Michael Moore: The Infamous Idiot and Egomaniac

[Economist]

Has anyone heard of this guy before? He is such an idiot! Not to mention an egomaniac.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4840722755857474101&q=michael+moore&total=4445&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

 

[mgb_phys]

You haven't heard of Michael Moore? That cave must be cold this time of year!

 

[Economist]

Did I mention crybaby?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4840722755857474101&q=michael+moore&total=4445&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

 

[Skyhunter]

Did you see Sicko?

 

[Skyhunter]

I am not a fan of Michael Moore. I think he is a fat egotistic slob. But he does make movies that hit at the heart of issues.

 

[turbo]

Apparently, there is a sub-set of our society that as is so insulated from social issues that even the most basic appeals to social fairness can be marginalized. Pretty sad.

 

[Economist]

Did you see Sicko?

Yeah, I saw it. I understand why people like it, as it definitely appeals to the emotions. But seriously, why would anyone get informed about issues from this fat college drop-out? Why would people make political/policy decisions based on something done by Michael Moore? I mean, if you really want to learn something about economic issues (which is definitely what health care is) then don't read too much into anything Michael Moore says. Instead, read books by people like F.A. Hayek, Fredrich Bastiat, and Adam Smith. But I doubt anybody would want to do this considering it's much more difficult and less fun then getting drunk and watching a Michael Moore flick. I mean our society is really in trouble when large groups of people think Michael Moore is any kind of authority on politics or economics. Luckily, most people who buy into his crap are already super liberal socialists, so his movies probably don't actually make any difference (accept for the fact that he makes millions of dollars, while at the same time trashing "companies," "profits," "greed," etc).

I am not a fan of Michael Moore. I think he is a fat egotistic slob. But he does make movies that hit at the heart of issues.

I don't know about at the "heart" of issues. More like the "heart" of humans. Not always the brain though.

Apparently, there is a sub-set of our society that as is so insulated from social issues that even the most basic appeals to social fairness can be marginalized. Pretty sad.

It's sad when a large sub-set of our society is so insultated from reality that they deify Michael Moore. It is even sadder that a large sub-set of our society cares more about their own ego, then trying to understand what actually works and what actually makes human beings (especially poor ones) better off. It's so important for many people to feel like they "are making a difference" in the world, even if they don't have the slighest clue about how to actually do so. In my opinion it is incredibly arrogant and selfish.

 

[GleefulNihilism]

How are those straw men holding up?

 

[LightbulbSun]

Apparently, there is a sub-set of our society that as is so insulated from social issues that even the most basic appeals to social fairness can be marginalized. Pretty sad.

If you'd like some good sources on Michael Moore I'd suggest the following links:

http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/f911"

http://moorelies.com/"
http://www.mooreexposed.com/"

 

[Skyhunter]

It's so important for many people to feel like they "are making a difference" in the world, even if they don't have the slighest clue about how to actually do so. In my opinion it is incredibly arrogant and selfish.

True.

I read a poll that showed that people who recycle feel as if they are doing their part to help the environment. Most of them don't understand that recycling is the worst option, reducing and reusing are far better options, but they put a plastic single serving water bottle in a recycling bin and feel they are saving the planet.

Unfortunately most never get more information than what is broadcast on their infotainment media.

 

[DaveC426913]

I guess you really do have to be pretty and thin to be an accepted celebrity.

We have posters who freely admit that they watch and appreciate his creations, yet they prefer judge him on his fatness, his (apparent) slobbishness, and (:gasp: unheard of in the film industry) egotism...

 

[Evo]

I guess you really do have to be pretty and thin to be an accepted celebrity.

We have posters who freely admit that they watch and appreciate his creations, yet they prefer judge him on his fatness, his (apparent) slobbishness, and (:gasp: unheard of in the film industry) egotism...

I don't like his "films". What he looks like doesn't matter.

 

[mgb_phys]

I don't like his "films". What he looks like doesn't matter.

What country do you live in ?

 

[Evo]

What country do you live in ?

The US.

 

[mgb_phys]

Then the previous statement makes no sense
(there needs to be more 'ironic' smileys)

 

[DaveC426913]

What he looks like doesn't matter.

You seem to be in a small club in these parts.

 

[Cyrus]

Well, you would think a fat bastardo would get into shape if he cared about health. Right? :tongue2:

Yes, no? Hello? Tap tap, this thing on?

 

[LightbulbSun]

Michael Moore is a conspiracy nutjob at the end of the day. Maybe not Alex Jones-esque, but still a nutjob.

 

[ShawnD]

Michael Moore is a conspiracy nutjob at the end of the day. Maybe not Alex Jones-esque, but still a nutjob.

Being emotional doesn't automatically make him wrong. When he released Fahrenheit 911, he put out a challenge where he would give somebody $10,000 if they could point out flaws in the movie. So far nobody has been able to claim that prize, since most disagreement comes from stupid things like "saudis didn't a free flight out of the country, they used their own money". Misinterpreting a word that has several meaning is not a flaw...

 

[LightbulbSun]

Being emotional doesn't automatically make him wrong. When he released Fahrenheit 911, he put out a challenge where he would give somebody $10,000 if they could point out flaws in the movie. So far nobody has been able to claim that prize, since most disagreement comes from stupid things like "saudis didn't a free flight out of the country, they used their own money". Misinterpreting a word that has several meaning is not a flaw...

http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/f911"
http://www.mooreexposed.com/"

These are very good sources which point out the flaws and deception in Fahrenheit 911. I suggest you read them.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/f911"
http://www.mooreexposed.com/"

These are very good sources which point out the flaws and deception in Fahrenheit 911. I suggest you read them.

I could care less about Moore, but one has to wonder how anyone could conclude that a site called "moorewatch" or "mooreexposed" is impartial or respectable.

 

[ShawnD]

"[URL

Alright let's see what we have here.

Moore claims that minorities make up a larger portion of the military than exists in the general population.

Actually, in the movie he said that poor people make up the majority of the military. That seems almost verifiable...
Rural people are more likely to join the army
http://www.army.com/money/college.html

Seems about right. Back in 1908, there was a huge flood of unemployed people trying to join the army. There was a market crash in 1907, so by that time people were pretty hard up for money, and they joined the army. Fahrenheit had a piece in it where he was talking to some lady at the unemployment office in Flint, and she was recommending people join the army since that's a reasonable place you can look to and always find a job.

Moore took advantage of a grieving mother when he paraded Lila Lipscomb through his movie.

Emotionalism is not a lie.

Moore was wrong about why we went to war with Iraq.

And from there he links to himself as the reference for why Saddam had to be taken out. Let's see what other crackpot theories I can dig up.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,00.html - If other OPEC countries followed suit, this would lower the value of US dollars since the demand would drop.


I have to go right now but I'll finish this post later.

 

[LightbulbSun]

Alright let's see what we have here.


Actually, in the movie he said that poor people make up the majority of the military. That seems almost verifiable...
Rural people are more likely to join the army
http://www.army.com/money/college.html

Did you read the full article? Because he dug up the actual statistics on this.

Emotionalism is not a lie.

He was documenting on how Lila has gone from a grieving mother to a complete conspiracy whackjob. He documents this pretty well with complete sources. I suggest you read those sources.

And from there he links to himself as the reference for why Saddam had to be taken out. Let's see what other crackpot theories I can dig up.

He sources links to speeches which are external links.

These are the two links he links:

http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html"
http://john-kerry.tonyspencer.com/kerry-speech-10-9-2002.htm"

He does not link himself anywhere.

I have to go right now but I'll finish this post later.

Please read the sources before you continue to post on Moore.

 

[LightbulbSun]

I could care less about Moore, but one has to wonder how anyone could conclude that a site called "moorewatch" or "mooreexposed" is impartial or respectable.

9/11 conspiracy debunking websites have the following urls:

911myths.com
911debunking.com


So don't necessairly judge the content by the name of the url.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

You assume that because it is a debunking site it must be credible, which is absolutely false. Some of the biggest crackpots on the web are debunkers of various kinds.

 

[LightbulbSun]

You assume that because it is a debunking site it must be credible, which is absolutely false. Some of the biggest crackpots on the web are debunkers of various kinds.

I don't assume that. You are putting words into my mouth. I always check the content, and the citations. If you actually look at the links I've provided to you will see that they do a pretty good debunking of Moore.

 

[PJC01]

If I can toss my two cents into this...Michael Mooore is worse than an idiot. He is a deceitful idiot that, unfortunately, has a huge following. This is especially true in Europe (I currently reside in the Netherlands). If people (anywhere) continue to deny the realities of the threats we are faced with today, then it is indeed our children and theirs who will suffer the most severe consequences. Here's just a quick example of some of the deceit Moore uses:

"Just as President Bush has deflected the Moore barbs re the Bush-Saudi connection, the media has been playing fact-check catch-up -- debunking the most sinister of his film’s claims.

For instance, a central theme of Michael Moore’s controversial documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” is a charge that Saudi Arabian interests provided $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush.

However, as a recent special Newsweek investigative report noted:


Nearly 90 percent of that claimed amount, $1.18 billion, comes from contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. The “Bush” connection: The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board once included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.

Newsweek further pointed out that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998 -- five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm.

As to George W’s own Carlyle link, his service on the board ended when he quit to run for Texas governor -- a few months before the first of the Saudi contracts to the unrelated BDM firm was awarded.


The Carlyle Group is hardly a “Bush Inc,” disclosed Newsweek, but rather features a roster of bipartisan Washington power figures. “Its founding and still managing partner is Howard Rubenstein, a former top domestic policy advisor to Jimmy Carter. Among the firm’s senior advisors is Thomas McLarty, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, and Arthur Levitt, Clinton’s former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of its other managing partners is William Cannard, Clinton’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.”

According to the report, the movie neglects to offer any evidence that Bush White House intervened in any way to bolster the interests of the Carlyle Group. In fact, the one major Bush administration decision that most directly affected the company’s interest was the cancellation of an $11 billion program for the Crusader rocket artillery system. The Crusader was manufactured by United Defense, which had been wholly owned by Carlyle until it spun the company off in a public offering in October, 2001. Carlyle still owned 47 percent of the shares in the defense company at the time that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld canceled the Crusader program the following year.

As to Moore’s dealings with the matter of the departing Saudis flown out of the United States in the days after the September 11 terror attacks, the 9/11 commission found that the FBI screened the Saudi passengers, ran their names through federal databases, interviewed 30 of them and asked many of them “detailed questions.” “Nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country,” the commission stated.

The entity in the White House that approved the flights wasn’t the president, or the vice president -- it was Richard Clarke, the counter-terrorism czar who was a holdover from the Clinton administration. Clarke has testified that he gave the approval conditioned on FBI clearance."

No matter what Moore or anyone else says - the invasion and forceful removal of Saddam Hussein was both legally and morally justified. I am prepared to back that up if there are any challenges to that assertion.

PJC

 

[LightbulbSun]

If I can toss my two cents into this...Michael Mooore is worse than an idiot. He is a deceitful idiot that, unfortunately, has a huge following. This is especially true in Europe (I currently reside in the Netherlands). If people (anywhere) continue to deny the realities of the threats we are faced with today, then it is indeed our children and theirs who will suffer the most severe consequences. Here's just a quick example of some of the deceit Moore uses:

"Just as President Bush has deflected the Moore barbs re the Bush-Saudi connection, the media has been playing fact-check catch-up -- debunking the most sinister of his film’s claims.

For instance, a central theme of Michael Moore’s controversial documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” is a charge that Saudi Arabian interests provided $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush.

However, as a recent special Newsweek investigative report noted:


Nearly 90 percent of that claimed amount, $1.18 billion, comes from contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. The “Bush” connection: The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board once included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.

Newsweek further pointed out that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998 -- five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm.

As to George W’s own Carlyle link, his service on the board ended when he quit to run for Texas governor -- a few months before the first of the Saudi contracts to the unrelated BDM firm was awarded.


The Carlyle Group is hardly a “Bush Inc,” disclosed Newsweek, but rather features a roster of bipartisan Washington power figures. “Its founding and still managing partner is Howard Rubenstein, a former top domestic policy advisor to Jimmy Carter. Among the firm’s senior advisors is Thomas McLarty, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, and Arthur Levitt, Clinton’s former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of its other managing partners is William Cannard, Clinton’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.”

According to the report, the movie neglects to offer any evidence that Bush White House intervened in any way to bolster the interests of the Carlyle Group. In fact, the one major Bush administration decision that most directly affected the company’s interest was the cancellation of an $11 billion program for the Crusader rocket artillery system. The Crusader was manufactured by United Defense, which had been wholly owned by Carlyle until it spun the company off in a public offering in October, 2001. Carlyle still owned 47 percent of the shares in the defense company at the time that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld canceled the Crusader program the following year.

As to Moore’s dealings with the matter of the departing Saudis flown out of the United States in the days after the September 11 terror attacks, the 9/11 commission found that the FBI screened the Saudi passengers, ran their names through federal databases, interviewed 30 of them and asked many of them “detailed questions.” “Nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country,” the commission stated.

The entity in the White House that approved the flights wasn’t the president, or the vice president -- it was Richard Clarke, the counter-terrorism czar who was a holdover from the Clinton administration. Clarke has testified that he gave the approval conditioned on FBI clearance."

No matter what Moore or anyone else says - the invasion and forceful removal of Saddam Hussein was both legally and morally justified. I am prepared to back that up if there are any challenges to that assertion.

PJC

http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php...ael_moore_9_11_truther_democrat_cheerleader/"


Moore is now a 9/11 Truther. Brilliant. Yet some people in this thread are cheerleading his deceptions and now pure insanity. You might as well just call him Alex Jones' big brother.

 

[PJC01]

When someone isn't capable of wiping their own butt (like Moore), jumping into the cesspool with dirty, like-minded people certainly hides the shortcoming, doesn't it?

 

[ShawnD]

Did you read the full article? Because he dug up the actual statistics on this.

Actually you are right, he did get some stats. However, those stats agree with Michael Moore. http://moorewatch.com/index.php/those_poor_stupid_recruits_part_4_in_a_series1/ is the page where he describe all of this. Here is an exact quote form that page:

Now, in terms of median income, for whites—now again, this is enlisted versus—and this is against the entire civilian population, so it’s not quite the right comparison. But for whites, the median total gross household income in 1999 for our enlisted population was about $33,500, versus $44,400 for the civilian population. Again, that omits officers from the DOD numbers—

Q: This is the household income that these recruits are coming out of?

Senior Defense Officer: Right. This is white enlisted.

Q: Thirty-three five. And what was the second number?

Senior Defense Officer: Forty-four four, for civilians as a whole.

Right there supports Michael Moore. Moore said they tend to recruit people from the lower class, and this certainly counts as lower class. Median household income of 33k? That's what McDonalds pays. Honest to god. My best friend works at McDonald's as a swing manager (that's like third in command, each store has 3-4 swing managers), and his yearly pay is $40,000. They're recruiting people who have "McJobs". Actually that's only 1 person making 40k. Here you're talking household, which would mean that you either have a single parent making mcdonalds swing manager wage, or you're looking at two parents who have entry-level walmart jobs. In other words: poor people.

It also tries to put the black population in a positive light with a similar stat

For African Americans, however, the total gross household income of our active duty personnel, their parents, that is, was $32,000 versus $27,900 for the population at large. So specifically to Mr. Rangel’s charge, it’s not quite the picture that he would argue exists. These are actually—for our African-American recruits, recruits come out better, above average, in fact, near the national average, in terms of household income.

What this means is that they recruit poor black people, but that's totally cool because median black people are also poor, right guyz? Show me a white or black guy making 60k who signs up for the army. It doesn't happen. I'm not saying people don't benefit from joining the army, because that's not true either. What I'm saying is that they benefited from joining because they were dirt poor when they signed up which is exactly what Michael Moore claimed in the first place.

He was documenting on how Lila has gone from a grieving mother to a complete conspiracy whackjob. He documents this pretty well with complete sources. I suggest you read those sources.

I'm not concerned about that whackjob lady. To be honest I zoned out during that part of the film beacuse it bored me to tears. It paid off too because my girlfriend mistook it as me being sensitive

He sources links to speeches which are external links.

The problem with http://moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_case_for_war/ is that the majority of the quotes he takes are from the Clinton administration when Clinton was desperate to make some fake crisis to draw attention away from the fact that he cheated on his wife. Look at the timeline of events:
January 26, 1998 - Clinton publicly stated, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
February 4, 1998 - “One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.” And by bottom line he means 'leave me alone, *******s. Saddam is the issue here.'
December 16, 1998 - Operation Desert Fox begins. Bombs start dropping on Iraq.
December 19, 1998 - Bill Clinton is impeached by the House of Representatives
December 19, 1998 - Operation Desert Fox ends. I guess that didn't distract them enough.

Then from there all talk about Iraq ended...until shortly after 9/11 when the window of opportunity opens once again.
Dec, 5, 2001; 3 months after 9/11 - Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) "and others" give anti-Iraq letter to Bush (this is according to that guy's site you linked to)
Sept. 19, 2002; 1 year after 9/11 - Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI) rants about Iraq
Sept. 23, 2002 - Al Gore
Sept. 27, 2002 - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA)
Oct. 3, 2002 - Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV)
Oct. 9, 2002 - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA)
Oct 10, 2002 - Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV)
Oct. 10, 2002 - Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA)
then John Kerry again, and finally
March 18, 2003 - War in Iraq officially starts

It sure seems like they picked a fantastic time to bring up Iraq. One guy begins 3 months after 9/11 when everybody is still ready to nuke the first thing they find (understandably so), then everything cools down... until 9/11 anniversary comes up and everybody is fuming again, Iraq is now a threat again. Sure it is.Next one:
I have absolutely no idea what this even means "Moore lies about meeting and hugging Tom Daschle."
I didn't know it was such an honor to hug some guy I've never heard of, but I'll put it on my Christmas list.

Next one: Claim is that Moore faked an article for inclusion in the movie.
Not sure how the dates tie into this, but it appears Moore took a shot of a letter to the editor and didn't tell anybody that it was an opinion letter, not a real news article. Looks like a pretty solid claim. Moore is a jackass for stunts like this one. He did something like that in Bowling as well when he took clips from NRA speeches and didn't say when or where they were from. They were real speeches, but the viewer is lead to believe the speeches were made after Columbine happened. Moore never says they happened after, nor did he say they happened before. He throws out little nuggets of information and let's people build their own conspiracy ideas around them, and it's no accident.

Next claim:

"The law against felon voting does have a racial impact, since African-Americans make up the greatest share of felons (nearly 49 percent felons convicted in Florida). But the application of that law in 2000 skewed somewhat the opposite way — whites were actually the most likely to be erroneously excluded."

Actually the law against felon voting was what I thought Moore was talking about. The misinterpretation was an error on my part, and it looks like Moore screwed up on this. He seems to make a lot of weird claims regarding race. On one episode The Awful Truth, he declared the south won the Civil War since "most black people make minimum wage". Is that even true? Probably not.

It seems like he'll throw out an assumption to get you to agree with an idea, so you have a bias of your own by the time somebody sheds light on that idea, even if it's Moore himself debunking it.
I know this isn't quite the same, but John Stossel once did a report about faith, and part of it was showing a study where a kid is told there is a fox in a box, then the kid is shown that the box is in fact empty. Even after being shown the box is empty, the kid still insists that there is a fox in the box because that was their original belief, as it was told to them by somebody in a position of power. Here, you are told something, or half of something, you make your own assumption, you believe that assumption, then you're more likely to ignore information that debunks what you've just been told. I tend to notice these things in Moore's films, whereas other people can be mislead and then hate Moore for misleading them. As an example of this: Bowling had a bit about people in Colorado building rockets for Lockheed Martin (which is a fact), then it said Lockheed Martin builds weapons of mass destruction (also a fact). He didn't say Colorado builds weapons, but he let's the viewer connect the dots and assume that people in Colorado are building weapons of mass destruction, but can't seem to relate to why their kids are using weapons to kill people. Very misleading, but worded in such a way that it's true. I can't remember what it's called, but this lockheed martin trick is one of those logical fallacies on wikipedia.
A implies B (rockets --> lockheed), and B implies C (lockheed --> WMD), therefore A implies C (rockets --> WMD). This is of course false because not all rockets are weapons. Those particular rockets were to send things into space IIRC.
Next claim: Moore says only 1 of 535 congressmen has a son in Iraq, but it's actually 7.
This is another one of those things where it's more misleading than it is false. The US population is 300 million. The military is roughly "1,426,713 personnel are currently on active duty" (wikipedia). Divide one into the other and you get a value of 0.004755 (or 0.48%) of the population is on active duty. Multiply the 0.004755 by 535 = 2.544. So for the entire congress to be a representative sample of the United States, 2.5 of those congressment should be on active duty (or know somebody who is, preferably a son or daughter). Moore says 1. Your link says 7. The differences don't even seem to be of statistical significance. Even if Moore's number is assumed to be correct, it doesn't actually mean anything. He says it to mislead people, even though he might be saying something that seems downright fair. Let me give an example. Suppose the US population was 90% white, 10% black, then in a film somebody said "Currently US jails are 90% white. Why is that?" The film would be stating a fact that is entirely logical (90% of overall population should mean 90% of prison population), but the question of "why" is added to make you think that it's an illogical statistic. "Only 1 congressman has a son in Iraq. Why?" The question of why makes you think something is very wrong with this statistic, when in reality it could be an accurate representation of the US population. I remember when Al Sharpton pulled this trick to claim that some state, I think Vermont, was racist because it had something like 2 black people in some house or something, when in reality those 2 black people represented a higher percentage of the house than the percentage of black people that make up Vermont. Hilarious.

I'll post more after work tomorrow.

 

[LightbulbSun]

The problem with http://moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_case_for_war/ is that the majority of the quotes he takes are from the Clinton administration when Clinton was desperate to make some fake crisis to draw attention away from the fact that he cheated on his wife. Look at the timeline of events:
January 26, 1998 - Clinton publicly stated, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
February 4, 1998 - “One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.” And by bottom line he means 'leave me alone, *******s. Saddam is the issue here.'
December 16, 1998 - Operation Desert Fox begins. Bombs start dropping on Iraq.
December 19, 1998 - Bill Clinton is impeached by the House of Representatives
December 19, 1998 - Operation Desert Fox ends. I guess that didn't distract them enough.

Then from there all talk about Iraq ended...until shortly after 9/11 when the window of opportunity opens once again.
Dec, 5, 2001; 3 months after 9/11 - Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) "and others" give anti-Iraq letter to Bush (this is according to that guy's site you linked to)
Sept. 19, 2002; 1 year after 9/11 - Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI) rants about Iraq
Sept. 23, 2002 - Al Gore
Sept. 27, 2002 - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA)
Oct. 3, 2002 - Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV)
Oct. 9, 2002 - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA)
Oct 10, 2002 - Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV)
Oct. 10, 2002 - Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA)
then John Kerry again, and finally
March 18, 2003 - War in Iraq officially starts

It sure seems like they picked a fantastic time to bring up Iraq. One guy begins 3 months after 9/11 when everybody is still ready to nuke the first thing they find (understandably so), then everything cools down... until 9/11 anniversary comes up and everybody is fuming again, Iraq is now a threat again. Sure it is.

I'll reply to your other points later on tomorrow because it is early morning and I need some sleep. But let me address this one point before I sign off for the night. You say that the Iraq crisis was a hoax to divert the attention away from the Monica Lewinsky case. Well to be honest the Monica scam was being emphasized into the forefront of all the other issues by the Republican party. What Clinton, Albright, Berger, and Pelosi all said back in 1998 and 1999 seems very consistent. Now if you want to argue about Bush's procrastination about the Iraq threat then that's another discussion. But to say the Iraq crisis was a hoax created by Clinton's administration is false when it was the Republicans who kept putting the case at the forefront of all the other issues.

I will be back tomorrow to make comments on some of the other things you've posted. Oh, and please read the section about Moore practically omiting almost everything Rep. Mark Kennedy said. Michael Moore himself provides the full transcript of the conversation on his own website here: http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/smackdown/index.php?id=12"

 

[edward]

Why is it that current politial discussions all seem to end up with the Republican side bringing up Bill and Monica.

It actually make me miss the Hitler/Nazi thing. Even Hitler didn't enter the discussion until about page 7 or 8.

 

[WheelsRCool]

Hitler/Nazi thing?

 

[ShawnD]

Hitler/Nazi thing?

Godwin's Law

Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies)[1] is an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states:[2][3]

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Godwin's law is often cited in online discussions as a caution against the use of inflammatory rhetoric or exaggerated comparisons, especially fallacious arguments of the reductio ad Hitlerum form.

The rule does not make any statement as to whether any particular reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that one arising is increasingly probable. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued[4] that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact. Although in one of its early forms Godwin's law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions,[5] the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads and wiki talk pages.

Godwin has stated that he introduced Godwin's law as an experiment in memetics.[3] However, linking reductio ad Hitlerum to discussion length had already been done in humorous Usenet adage form the previous year, by a poster named Richard Sexton: "You can tell when a USENET[sic] discussion is getting old when one of the participents[sic] drags out Hitler and the Nazis."[6] It is unknown whether Sexton's quip directly influenced Godwin's law.

 

[wildman]

The funniest thing I found about Far. 9/11 film was that he attacked Bush for the very thing that Conservative Talk Radio attacks Clinton for... Which is inaction on terrorism before 9/11. Which proves that Clinton and Bush in many ways are not that different.

As far as Sicko goes... well my wife is a nurse and my father in law is a doctor and they all say our system is broke. Things are rapidly going down hill. At least Moore is bringing up issues and causing debate. That has to be a good thing even if you don't agree with him because we can't keep going the way we are.