended to buy them, one forked over another few hundred thousand for Al Sr.'s "company" to manage the breeding programs for a year. Renewable forever, of course.

Thanks to the Soviet Union, Al Gore, Jr. began life as a multi-millionaire heir to a criminal empire. Daddy and Mommie Dearest would have been proud of the al-Jazeera deal!

2 posted on 02/03/2013 5:42:13 AM PST by Kenny Bunk (The Obama Absolution Molecule: Teflon binds with Melanin = No-Fault Marxism.)
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To: Kenny Bunk

I thought Gore senior made his money in Tobacco.


3 posted on 02/03/2013 6:07:36 AM PST by EQAndyBuzz (I own a weapon to protect my family from those wanting to take that weapon away.)
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To: Kaslin

liberal/progressives = Two Faced


4 posted on 02/03/2013 6:17:13 AM PST by Vaduz
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To: EQAndyBuzz
I thought Gore senior made his money in Tobacco.

He made plenty of money in Big Tobacco, investing some of his ill-gotten gains in prime land, much of which Al Jr. still owns. It made a great way to "launder" the swag. However, the really big Gore money source was Armand Hammer and AMTORG. You see, those companies interested in getting on the lucrative allowed export list heavily bribed Al, Sr. to make sure they got a piece of the federally-funded pie. On top of this, Armand Hammer and the Soviets "heavily subsidized" old Al. This went on for years ... 1930's -1950s!

In fact, toward the end of his career as a Segregationist Senator, Al, Sr. became very unfashionable and was hustled off the scene under an investigational cloud. Nothing serious, mind you. He kept the money.

5 posted on 02/03/2013 6:19:57 AM PST by Kenny Bunk (The Obama Absolution Molecule: Teflon binds with Melanin = No-Fault Marxism.)
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To: Kaslin

Also:

It is fun to watch Big Oil critic Al Gore squirm as he is questioned about selling out to the oil-rich dictatorship in Qatar. But his sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera is not a laughing matter. This transaction is a homeland security threat that violates numerous U.S. laws.

To his credit, funnyman David Letterman got close to the truth when he asked the former Democratic vice-president, “Now why do we think of Al Jazeera as something not right going on there in terms of, in terms of the good for Americans? Why do we think that they may be propaganda for Muslim violence and terrorism?”

...It’s apparent that Gore is talking about the channel in glowing terms in order to justify his receipt of $100 million from the $500 million deal. Gore doesn’t want to admit the truth because then he would be exposed for selling Current TV to Al Jazeera not only for “dirty” oil money, but also for blood money. The American blood on the hands of Al Jazeera is real.

Every time that you see a wounded member of the American military, or attend a service for those who died defending America, there is the distinct possibility that the death and destruction was carried out by Jihadists egged on by Al Jazeera.

...This is a very serious matter. If Al Jazeera reaches English-speaking Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. with its incendiary messages, we could see suicide bombings on the streets of America and the development of more al Qaeda cells plotting 9/11-type terrorist attacks. The purpose of “Al Jazeera America” is to reach English-speaking Muslims who don’t speak Arabic with inflammatory words and images making America out to be the enemy and villain in the Middle East.

But we also know that those bin Laden documents, according to CNN’s Peter Bergen, included a plan to “craft the perfect media message” on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks by urging contacts between al Qaeda and Al Jazeera.

The terrorist leader said al Qaeda should contact the correspondents of Al Jazeera Arabic and English “and tell them that we are willing to cooperate with them in the area of covering the tenth anniversary by answering any questions that you think the public is interested in.”

So it was apparent, from the leader of this terrorist group, that both Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English were considered outlets for al-Qaeda propaganda messages.

There is no reason to believe the new Al Jazeera America will be any different. And the inevitable result will be more cases of terrorist violence and murder on American soil.

A hearing into this deal would make things difficult for McCaul and other Republicans who want to pursue a bipartisan agenda and do not want to irritate Obama and the Democrats. The co-owners of Current TV, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, are prominent Democrats, and another investor in the company, Richard Blum, is the HUSBAND OF SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN. Selling their Current TV to Al Jazeera is somewhat comparable to turning over American broadcast facilities during World War II to Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally, the propagandists for the German and Japanese enemies. They were prosecuted and convicted for treason for broadcasting their propaganda against America from overseas.

Plus, hearings will surely annoy Republican Senator John McCain, who joined Hillary Clinton in praising Al Jazeera in 2011.

But investigating Al Jazeera is the right thing to do and a necessary component of homeland security. After all, members of Congress do swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”

Full article link: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/congress-fails-to-act-against-gores-terror-tv-deal/


6 posted on 02/03/2013 7:56:22 AM PST by CharlesMartelsGhost
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To: Kaslin

How many of those Progressives who love Al Gore & hate oil are aware that he is the major stockholder of Occidental Oil?

He bought it from Armand Hammer before Hammer died.


7 posted on 02/03/2013 9:58:59 AM PST by ridesthemiles
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To: ridesthemiles

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/19/us/2000-campaign-vice-president-gore-family-s-ties-oil-company-magnate-reap-big.html?ref=albertgoresr

...Mr. Hammer helped make the elder Mr. Gore a wealthy man, and the politician became one of the oilman’s most valued allies in Washington.

When J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.B.I., wanted to prosecute Mr. Hammer on suspicion of being an agent of the Soviet Union in the early 1960’s, Mr. Gore Sr. defended him on the Senate floor. Mr. Hammer was not charged...


8 posted on 02/03/2013 10:05:35 AM PST by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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