A Film With Heart

You know how when you’re watching a movie, and there are three guys sitting around drinking beer, and all the beer bottles are positioned so you can clearly read the label?  That’s called product placement, which Wikipedia defines thus:

Product placement is a type of advertising, in which promotional advertisements placed by marketers using real commercial products and services in media, where the presence of a particular brand is the result of an economic exchange. When featuring a product is not part of an economic exchange, it is called a product plug. Product placement appears in plays, film, television series, music videos, video games and books. It became more common starting in the 1980s, but can be traced back to at least 1949. Product placement occurs with the inclusion of a brand’s logo in shot, or a favorable mention or appearance of a product in shot. This is done without disclosure, and under the premise that it is a natural part of the work. Most major movie releases today contain product placements.

This is one means by which movies get funded.  For example, in the last two or three James Bond movies starring Pierce Brosnan came out Bond was driving a BMW.  The producers signed a deal with BMW to provide the vehicle in exchange for monetary or other consideration.  When the last movie, Casino Royale, came out the producers signed a deal with Ford.  When Bond first goes to Bermuda he rents a small Ford which he drives to the hotel.  Once there he ends up winning the bad guy’s Aston Martin in a poker game.  Later on we see Bond driving his pimped-out Aston Martin, the one with the defibrillator in it.  At the time Ford owned Aston Martin, thus the majority of vehicles in the movie are by Ford.  (Apparently the new owners of Aston Martin have agreed to abide by the terms of the contract entered into by Ford, so Bond will be driving an Aston Martin for the next few films.)

The Only Chemist in the Village

It’s the latest socialized medicine success!

Tens of thousands of English patients could be registering with Welsh GPs and making day-trips to the country to obtain free prescriptions, it was claimed yesterday.

Statistics show that three million people are registered with Welsh GPs, about 100,000 more than the official population. Wales is the only part of Britain not to have prescription charges.

England has the highest at £7.10, followed by Northern Ireland at £6.85 and Scotland at £5.

The Conservative Party in Wales claimed that the figures pointed to patients from England travelling to Wales and called on the Welsh Assembly executive to stop “prescription tourism”.

The copay in Englad is roughly the same as the prescription copay that I have with my eeeeeevil kapitalist for-profit US health insurance.  The only difference is that I have access to a wider range of newer, higher-quality drugs than the English.  And I don’t have to travel to Wales to avoid paying for it.

Oh, lest anyone get the wrong idea, I live in Beijing.  I pay, every month, out of my own pocket, for US healthcare, so that I can get prescriptions which are not available here in China’s socialist paradise.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?  When I want something I (gasp!) pay for it.

Scenes We’d Love To See

In this post below, Donna writes:

I just thought of something that really makes the idea of Moore bringing Castro to the Academy Awards this year even *more* repugnant, if that’s even possible.

As some of you will know, I published a long series of articles about the extraordinarily talented dissident Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas. In the year 2000, director Julian Schnabel brought the story of Reinaldo Arenas to the silver screen with his film “Before Night Falls”, an adaptation of Arenas’ memoirs by the same name. In the movie Arenas was played so well by the talented Javier Bardem that he won an Oscar nomination for his performance.

How does this movie made nearly a decade ago connect to Moore’s desire to bring Castro to the Oscars this year? Simple, really. This year, Julian Schnabel is up for Best Director for his work in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, and of course Javier Bardem is the favorite to take home the Best Actor in a Supporting Role statue for his astounding performance in “No Country for Old Men”. So… Moore would like sit Castro just rows away from the man who brought Reinaldo Arenas’ story to the world and the man who immersed himself so deeply in the tortured soul of Reinaldo that he won an Oscar nomination for his work. Can you imagine the effect having Castro so close to them would have on both of these men, on what should be one of the happiest nights of their lives? How selfish and thoughtless could Moore possibly be?

We’ve all known for years that Michael Moore is a sociopath who cares about nobody but himself.  But if he does end up bringing El Presidente to the awards, this presents a golden opportunity. Assume that either Julian Schnabel or Javier Bardem win their respective awards.  They’ll be standing there, in front of the world, and can say anything they want.  Allow me to fantasize using Javier Bardem as an example.

“Wow, this is just incredible.  Thank you so much.  However, before I get stuck in with the thank you’s I’d like to say something.  A few years ago I played a Cuban Dissident named Reynaldo Arenas, a man tortured and humiliated by Castro’s Cuba, which was directed by another of tonight’s nominees, Julian Schnabel.  This man Castro, this monster, this piece of human filth, now sits among us as the guest of another nominee.  To Michael Moore, Castro’s most famous propagandist, I would like to say, shame on you.  Shame on you for sullying these awards with the presence of this vile, disgusting person.”

I think he’d get a standing ovation.  Of course Moore, Castro, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Sean Penn will all remain seated.  Someone forward this to Javier Bardem’s publicist.

Whither Fidel?

Like most of you, I’m getting a little sick of the stories in the media about the glories of Castro’s Cuba. I’m reminded of a line in the Greatest Television Miniseries of All Time: “Everybody’s loved when he’s dead.” Fidel ain’t dead but he’s getting eulogies.

Well, I don’t love someone just because he’s dead. When Fidel kicks the bucket, people should dance on his grave the way they would dance on Stalin’s. Fortunately, many others are immune to this “Viva Castro!” bullshit:

Moore would like to bring Fidel Castro to the Oscars?!?!

Please bear with me here… I have a torn-up shoulder and can’t type very well at the moment, but when I saw this story I had to tap this out for the site. Apparently, Michael Moore has a new mission… he wants to bring Fidel Castro to the Academy Awards:

Moore’s Oscar-nominated documentary on the health care industry ends with a trip to Cuba, where he seeks care for a group of Nine-Eleven responders who’ve had health problems.

Moore told AP Television he’s been trying to figure out how to get Castro into the Oscars, and Castro’s resignation as leader of Cuba comes with great timing. Moore says now Castro can come to L.A. and be Moore’s guest at the Academy Awards and maybe even get to give an acceptance speech—as long as he keeps it under five hours.

As most of you might know by now, Fidel Castro recently “resigned” as the President of Cuba and handed over the governmental reigns to his brother, Raul. Raul Castro has in fact been running Cuba for some time now due to Fidel’s health issues, so this isn’t a monumental change for the Cuban people, who remain horrifically oppressed, starved, and completely controlled by the governmental machine. I’ve written extensively about Cuba for Moorewatch in the past, so my passionate hatred for Castro and all he and his government have done to destroy the people of Cuba is no secret. Indeed, I have openly stated that Moore’s trip to Cuba in “Sicko” made him a Castro collaborator and demonstrated that he, on some level, supports Castro’s despicable treatment of the Cuban people.

Moore’s statements about bringing Castro to the Academy Awards proves most every allegation I have made towards him in regards to his trip and attitude towards Cuba. The fact that Moore wishes to bring a Communist dictator, a mass murderer, a man who systematically slaughtered tens of thousands of his own people in order to establish his totalitarian government is not only offensive to me as an American but a huge slap in the face to all Cubans and Cuban-Americans who have fought their way out of Cuba over the last fifty years. Clearly Moore has no regard whatsoever for the feelings of the thousands of Cuban-Americans and Cuban refugees whose lives and families have been destroyed by this monster, and this cavalier attitude just disgusts me to no end. It seems that whatever will bring Moore press is a good thing, no matter who it might hurt or offend.

Once again… shame on you, Michael Moore. Shame on you indeed.

UPDATE: I just thought of something that really makes the idea of Moore bringing Castro to the Academy Awards this year even *more* repugnant, if that’s even possible.

As some of you will know, I published a long series of articles about the extraordinarily talented dissident Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas. In the year 2000, director Julian Schnabel brought the story of Reinaldo Arenas to the silver screen with his film “Before Night Falls”, an adaptation of Arenas’ memoirs by the same name. In the movie Arenas was played so well by the talented Javier Bardem that he won an Oscar nomination for his performance.

How does this movie made nearly a decade ago connect to Moore’s desire to bring Castro to the Oscars this year? Simple, really. This year, Julian Schnabel is up for Best Director for his work in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, and of course Javier Bardem is the favorite to take home the Best Actor in a Supporting Role statue for his astounding performance in “No Country for Old Men”. So… Moore would like sit Castro just rows away from the man who brought Reinaldo Arenas’ story to the world and the man who immersed himself so deeply in the tortured soul of Reinaldo that he won an Oscar nomination for his work. Can you imagine the effect having Castro so close to them would have on both of these men, on what should be one of the happiest nights of their lives? How selfish and thoughtless could Moore possibly be?

I am, quite simply, disgusted beyond words.

And the Walls Came Crumbling Down

As happens oh so often with Michael Moore’s bullshit, reality comes along and slaps him in the face with its dick.

Foreigners coming to Britain are to face a new “immigrant tax” under Government plans to try to make them help pay for the schools and hospitals they use, ministers are to announce.

They will have to pay a special levy on entering the country which will be used to provide extra funding for public services.

The announcement follows growing evidence that health, education and social services are coming under increasing strain from immigration, with councils complaining that they need hundreds of millions of pounds more every year to cope.

But… but… this is Britain.  They have glorious “free” healthcare for everyone!  It’s all free free free!!!  So how can it be that their healthcare system is swamped under the demand of immigrants?  Could it be that—gasp!—there is no such thing as “free” healthcare, and a single-payer system run by the government is a recipe for complete disaster?  (You know, exactly what we’ve been saying through the entire history of this blog.)

Sources indicate that the additional levy could be set at 10 per cent of the visa fee - an additional £20 for the usual £200 visa granted to those wishing to stay in Britain longer than six months.

Ministers hope to generate an extra £15 million a year, although council chiefs say they need £250 million more annually to avoid increased council tax.

Ah, I see.  So what’s going to happen is the immigrants are going to pay a little bit extra in taxes, and the rest of the bill is going to be footed by the general public through increased local taxes.  So much for “free” healthcare.

Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, said the cost of the visas could put off key workers such as nurses coming from outside the EU.

What?  You mean there are negative consequences to big government socialist idiocy?  Who the hell could have seen THAT coming!

Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, said recently: “It is fair that those who benefit most from using our immigration system should help fund it.

Come now, Liam.  Where’s your compassion?  What will Michael Moore make of this development?  Does anyone here think he has the balls or integrity to send out one of his super awesome messages?  Of course not, he’s a fucking coward.

How to Document a Cuba

What Our Mr. Lee calls the Greatest Magazine on the Planet has the goods on a real documentary about Cuba:

In June 2000, this magazine published a cover story on Hollywood’s “missing movies.” These were not, alas, films that had been neglected by inattentive archivists or spurned by Ted Turner’s guardians of classic film. The target of this search-and-rescue operation, wrote critic Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, were those tales of injustice, those triumphs of the spirit that Hollywood had little interest in producing. Long under the spell of radical writers such as Dalton Trumbo and Clifford Odets, Hollywood was “a town that welcomed Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista junta but never took up the cause of a single Soviet or Eastern European dissident.”

Almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the entertainment industry is still sensitive to charges of Cold War jingoism, though the spread of hipster Buddhism has necessitated the occasional dramatization of China’s occupation of Tibet. A spate of recent films—none of them produced in Hollywood—is also providing a more nuanced picture of the Cold War, one that eschews simple moral equivalence in favor of the dystopian reality of the Eastern Bloc.

...

Even Hollywood’s strange love affair with the Cuban revolution, recently evidenced by Oliver Stone’s Comandante and Walter Salles’ saccharine salute to Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries, is at long last showing signs of abating. A few years ago, New York painter/director Julian Schnabel memorably upbraided Castro in his film Before Night Falls, a portrait of the gay writer Reinaldo Arenas, imprisoned by the communist government for both his aberrant politics and sexuality.

Now, from first-time director Cristina Khuly, comes Shoot Down, a brilliantly rendered and scrupulously even-handed documentary revisiting the 1996 Cuban downing of two civilian planes over international waters, both piloted by Miami-based exiles from the group Brothers to the Rescue. Khuly, a 37-year-old sculptor, is the niece of shoot-down victim Armando Alejandre Jr.

An event soon overshadowed by the saga of Elian Gonzales, the attack on the unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes is now largely forgotten outside Miami. And despite the smokescreen of misinformation presented by Castro and his foreign enablers, the facts of the story are rather straightforward and grimly characteristic of a totalitarian regime.

As three Brothers to the Rescue planes approached Cuban territory, the lead plane, piloted by the group’s founder Jose Basulto, briefly breached Cuban airspace. While the planes were searching for refugees in the water, officials in Havana, tipped off by a mole in the Brothers leadership, scrambled Soviet-made MiG fighter planes to knock the planes out of the sky. Basulto’s plane managed to escape. When the other two were vaporized by Cuban missiles, both were flying over international waters.

The mole, former Cuban Air Force MiG pilot Juan Pablo Roque, is a chilling reminder of the Stasi-like tactics of the Cuban secret police. Roque infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue by insinuating himself into the exile community—going so far as to write a book for the Cuban American National Foundation detailing his escape from the island—and marrying a local woman as cover. The day before the deadly flight, Roque declined an invitation to participate in the mission and informed his wife that he would be away on business. A day later, he reappeared on Cuban state television to denounce the Brothers as “terrorists” of the empire.

I don’t expect MIchael Moore to make do an expose of Cuban society in a film about healthcare. I do expect that he might mention, maybe in passing, that Cuba is something less than a socialist paradise.

The first post I wrote on my own blog that got any attention was on Hollywood’s refusal to take either communism or Islamism. Nice to know that not everyone is afraid.

Sorry, Tubby.  Go Home and Die.

Take note, Michael Moore, you fat bastard.

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

That’s right, tubby.  You’re a multi-millionaire, so you can afford to climb into your private jet and scoot off to the world’s most luxurious fat farms when you want to drop a couple of pounds.  But the average working class Joe, who eats the same food you do and puts on a few pounds, well, he doesn’t qualify for healthcare under your socialist medical care utopia.  But wait, it gets better.

Fertility treatment and “social” abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

That’s right, Mikey.  Not only is your socialist paradise going to stand by and allow fat fucks like you to drop dead of a heart attack, but they’re also going to prevent pregnant women from terminating their pregnancies, as well as only allowing the infertile rich to have children, since poor people won’t be able to afford to pay for the treatment themselves.

Oh yeah, that free healthcare is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?  Smokers, fatties, sluts, and the barren, all of them are completely fucked under your socialist healthcare fantasyland.

The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as “out rageous” and “disgraceful”.

About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt.

Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

Of course they’re being denied treatment because of money.  Money is a finite resource.  In economic terms it is “a scarce resource which has alternate uses.” And when the government provides all the fabulous free healthcare that people could ever hope for, they will quickly run out of money, because the public has no financial incentive NOT to go to the doctor.

But keep pushing for this evil scheme, you fat fuck.  Someone can always buy one of your books or DVDs instead of paying for their own medical care, while you hobnob with the rest of the unhealthy socialist millionaires at your $20,000 a day for-profit Swiss health chalet.

Update: Oh man, it just gets better and better.

School lunchboxes could soon be monitored by dinner ladies to ensure children are eating healthy meals, ministers said.

Under the Government’s obesity strategy, all schools will be expected to design a “healthy lunchbox policy” on what makes a nutritional packed lunch over the next year.

Some parents may even be asked to sign a form agreeing to ban unhealthy foods from their children’s lunches.

If a packed lunch is deemed to contain too much fat and sugar, parents could be sent warning letters or their children’s meals confiscated.

That’s right.  The food Nazis are now going to be keeping an Orwellian eye on what British children eat.  If they make food choices that Big Brother has determined are not in the public interest, then the Gestapo will ensure you comply.  Then, if the kid happens to choose to smoke or turns into a fat kid anyway, well, don’t come crying to the government for fabulous free healthcare.

Hey Michael Moore, we all know that you (or at least one of your low-paid, non-union flunkies) read this site.  Do you have the balls at all to comment on this?  You claim to oppose government and worship individual freedom, but the very policies you support are going to result in this type of surveillance-state over fucking food.  So rather than suck your own cock over your latest Oscar nomination, why don’t you show some integrity and actually send out one of your Mike’s Messages either supporting this type of police state activism or decrying it?

Naah, you’ll just keep sucking your own cock, won’t you?  Have fun at the fat farm, Tubby.

Oscar time

Mike was nominated for Sicko.  Does he have a shot at winning?

Update by Lee: I don’t think so.  First off, Sicko wasn’t that good of a movie.  His previous efforts were timely and something a large section of the general public was interested in.  And, had Moore treated the subject matter in Sicko with the seriousness it deserves he might have made more of an impact.  But, as I’ve said before, Sicko was nothing more than a two-hour infomercial for socialism which used healthcare as a context.  Even Hollywood lefties, who would all spout the expected platitudes about how we need to “provide healthcare for everyone” know that government run socialist disasters like the UK and Canada simply don’t work.  And I think the Cuba segment, where he portrayed the island as a tropical paradise of egalitarian brotherhood and compassion, was the final nail in the coffin.  Castro is an evil bastard, and other than the usual suspects—Moore, Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, etc.—most Hollywood types know it.  They all know Moore to be nothing more than a manipulative, self-promoting blowhard, and I doubt they’re going to reward him for this film, which from a cinematic standpoint was nowhere near as entertaining as F9/11 or Bowling for Columbine.

But, these are Hollywood liberals, so ultimately you never really know what the fuck they’re going to do.

A question about releasing Sicko worldwide

I’ve got a question that has been bugging me ever since the international Moore fanbase have decided to take Sicko at face value;

What is the purpose of releasing a film that is hyper-specifically about the US health insurance business in the rest of the world?  What purpose is being served?  It doesn’t apply to anyone else in the world except US citizens.  Why is it released in Norway, Spain, Australia, Denmark, etc.?  Why am I getting email from every country in Europe over this?  How can this information in any way pertain to them?  It’s not like it’s a fair analysis of the business.  It’s not a documentary.  It’s a hyper-specific polemic about a situation that applies to US citizens with health insurance.  So why drum up so much business with college kids all over the world?

I have two answers.  One is to make as much money as possible.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Nothing wrong with that either, if one is honest about one’s intentions, that is.

Moore cashes in on anti-American sentiment the world over by releasing this movie to as many foreign markets as possible.  He knows that as hard as it is for us to verify some of the outrageous claims, it will be impossible and even undesirable for people in other nations to fact-check.  They want it to be true and already trust him.

The second is a logical extension of the first reason; it helps him de-value and denigrate the United States.  He’s never loved this country, in fact he’s openly hated everything from the people to the highest levels of government (the same government he is now pretending he wants in charge of health care).  The worse off we seem to everyone else in the world, the more he gets to be “right” about it all.  If that means stretching the truth, making things up and leaving things out, then so be it.

Can anyone give me a reason for releasing Sicko internationally that doesn’t fall into one of those two categories?

Dealing With the Facts

Let’s assume that there are still some readers out there who harbor the delusion that government-run healthcare is a good idea.  Could we even afford to pay for it?  The answer, of course, is no fucking way.

If you forgot to get a Christmas present for Charlie Rangel, don’t worry. The congressman picked one out for himself, and he’s sending you the bill: $2 million for a shiny new Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College.

The New York Democrat’s Monument to Me was one of about 9,000 earmarks in the omnibus spending bill Congress approved before going on vacation. Most represented a more subtle form of self-aggrandizement, aimed at maintaining power and prestige by currying favor with voters.

According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the total cost of the 11,000 or so earmarks in the omnibus bill and an earlier defense bill is about $14 billion, which is not much in the context of a $2.8 trillion federal budget. But the same tendency that explains the persistence of earmarks—the habit of staying popular by pretending your constituents can get something for nothing—also explains the failure to address the federal government’s increasingly dire fiscal situation.

The root of that situation is not earmarks, which represent less than 1 percent of federal spending. Nor is it the war in Iraq, which at $100 billion or so a year accounts for less than 4 percent.

So-called entitlement programs are the reason “America faces escalating deficit levels and debt burdens that could swamp our ship of state,” as Comptroller General David Walker put it in a recent speech. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid account for 40 percent of federal spending and are expected to consume 51 percent in a decade.

Right now Social Security makes the federal fiscal picture look better than it really is, since the program generates a surplus that masks the true size of the deficit. In fiscal year 2007, for example, the official budget deficit was $163 billion; excluding the Social Security surplus, it was more than twice as high.

Since the government spends the surplus on other programs, the Social Security “trust fund” consists entirely of federal bonds, and those IOUs will come due soon. The oldest baby boomers become eligible for early retirement in 2008. They will start drawing Medicare benefits in three years.

The result, said Walker, will be a “tsunami of spending” that “will never recede.” Under current law the estimated gap between the benefits retirees have been promised and revenue to fund them is $53 trillion, of which $34 trillion is due to Medicare.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Medicare is America’s free government healthcare program for the poor.  So when Michael Moore tells you that there is no healthcare here for poor people, I’ve got $34,000,000,000,000 in IOUs that say otherwise.  Make sure you take note of the fact that the Iraq War costs less than 4% of federal spending.  This is one of the most common arguments we hear from Moore-ons who write us, that if it wasn’t for the evil Bush and his war for oil then we’d have all the money in the world for fabulous free government healthcare.

So, let’s hear some real-world solutions from the Michael Moore crowd.  Other than claiming that “free” government healthcare is more “compassionate,” make a practical argument about (a) how and (b) why the US government can provide fabulous free healthcare for everyone.

Suddenly Susan

In the Two Emails post below I posted an email from a Canadian named Susan Jendrick.  Just to give you an idea of how utterly clueless Moore fans can be, I am posting our entire email exchange here.

From:
Subj: Once again, the stupidity of United States is shinning through

Thank you MR. MOORE, you have again opened the eyes of many and shut the ones that are already blind. Blinded by stupidity. Michael Moore is one of the best things that is happening in the states.  Its pretty sad when people from the states have to sneak across the border, lie and say that they are Canadians just to get treatment they think they deserve.  Well if you are so deserving of this treatment, look to your own government for help.  You think that your land is the best, everything in the states are better than everyone else, WOW do you people need an awakening!  How much more stupid can you people get, you support a government that cares more about war then its own people.  They even treat the terrorist with better health care than they give their own people.  Hello?  should that not tell you something.  Its really a shame that you people can only see whats in front of you.  Take off the blinders, the rose colored glasses.  Hey, there is a world out there, other countries that do look after their own.  Theres alot about this SiCKO film that alot of you americans can learn alot from.  Take notes, that is if you can read or write!

My reply.

Once again the stupidity of some Canadian moron has made the front page of our website.

http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/comments/two_emails/

Honestly, you retarded Canucks make it too easy sometimes.

To which she responded (and this is exactly as I received it, formatting and spelling identical):

So very american.  Can’t think of anything smart enough to come back with except name calling.  How mature!  Very proud Canadian, you . . . only wish! and as I said to you friend,
“ Thank God you are not me.  Do americans really believe the world looks up to them?
americans do keep us laughing though . . . their lack of knowledge of
anything beyond their own borders is
amazing.  When we go to other countries, we do not have to lie about who we
are or where we are from. Someone
is a little jealous by the sounds of things, and I don’t blame you.  Tell
me, do you get tired of standing up for a country
that does nothing but let the people in it down?”

Wow you two really are amazing.

My reply:

Listen to me, you fucking ignoramus.  I’ve personally LIVED in the following countries, not visited but LIVED.

Australia (the country where I was born)
Italy
Turkey
Iran
Morocco
Burma
Indonesia
Malaysia
Singapore
Norway
Scotland
the United States
And I currently reside in Beijing, China.

In addition to my residence in these countries, I have also traveled the world extensively, at one time or another visiting all of Europe and every continent except Antarctica.  Other than Russia, Egypt, India, and North Korea, I’ve been to every place in the world I could ever hope to go.  So you can take you smug sense of Canadian self-satisfaction and shove it up your socialist ass.

As far as name calling goes, go back to your original post and point out ONE SINGLE LOGICAL ARGUMENT you made.  Do it, I dare you Find one.  You did nothing but write to me for no reason other than to insult me, Jim, the site, and to praise both your disgustingly poor healthcare system and your idol, Michael Moore.

When you can make an argument with more intellectual veracity than that of your average fifth grader, feel free to write me back.  Otherwise, fuck off and die.

Oh, and when you end up on a waiting list for a year and half for hip surgery, don’t you DARE come to America to get it done.  I want you to lay there in agony for 18 months, convincing yourself that this is the best way to provide healthcare to people.  Because other than your failing healthcare system and an army that is going bankrupt participating in UN peacekeeping missions (where little girls are routinely raped by the blue helmets), you Canadians have exactly jack shit to distinguish yourselves from America.  And it pisses you off.

As for lying about who I am or where I am from, I proudly claim both my Australian and American citizenship.

So, if you feel like talking out of your ass and continuing to make yourself look like a complete ignoramus, feel free to respond.  And try and meet my challenge, if you can—quote your original email to me and point out a single logical argument you made.  Find ONE.  I dare you.

Moron with an inferiority complex, the concise definition of al too many Canadians.

So, does Susan meet my challenge?  See if you can guess.

Two Emails

I just received two emails, one right after the other.  They are the polar opposites of each other.  One is from someone with a perfectly legitimate question, and in return she receives a perfectly legitimate answer.  The other is a typical Canadian Michael Moore-worshipping moron.  The first:

I have read your site for the last few hours. I admit, you do have some excellent view points, but between you three it seems to be a tug a war on one sidedness opinions. You guys express it through your site, and Moore expresses it through his films. Now about Moore generosity, well we all know that was more the sake of the movie, and to get attention to him and his ideas. But if you are here to argue his beliefs amd bash him to the ground, you need to consider what he has done for you besides his little donation, he not only allowed you to get more hits to your site, and allow people to see your view points but allowed people to make a “choice” by deciding what we want to believe in, stand for. He is allowing us to choose, to make a choice between the point of views. right or wrong? then again, is there a right or wrong between you three??? I beg to differ.

My response:

Vivian, thanks for a pretty reasonable question.

Let me put it like this.  Name ONE THING in Sicko which expressed, in any manner, that there is a downside to socialized medicine.  Name one.  You can’t, because there isn’t any.  This is why I say on the site that Moore has no interest whatsoever in actually seeing people get quality healthcare.  He wants to see people get healthcare *through socialism.* That’s his primary goal, to see his grand socialist plan implemented.  In order to do so he has to ignore all the negatives, and present socialized medicine as some kind of medical Disneyland, where people will come to your house and wipe your ass for you if you choose, and it’s all FREE FREE FREE!

Now, by way of comparison, Jim and I freely admit that the current US system sucks.  We also make the case that socialized medicine, far from being the utopian paradise portrayed by Moore, is just as bad, if not worse.  So the solution is not to abandon one shitty system (the US) for a system which is, at best, equally shitty (European and Canadian).

Moore’s trickery has made this appear like a two-sided coin:  one one side are the bloodthirsty evil capitalists and their for-profit healthcare system, and on the other are the kindly, benevolent government-run systems, which never deny anything to anyone.  The impression left in the viewers mind is “Wow, if I care about people then how can I support anything but socialized medicine?” Search our site, you’ll find countless horror stories about socialized medicine—people pulling their own teeth out with pliers because they couldn’t get in to see a dentist, nurses merely turning sheets over between patients to save on laundry costs, rationing schemes which send old people home to die because it would cost too much in limited resources, and so on.

Again, was ANY of this mentioned in Moore’s film?  No, of course not.  Because it was a two hour lie.

So, in this respect, does Moore actually give you a choice of what to believe in?  Or does he lie, distort, obfuscate, bullshit, and *trick* you into believing what he wants you to believe?  And if socialized medicine is so wonderful, why does he need to present such a distorted and inaccurate version of its reality? These are the real questions you should be asking yourself.

Take care.

And now, the clueless Canadian moore-on.

From:
Subj: Once again, the stupidity of United States is shinning through

Thank you MR. MOORE, you have again opened the eyes of many and shut the ones that are already blind. Blinded by stupidity. Michael Moore is one of the best things that is happening in the states.  Its pretty sad when people from the states have to sneak across the border, lie and say that they are Canadians just to get treatment they think they deserve.  Well if you are so deserving of this treatment, look to your own government for help.  You think that your land is the best, everything in the states are better than everyone else, WOW do you people need an awakening!  How much more stupid can you people get, you support a government that cares more about war then its own people.  They even treat the terrorist with better health care than they give their own people.  Hello?  should that not tell you something.  Its really a shame that you people can only see whats in front of you.  Take off the blinders, the rose colored glasses.  Hey, there is a world out there, other countries that do look after their own.  Theres alot about this SiCKO film that alot of you americans can learn alot from.  Take notes, that is if you can read or write!

First off, I would be willing to bet that I have lived in more countries than this dunce will ever visit in her entire life. Secondly, the Canadian inferiority complex is clearly evident here.  And third, the fact that there is an entire healthcare industry in Canada whose sole purpose is to find medical care in the United States for Canadians who are stuck for years on waiting lists shows that this woman clearly has absolutely no idea what she is talking about.  In other words, she’s a typical Moore fan.

Greedy, Heartless, For-Profit Government

Of the many points Michael Moore raises in Sicko, two stick with me.

1.  Insurance companies routinely deny service to patients as a matter of policy, and they do so out of a heartless sense of corporate greed.
2.  To solve this problem a government agency, with no heartless and greedy profit motive, is essential for equitable distribution of benefits.

Keep these two points in mind as you read this story.

Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, now waiting as long as three years for a decision.

Two-thirds of those who appeal an initial rejection eventually win their cases.

But in the meantime, more and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing, say lawyers representing claimants and officials of the Social Security Administration, which administers disability benefits for those judged unable to work or who face terminal illness.

The agency’s new plan to hire at least 150 new appeals judges to whittle down the backlog, which has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000, will require $100 million more than the president requested this year and still more in the future. The plan has been delayed by the standoff between Congress and the White House over domestic appropriations.

There are 1,025 judges currently at work, and the wait for an appeals hearing averages more than 500 days, compared with 258 in 2000. Without new hirings, federal officials predict even longer waits and more of the personal tragedies that can result from years of painful uncertainty.

Backlogs?  Denials?  Years of uncertainty?  Where have we heard of all these things?  Oh yeah, I remember now:  Canada, the UK, Australia, and every other country with compassionate, “free” healthcare fun by the government.  But wait, it gets better.

Of the roughly 2.5 million disability applicants each year now, about two-thirds are turned down initially by state agencies, which make decisions with federal oversight based on paper records but no face-to-face interview. Most of those who are refused give up at that point or after a failed request for local reconsideration.

But of the more than 575,000 who go on to file appeals — putting them in the vast line for a hearing before a special federal judge — two-thirds eventually win a reversal.

Why, it’s almost like the government routinely denies claims.  You know, just like private insurance does.  But how can this be?  Government isn’t motivated by evil profit, is it?  They don’t operate with the brutal capitalist motivation, do they?  Government is the solution, isn’t it?  Government never fails us, does it?

The growing delays in the appeal process over the last decade resulted in part from litigation and financing shortages that prevented the hiring of new administrative law judges. In addition, the number of applications is rising as baby boomers reach their 50s and 60s.

Litigation?  The costs of litigation on rising insurance premiums are continually dismissed by compassionate Moore fans as nothing but capitalist propaganda.  But here it is, contributing to delays and waiting lists and misery in providing Social Security benefits.  But I’m sure that nothing similar will happen when government runs healthcare, will it Mikey?

And people wonder why we oppose government-run healthcare.  The government ponzi scheme is finally starting to fall apart, and the investors are finding out that they’ve being scammed.  What a complete fucking disaster.

But at least it’s a compassionate disaster.

GDP and Fingers

From Liz in Canada.

Mr K. and Mr. Lee,
I have been reading part of your site and, while on the whole I found it to be a little one sided, I found one opinion to be rather alarming.  The only mention I have found of this issue on your site is the following quote: “As the baby boomer generation ages, where are we going to get the money and resources to provide unlimited free healthcare?  Is it fair to saddle the current generation with a massive mountain of debt to do so?” While relatively harmless when only taken on its own, I wonder what the effect will be when others of my generation, the one who will have that massive debt, will respond to your quote.  The simple fact is that if not for our parents, who will require massive quantities of health care, we would not exist.  Was it fair to saddle them with the burden of raising us until, in some cases, the very late 20’s?  The current cost of raising a child is approximately 100 thousand dollars.  That does not even take into account the emotional responsibility as well as the difficulties involved in instilling a sense of responsibility and other , for lack of a better word, wantable attributes in another life.  After all this you actually raise the question is it fair to pay for their health care, to keep them comfortable, and to ensure that they feel as little pain as possible?  Perhaps you need to reevaluate your priorities ever so slightly.  By they way I am a canadian who has so far lived in ontario (universal health care) and alberta (more privatized) and I only have this to say: wait times may be high but there are less people missing fingers in ontario. I’ll gladly wait the extra time if it means getting the care i need.

Here’s my response.  My numbers might not be exactly right since I’m at work and wrote this from memory, but the overall theme is correct. Please, if you find more accurate numbers post them in the comments and I will correct what I wrote.

Elizabeth,

Thanks for a reasonably polite question.  Allow me to elaborate.  At the time Social Security was created there were more people paying into it than there were people taking out of it.  Thus there was enough money to finance the thing, plus a little bit left over. Piece of cake.

However, wherever there is a mountain of money laying around, and politicians eager to spend it to show that they’re “doing something,” there will be trouble.  So what the politicians have done is write themselves the world’s biggest IOU.  To put this in basic terms, imagine you had an empty jar on top of your fridge into which you put money for a rainy day.  Then, one day, you see a really cool stereo you want to buy. So you write yourself an IOU, take the money out, and spend it.

Then, when the rainy day comes, you have no money.  In this scenario, however, the only person who suffers is you.  What happened was the government opened the jar, wrote the IOU, then continued to write itself IOUs, to the point that there are currently something like $43,000,000,000 (that’s 43 trillion dollars) in unfunded benefits (i.e. IOUs) that the government has promised the baby boomer generation, who are now hitting retirement age.

Now, if you look at the boomer generation as a whole, they are the wealthiest single demographic in the entire United States.  The vast majority of them have no problem paying for their own medications.  They paid off their mortgages long ago, their children are grown and have college educations and families of their own, they’re doing just fine.  However, they’ve also been paying into the Social Security ponzi scheme their whole life and rightly want to get that money back.  Unfortunately, the government has already pissed it away.

So, how do we come up with $43,000,000,000?  There are one of two ways, we massively decrease benefits or massive increase taxes.  Since the boomer generation will be dead within the next two or three decades, and they are retired and thus not paying into the system any more (only withdrawing from it), they aren’t going to stand for any cuts in benefits.  So the only remaining option is to increase taxes to generate this $43,000,000,000.

To give you an idea of how much money this is, the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States is about $13,000,000,000 a year.  Again, to put this in basic terms, imagine you make $13,000 a year, and you have $43,000 in credit card debt.  How the hell are you going to pay it off?

So, as I initially wrote, is it fair to saddle the current generation, who have no stake yet in social security, with a $43,000,000,000 bill that they had no hand in creating?  If you made $13,000 a year, how would you feel being handed a $43,000 bill that you didn’t create?

So, don’t confuse what i wrote with “You’re a mean heartless poo-poo head because you don’t want to take care of old people.” The issue is a lot bigger and a lot more complex than that.  The problem is that you have fallen for Michael Moore’s schtick—“Anyone who disagrees with me wants to throw old people out into the snow.  Look, they don’t sew fingers back on in America!” This is, as we have demonstrated countless time on the site, complete bullshit.

Is our site one-sided?  Perhaps.  But if so, it is only to act as a counterweight to the one-sided stream of lies and propaganda that have you believing everything that comes out of Michael Moore’s mouth.

So, Elizabeth, you tell me.  Should a recent college graduate, starting his life, be instantly saddled with a tax burden of roughly $35,000 a year for his entire life just to pay for the healthcare of one of the wealthiest groups of people in the country?  You tell me, does that seem “fair” or “compassionate” to you?

It sure doesn’t to me.  Oh, and one final thought:  when your super wonderful awesome magical healthcare system, where everyone has sunshine and rainbows shooting out their assholes, fails to provide you the healthcare you need, you always have the option of crossing the border into the evil, heartless, for-profit United States, as millions of your countrymen do every year, fingers or no fingers.

The Pancreatitis Chronicles

Take a moment and refresh your memory by reading this post, specifically the update to it.  I just received a follow-up email from the author of that update, and I’d like to post it here.

Lee I am the guy that had the Pancreatitis that you featured in your post on right-thinking and morewatch.

I just wanted to let you know how the billing for this went. After spending 3 days in the hospital - in a private room none the less. After getting infused with bag after bag of drugs to get my body back on track and getting more morphine than an addict on the street for the pain I got the bill for the treatment.

$12,625.35

A hell of alot more than I can pay thats for sure. Hey your co-admin has Michael Moore to thank, I have the City and County of Denver and it’s taxpayers. I was told to go to the finacial aid office and after all is said and done guess how much I owe?

$100.10 Thats it $12,525.25 paid for by some unknown persons somewhere. I did not ask where they get the funding for this program. But thats not the case. The 100.10 that I am paying are proccessing fees! Fees that cannot be waived and that I must pay. So actually this financial assistance paid the ENTIRE BILL!

Who the hell says we don’t have free health care when it is required? And as I said before my care was top notch (allthough I was asleep most the time) in a state of the art hospital KNOWING I COULD NOT PAY THE BILL!

I can send you copies of the bills if you need them.

No, that won’t be necessary.  I’ve had the same thing happen to me.  When my father was admitted to the hospital in in severe cardiac failure, one of the first things my mother said was that we didn’t have insurance.  The head doctor, a world-renowned cardio-thoracic surgeon, said to my mom, “Don’t worry about the bill.  Your husband will get all the treatment he needs.  We’ll worry about the bill later.”

Not exactly the “dumped at Skid Row” scenario that Moore paints, is it?  Now, the Skid Row dumping in Los Angeles absolutely happened, and it was disgusting.  But he painted at as the norm, when it is clearly the exception, and the public was outraged about it when it came to light.  (Oddly, that aspect of the case didn’t make it into the movie.  What a strange coincidence.)

On the Road for Freebies

A reader from Canada makes an excellent point about Canada’s free healthcare system, one which never really dawned on me until brought up in this email.

Hello Lee,

My name is Eric and I’m from Canada, the magical land of super awesome health care. I been reading Moorewatch for a while and I totally agree with the things you say about Moore. Like a lot of other people I was made aware of this site by Sicko, which I thought was extremely entertaining for a movie but sub-par for a documentary at best. He really goes out of his way to make the Canadian system seem all encompassing and great but omits a lot of serious problems like very long waitings lines, the lack of equipment and treatment options, most of which you have mentioned prominently on Moorewatch. I thought the Boobies for Capitalism was interesting today because it actually reflects another more insidious problem that’s hurting quite a few people in the Canadian Health care system, and that’s traveling fees.

This may sound a big insignificant at first but when considering the geographical magnitude of Canada and the fact that certain types of treatment are only available in certain areas (ie. Vancouver or Toronto). So if you’re a rural family living in the outskirts of Saskatchewan who has a kid with cancer or some other serious disease, the best option for your kid would probably be the Vancouver Children’s Hospital. Since you’ll probably have to stay at least several weeks to get everything sorted out, your not only paying for plane tickets but also probably a month’s worth of living costs while generating no income during that time. It might seem manageable if you had savings, but Vancouver is probably one of the most expensive Canadian cities to live in (a recent study shows that people who earn about 100k annually Barely qualify as middle class in the city so if your only making 40-50 grand a year your pretty much somewhere between lower middle class and homeless) and those expenses will easily rack up to the thousands in a few weeks.

Of course since the current system doesn’t cover such costs despite the fact that many people incur them while seeking treatment it can take a serious toll on people who have to travel to different cities and provinces to receive proper care. This is probably one of the lesser talked about problems when we discuss healthcare over here but its definitely an important one that I wished Moore would have addressed.

Thanks for reading this and I hope your having a blast in China, if you ever get a chance to go to Tian Jing (it’s pretty close to BeiJing) make sure to check out their dumplings, its what the city is really famous for.

Best Regards,
Eric

That’s a great point.  Canada’s lack of things like MRI scanners has been documented many times on this site.  (There are more MRI scanners in the city of New York than in the entire country of Canada.) So while the healthcare may be “free” in some respects, you may have to incur astronomical fees in order to travel to obtain it.

This one hits particularly close to home.  When my father was dying I had to go on three months unpaid medical leave.  It damn near bankrupted me.  I maxed out my credit cards, I had to take out emergency high-interest loans, and I had to cash in my 401k and all my savings.  When he died I was flat busted, so I know just how expensive not working for a few months can be.  We had to drive an hour each way to get to the hospital, and we sometimes made this trip twice a day, so we were going through a tank of gas (roughly $60) every day or two.  That’s about $6,000 in gasoline expenses alone, let alone buying meals at the hospital every day, and this was on top of all the regular bills—my rent, the mortgage on my parents’ house, and every other bill which still needed to be paid.  At the very least Houston, the city where this took place, has some of the finest hospitals in the world, and so I didn’t have to travel to a different city for treatment.  As this letter indicates, while Canada’s healthcare may be “free,” you might have to spend a hell of a lot of money to be able to receive it.