An Open Letter to God from Michael Moore

I just got this in my mailbox. It’s a “letter to God” from Michael Moore. If you thought what Moore said on the Olbermann show the other night was offensive… wait until you read this.

Now… I am fully aware that Michael Moore is attempting to get his name into the press again to garner more attention for himself and his new book. I’m sure he’s reveling in all the negative press he has received over the Olbermann incident and he’s trying to stoke the flames with this letter. He’s trying to be as offensive as he can be without crossing *too* many lines. So I shall offer you this letter without comment or commentary. I will not dignify Moore’s words with a response because they simply do not deserve one. But I will present them to you, the reader, so that you may form your own conclusions and opinions on your own.

An Open Letter to God, from Michael Moore

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Dear God,

The other night, the Rev. James Dobson’s ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be cancelled.

I see that You have answered Rev. Dobson’s prayers—except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don’t blame You, I know You’re angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an “Act of God”—when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

Some of us tried to help after Katrina hit, while Bush ate cake with McCain and twiddled his thumbs. I closed my office in New York and sent my entire staff down to New Orleans to help. I asked people on my website to contribute to the relief effort I organized—and I ended up sending over two million dollars in donations, food, water, and supplies (collected from thousands of fans) to New Orleans while Bush’s FEMA ice trucks were still driving around Maine three weeks later.

But this past Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that the Republicans had begun making plans to possibly postpone the convention. The AP had reported that there were no shelters set up in New Orleans for this storm, and that the levee repairs have not been adequate. In other words, as the great Ronald Reagan would say, “There you go again!”

So the last thing John McCain and the Republicans needed was to have a split-screen on TVs across America: one side with Bush and McCain partying in St. Paul, and on the other side of the screen, live footage of their Republican administration screwing up once again while New Orleans drowns.

So, yes, You have scared the Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of them, and more than a few million of your followers tip their hats to You.

But now it appears that You haven’t been having just a little fun with Bush & Co. It appears that Hurricane Gustav is truly heading to New Orleans and the Gulf coast. We hear You, O Lord, loud and clear, just as we did when Rev. Falwell said You made 9/11 happen because of all those gays and abortions. We beseech You, O Merciful One, not to punish us again as Pat Robertson said You did by giving us Katrina because of America’s “wholesale slaughter of unborn children.” His sentiments were echoed by other Republicans in 2005.

So this is my plea to you: Don’t do this to Louisiana again. The Republicans got your message. They are scrambling and doing the best they can to get planes, trains and buses to New Orleans so that everyone can get out. They haven’t sent the entire Louisiana National Guard to Iraq this time—they are already patrolling the city streets. And, in a nod to I don’t know what, Bush’s head of FEMA has named a man to help manage the federal government’s response. His name is W. Michael Moore. I kid you not, heavenly Father. They have sent a man with both my name AND W’s to help save the Gulf Coast.

So please God, let the storm die out at sea. It’s done enough damage already. If you do this one favor for me, I promise not to invoke your name again. I’ll leave that to the followers of Rev. Dobson and to those gathering this week in St. Paul.

Your faithful servant and former seminarian,

Michael Moore
[email protected]
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. To all of God’s fellow children who are reading this, the city New Orleans has not yet recovered from Katrina. Please click here for a list of things you can do to help our brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast. And, if you do live along the Gulf Coast, please take all necessary safety precautions immediately.

Mikey Luvs Hurricans

Egad:

Throughout the Bush Presidency, Mikey has wished for things to do got badly for America so that the Republicans will get blamed and unelected.  I have no doubt that Mike has blasted Religious Right zealots for claiming that Katrina was God’s vengeance for abortion, gay marriage and men’s speedos.  Let’s see if someone— anyone—on the Left blasts him for claiming that Gustav is God’s vengeance for Republicans.

[[Crickets Chirping]]

(H/T: West Virginia Rebel)

An American Carol

Mark your calendars people!  October 3, 2008 is the release date for a new film by the Zucker Brothers titled “An American Carol”.  It tells the comedic and completely hypothetical story of a character obviously modeled after Michael Moore (and played perfectly by Kevin Farley) who experiences an epiphany ala’ “A Christmas Carol” when he refuses to celebrate the Fourth of July and is visited by the ghosts of General George S. Patton, JFK, George Washington and finally Trace Adkins as the angel of death.  Of course Mikey makes no mention of the film on his site since he refuses to ever mention any film that he doesn’t actually profit from.  But I encourage everyone to go see it when it comes out.  From what I’ve seen on the video, it looks like Kevin Farley does a great job as Moore and I especially love the scene where he’s gets slapped by JFK, George Patton and Bill O’Reilly.

You can view the trailer here:
An American Carol Trailer

Once Again, Capitalism Saves the World

When Michael Moore wants to drop a few pounds he usually just pays someone to use Photoshop to stick his head on the body of a smaller fat guy.  Other than that he pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to the world’s most exclusive fat farm resorts.  However, if you’re a nurse in the socialist medical utopia of the UK, you just let the taxpayers pick up the bill.

Overweight nurses are to get personal trainers and high street vouchers to encourage them to lose weight.

More than 200 NHS staff are being equipped with pedometers and offered motivational fitness coaches to help them slim down.

They have been promised £20 of high street store vouchers if they manage to keep the weight off during the year-long pilot.

But here comes the best part.  Are you ready?  Make sure you’re sitting down, because this is awesome.

The £250,000 scheme at Birmingham East and North Primary Care Trust is being run by American healthcare company Humana, which wants to roll the programme out across Britain.

That’s right, folks!  The compassionate, free governmental fantasyland of the UK is turning to an evil, greedy, for-profit, heartless capitalist American company to get their lard-ass nurses to drop weight. 

My God, it’s almost as if socialism doesn’t work, and the free market provides solutions that government either cannot or will not!  Who could have ever imagined such a thing?

Dead Baby Jokes

You know that wonderful medical utopia in the UK, where everyone gets all the super duper magical free healthcare they could ever need, and it’s paid for by fairies and unicorns?  Well, it’s killing babies.

A devastating report on the state of Britain’s maternity services has concluded that they put the lives of women and their babies at risk.

The first national inquiry into maternity care by the Healthcare Commission, the NHS watchdog, has revealed a critical shortage of midwives, obstetricians absent from wards, a lack of beds and poor continuity of care. These have contributed to high death rates in some units and threaten the long-term health of mothers and their babies in others.

The inquiry, which is the largest ever carried out, involved all 150 NHS maternity units in England. It was triggered by separate full-scale investigations conducted at three trusts where mothers and babies died, which revealed failings indicative of a national pattern.

The three trusts were Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, where 10 mothers died between 2002 and 2005, New Cross in Wolverhampton, where three babies died in two months in 2003, and Ashford & St Peters in Surrey, where there was a series of serious incidents in 2000 and 2001.

The Healthcare Commission said the root cause of poor performance was weak leadership by managers and medical staff. Many trusts were critically short of midwives, with numbers ranging from 40 per 1,000 births in the best-staffed trusts to 25 per 1,000 in the worst.

Only two-thirds of trusts had a consultant present on their wards for 40 hours a week – the basic safety standard laid down by the Royal College of Obstetricians. The study also revealed a five-fold variation in the number of consultants among trusts, from 3.3 to 0.6 per 1,000 births. In some trusts this meant consultants were present on the wards for just 10 hours a week.

More than £660m was paid out by NHS trusts in the three years to 2007 in negligence cases for obstetric claims – enough to hire 1,000 extra consultant obstetricians. Maternity services account for one in 10 requests to the Healthcare Commission to investigate particular trusts. Today’s report, which included surveys of 5,000 staff and 26,000 mothers, says nine out of 10 mothers rated their care as good. But it said there were “significant weaknesses”, with wide variations in standards between trusts. Many of the problems identified in earlier investigations were widespread, suggesting that NHS trusts are not giving maternity services priority. Sir Ian Kennedy, chairman of the commission, said: “I don’t ever again want to be reading another report into high death rates at a maternity unit.”

It’s worth noting that this report comes from The Independent, one of Britain’s leftie papers.  Ah, socialism.  Guaranteeing the same equal level of misery and shitty treatment for everyone.  (Except of course the rich, who can avoid the whole socialist disaster altogether by paying for private care themselves.)

Castonguay Turns

You know that wonderful Hoser healthcare system?  Well, it’s very architect wants to change it:

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.

In America, these ideas may not sound shocking. But in Canada, where the private sector has been shunned for decades, these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It’s as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced.

What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.

Somehow, I rather doubt this will be a part of Sicko II: The Search For More Money.

Olbermoore

From the blog at that notorious right-wing neocon-worshipping rag The New Republic comes this fascinating Isaac Chotiner piece.

Peter Boyer has a fairly long Keith Olbermann profile in this week’s New Yorker which is not necessary reading, although it does feature a notable anecdote. Olbermann is reading over an interview with President Bush in which the following exchange occurs:

Q: Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?
A: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as—to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Boyer then goes into great detail about how Olbermann furiously raced home to his computer and typed a blistering 18-page screed which contains the following nugget of genius, which he refers to as the “final blow to our nation’s solar plexus.”

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you six and a half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you. . . . It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game!

Choitner then nails it.

Oh, how quickly we forget!  Just four years ago, in fact, Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 arrived in theatres, and one of the big scenes featured--you guessed it--Bush playing golf. The president is asked a question about terrorism, he responds by saying that all countries must unite against evil, and then he pauses before saying, “Now watch this drive.” Moments later he tees off. This was of course supposed to prove that Bush does not take terrorism seriously, or is an idiot, or God knows what. But now Bush has sworn off golf, which apparently also proves that he is cruel and uncaring. And something tells me the same people who nodded vigorously at Moore’s movie are now nodding vigorously at Olbermann’s monologues. Terrific.

Of course they are.  Bush playing golf = evil.  Bush not playing golf = evil.  See how logic works in the fantasy world where Olbermann and Moore live?

Guess What?  Socialism Kills People

It’s often been our contention, as vehement critics of socialized medicine and its supporters like Moore, that all government healthcare provides is the same equally shitty service to everyone.  (Except, of course, the wealthy, who can pay for their own treatments.) As usual the Times of London lays it out.

The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.

That’s right, folks.  If you decide to use your own money to pay for the life-saving drugs that your free healthcare system doesn’t provide, you’re shit out of luck on any future treatment.  Their policy is, “Use our substandard care or you’re on your own.” Ah, compassion.

One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those prescribed the standard NHS drug.

The growing row over “co-payments” has prompted the government to reconsider the ban. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has promised a “fundamental rethink” of the policy.

Just not a fundamental rethink of the socialist disaster which created the problem in the first place.

A woman with bowel cancer is fighting for the right to pay for a drug that could extend her life long enough for her to spend Christmas with her grandchildren.

Sheila Norrington, 59, a former NHS medical secretary from Maidstone, Kent, has been told by doctors that if she buys the drug Erbitux, which the health service will not pay for, she will lose her state-funded cancer care. Erbitux is the only drug capable of treating her advanced bowel cancer.

Norrington’s husband, Goff, 61, a former sales manager, said: “We have been told that if we pay for it ourselves we will be thrown off the NHS completely and we will need to pay for everything privately. We are devastated. This is not going to cure my wife, but if it keeps her alive a little bit longer, then we would pay for it.”

The couple say that although they could pay for a few cycles of the drug, which costs about £3,000 a month, they could not pay for all Norrington’s care, including scans, blood tests and consultations.

Goff Norrington added: “We have two young granddaughters and this could make the difference between sitting round the table with them at Christmas or not. We think it is deplorable that patients can get this drug almost anywhere in Europe but we cannot get it in the UK.”

A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: “We are governed by Department of Health policy on this issue.”

And why shouldn’t they be?  The government is the one paying for it.  They aren’t concerned with individuals, they’re concerned with doling out their limited resources in the most compassionate and fair manner, which in this case is simply letting people die.

A poll for The Sunday Times shows strong support for allowing co-payment in the National Health Service, with 89% saying that people who buy additional cancer drugs should continue to get free NHS treatment.

Only 5% think allowing co-payment would create a two-tier NHS. Until now this has been the position taken by Alan Johnson, the health secretary.

Ministers had feared that allowing co-payment would upset less well-off patients, but the YouGov poll of nearly 1,800 people shows strong backing across the social spectrum and supporters of all three main parties.

This, of course, begs the question.  If compassionate free government healthcare can’t provide, y’know, actual healthcare to patients, and they are forced to paying massive amounts of money to buy their own treatments, maybe the solution to the problem is less free government healthcare and more private sector solutions.

Wow, paying for healthare.  What a concept!

Moore set to publish an “Election Guide” in the fall

I must be honest… I’m not quite sure what to make of this yet:

Michael Moore is coming out with a new book. The tome, titled “Mike’s Election Guide,” a manual of mockery for the 2008 presidential election, will be published Aug. 19 by Grand Central Publishing, Jimmy Franco, a spokesman for the publisher, said Friday.

Promotional material for the book reads: “Perfectly timed to coincide with the national political conventions—and to capitalize on massive campaign coverage.”

That is the sum total of all the details I’ve been able to find as of now, so I have no real idea what this book will be about. “Manual of mockery”? What does that even mean?

Moorewatchers… any guesses as to what types of shenanigans Moore is cooking up this time? 

Moore declares new film to be toxic and dangerous… again….

I think we’ve all heard these claims from Moore about his movies before, haven’t we?

Oscar-winning documentary maker Michael Moore, who this week unveiled plans for a follow-up to his anti-Bush polemic “Fahrenheit 9/11,” said on Friday the new film would cover topics so “toxic” he probably should not make it.

But Moore, whose work ranges from an expose of American gun culture in “Bowling for Columbine” to a scathing critique of U.S. health care in “SiCKO,” relishes controversy, so his unnamed new movie will likewise be risky, he told reporters at the Cannes film festival.

“It’s something I shouldn’t make, something that is dangerous,” he said.

Is is just me or is this hype of Moore’s becoming something of a mantra for him? He said it about Bowling, he said it about Fahrenheit, and he said it about Sicko. Not one of those films turned out to be either “toxic” or “dangerous”, largely due to the hefty amount of factual errors, inaccuracies and outright untruths contained within them. But no… *this* one will be different:

At box offices, his new movie will face risks. Recent films dealing with the current wars, such as “Stop-Loss” and “In the Valley of Elah,” were commercial flops.

But Moore said he believed those movies failed because most Americans no longer support the wars, whereas in 2004, when “Fahrenheit 9/11” was released, most Americans still backed U.S. military pursuits in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He believes “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which ranks as the top-grossing political documentary of all time with more than $220 million at global box offices, was a hit because it told audiences things about the Bush administration that they were surprised to hear.

Similarly, he said his new movie will succeed by exposing information about President George W. Bush and his policies that will leave audiences stunned.

“What I’m going to say in this film is what probably 70 percent of them (audiences) don’t want to hear,” Moore said.

Yes, Mr. Moore. You’ve got something right. We probably aren’t going to want to hear what you have to say in this new film venture of yours. You see, we’re all getting a little tired of your fictional diatribes against America getting masqueraded as documentaries. If you’d like to truly shock us… how about making this movie… I don’t know… based on the truth? That would certainly shock me.

Go Home and Die

Here’s some more of that wonderful socialist compassion that is supposed to infuse our cousins across the Atlantic, this proving their inherent moral superiority over us.

An HIV-positive Ugandan woman’s claim to stay in the UK has been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights.

Her lawyers argued that a lack of medical care in Uganda would lead to her early death, and this would amount to cruel and degrading treatment.

The government denies this, saying all NHS HIV drugs are available in Uganda.

The court agreed that if the unnamed woman were sent back to Uganda, there would be no violation of the bar on inhuman or degrading treatment.

When the woman entered the UK in March 1998 under an assumed name, she was seriously ill and was admitted to hospital.

Soon afterwards, solicitors lodged an asylum application on her behalf, claiming she had been raped by government soldiers in Uganda because of her association with the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group in the north of the country.

The lawyers argued that her life would be in danger if she were returned to Uganda.

By November 1998, she was diagnosed with two illnesses which are known to be indicators of having AIDS, and as being in an extremely advanced state of HIV infection.

Her asylum claim was rejected in March 2001, a decision she appealed against.

In rejecting her claim, the secretary of state found no evidence that Ugandan authorities were interested in her and that treatment of Aids in Uganda was comparable to any other African country.

The secretary of state also found that all the major anti-viral drugs were available in Uganda at highly subsidised prices.

In January the government sent a terminally ill Ghanaian woman who had been receiving treatment in the UK back to her country because her visa had expired.

Now, which do you think is more likely, that she was deported because of a expired viusa, or because and HIV diagnisis would reqire thirthy fo forty more years of retroviral and “drug cocktail” therapy to keep her alive, when we all know that NHS is failing miserably to provide even basic care to the citizenry.  So rather than deal with the expense of treating this woman they’re sending her back home, to her happy land full of sunshine and rainbows and rivers of chocolate, where the children dance and play with gumdrop smiles.

Full discosure:  The US has some pretty draconian laws regarding HIV people obtaining citizenship in this country.  I’m just as opposed to this as I am to what these European dickwads are doing? 

See?  That’s called “intellectual honesty.” You Moore fans should try it once in a while.

Getting Care to the Sick

Michael Moore has stated that evil capitalism is the cause of all America’s healthcare woes, and that only the loving, warm, benevolent arms of the nanny state can provide what we need.  (He has explicitly called for the abolition of private health insurance.) But it seems that (gasp!) maybe one solution to the problem is to get rid of the bloodsucking trial lawyers.

Tort reform, of course, resulting in substantially lower medical malpractice premiums and expenses, and an influx of 7000 doctors, including into many underserved regions. One indirect benefit: with less money spent on medical malpractice lawyers, self-insuring hospitals can spend more on doctors and on medical practice:

Take Christus Health, a nonprofit Catholic health system across the state. Thanks to tort reform, over the past four years Christus saved $100 million that it otherwise would have spent fending off bogus lawsuits or paying higher insurance premiums. Every dollar saved was reinvested in helping poor patients.

Also of relevance: the amusing results when Texas added evidentiary standards of medical harm to their asbestos and silicosis docket. Suddenly, over 99% of the cases went away because so few suing plaintiffs had a doctor willing to certify harm.

My God, what a concept!  It should be noted, gentle reader, that trial lawyers overwhelmingly donate to Democrats.  In return, the Democrats will inevitably put a stop to this terrible example of the deregulated free market actually, y’know, improving the lives of patients.  For liberals, especially those like Moore, the means are more important than the ends.  Moore doesn’t want to see more people get healthcare, he wants to prove that socialism is super peachy awesome, and he pimps out sick people to make that point.  Any solution which is not directly attributable to government intervention will not sit well with him, because it won’t support his overall thesis that eeeeeevil capitalism is to blame for everything.

Update Well well well.  It looks like the Democrats are dutifully bending over for their ambulance-chasing overlords with a nice $1.6 billion payoff which somehow managed to find its way into the Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.

The language is from Sec. 311, Uniform Treatment of Attorney-Advanced Expenses and Court Costs in Contingency Fee Cases. The provisions allow trial attorneys to deduct advanced litigation fees regardless of whether their contingency fee was structured as a “net” or a “gross” fee arrangement. The law does not now allow lawyers to take a current tax deduction under a net fee arrangement.

Anything that makes it easier for bloodsucking mass tort lawyers to drive up the costs of healthcare (and everything else). 

Ooh, Joy!

Mikey is making a sequel:

Michael Moore is making a sequel to “Fahrenheit 9/11” for Overture Films and Paramount Vantage, which will shop the project to international buyers when the Cannes Film Festival and market get under way today.

--snip--

Sequel will pick up where “Fahrenheit 9/11” left off. In the time since, Bush’s popularity has plummeted, while the Iraq war continues and the economy falters.

“It’s a vote of confidence on Michael’s part and a great partnership for all of us,” Rosett said. “There is a voracious appetite for this kind of commentary.”

Really? Is there? You think beating a dead horse has a market?  A dead horse who will be out of office by the time the movie is released?  I love this bit:

Moore’s decision not to make his next film with the Weinstein Co. comes after “Sicko” failed to ignite at the box office. Film, which took on the U.S. health care system, grossed $24.5 million domestically and $11.2 million internationally. Topically, the film didn’t resonate with overseas auds.

Yeah, it’s the Weinstein’s fault.  It’s not because the film had holes in it that were big enough that Mike’s ego could comfortably pass through them.

Anyway, we’re fired up about this.  We can use the traffic.  And the exercise of debunking Mike’s crapola.

Cuban Doctors

Ah, Cuba the tropical wonderland of freedom and egalitarianism and all the free, wonderful, magical healthcare anyone could ever want.  Strange, isn’t it, that so many Cuban doctors would defect to the country with the world’s 37th best healthcare system.

The Cuban government’s plan was for Beny Alfonso Rodriguez to help lead a group of 72 Cuban doctors on a medical mission in the town of Macarapana, Venezuela.

But Rodriguez, a former soldier, lasted four months. He joined the mission with one thing in mind: to flee Cuba.

“I was born into the revolution, but I didn’t choose it,” says Rodriguez, who arrived in Miami in April.

Rodriguez is among hundreds of Cuban medical personnel who have deserted their country’s overseas medical missions in recent months to apply for fast-track entry into the United States.

News of the U.S. government’s Cuban Medical Professional Parole program, launched in August 2006, quickly reached rural outposts in Venezuela and other countries. The policy allows Cuban doctors, nurses, administrators, lab technicians and other professionals working in humanitarian medical missions outside Cuba to apply at their host country’s U.S. embassy for entry into the United States. After undergoing a background check, most applicants are accepted, according to Ana Carbonell, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami.

“The Castro regime has used these medical professionals as a vehicle for its international propaganda,” Carbonell said.

It’s also used it’s willing Castro sycophant, Michael Moore.  Here’s the best part:  they’re defecting from another socialist utopia, Venezuela.

Cuban exile activists say dozens of Cuban medical personnel have defected in Venezuela. In exchange for cheap oil for Cuba, about 21,000 Cuban doctors staff President Hugo Chavez’s free health-care program for the poor, called Barrio Adentro (Inside the Barrio) — the backbone of the Venezuelan leader’s popular socialist reforms.

“The number one fear of these doctors is that they’ll be deported back to Cuba. Where do they go in a country that’s friendly with the Castro regime? They don’t know who to trust,” said Camila Ruiz-Gallardo, of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Many of the doctors have received guidance from the foundation and another exile group, Solidarity Without Borders. The two groups formed a partnership in 2006 to help Cuban medical personnel reach the United States. With the foundation’s support, Solidarity has expanded a program, Barrio Afuera (Outside the Barrio), that provides doctors hiding in Venezuela or other countries with “safe houses,” money and information about the application process.

Okay, so they’re leaving one socialist wonderland with free healthcare to go to another socialist wonderland with free healthcare, and they STILL want to come to the evil, heartless, for-profit United States?  What could possibly motivate them to do such a heartless thing? 

But some who have deserted missions in Venezuela said they saw a chance to flee Castro’s communist system without risking a high-seas voyage. Others jumped at the opportunity to earn 10 times the salary they earned in Cuba.  …

Miguel Alfredo Jimenez, a doctor who specializes in sports medicine, served in a mission in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, from 2003 to 2005 monitoring the health of a group of athletes. He earned about $330 a month, up from $30 a month he earned in Havana.  …

“It hurts to admit it,” Jimenez said of those who join missions to flee or earn better pay. “It doesn’t mean it’s not important in our profession to help others, but we’re in a grave situation in Cuba.”

I think he needs to watch Sicko.  He obviously has no idea how wonderful things are there.  Michael Moore needs to set this Cuban doctor straight. 

Profit in medicine?  What a disgusting concept.  This guy should take his $30 a month and shut the fuck up.

Shameless self-promotion break from the presidential campaign nonsense

Aloha everyone!  I haven’t posted in a while here as there didn’t seem to be much going on with Moore except his kiss-of-death proclamation of support for Obama in the democrat race to the DNC.  I don’t know about the rest of you but I am pretty much done with watching the news for now.  It’s the same old same old: gas prices are up and keep going up, housing market is out of control and nobody can afford to buy a house, the war is still going on, celebrities are sexually harassing people, cults are molesting children, the democrats can’t get their shit together, etc., etc.
So I am offering a break from all of it for all my Moorewatch friends.  This Saturday, May 10th the Sci Fi Channel is showing the film, “Aztec Rex” (check your local listing).  Now, why would I be bringing up a film showing on a saturday on Sci Fi Channel?  Three reasons:
1. Because like I said, it would be a nice break from all the crap going on in the world;

2. Because the film features several Hawaii-based actors in lead roles.  Which is a rarety in Hollywood these days.  Studios tend to think that there are only asians and polynesians living in Hawaii so they fly in mainland talent and occasionally toss us actors who are not asian or polynesian the background or “extra” roles for mere pittances.  Perhaps if studios see there are people who actually WANT to see Hawaii-based actors on the small and big screens, they might start casting us in more principal roles!

3. And finally, because yours truly is in one of those lead roles as the character “Alvarado”.

You can see the Sci Fi channel commercial here:
Aztec Rex commercial on Sci Fi Channel

you can also see the listing on Sci Fi here:

Sci Fi Channel listing

So on saturday pop some popcorn, crack open a cold one, sit back, relax and watch some good old fashioned Hollywood B-Movie entertainment with half-naked Aztec women, dirty conquistadores, dinosaurs, sword fights, murder, mayhem, and Jack McGee playing a Spanish priest with a New York accent!

Thanks and God Bless!

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.)

Happy Birthday, Mike

Did you enjoy your gift from the people of Pennsylvania? You endorse Obama, Obama loses.

Wouldn’t you really, really like to campaign on his behalf?  Surely you want to go around the country telling everyone how horrible McCain and/or Hillary is and how great Obama is.  You should totally do it.

Anyway, enjoy your 54th.  Make sure you take that walk after dinner and cake.  The NHS says 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week!

The End of Obama

Michael Moore has endorsed Obama.  This should be the death knell for the Obama campaign, since not a single candidate for political office endorsed by Michael Moore has ever won.  The endorsement is aboout what you’d expect, the usual nonsensical ramblings of a multimillionaire socialist.  Read it yourself if you like, I just want to make a couple of observations.

I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan.

No you don’t, Michael, you live in a penthouse in Manhattan.  Jim and I know your home address.  You own property in a swanky part of Michigan.  (You know, where you held your film festival, rather than in Flint, the town you claim to come from but don’t.  Why help out the disadvantaged in Flint when you can suck up to the rest of the millionaire liberals who own gigantic private estates?) So, either you’re registered to vote in two places (New York and Michigan) or you’re lying your ass off to perpetuate the farcical image of yourself as an average Joe.  Both of these sound equally plausible.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years.

And here we see the classic liberal self-image as a pathetic waif being beaten by an all-powerful machine.  This is one of the things I find more vulgar and disgusting about liberalism than anything else, their incessant need to view themselves as victims.  I guess this is why they believe that the government is the solution to ever conceivable problem.  If people weren’t pathetic victims they might be able to find solutions to some of their own problems, and if that were to happen (God forbid!) it would deny liberals the ability to derive self-satisfaction from pointing to a government program and saying, “See what a wonderful person I am?  I supported that proposal!”

It’s foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country.

Thus says a guy who has made himself filthy, stinking rich by working with massive corporations.  But let’s not let a little rank hypocrisy get in the way of your own perceived sense of victimhood, huh Mike?  Just keep dressing like a slob and wearing your baseball caps, the world is full of idiots who will actually buy your little persona.

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.

Careful Who You Interview

You remember in F911, Mikey asking Congressmen to enlist their children in the Iraq War (apparently under the impression that this is even possible)?  I wonder if he’ll make a sequel about John McCain:

Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father’s New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.

Read the whole thing.  The only McCain note on Mikey’s blog is about the MLK holiday vote.  He blasted our leaders for their supposed hypocrisy on the Iraq War.  How much are you willing to bet he never mentions this?