Fahrenheit 911

[vicente]

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/trailer/

[pnklphnts]

im seeign that the first day it comes out, you should see it slayer, and maybe refrain from making fun of micheal moores wieght problems throguht the movie, as im sure you would.[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]

[sonrisa]

one of my nieces is getting married that weekend, but hopefully I can go Sun, after all the weeding brouhaha has died down. Can't wait to see it!! :)

[dustwitch]

That movie is propaganda. It certainly isn't a documentary. What a joke. Hollywood lauds that lying idiot. He would give Joseph Goebblels a run for his money. Kerry should offer him a post as his Minister in charge of Re-education in his fantasy future never -will -be- presidential cabinet.

[NeverMind]

well it takes a good fat filmamaker like him to keep media fair and balanced. The news is mostly blatantly conversative-biased. There's plenty of propaganda coming from both sides. Personally, i find Michael Moore very entertaining and educational.

[sonrisa]

how do you know it's propaganda Dustwitch? You've seen it already? Where?

If it's anything like Bowling For Columbine, it should be good! :)

ps, the lying idiots are in the White House, their lies are getting staler everyday & I, for one, am getting sick of hearing them

[vicente]

Below is for those who regularly get their news from anti-Americans like Rush Limbaugh type Talking-Heads

By Way of Deception
by Stuart Klawans


Not the judgment of film critics but the passage of time will decide whether Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 can change the world. Change, of course, is the whole purpose. Whatever satisfaction Moore derives from his ever-mounting income and awards, he clearly will consider this picture a success only if it helps drive George W. Bush from office. Voters will write the real review. I can merely fill time until November, with the thought that Fahrenheit 9/11 might be interesting as a movie after it has done its work as politics.

As with any good polemic--and this is an excellent one--you sit in the theater thinking of how someone else would respond, some imaginary "undecided" in a swing state, or perhaps your Uncle Max the Republican. You don't much monitor your own reactions. But then, as you leave the movie house, you might notice that the sidewalk chatter sounds oddly muffled, the traffic looks a little blurred, as you begin to realize that your attention has not come outside with you; it's still in the dark, struggling with the feelings that Fahrenheit 9/11 called up and didn't resolve. Are you outraged, heartbroken, vengeful, morose, gloating, thoughtful, electrified? Moore has elicited all of these emotions and then had the nerve--the filmmaker's nerve--to leave you to sort them out.

I think there are two bundles of messages in Fahrenheit 9/11, one political and one emotional--and while the first is about as ambiguous as a call to take up pitchforks and torches and storm the castle, the second is too complex to unsettle those in power. It works to unsettle you. It's what makes Fahrenheit 9/11 a real movie.

For clarity's sake, then, let's start with the politics: the film's bill of particulars against Bush, and also against the Democratic leadership, which in Moore's view has colluded most shamefully in the misrule the world now suffers. The prologue to Fahrenheit 9/11 revisits Bush's rise to power in late 2000, paying particular attention to the hunched posture of the Democrats who let him step on their backs. Here are Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, counseling "acceptance" of the non-election; and here is Al Gore, mildly officiating over the Senate session that legitimized the theft of his presidency. For the first time in Fahrenheit 9/11, but certainly not the last, Moore tells his story through borrowed but decidedly nonstock footage, which you most likely have not seen before--in this case, a scene of members of the House, all of them African-American, coming forward to contest the election, while Gore calmly rules their objections inadmissible because no senator, not one, would satisfy Congressional rules by signing on to them.

Moore's antagonists, being Republican, won't go so easy on him. Their attacks will no doubt include the charge that his film is Democratic Party propaganda. You should understand from the preceding the flimsiness of this accusation--although it's true that Moore spares us the sight of one notable Democrat, John Kerry, voting to authorize Bush to start a war on his own say-so, at any time that suited him.

But enough of Democratic malfeasance. Who is this Sage of Crawford, that he may choose for us between life and death? Moore answers, in part, with more footage you probably haven't seen until now: a substantial portion of videotape from the morning of September 11, 2001, when Bush and his handlers staged a photo opportunity at an elementary school in Florida. After an aide whispered to him that a second airplane had struck the World Trade Center, Bush sat in place for seven minutes, pretending to read a book titled My Pet Goat. Have you ever before had a chance to study his face on that morning? Has anything other than this movie made you feel the unendurable length of his inaction? What do you suppose he was thinking for all that time, as he stared into space? Moore himself asks that last question on the soundtrack, as a way of opening a biographical digression about Bush, his family and their business interests. This section of the film will particularly incense Moore's attackers, who will pronounce on him the dependable slur of "conspiracy theorist." So, to digress on my own:

Moore alleges no conspiracies. He merely says that Bush has motives beyond those he's willing to state. To make this case, Moore begins by showing that the Bush family in general, and George W. in particular, have received lavish support over the years from the Saudi elite, including the bin Ladens, and have offered valuable help in turn. Unlike the actualities footage that Moore uses in the film, these facts are by now widely known--although it was news to me that Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, had dined with Bush at the White House on September 13, 2001. In speculating about this dinner, and about the subsequent airlifting out of the United States of more than a hundred Saudis when everyone else was grounded, Moore goes only so far as to say that the overwhelmingly Saudi makeup of the September 11 attack teams could have proved embarrassing to Bush. He would not have wanted journalists just then to begin looking into his personal ties to Saudi interests, or to ask whether any useful information had emerged from the two dozen bin Ladens who had been in the country, and whom he soon spirited away without the indignity of questioning.

Nothing conspiratorial about that. The worst you can reasonably say of this section of the film is that it gives Moore the opportunity for one of his man-on-the-street pranks. He films himself and Craig Unger (author of the book House of Bush, House of Saud) in front of the Watergate complex in Washington, directly across the street from the Saudi Embassy: a choice of location that insures interruption. Sure enough, onto the scene drive carloads of Secret Service agents, who just want to ask, politely, why a film crew is working on this spot. The agents move off readily enough when given the answer, although one of them seems abashed when Moore blandly delivers his punch line: "I didn't realize the Secret Service guards foreign embassies."

In fact, reasonable people may find this to be the best part of the section.


You may have heard, by the way, that Moore is less of a presence in Fahrenheit 9/11 than he was in his previous pictures. Actually, he's always with you, in voiceover; but he does perform for the camera less than usual. At times, his stunts serve to drive home a point, as when he accosts members of Congress on the street and offers them recruiting brochures, in case they want to enlist their children in the military. At other times, his antics are pure comic relief. (After complaining that the House passed the USA Patriot Act sight unseen, Moore corrects the situation by reading the bill aloud to Congress, circling the Capitol in an ice-cream truck and reciting the provisions over a loudspeaker.) Either way, though, Moore makes sparing use of this sort of material in advancing his main charges against Bush

The first principal accusation is that Bush had gotten along just fine with the Taliban before September 11 (which is demonstrable) and didn't much care about fighting them afterward (which is unproved but plausible). Bush invaded Afghanistan, Moore claims, because he had to be seen to do something, because the war helpfully diverted attention from the Saudis and because those closest to him would gain lucrative contracts for a natural gas pipeline. Moore's second accusation is that Bush undertook the war in Iraq for even shadier purposes. As Nation readers knew, and as others have since caught on, Bush attacked without even the excuse he'd had in Afghanistan of pursuing bin Laden. There were no terrorists in Iraq to destroy, no military threats to counter--and unless you define "democracy" as the creation of profit-making opportunities for Halliburton, no process of democratization to pursue.

There is also a third principal point, most devastating of all. But before I go into that, let me digress once more, to sum up the impressively varied materials that Moore assembles to make these arguments.

The film contains, as I've said, a few of Moore's little skits, along with a lot of borrowed actualities footage, which is usually surprising and sometimes shocking. (How many shots have you seen of daily life in Baghdad immediately before the war? How many dead and wounded Iraqi civilians have you looked at close up?) In addition, you find pop-culture images, which Moore takes over for purposes of sarcasm or parody (as when he remakes the TV western Bonanza as the Bush adventure Afghanistan); talking-head interviews with expert commentators (such as former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, former FBI agent Jack Cloogan and Senator Byron Dorgan); a range of texts and graphics; patches of direct cinema (for example, an excursion to a shopping mall in Flint, Michigan, with a couple of Marine recruiters); and, most critical of all, filmed encounters with ordinary citizens, who pretty much have the frame to themselves while Moore stays quietly out of the way.

The most important of these citizens, the one who takes over the final portion of the movie, is Lila Lipscombe of Flint, mother of Sgt. Michael Pedersen, who served in a helicopter unit in Iraq and was killed in action sometime after "the completion of major combat operations." Lipscombe is a pleasantly robust woman of modest means, patriotic and Christian in convictions, guileless in manner, whose role in the polemic is simple: She is meant to embody disillusionment. Having once despised all protesters against war, feeling that they were slapping our soldiers in the face, she now grieves over a dead son, whose final letter home said of Bush, "He got us out here for nothing." In a succession of artfully spaced scenes, which constitute the film's third damning charge against Bush, Lipscombe speaks of the meager possibilities open to most young people in Flint; she recalls having encouraged her own children to enter the military, believing it to be a good thing to do and a good opportunity; and at the end, bereft, with Moore trailing behind, she visits the White House (or as close to it as you can get these days) and says she is glad to be there, since it gives her a place to put her anger.

Lipscombe makes a very efficient witness--but she is an intractably complex movie character. She just doesn't fit Moore's scheme. He generally relies on economics to explain the behavior of the elite and psychology to account for the rest of us. (As you may recall from Bowling for Columbine, he is very interested in the way politicians and the communications media use fear to grab attention and elicit compliance.) But when it comes to Lipscombe, Moore (to his great credit) forgets about his standard categories. For perhaps the first time in his career, he shows someone as a fully rounded personality, animated by beliefs and loyalties that he does not necessarily share but must respect; and so he allows her emotions to overwhelm his cleverness.

This is the point at which Fahrenheit 9/11 may overwhelm you, too. Perhaps it will seem trivial to a pollster, counting and recounting those swing votes, that this campaign tool should also qualify as a work of art; but I can't believe the effect will be lost on moviegoers.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is Michael Moore's most urgent diatribe and also his best, most moving film.

Extremely Short Take: Had Moore's film not shouldered everything aside, I would have devoted several paragraphs of this column to praising The Corporation, a new documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan. A study of the business corporation as the dominant institution of the past century and a half--and an analysis of the built-in qualities that make this "fictitious person" a psychopath--The Corporation recently opened in San Francisco and is now about to begin a New York City run at Film Forum (June 30). I think you'll find the film smart, playful, rapid and almost too richly informative. A nationwide release begins soon--a very successful one, I hope.

[slayer]

I haven't decided whether I'll see the movie. I don't want to contribute financially, or to indirectly endorse such movies by buying a ticket to see it, but I do want to see it so make criticism will be first hand.

Judging from the criticism, some clips, interviews of Moore, and Moore's obvious liberal bias and disingenuous films, I have little doubt but that this movie is left-wing, liberal propaganda. This movie will undoubtedly muddy the name of what a documentary truly is meant to be.

Oh! And of course Michael Moore will step aside and let the "ordinary citizen" talk. I can interview dozens of ordinary citizens, not interrupt them during their interview, and then edit out which ones I want to add to my biased movie. Why anyone would not see through this is beyond me. Although I see that some idiots are swayed by such tactics.

Moore also has footage in the film, thus evidence, of wrongdoing by military personnel at some prisons. I'm not contesting the evidence, I'm wondering why he withheld this information from the State Department!

Why do fools think that a movie of the type Michael Moore typically makes should be a eye opener about anything! He doesn't give arguments in his movies, he gives bad impersonations of arguments. Pictures are not the whole story, yet they will sway the simple, which is who this movie is geared to, you simpletons.

If you truly think Bowling for Columbine was a documentary in the true sense of the word, a good persuasive movie that depicts how things are and should be, then I have no doubt that you like Micheal Moore. You probably even think he has a lot to teach us.

I for one know he's a moron and a liar. He's disingenuous and out to get rich before doing the right thing, as in reporting the mistreatment of Iraqi soldiers. He might have, had he done the right thing, prevented such mistreatment, considering that the footage he has predates much of the stuff we've been getting on TV.

No, Micheal Moore is un-American and a moron in my book.

You fools enjoy your education,

slayer

[pnklphnts]

Slayer, I would like to see the evidence or specific examples you have of Micheal Moore being a liar. Don't use generlizations. And of course Micheal Moore's movie is intended to make people change their minds, thats what documentrys are for. You act as though every single post you make isnt republican biased. You think Micheal Moore is an anti-american liar is republican biased to the extreme, because you don't back it up with anything. Just "He's obviously lieing, cause hes liberal". No one is fully-objective, I would like to think I am at least semi-objective, because no matter who the person is (which is where your attacking the person fails you, and you decide their fat therefor not smart) i listen and then think about the information. You should try it, maybe you'd learn something.

And if you watch his other documentrys, he almost always has a conservative speak then shows evidence to support why they are wrong. And almost always what they say is a major point the audience is thinking.

[NeverMind]

documentary: n. pl. doc·u·men·ta·ries
A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.

well i think Michaels Moore's movies fit that definition.

[dustwitch]

No, his movies do not fit that definition. Throughout his movies he heavily edits to mislead and deceive the viewer. A documentary is supposed to document the facts, and if the viewer is pursuaded to a particular point of view after being presented with the documented facts , that's fine, but if the viewer is manipulated into adopting the filmakers's point of view through the crafty, deliberate manipulation and witholding of facts, or outright fabrication of facts, well, that is propaganda.
In 'Bowling for Columbine' there are many examples of this kind of crap :
http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

Michael Moore is a propaganist and a sleaze bag who blatantly mocks and abuses the very human beings whose best interests he purports to have mind. The only thing he truly cares about is furthering his own twisted political agenda.

[a random hack]

hey slayer, you forgot 'fat' :lol:

[vicente]

slayer utters: "Moore's obvious liberal bias"

I'd be more concerned with the Christian Conservative bias and their pathetic, anti-American attempts at revisioning what America was founded to be.

“a Liberal is someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, that is what a ‘Liberal’ means, and I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’” John F Kennedy
September 14, 1960

dustwitch spews: "he heavily edits to mislead"

What does that have to do Fahrenheit 9/11? Nothing! That's like saying you will never watch another Robin William film because you didn't like 'Death to Smoochy'

In truth Dustwitch, your posts suggest that you are a fascist, Conservative, Republican who worships despicable, polluting dialogue of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter.

As I never seen any of Michael Moores films, except the above trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11, so I cannot respond to his agenda,...but your agenda is plain and clear,...to destroy America through fascist, self-centered delusions media-ted by conservative slime who are void of having any meaning contribution to the evolution of humankind.

"I am fighting for the work of the lord", George W Bush April 11, 2002
"I am fighting for the work of the lord", Adolph Hitler, the Mein Kampf

:)

[NeverMind]

First of All:

Vicente:
"Death to Smoochy" was HILARIOUS!
i love the Mein Kampf quote. Hitler's so versatile.
John F. Kennedy ruled.

Dustwitch:
i think it DOES fit the definition. He DOES use facts. Whether he uses them to "mislead and decieve" or not, they ARE facts. What do you have against Bowling for Columbine. I think it's stupid so many americans have guns. I wonder why there is so much more killing in the USA. And I think the Bloodthirsty media definitely has something to do with that. Why does that make me or Michael Moore a bad person? His movies contain many facts. That is a FACT. Sure he pokes his opinions and the opinions of similarly-minded individuals into them. So what?
If I want to go see what he says and make my decision based on what he says. FINE. why do you care?

Slayer:
Do you REALLY think he's in it for the money? He is moderately intelligent and could probably make be in a much more monetarily rewarding and more financially secure career if he wanted to.

[slayer]

Yes, Kennedy was a liberal, but you're not understanding the connotation of 'liberal bias,' which is to say that Moore doesn't do what's best for America as much as he pushes for whatever is liberal. Moore is also anti-conservative and anti-Bush, which makes him paint Bush in the worst light. And I say "paint" because he really does mislead, because when you intentionally leave out important premises and information, it's a fallacy and an attempt to mislead.

So all this Kennedy mumbo jumbo isn't getting you what you want. Sorry.

And to show that you've learned Michael Moore's tactics well, you offer us this.

[Vicente...] "I am fighting for the work of the lord", George W Bush April 11, 2002
"I am fighting for the work of the lord", Adolph Hitler, the Mein Kampf

Thank you, Vicente, I couldn't have asked for a better example of the stuff you'll likely get in Moore's film. In order to CLAIM that Bush is like Hitler, we get these two quotes. Let me do all of your thinking for you: Oh wow, look what Bush said, it's the same thing Hitler said. Oh, so they must be the same. Well, since Hitler is screwed up, Bush must be screwed up.

Now take a moment from your normal thought patterns and insert the name "Jesus Christ" where you see Bush's name. This is something Jesus would have said, if not precisely in these words. So, now Jesus is as evil as Hitler, Vicente is arguing. Interesting stuff, huh?

Now substitute "Jesus Christ" for "Hitler." Wow, look Bush is as good as Jesus Christ! Amazing stuff, huh?

Again, continue to be "educated" by Michael Moore. Vicente has learned his lessons well, as you can see. You'll all soon be able to turn your ignorant opinions into somewhat sophisticated rhetoric soon.

your intellectual superior,

slayer

[vicente]

Slayer, since there is no evidence, not one single thread, that Jesus ever existed, I couldn't say if this product of Christians imagination said "I fighting for the works of the lord".

I could assume from the Stuart Klawans article I posted above that Moore is an anti-Conservative, anti-Bush, and anti-DLC, just as any true American should be.
http://www.impeachbush.tv/impeach/articles.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/a...article5646.htm (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5646.htm)
http://skepticreport.com/tools/10command.htm
http://www.ffrf.org/nontracts/?t=xian.txt
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/misqidx.htm
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/meme.html

Since I haven't seen Moore's film, I do not know if he left anything out, as the pathetic Fox News Channel does every hour of every day. From the reviews I've read he does not go as far as the facts demand,...that is that George W Bush is a treasonous, anti-American who should have been tried and executed for his crimes against America, Humanity and the Planet more than two years ago.

Under George Washington, a document was drafted in 1796, then unanimously ratified by the US Senate and sign into law on June 10, 1797 by President John Adams which said,

"the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded upon the Christian religion".

Even though that document was read aloud in Congress without dissension, and well publicized at the time, there were no complaints or public outcry, as when Christians balked over the illegality of the addition of 'under god' in the Pledge. In fact, at the signing of the above 1797 document, Adams said, "Now be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End, may it be observed and performed with good faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; and I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill every clause and article thereof".

As for Bush being like Hitler,...it would be easier to expound on how Bush isn't like Hitler.

:)

[sonrisa]

and that would be a very short post!

thanx for posting the review. Now I really can't wait to see this flick! And you should rent Bowling For Columbine.

This is what my sister said: "How normal Marilyn Manson was, even in full makeup, as compared to Charlton Heston."

My first thought was- huh? My second thought was- ya know, she's right!

The, uh, "interview" with Dick Clark was good too.

Rent it. :D

:uninvolved: and I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.... :uninvolved:

[vicente]

Sonrisa,...a while back I caught about two minutes of an interview with Marilyn Manson. The interviewer asked what he would like to tell the students of Columbine. Manson responded, "nothing,...I like to hear what they had to say".

Compared to Chatlton Heston, Ronald Reagan, George Bush,...Manson would make a much better leader and President.

I recently attended a ceremony for a 10th grader who committed suicide. The adults were regurgitating biblical crap, but the kids, although much more emotional, were talking from their hearts. The contrast had me wishing I could evaporate every Rightwing Christian from Earth.

:)

[sonrisa]

yeah, Marilyn Manson said pretty much the same thing in the movie too.

as for those so-called "christians"- have you read Jimmy Carter's take on them? If not, I'll find the link & post it.

[dustwitch]

Oh, yes, Marilyn Manson is a marvelous role model with solid moral and intellectual leadership qualities that would make him a MUCH better president than Reagan or Bush. WTF , are you two smoking crack ?
Hey, vincente, too bad they don't have jumping to conclusions as an olympic event because you certainly would go home with the gold, ( that is if you don't blow your knees out first) as I am neither a reader, listener, nor worshiper of Coulter, Limbaugh, or O'Reilly.
I find it to be interesting how remarkably similar your judgmentalism, narrow-mindedness and lack of rational discourse is to the fascists and bible-thumping christians you so abhor.

Slayer, I admire your well reasoned arguments.

The best predicter of future behavior is past behavior, so I expect Moore's movie to be the same rank pile of prevarication and hyperbole as his others.

[slayer]

Nevermind,

You're misunderstanding what a documentary is. A documenatry is supposed to give you all the facts, at least all the salient ones the filmmaker has available to him, in order to let the viewer make judgments for himself.

If the filmaker doens't have available to him the salient facts, then he shouldn't make that particular documentary. If he intentionally leaves out salient facts, then it's not a documentary but propaganda.

If I videotape you in a shouting match with your friend, one in which you two trade highly personal insults every now and then, and then I edit out the insults your friend says, then I'm not making a documentary of the event - I'm putting out propaganda that is going to make you seem like an *******.

So while the so-called documentary of events only includes facts, it misleads, intentionally so. This isn't a documentary, this is propaganda.

What I have against Bowling for Columbine is that it's a pile of shit. By which I mean it's just propaganda that intentionally misleads people. And even if it wasn't intentional, it would still be a pile of shit. Here is why.

Take the scene where Moore bullies K-mart, or was it Wallmart?, into taking the gun and rifle ammunition off their shelves. The only reason this company did this was because of the bad publicity that Michael Moore's film was causing, or was going to cause. This isn't democracy at work. Why shouldn't that company continue to sell something that it has a legal right to sell? What is the argument that Moore gives for removing this product? You get no argument, all you get is pictures of a couple of boys harmed by that product. You get to feel sorry for them. Yes, Columbine was a tragic event, but how does that translate into that company shouldn't sell ammunition. That's not a reasoned argument for taking the product off. Worse yet, you're skirting our democratic method by using this bullying tactic to get your way.

When you say, "guns should be illegal," we get to ask you why you say this. You'll then need to give a reasoned argument in support of this claim. What are Michael Moore's reasons, with respect to the movie? I'll let you answer this, just so you can see that he has no argument worth mentioning.

He's a bad person because he portrays his films as documentaries, which they are not, and so he misleads the American people.

Nobody cares if you have an idiotic opinion, because you're nobody, but Moore's films sway many people, so his responsibility not to say false things and, more importantly, intentionally deceiving things is greater than your responsiblity. Your stupidity won't harm America, his might. Your stupidity will not go beyond this forum and some of your like-thinking friends, but Moore's will go nationwide, worldwide even.

And yes, he's in it for the money. I don't know about moderately intelligent -- how about just clever? I have no reason to think that he could make as much money doing anything else. He's clever because he knows how to take the information he gathers and present it in a very clever way. He knows how to manipulate, and he knows how stupid the average person is, which explains his popularity. But to say he's moderately intelligent would suggest that he gets some things right, which he does not, so I have no reason to attribute moderate intelligence to him.

His movies are the equivalence of pro-life idiots who hold up posters of an aborted fetus in order to argue that abortion is wrong.

Well, why is it wrong? Well, going by their posters, it's wrong because it's gross. In that case, shitting is wrong. This is all Micheal Moore's movies amount to, yet people like yourselve fashion him educated, a good film maker, and moderately intelligent.

Again, give me Moore's arguments in Bowling for Columbine, and restrict yourself to what he says or portrays in the film, and I'll show you why he's a moron, and for why anyone who buys into that bullshit is a moron.

poo is gross, therefore it's morally wrong!

slayer

You want another example of Moore's tactics? This one is truly amazing because it actually works contrary to his position, but you'd only know that if you thought about it and didn't simply just moo in agreement with whatever he was trying to present. He tells us that in Canada there are plenty of guns. But he says they don't have a similar crime record. Well then, why isn't this an argument for why guns aren't the problem? Is the argument that Americans are just more killing-crazy? Maybe so, but it's not because of the guns, so why are we banning guns?

Another example. What was the whole point of interviewing Charleton Heston in a movie that promotes the banning of handguns? What is the point of making him look like an idiot supposed to be? And why does Heston need a reason for keeping a loaded gun in his house? especially when he has a permit for that gun? What does it matter that he doesn't know why Americans are more prone to kill than others? especially when Moore doesn't know either. And yet only Heston was made to seem like the idiot.

Of course Moore doesn't know why, or else he wouldn't be pointing to Canada as an example, because pointing to Canada tells us that guns aren't the problem, but something else about Americans is. Moore is silent about what that may be, so we have reason to think that he just doesn't know.

[sonrisa]

if anybody wants to have a Michael Moore house party click here (http://action.moveon.org/f911/newmeeting.html?id=2973-4234557-fol.mXUbYkjO9IegWOz5dQ)



if anybody wants to find a Michael Moore house party in their area click here (http://action.moveon.org/f911/?zip=45223)


Michael Moore rules!! :)

[slayer]

Sonrisa, thanks for your substantive post, you nimrod.

How about not cluttering up these threads with your idiotic hurrahs!?

Damn morons!

[sonrisa]

suck eggs Gomer

[sonrisa]

Moore (sorry, couldn't resist! :D ) reviews:

click here (http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/0625041.shtml)

and here (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,638819,00.html)

here too (http://www.citybeat.com/current/film.shtml)

click here for a thumbs up (http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/cst-ftr-cannes18.html)

2 thumbs up! (http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-moore24f.html)

:badgrin:

Michael Moore rules!!

:D

[zygoat]

sonrisa,
Marilyn Manson Quotes

"I think I've grown to become all the things that tormented me as a child" ~ Marilyn Manson, on himself

"Raise your kids better or I'll raise them for you" ~ Marilyn Manson, on parenting

"I view my job as being someone who is supposed to piss people off" ~ Marilyn Manson, on his occupation

"Sometimes the hardest thing to believe in is yourself. Never mind trying to believe in God or the President. Believe in yourself, because in the end, you are... whatever you want to be." ~ Marilyn Manson, on believing in yourself

"If more stupid people killed themselves over stupid songs, there would be less stupid people in the world." ~ Marilyn Manson, on suicide because of music

[sahyo]

enjoyed this sweet sensitive sharing on a buddhism forum not on tbv
(maizuru/jeff consented for posting it):


Originally posted by Maizuru@Jun 25 2004, 09:36 AM


Okay, so I saw this movie last night.* I'd like to share my experience and thoughts about the movie and life in general.* This isn't really a review - if you are looking for that, you can find many on Google.* Rather, I am trying to give an expository look at the experience of watching itself and the vow that it brought me to.

I found out yesterday afternoon that there would be an advance showing at Universal Studios CityWalk in Orlando.* Living in Orlando, this is only about a 45 minute drive for me, so I decided to go.

Watching this movie at CityWalk was an experience of itself.* I parked in the "Jaws" lot - row 408 - and walked along the moving sidewalks towards the movie theater with the sounds of glib and funky party music, knowing I was about to walk into a movie that showed footage of the horrors of war.

The movie was to start at 12:20 a.m., but by the time I arrived 11:20, there was already a considerable line (the theater reached about 75-80% capacity, which is quite good for a 12:20 showing).* As I waited in line, I heard some film students discussing their trade.* This should not have surprised me - after all, this film did win the Palme D'or at Cannes.* I believe that cinematic gourmets were not to be disappointed by the movie.

The movie is extremely well put together, only straying off message a few times.* It is a moving and intense movie, which is all the more poignant because it is based upon real life.* Regardless of their political affiliation, every Buddhist should see this movie.

When I got home last night, my wife asked me, "so how was it?* Was it good or bad?"* I told her that it was neither good nor bad, but True.

By this, I don't mean that it was true, in the sense that every fact was 100% true or that it was presented in an unbiased manner.* Perhaps some facts were distorted a bit and the presentation was definitely slanted.* What I mean is that it was a True movie, in that it showed the real experience of this cyclic life - that is, the First Noble Truth of Suffering.

Based on what I have learned in Buddhism, I have tried hard to see past politics.* I don't think that conservatives or liberals have any monopoly upon good qualities, nor do I believe that either side has a dearth of negative qualities.* People are people, and all unenlightened beings share equally in the three Poisions of ignorance, anger, and desire - myself included.

Therefore, I did my best as I was watching this movie to throw the polemical politics out and keep an open mind for all living beings.* I must say that this approach did seem to yield fruit.* For example, watching the copious footage of George W. Bush dispelled my mental prejudice that he is an evil, manipulative man, and I instead saw him as an vulnerable and unsure man.* In some of the most interesting footage of the film, after Bush was told of the attacks against the Twin Towers, he continued to read "My Pet Goat" to a Florida classroom for twelve minutes.* The look in his eyes, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, inspired me with sympathy and compassion for the man.* Despite all of the things he has done, he is not an evil person, just a deluded one, and just as deserving of sympathy as any other living being.

At its height, the film is absolutely haunting and powerful.* The presentation of the chilling moments of September 11th is artful and touching.* Like the most effective of horror movies, the actual horrific act - in this case, the scene of the planes crashing into the buildings - is not shown, leaving us to our own memories and imagination to create the true horror.* Instead, during the presentation of the two planes destroying the WTC there is a black screen while the sounds themselves roll on.* Then, the screen fades in with the absolutely stricken faces of the men and women who were at the site now known as Ground Zero.* One of my "favorite" scenes shows the papers from the two buildings floating like ghosts upon the wind, swirling like the tortured souls of those who have just passed en masse to their next stage within in this cyclic existence.

Pressing forward, the movie then goes on to explain how Bush is connected with Saudi Arabia and even the Bin Ladin family.* It is hard to dispute evidence of Bush shaking hands with the Bin Ladin family.* However, these parts of the movie could never hope to touch the power of the beginning (or the end) of the movie, and seemed to me to pale and drag in comparsion.* By the end of the movie, when the footage moves to the horror of the Iraq war, we can see jus how horrid violence is upon both the occupied and the occupier.* We see the dead babies and children who were killed, shown vis-a-vis with Rumsfeld's description of "precise and humane" strikes.* Many soldiers lose their humanity, singing about "burning the mother-f***er to the ground," while still others realize that their soul has been permanently damaged.

The movie then shifts to the mother of a soldier who was killed.* She is first shown as a patriotic "military mom" before her son was killed in the war.* Her belief in Jesus Christ and the "military sacrifice" was a refuge that kept her proud and happy.* Yet when her son passed away for what came to believe was a pointless war, we see her painfully renounce all that she had felt before.* We see her struggles, and we are very tempted to cry her tears.* What pain could be more excruciating than a mother losing her child?

For those of you who have never experienced any real loss, let me just say that you are lucky.* When I was six years old, my mother died.* I was absolutely devastated.* Therefore, I can sympathisize with this woman and all of the others who have lost friends and especially family.

As the movie let out, I thought how within this existence of Samsara, there is so much pain and suffering that is awaiting each and every living being.* No one can imagine the sufferings and the torture to us that will come about as a result of this churning.* This is not pessimistic - it realistic.* I have seen it personally, and believe that this movie shows it as well.

On the moving sidewalk on the way back to my car, the funk music continued to jam away blithely.* To me, it seemed like a Samsaric spider inviting living beings to play within a web leading to eventual doom.* The flies, so contented to be within a place with good music and food, never suspect that the horrible spider is about to inject the paralyzing poison of death, sickness, old age and rebirth.* Watching the faces of all the people walking by, totally ignorant of the coming torture, I felt moved to tears.*

I will not push this realization down nor will I allow myself to forget it.* Therefore, I vow that I will dedicate this and every future life to helping sentient beings escape from the grasp of this cycle of torture and death.* I vow that I will dedicate this and every future life to helping sentient beings to obtain the liberation of Ultimate happiness.* I vow that in this and every other life, I will give my life, even my own flesh, in order to save all living beings.* I vow that, no matter how many lifetimes it takes, I will lead each and every single sentient being remaining within the grasp of Samsara to liberation.

Buddhas of the Ten Directions, please hear and accept my sincere vows!

May all living beings quickly obtain happines removed from suffering!

Peace in the Triple Jewel,

Jeff

[sonrisa]

thanx for posting Jeff's comments, Asheera, & thanx to Jeff for letting you post them here :)

zygoat- yep, sounds like Marilyn

[sahyo]

thx dear....
messaged him quoting that part the post

:)

[sonrisa]

well, I saw Fahrenheit 911 with a friend yesterday afternoon. It played to a packed house. It was, on the whole, a well done, thought provoking film. All TBVers should go see it.

Somebody was complaining about the way Michael Moore edits his movies: well, there's alot of info in this film, infact I suspect that alot of folx are going to have to see it at least one more time to absorb all the info in it. Presenting all that info dry can get boring- I started to glaze over a couple of times, at one point I became more interested in watching the snipers on the White House roof (which was being used as a background shot) than in what was being said in the movie. I think MM's choice of the songs that accompany his footage, his splicing techniques, the montage sequences, & of course, his infamous pranks, are to hold the viewers interest in all the info he is presenting.

Another thing, everything you see in the movies & on TV is edited. The local reviewer here noted some of the footage in Fahrenheit 911 is discarded from other broadcasts. Makes you wonder, why didn't they, whoever they are, want us to see this footage? Why don't they want us to see the horrors & chaos our bombs have brought to Iraq? Why don't they want us to see the dead & injured- both Iraqi & military? Why don't they want us to see these things?

A good deal of the info in the film wasn't news to me, news digest sites like truthout (http://www.truthout.org) have been reporting it all along, & I know somebody whose sister-in-law was a relief worker in Iraq til it got too dangerous for foreigners to live there. But to actually see footage of the horrors that I had only read about or been told about.. it made me think, OMG, what are we doing to those people?
Then there was the conference of these rich men salivating over all the $ to be had by exploiting Iraq. IMO, these were the most disgusting scenes in the movie.

What was news to me was how deep the Bush/bin Laden connections run. Sure I knew about Poppy Bush & the Carlyle Group. But the rest of it I found to be most enlightening. And all those fotos of various bushits with various Saudis, tho I do have to admit, Tom Powell, I mean Colon Powell, looked a tad uncomfortable in his foto.

But I won't give away any more of the flick. Go see it for yourselves, its well worth the $.

[NeverMind]

After seeing many clips of Marilyn Manson speaking I have come to respect him as a person. Although I dislike most of his music (dope show ruled) I sincerely respect him and his views.

GUNS KILL PEOPLE!

If Michael Moore just came out and said his movies were propaganda, I would still see them. Just cuz i'd be curious.

He does show facts in his movies. Like the list of murders in various countries, etc. WTF are you talking about?

[zygoat]

TO ALL,
the real title of the movie was....
As Far from the Truth as I could get with 9$ or less in 1 year or so!!!
but with all of the editing Michael Moore did it ended up as ...
Fahrenheit 911!!! <_<

[sonrisa]

Dave's top 10:

:D

From Letterman -- who interviewed Joseph Plame on his show last (tues) night:

"Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11"

10. That actor who played the president was totally unconvincing.

9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election.

8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words

7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the
part where I get him deported.

6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives
people the finger.

5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true.

4. Not sure - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe.

3. Where the hell was Spiderman?

2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth.

1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball!"

[DrewPollock]

the idea that only guns kill people is ignorant. Our media should be more responsible for violence than a piece of metal called a gun. someone has to pull the trigger, if there were no guns in america, deaths from stabbings would replace the shooting deaths. its simple, the drive for wealth in this country is the overall mindset. the drive for wealth can cause someone to lose the value of someone elses life and kill them. that is just one example of reasons behind killing. tighter gun laws would be better, but guns arent responsible.

[zygoat]

Drew,
Guns don't kill,it's the bullets,charge a $100.00/bullet and see how the # of shooting deaths drop!!

[NeverMind]

like the Chris Rock quote from Bowling for Columbine!
except i think it was $200 in that.
he was like "you'd have to really hate somebody to shoot them"

[todd]

Originally posted by vicente@Jun 19 2004, 11:39 PM
Below is for those who regularly get their news from anti-Americans like Rush Limbaugh type Talking-Heads

By Way of Deception
by Stuart Klawans


Not the judgment of film critics but the passage of time will decide whether Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 can change the world. Change, of course, is the whole purpose. Whatever satisfaction Moore derives from his ever-mounting income and awards, he clearly will consider this picture a success only if it helps drive George W. Bush from office. Voters will write the real review. I can merely fill time until November, with the thought that Fahrenheit 9/11 might be interesting as a movie after it has done its work as politics.

As with any good polemic--and this is an excellent one--you sit in the theater thinking of how someone else would respond, some imaginary "undecided" in a swing state, or perhaps your Uncle Max the Republican. You don't much monitor your own reactions. But then, as you leave the movie house, you might notice that the sidewalk chatter sounds oddly muffled, the traffic looks a little blurred, as you begin to realize that your attention has not come outside with you; it's still in the dark, struggling with the feelings that Fahrenheit 9/11 called up and didn't resolve. Are you outraged, heartbroken, vengeful, morose, gloating, thoughtful, electrified? Moore has elicited all of these emotions and then had the nerve--the filmmaker's nerve--to leave you to sort them out.

I think there are two bundles of messages in Fahrenheit 9/11, one political and one emotional--and while the first is about as ambiguous as a call to take up pitchforks and torches and storm the castle, the second is too complex to unsettle those in power. It works to unsettle you. It's what makes Fahrenheit 9/11 a real movie.

For clarity's sake, then, let's start with the politics: the film's bill of particulars against Bush, and also against the Democratic leadership, which in Moore's view has colluded most shamefully in the misrule the world now suffers. The prologue to Fahrenheit 9/11 revisits Bush's rise to power in late 2000, paying particular attention to the hunched posture of the Democrats who let him step on their backs. Here are Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, counseling "acceptance" of the non-election; and here is Al Gore, mildly officiating over the Senate session that legitimized the theft of his presidency. For the first time in Fahrenheit 9/11, but certainly not the last, Moore tells his story through borrowed but decidedly nonstock footage, which you most likely have not seen before--in this case, a scene of members of the House, all of them African-American, coming forward to contest the election, while Gore calmly rules their objections inadmissible because no senator, not one, would satisfy Congressional rules by signing on to them.

Moore's antagonists, being Republican, won't go so easy on him. Their attacks will no doubt include the charge that his film is Democratic Party propaganda. You should understand from the preceding the flimsiness of this accusation--although it's true that Moore spares us the sight of one notable Democrat, John Kerry, voting to authorize Bush to start a war on his own say-so, at any time that suited him.

But enough of Democratic malfeasance. Who is this Sage of Crawford, that he may choose for us between life and death? Moore answers, in part, with more footage you probably haven't seen until now: a substantial portion of videotape from the morning of September 11, 2001, when Bush and his handlers staged a photo opportunity at an elementary school in Florida. After an aide whispered to him that a second airplane had struck the World Trade Center, Bush sat in place for seven minutes, pretending to read a book titled My Pet Goat. Have you ever before had a chance to study his face on that morning? Has anything other than this movie made you feel the unendurable length of his inaction? What do you suppose he was thinking for all that time, as he stared into space? Moore himself asks that last question on the soundtrack, as a way of opening a biographical digression about Bush, his family and their business interests. This section of the film will particularly incense Moore's attackers, who will pronounce on him the dependable slur of "conspiracy theorist." So, to digress on my own:

Moore alleges no conspiracies. He merely says that Bush has motives beyond those he's willing to state. To make this case, Moore begins by showing that the Bush family in general, and George W. in particular, have received lavish support over the years from the Saudi elite, including the bin Ladens, and have offered valuable help in turn. Unlike the actualities footage that Moore uses in the film, these facts are by now widely known--although it was news to me that Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, had dined with Bush at the White House on September 13, 2001. In speculating about this dinner, and about the subsequent airlifting out of the United States of more than a hundred Saudis when everyone else was grounded, Moore goes only so far as to say that the overwhelmingly Saudi makeup of the September 11 attack teams could have proved embarrassing to Bush. He would not have wanted journalists just then to begin looking into his personal ties to Saudi interests, or to ask whether any useful information had emerged from the two dozen bin Ladens who had been in the country, and whom he soon spirited away without the indignity of questioning.

Nothing conspiratorial about that. The worst you can reasonably say of this section of the film is that it gives Moore the opportunity for one of his man-on-the-street pranks. He films himself and Craig Unger (author of the book House of Bush, House of Saud) in front of the Watergate complex in Washington, directly across the street from the Saudi Embassy: a choice of location that insures interruption. Sure enough, onto the scene drive carloads of Secret Service agents, who just want to ask, politely, why a film crew is working on this spot. The agents move off readily enough when given the answer, although one of them seems abashed when Moore blandly delivers his punch line: "I didn't realize the Secret Service guards foreign embassies."

In fact, reasonable people may find this to be the best part of the section.


You may have heard, by the way, that Moore is less of a presence in Fahrenheit 9/11 than he was in his previous pictures. Actually, he's always with you, in voiceover; but he does perform for the camera less than usual. At times, his stunts serve to drive home a point, as when he accosts members of Congress on the street and offers them recruiting brochures, in case they want to enlist their children in the military. At other times, his antics are pure comic relief. (After complaining that the House passed the USA Patriot Act sight unseen, Moore corrects the situation by reading the bill aloud to Congress, circling the Capitol in an ice-cream truck and reciting the provisions over a loudspeaker.) Either way, though, Moore makes sparing use of this sort of material in advancing his main charges against Bush

The first principal accusation is that Bush had gotten along just fine with the Taliban before September 11 (which is demonstrable) and didn't much care about fighting them afterward (which is unproved but plausible). Bush invaded Afghanistan, Moore claims, because he had to be seen to do something, because the war helpfully diverted attention from the Saudis and because those closest to him would gain lucrative contracts for a natural gas pipeline. Moore's second accusation is that Bush undertook the war in Iraq for even shadier purposes. As Nation readers knew, and as others have since caught on, Bush attacked without even the excuse he'd had in Afghanistan of pursuing bin Laden. There were no terrorists in Iraq to destroy, no military threats to counter--and unless you define "democracy" as the creation of profit-making opportunities for Halliburton, no process of democratization to pursue.

There is also a third principal point, most devastating of all. But before I go into that, let me digress once more, to sum up the impressively varied materials that Moore assembles to make these arguments.

The film contains, as I've said, a few of Moore's little skits, along with a lot of borrowed actualities footage, which is usually surprising and sometimes shocking. (How many shots have you seen of daily life in Baghdad immediately before the war? How many dead and wounded Iraqi civilians have you looked at close up?) In addition, you find pop-culture images, which Moore takes over for purposes of sarcasm or parody (as when he remakes the TV western Bonanza as the Bush adventure Afghanistan); talking-head interviews with expert commentators (such as former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, former FBI agent Jack Cloogan and Senator Byron Dorgan); a range of texts and graphics; patches of direct cinema (for example, an excursion to a shopping mall in Flint, Michigan, with a couple of Marine recruiters); and, most critical of all, filmed encounters with ordinary citizens, who pretty much have the frame to themselves while Moore stays quietly out of the way.

The most important of these citizens, the one who takes over the final portion of the movie, is Lila Lipscombe of Flint, mother of Sgt. Michael Pedersen, who served in a helicopter unit in Iraq and was killed in action sometime after "the completion of major combat operations." Lipscombe is a pleasantly robust woman of modest means, patriotic and Christian in convictions, guileless in manner, whose role in the polemic is simple: She is meant to embody disillusionment. Having once despised all protesters against war, feeling that they were slapping our soldiers in the face, she now grieves over a dead son, whose final letter home said of Bush, "He got us out here for nothing." In a succession of artfully spaced scenes, which constitute the film's third damning charge against Bush, Lipscombe speaks of the meager possibilities open to most young people in Flint; she recalls having encouraged her own children to enter the military, believing it to be a good thing to do and a good opportunity; and at the end, bereft, with Moore trailing behind, she visits the White House (or as close to it as you can get these days) and says she is glad to be there, since it gives her a place to put her anger.

Lipscombe makes a very efficient witness--but she is an intractably complex movie character. She just doesn't fit Moore's scheme. He generally relies on economics to explain the behavior of the elite and psychology to account for the rest of us. (As you may recall from Bowling for Columbine, he is very interested in the way politicians and the communications media use fear to grab attention and elicit compliance.) But when it comes to Lipscombe, Moore (to his great credit) forgets about his standard categories. For perhaps the first time in his career, he shows someone as a fully rounded personality, animated by beliefs and loyalties that he does not necessarily share but must respect; and so he allows her emotions to overwhelm his cleverness.

This is the point at which Fahrenheit 9/11 may overwhelm you, too. Perhaps it will seem trivial to a pollster, counting and recounting those swing votes, that this campaign tool should also qualify as a work of art; but I can't believe the effect will be lost on moviegoers.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is Michael Moore's most urgent diatribe and also his best, most moving film.

Extremely Short Take: Had Moore's film not shouldered everything aside, I would have devoted several paragraphs of this column to praising The Corporation, a new documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan. A study of the business corporation as the dominant institution of the past century and a half--and an analysis of the built-in qualities that make this "fictitious person" a psychopath--The Corporation recently opened in San Francisco and is now about to begin a New York City run at Film Forum (June 30). I think you'll find the film smart, playful, rapid and almost too richly informative. A nationwide release begins soon--a very successful one, I hope.
Some personal annotations on the above article

Change, of course, is the whole purpose

Why do you thing everyone wants to change something? Stupidity is a fact, is nature, unchangeable my friend. All the books in the world cannot help. Stupidity is something we should value, cherish even...

Voters will write the real review

Are you a democracy fan? So is the majority made of intelligent people? Good news.

[/b][/quote]Moore has elicited all of these emotions and then had the nerve--the filmmaker's nerve--to leave you to sort them out

Hooray..., intellectual masturbation time... take thebigview

For clarity's sake, then, let's start with the politics

Yes, politics enlighten our lives..

[quote][b]Who is this Sage of Crawford, that he may choose for us between life and death

No friend, he's just showing us who does.

What do you suppose he was thinking for all that time, as he stared into space

?!$%$&%^?????encryptionpack2.0LKKKBKegelexercises$@%#$%$ 666djidjf

carloads of Secret Service agents, who just want to ask, politely, why a film crew is working on this spot

I thought they were asking politely "how the f_ dare you having an opinion?"

How many shots have you seen of daily life in Baghdad immediately before the war? How many dead and wounded Iraqi civilians have you looked at close up?
Honestly?.....Myself?....None.

..She is meant to embody disillusionment

May I plead guilty too?

Lipscombe makes a very efficient witness

How about victim?

the way politicians and the communications media use fear to grab attention and elicit compliance

Here you have a point...

[a random hack]

like the Chris Rock quote from Bowling for Columbine!
except i think it was $200 in that.
he was like "you'd have to really hate somebody to shoot them"

not to mention animals, rocks, trees and street signs :lol:

[dustwitch]

I just purchased a lifetime membership in the NRA and soon as I can afford it I'm sending in $25.00 for each of you.
We need to have tougher gun laws not to ban gun ownership.
I lived in a area where almost everyone has one firearm and most have several. There was ZERO gun related violence. ZERO children shot by playing with guns. Now I live in the big city and there are predators about , so if conceal and carry legislation passes here in my state I'll be a well trained pistol backin' b*tch . I refuse to be a victim. I will protect myself.
Michael Moore is a liar and propagandist. I wouldn't spend one penny on any of his movies. I think I'll send 25 bucks to the NRA for him too. :thumbsup:

[a random hack]

thanks dust,

i'm sure michael moore would love to be in the NRA too :D

[dustwitch]

Oh, I forgot, he IS a member by his own volition. It's true.

[NeverMind]

Yeah, Michael Moore is a card-carrying member of the NRA.

By the way, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and it had significantly less commentary than his other movies. I thought it was quite well done although he dwelled on some odd subjects. I think everyone, liberal or fascist, should go see it. :nono:

[sonrisa]

click here to read Michael Moore's thank you (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message)

more from Moore (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/index.php) :D

Michael Moore rules!

[NeverMind]

La la la la la!
Michael Moore is jeenyus! He is PIMPing! :huh: :o :D

[slayer]

Compared to you, Nevermind, he is a genius.

That movie was some of the worst horse shit I've ever seen. What was up with Moore's gaybob tone of voice to begin the movie? It was so fake it was nauseating. I cannot believe people are duped by such rhetoric.

Moore: Uhm, the government helped the Bin Ladin family leave during the air restrictions!

What do we find out? That they left 7 days are the restrictions were lifted. Nice lie, you dumb-ass.

Uhm, Why was this man's name blacked-out? Oh, I don't know, nimrod, maybe because he didn't authorize his private documents to be released the way Bush did?

Uhm, corporal so-and-so here is against the war; therefore the war must be wrong. Gee, why bother giving arguments, let's just find one marine who disapproves of the war -- that'll settle the matter!

Uhm, this idiot sergeant's mother is weeping on screen and really mad at somebody, perhaps that means the war is wrong. Yeah, I think tears equal correct opinions. Nice job, Micheal, keep foolin dem mo-rons.

Uhm, let's pan to Bush sitting down at that kindergarten. Moore: I wonder if this is what the president was thinking, "................", or was it, "............", or perhaps, "................" I tell you what Micheal Moore-on, why don't you just put a little cartoon caption over Bush's head and try to convince everyone that that's what Bush was thinking at the time? It'll probably convince most of your viewers, and it'll have Nevermind saying how amazing you are for being able to freeze Bush's thoughts in mid-air while he was thinking them.

Michael Moore-on lives up to the billing. And it was boring to boot.

still yawning,

slayer

[zygoat]

to all,
Christopher Hitchens notes:

More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

Dave Kopel also observes:

Fahrenheit mocks President Bush for continuing to read a story to a classroom of elementary school children after he was told about the September 11 attacks.



What Moore did not tell you:

Gwendolyn Tose’-Rigell, the principal of Emma E. Booker Elementary School, praised Bush’s action: “I don’t think anyone could have handled it better.” “What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?”…



She said the video doesn’t convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush’s presence had a calming effect and “helped us get through a very difficult day.”

“Sarasota principal defends Bush from ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ portrayal,” Associated Press, June 24, 2004.

[DoWalker]

That's very nice that he was able to help those twenty five children remain calm during the worst single attack our country has ever had to deal with. How fortunate he didn't fly off the handle, and, say, leave the room for a full briefing.

As a teacher, I take responsibilty for the children in my care -- that's my job. If I were president, I would act as caretaker of the entire country -- that's the president's job.

The leader of an army (in this case, the Commander-in-Chief,) should not sit still during an attack and concentrate on converting oxygen to carbon dioxide for seven and a half minutes before making a decision.

I do not hold the president responsible for 9-11. He could not have prevented it, and once it started, there's nothing he could have done to stop it. But it's disturbing to see him sitting frozen. Michael Moore is probably wrong about what was going through Bush's head -- it was probably less conspiratorial.

It was probably something like "Jesus, what do I do now?"

[zygoat]

DoWalker,
I sense some condesencion,so was he right to not frighten the children?
go to either of these links

mooreexposed (http://www.mooreexposed.com)

moorelies (http://www.moorelies.com)

if you want to know more ;)

[DoWalker]

The condesencion was less intentional than an inevitable tone. He was right not to scream "Oh, my God, we're all gonna die!!!" at the five-year-olds.

However, a smile, and "I'm sorry, children, but something's come up, and I'm going to have to go now," would have satisfied me.

[zygoat]

DoWalker,
However, a smile, and "I'm sorry, children, but something's come up, and I'm going to have to go now," would have satisfied me. I doubt it but,did you click on the links???
You will find more about Moore.

[DoWalker]

Ack! Ya got me! I hadn't checked the websites! :unsure:

Whew. I checked 'em, now. All opinions, no facts.

Moore's interpretation of the facts is skewed WAY left. The spin he puts on them are, also, WAY left. However, the bare bones facts are facts. You can put a conservative spin on them, and they don't sound so bad. Welcome to the wonderful world of spin.

Is he chummy with the Bin Ladens? Has he played favorites with Halliburton?

Let Moore or Limbaugh spin these how they will. I'll make my decisions based upon the facts:

War is bad. The war in Iraq was not necessary. Our foreign relations are in the toilet. The deficit is soaring. Evironmental controls have been relaxed far too much. No Child Left Behind has crippled public education. Bush has made bad decisions as president. Ergo, Bush has been a rotten president. :boxing:

[zygoat]

DoWalker,
war is bad!!war in Iraq,necessary,14 resolutions!!the deficit shrinking,ecomy is growing faster than anytime in the last twenty years!!!unemployment steady 5.6% !!No child left behind,much needed!!minorities have been steadily declining in reading and math skills drastically in the last thirty years,it's time we stand up and make changes now so that our children will have better teachers!!
Bush GREAT President!! :boxing: :thumbsup:

[todd]

Here I agree with you, Iraq war was necessary - for the American economy, what a pity it will prove itself inefficient though. You know, like cats that are burying their stinky excrements thinking the fetid smell will die there.

[NeverMind]

The economy did get helped by the Iraq War. But I have talked to many teachers about "No Child Left Behind" and they've all said that it is misguided and stupid. NCLB (if I may acronymicize it) pulls funding when kids are stupid. That seems backwards to me. If they don't know it, you give them more funding! That seems obvious to me. NCLB is not needed, and is evil. It is evil and picks on the poor.
Bush sucks and will NOT be re-elected.
todd, I love your metaphor. It made me giggle with glee.

[sonrisa]

NM-- how can dubya be reelected when he wasn't elected the last time?

[zygoat]

sonrisa,
why do you say that George W.Bush was not elected,the truth is that Gore lost Florida,several times in fact,even after he got the overseas military vote thrown out.
The supreme court just told AL that you can't just keep recounting,HE LOST,several times,and besides there were other states that weren't recounted where Bush,would have won by a landslide,but AL chose Florida and he LOST!!! :cry:

[slayer]

But I have talked to many teachers about "No Child Left Behind" and they've all said that it is misguided and stupid. NCLB (if I may acronymicize it) pulls funding when kids are stupid. That seems backwards to me. If they don't know it, you give them more funding! That seems obvious to me. NCLB is not needed, and is evil. It is evil and picks on the poor.

Obviously your teachers have failed you, Nevermind. You should be the poster child for why we need NCLB.

The program rewards schools that teach well. When the students are learning, then the program pumps money into that school, because that school deserves money so that it can expand its student body. It's as simple as investing in something that yields good returns, and not pumping more money into insitutions that continue to turn out poor students. What you don't realize is that different schools have different goals, different methods, different atmospheres, and hire using different standards, all of which contribute to student learning.

If a school continues to show that it can't produce educated students, then that school has failed. I wouldn't send my kids there. I wouldn't care why it failed either, so long as my kids are not being well educated. Now, Bush is saying that there are schools that succeed, and there are, and if these schools can be expanded and the students from the failing schools sent there, then this would make more sense (because then the kids will get a better education) than continuing to send them to a failing schools. I wholeheartedly agree, because this approach puts the greatest import on the education of the child, not on the reputations of the schools or teachers. And it will forever be the subpar teachers, the ones comfortable in their status quo teaching methods, that will grumble about being held accountable. Well, we're tired of the status quo, because this has led to illiterate high school students. This is why social promotion is so frowned upon today. The status quo teachers are turning out a nation of idiots.

This program will eliminate the 10th grader who can't spell or form simple sentences, for the simple reason that any student who can't spell or write will not be promoted to the tenth grade. I would rather a child graduate high school at 19 or 20 with the abilities we used to expect someone which a high school diploma than to graduate, basically, illiterate 17 or 18 year olds. We all know how rare and difficult it is to go back and catch up on the material that we didn't learn properly. All who aren't children, at least.

No, what's misguided is to not hold teachers accountable. What's misguieded is to continue to send our children to schools that don't teach well. What's misguided is to not sanction these poor schools, for else there is little pressure to change their methods.

This program will shut down poor schools, as they are of little worth to anyone open anyway. This program will reward schools that teach well, because we're investing in people and a teaching program that yield good results.

It is only the small mind of a poorly educated child that can't see the benefits of this program, and this pernicious child will even label this program evil, when in fact it's probably the greatest good he'll ever encounter in his life.

Nevermind is inept at thinking, but we excuse his ineptness because it's the status quo these days. This is unacceptable though, because it's poor thinking, and it's the result of poor teaching.

NCLB is a good, smart idea, and it might just save this country from its current dismal record in lower education. We have fallen behind some third world countries in educating our children. This is a serious problem. It makes little to absolute no sense to continue to fund the current system, and NCLB is a change for the better.

And a rebuttle of "My teachers disagree" isn't an argument, Social Promotion Victim.

slayer

[a random hack]

and what do you want your children to learn, slayer?

Oh, let me guess... :think: <_< :think: :lol:

[DoWalker]

Originally posted by NeverMind@Jul 18 2004, 11:27 AM
NCLB (if I may acronymicize it) pulls funding when kids are stupid. That seems backwards to me. If they don't know it, you give them more funding! That seems obvious to me. NCLB is not needed, and is evil. It is evil and picks on the poor.
Woo woo! :thumbsup:

Please, everyone, if you haven't already read it, check out the "No Dentist Left Behind" essay on:

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html

As a teacher in a school with an increasingly urban population, I know how frustrating it is to see the student population grow more and more transient. (They move around a lot.) I'm going to be held accountable for how this kid does on his test, when I'm not the one who's been teaching him?

How about the kids whose parents couldn't read to them much because they were working three jobs? The kids aren't good readers, now. My fault? Nope.

Let's take a different situation, where the child is spoiled. TV/VCR with a PS2 in the room by second grade. How much time does that kid read outside of school? He won't do as well on his test, either. My fault? Nope.

When I got the kid, she read at a third grade level, and now she's reading at a sixth grade level. But she's in tenth grade. She takes her test, and it shows I'm a failure as a teacher.

So you see your local school is failing. You say "That's okay, I'll put my kid in the school down the street." Oops. That one's failing, too. Know what? So many are failing, you've nowhere to put little Slayer Jr. Know why? The government will define the school as "failing" if it's improving, but not fast enough for them. The school is "failing" if last year, all of the students tested at 100%. Why? Because this year, they only got 99%s! Any downward movement makes it a failing school! The class of '03 had three geniuses in it, whose scores inflated the curve. Your kid's class is geniusless, so the school isn't doing its job. The teachers must be lazy.

Hey, they have summers off, right? You remember summer vacation. Sleeping late, lounging by the pool . . . Oops! Teachers are required by law to work towards their Master's degree until they have it. Starting salaries are low enough, they have to do something (such as summer school) to suppliment the income if they have a family. So much for vacation.

I'm going to go breathe and say "Om," or something. :angry:

[zygoat]

to All,
NCLB shows progress....

(AP) As report cards go, it is a spotty mix of promising and abysmal grades. But an independent review praises the states for progress given the scope of their assignment — putting in place the most sweeping education law in decades.

Most states have met or are at least on the way to meeting 75 percent of the major requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, according to the nonpartisan Education Commission of the States. That level of compliance has more than doubled over the last year.

Every state and the District of Columbia, for example, have a policy to ensure that students with disabilities are included when their schools test reading, math and science.

But not a single state is on pace to fulfill the law's requirement of having a measurable way to ensure a highly qualified teacher will be in every core academic class in 2005-06.

Overall, the states are doing well in areas of testing students and measuring yearly progress, but they're struggling with requirements designed to improve the teaching corps.

"The hardest work is yet to come," said Kathy Christie, vice president of the ECS Clearinghouse, the commission's research and information arm. "The toughest thing in all of this is going to be getting better at actually raising student achievement."

The 2001 law requires expanded standardized testing, more information and choices for parents, and public reporting of progress for every demographic group so the scores of struggling students aren't masked by school averages. Schools that get federal poverty aid but don't make enough yearly progress get help but also face mounting sanctions.

ECS, a Denver-based group that advises state leaders, graded states on 40 elements of the law, from how well parents get information to how well struggling schools get help.

The determination of whether a state is on track varies by topic. Some changes under the law were supposed to have happened already, while some have deadlines in coming years.

Among the findings:


98 percent of states are on track to define what a "persistently dangerous" school means, a designation that allows students in such schools to transfer. But many states are revamping their definitions after criticisms that their standards were far too low.


92 percent are on track to publicly report achievement data for all major groups of students, such as minority, poor, disabled and limited-English students.


65 percent are on track to set clear, substantial expectations for students so that all of them are at grade level in reading and math no later than 2013-14.


53 percent are on track to identify which schools are in need of improvement before the next school year begins so that parents have time to understand their options.


45 percent are on track to provide the promised "scientifically based" help to schools that have been targeted for improvement or more serious corrective action.


22 percent are on track to make new and current elementary, middle and secondary teachers of core subjects demonstrate that they are competent in their subjects.

In perspective, Christie said, the effort by the states is encouraging. Not since the 1970s, when the government passed landmark acts to help disabled children and prevent sexual discrimination, have states gotten so active in response to a federal law, the report says.

State progress is also clear in the way the debate is shifting, said Ray Simon, assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education. School leaders are focusing less on forms and funding and more on getting students up to grade level, he said.

The report's recommendations include redefining how progress is measured so schools and districts can track the success of the same students over time, not just different students each year. ECS also calls for states to get rid of systems that allow veteran teachers to be deemed highly qualified under standards that aren't rigorous. :thumbsup:


By Ben Feller
©MMIV, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[slayer]

First, thanks, Zygoat, for your post.

Do Walker,

Why are teachers, such as yourself, not held accountable like every other working person in America? If we as workers continually turned out the crappy results many teachers turn out now, we'd all be fired.

Is there no such thing as a bad teacher? And how would you propose we measure to see whether there are? I'll tell you how: by testing their students. Yes, if you get a child in mid-year, then his test can probably be ignored, but how about the other 30-40 students in your class(es)?

The Program isn't just measuring what your kids know, it's measuring what all kids in every grade know, so you won't have your fallback of "this kid was behind when I got him" anymore, because the kids that come to you will have passed the requisite tests. That is, they'll know what they're supposed to know to be in your class(es).

As for the kid whose parents didn't read to him much because they were working three jobs and for the spoiled child that doesn't read much after school, then that child stays in the grade which his reading level -- the most important skill for students -- indicates he belongs. Why promote the child and forever cripple him by pitting him against students much more advanced than him in higher grades? You're just setting up that kid to fail at the higher grades, setting him up to get poor grades and thereby lessening his chances to get into a good college. This is a disservice to children. And parents who favor social promotion are just trying to avoid the stigma of having a left-behind child and having the child suffer the embarrassment of being branded a dummy. And because the Program can be adjusted to track the individual scores of children, then we'll know whether these children improved under your guidance. So they won't cause you to be labelled a failing teacher in virtue of their low scores, because their scores will be measured against their previous scores.

If we did away with social promotion, then the stigma wouldn't be as bad as people think, because there would be more than some children getting left behind. And I'd rather have my child suffer a year or two of embarrassment than to graduate high school poorly educated and behind the game for the rest of his life. Let's just fix the problem early.

First of all, no number of geniuses can affect a school's score of 100%. That's just silly talk. A genius can only score 100%, so it's not like we can take some of his points and average out the lower scores, for then it wouldn't be at 100%. Second, if a school is getting 99%, then it's not failing. You're confusing dropping in scores with failing scores. Third, as Zygoat's post indicated, there are ways to account for the scenarios, at least more reasonable ones, which you've alluded to.

Your entire post struck as "Uhm, it's not my fault." Well, yeah, it is your fault. Something has to be your fault. And the scores of your students is the only thing that can be your fault. You don't have a Supreme Court position, buddy, although you've not been held accountable for so long that you probably thought that you had all the perks.

I think teachers have the hardest job in America, they're also underpaid, but that's not to say that they shouldn't be held more accountable than they have been to date.

Listen, if someone tells me he wants to become a teacher in order to teach kids, then I think that's admirable. If this person turns out to be a shitty teacher, then let's fix that problem.

If someone tells me he is going to teach because he doesn't know what else to do with his degree but really has no interest in teaching, then I'm thinking that's less admirable. But if he turns out to be good teachers, then this is somebody we should be rewarding and admiring.

I tell you what, live within your means. Budget your money better. You are a teacher! You know how much money you make, you know what you can afford to buy and what not to buy, you know what apartment you can or cannot afford to rent, and you know how much money you need to put away for summer. If you're a student during summer school, then you'll just have to put away that much more during the school year, so adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Yes, teachers get paid little, but you're not destitute by any means. So stop grumbling to me about how your money doesn't go far enough. Yes, you should get a raise, but until you do....budget your money! Other teachers manage to do it, so why not you? Other teachers manage not to have to work during summer and actually take trips, so why not you? And you're getting paid not for a year's work, but for nine month's work. Why is this something to grumble about? Oh, that's right, god forbid you actually can't take a three month vacation like the rest of us. Ooops, I meant, like no one else among us.

OMMMMMMMMMM,

slayer

[zygoat]

the 9 lies of Fahrenheit 911,
The Nine Lies of Fahrenheit 9/11


Fahrenheit Lie #1

National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice is depicted in the movie telling a reporter, “Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11.”
The scene deceptively shows the Administration directly blaming Saddam and his regime for the attacks on 9/11 by taking her comments out of context. Now read the entire statement made by Ms. Rice to the reporter:
“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11. But if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that led people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.” (CBS News, November 28, 2003 Interview)
Fahrenheit Lie #2

In the film, Moore leads viewers to believe that members of bin Laden’s family were allowed to exit the country after the attacks without questioning by authorities. o The September 11th commission, on the other hand, reported that 22 of the 26 people on the flight that took most of the bin Laden family out of the country were interviewed and found to be innocent of suspicion. (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)

The commission reported that “each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure.”
Fahrenheit Lie #3

Moore claims that James Bath, a friend of President Bush from his time with the Texas Air National Guard, might have funneled bin Laden money to an unsuccessful Bush oil-drilling firm called Arbusto Energy.

Bill Allison, managing editor for the Center for Public Integrity (an independent watchdog group in Washington, D.C.), on the other hand, said, “We looked into bin Laden money going to Arbusto, and we never found anything to back that up,” (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)
Fahrenheit Lie #4

The movie claims that the Bush administration “supported closing veterans hospitals.” o “The Department of Veterans Affairs did propose closing seven hospitals in areas with declining populations where the hospitals were underutilized, and whose veterans could be served by other hospitals” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)

But Moore’s film fails to mention that the Department also proposed building new hospitals in areas where needs were growing, and also proposed building blind rehabilitation centers and spinal cord injury centers (News Release, Department of Veterans Affairs, www.va.gov, 10/24/03)
Fahrenheit Lie #5

Conspiracy theories abound about the reasons for the War on Terror, but none is more outlandish than the one propagandized in Moore’s film: that the Afghan war was fought solely to enable the Unocal company to build an oil pipeline (the plan for which was abandoned by the company in 1998).

Moore “suggests that one of the first official acts of Afghan President Hamid Karzai … was to help seal a deal for … Unocal to build an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. It alleges that Karzai had been a Unocal consultant.” (emphasis added) (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)

Unocal spokesman, Barry Lane, says unequivocally, “Karzai was never, in any capacity, an employee, consultant or a consultant of a consultant,” and Unocal never had a plan to build a Caspian Sea pipeline. (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)

Moore mentions that the Taliban visited Texas while President Bush was governor to discuss a potential project with Unocal.

While Moore implies that then-Governor Bush met with the Taliban, no such meeting occurred. The Taliban delegation did, however, meet with the Clinton Administration on this visit. (Matt Labash, “Un-Moored From Reality; Fahrenheit 9/11 Connects Dots That Aren’t There,” Weekly Standard, July 5-July 12 Issue)
Fahrenheit Lie #6

Even readily available figures are exaggerated for effect in Fahrenheit 9/11. The claims have a basis in reality, making them believable, but are false nonetheless. ü In the film, Moore asks Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, “How much money do the Saudis have invested in America, roughly?” to which Unger responds, “Uh, I’ve heard figures as high as $860 billion.”

The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy reports that worldwide Saudi investment approximated $700 billion – a figure much lower than Unger alleges the Saudi government to have invested in the U.S. (Tanya C. Hsu, Institute For Research: Middle Eastern Policy, “The United States Must Not Neglect Saudi Arabian Investment,” www.irmep.org, Accessed 07/11/04)

The Institute reports that 60 percent of that $700 billion – roughly $420 billion, less than half of what Unger “heard” – was actually invested in the United States by the Saudi government.
Fahrenheit Lie #7

“Moore’s film suggests that [President] Bush has close family ties to the bin Laden family – principally through [President] Bush’s father’s relationship with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm. The president’s father, George H.W. Bush, was a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group’s Asian affiliate until recently; members of the bin Laden family – who own one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction firms – had invested $2 million in a Carlyle Group fund. Bush Sr. and the bin Ladens have since severed ties with the Carlyle Group, which in any case has a bipartisan roster of partners, including Bill Clinton’s former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt. The movie quotes author Dan Briody claiming that the Carlyle Group ‘gained’ from September 11 because it owned United Defense, a military contractor. Carlyle Group spokesman Chris Ullman notes that United Defense holds a special distinction among U.S. defense contractors that is not mentioned in Moore’s movie: the firm’s $11 billion Crusader artillery rocket system developed for the U.S. Army is one of the only weapons systems canceled by the Bush administration.” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)

“There is another famous investor in Carlyle whom Moore does not reveal: George Soros. But the fact that the anti-Bush billionaire [Soros] has invested in Carlyle would detract from Moore’s simplistic conspiracy theory.” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)
Fahrenheit Lie #8

Not revealing relevant facts is dishonest enough. But to paint the Bush Administration as sympathetic and friendly to the Taliban prior to September 11, is not only dishonest, but maliciously so. ü Moore shows film of a March 2001 visit to the United States by a Taliban delegation, claiming that the Administration “welcomed” the Taliban official, Sayed Hashemi, “to tour the United States to help improve the image of the Taliban.”

But the Administration did not welcome the Taliban with open arms. In fact, the State Department rejected the Taliban’s claim that it had complied with U.S. requests to isolate bin Laden.

To demonstrate even further the Administration’s contempt for the Taliban and its illegitimacy, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher – on the day of the terrorist regime’s visit – said, “We don’t recognize any government in Afghanistan.”
Fahrenheit Lie #9

Moore does more than simply downplay the threat posed to the U.S. by the former Hussein regime in Iraq. He goes so far as to assert that Saddam “never threatened to attack the United States.”

If by “attack the United States” one interprets this claim to mean that Saddam never threatened to send troops to the United States, then Mr. Moore has a point. ü But Saddam Hussein clearly sought to attack the United States within his own sphere of influence, even though he didn’t have the resources to attack U.S. soil from his side of the world:

On November 15, 1997, “the main propaganda organ for the Saddam regime, the newspaper Babel (which was run by Saddam Hussein’s son Uday), ordered: ‘American and British interests, embassies, and naval ships in the Arab region should be the targets of military operations and commando attacks by Arab political forces.’” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)

In addition, “Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country,” (Source: New York Times, 12/1/03).

Saddam Hussein also provided safe haven to terrorists who killed Americans, like Abu Nidal; funded suicide bombers in Israel who certainly killed Americans; and ran the Iraqi police, which plotted to assassinate former President George Bush.
CRITICISM OF FAHRENHEIT 9/11

[NeverMind]

; and ran the Iraqi police, which plotted to assassinate former President George Bush.

Dude, EVERYONE plotted too assassinate Bush. Even my Grandma! And it's not like they ever did! If I say "i wanna kill Robert Redford" does that mean I'm evil? No! If I killed RObert Redford then I'd be evil. STFU!

[zygoat]

NEVERmind,
I'll slap that lilly white-a** of yours til it's blood red punk!!so you STFU!!And would the thought of killing Robert Redford be evil,yea!! :boxing:

[NeverMind]

Ha! Ronald Reagan's SON is a democrat! What's that tell ya? Republicans suck! And even the son of one of the most revered republicans doesn't like 'em!

[sonrisa]

aww, c'mon y'all, why y'all wanna kill Sundance?

[zygoat]

Nevermind,
do you do everything that your father does??Ronald Reagan jr.also likes to wear spandex and dance ballet,what's that tell you?? :hahaha: so I take it you 've been watching the convention,what in your young and impressionable mind have you learned that the demoncrats are going to do,other than the opposite of George Bush?? :nono:

[NeverMind]

Well I believe most of the things that my dad does. The exceptions being the things I a) am morally opposed to and B) know more than him in.
Ronny rocks. Spandex rocks. Bush sucks. They've been saying they were gonna do the opposite of Bush. What are you talking about? You foolish little man.

[sonrisa]

NM- just becuz they say they are gonna do the opposite of dubya... well, I guess we'll find out in Nov. They're talking a good talk- healthcare, jobs/Fair Trade, etc.... but whether or not they'll deliver remains to be seen. But I don't think they are gonna turn this country into a fascist state, which, at this point, is enough to induce me to vote for them this year.

As for Ronny, the only reason he's with the Dems this year is becuz he wants stem cell research. So what if he's into ballet, somebody's gotta lift those ballerinas up in the air! Some football players take ballet, it improves balance & co-ordination.

wut duz your Dad beeleeve in?

[NeverMind]

Well they may not be able to do the opposite of Dubya. But I'm preeety sure they Kerry's not gonna go starting retarded wars for oil. Bush is going pretty damn far to the right. They were talking about him on CNN, about how around campaign season he becomes a compassionate conservative, but then once he "won" the presidency he went way to the right. And Hitler was way to the right.

I want stem cell research too! But I think they should just get really dumb people to donate their embryos so we'll run out of dumb people cuz all their embryos will be donated to science.
Ballet rocks, I wasn't hatin' on ballet. I did Yoga, that's kinda similar. Even though I did it for all the wrong reasons...

My Dad's pretty liberal but he grew up in Florida and has some old-fashioned views as a result. Plus, he has a Ph. D. in physiology. Yeah he's pretty smart but his thinking on education differs greatly from mine. It's really funny to watch him and his best friend (a staunch conservative) argue about whether or not gays are going to hell, etc. I enjoy it greatly.

[sonrisa]

click here to read Michael Moore's latest letter (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-09-22)

I found a copy in my hotmailbox today but the original contains interesting & informative linx the copy doesn't have.

Michael Moore rocks!! :D

[NeverMind]

Michael Moore rocks!!
heh heh.
your mom rocks!! :D

[sonrisa]

:D yeah in a chair!!