I close the film?

Really?  Me?  In a film about the difference between forcibly taking money from all to pay for some and how that works around the world, *I* am the best thing he could find to close the movie?

Moore’s last revelation in “Sicko” is sure to be endlessly debated in the right-wing blogosphere that is so obsessed with him (and may be of little interest to ordinary viewers). Some time ago, Jim Kenefick, proprietor of the especially bilious anti-Moore site Moorewatch, almost shut down his site to focus on his wife’s worsening illness and escalating healthcare costs. An anonymous donor then sent him $12,000 to cover his wife’s bills and keep the site running. (She has apparently recovered.) Now that donor has been revealed and, as Kenefick now says he suspected all along, it turns out to be Michael Moore.

“I want him to know that it was done with all the best intentions,” said Moore, adding that he planned to phone Kenefick personally after the press conference. (According to Kenefick’s blog, Moore left him a voice-mail message later on Saturday.) “I went back and forth about whether to use that material,” Moore went on. “I asked myself, would you be doing this if it weren’t in the film? I decided that I would, and I should, and that that’s the way I think we should live.”

1. Raise your hand if you think Moore would have actually sent money and NOT included it in the movie.

2. If you raised your hand, I’m sorry, but you’re not very perceptive.

3. This site was not going to be closed.  I did not say that and if Moore puts it in the film like that, it’s the same kind of perversion of the facts that Moore tends to do all the time.

4. See?  $12,000 to use me in the movie and get all this publicity.  It wasn’t altruism, it never was altruism and I’ll hold my breath waiting for you Moore fans to apologize for calling me all those names.*

* I can’t hold my breath for more than like, 30 seconds, so this is very much a metaphor.  I should see a doctor about that.  If only I could still afford it… ;)

Moore called me

While I find the timing...interesting...he did in fact call and was completely normal and gracious about it.  You can hear for yourself.

Thank you, Michael.  I appreciate the help and I always have.  You know that, of course, because I posted right here on the site that I was grateful to the guardian angel long before this became an issue for the press to feed on.  I hope that your Cannes screening goes well, but more importantly I hope you’ve used your power to tell the truth this time.  I’d love to support this movie, as I’m no friend of the HMO.

In case anyone doubts it, that’s definitely him.  Even if I didn’t recognize the voice, he used phrasing that was identical to the original emails I got from the third party.  This also puts to rest the doubts I’ve seen all over the ‘net that it was even Mike in the first place.  Now we all know.

Man...what is in that film?  Am I crazy or did he sound...nervous?  I guess we’ll all find out why he did this when the film shows tonight at Cannes.

Well, if you insist…

Apparently I’m going to be the focus of every press idiot that still fawns over Mikey’s bullshit for the next few days.  Yeah, better to focus on me than him, I suppose, that way you can keep your blinders on about why he does things.

This time it’s Rush & Malloy in the New York Daily News.  I suppose there are worse places in which to be talked about; I could have been in a column by one of the interns that write Perez Hilton’s blog.  Gossip columnists in the Daily News is a bit of a step up from that.  Only just, but still a step up.

We can now confirm to Kenefick that his secret benefactor is none other than the dreaded, detestable, loathsome Michael Moore.

Moore didn’t contact us. We heard it on our own.

Well, you confirm a lot of things, but for now I am assuming this is true.  I got it from a pretty good source myself, hence my post that you quote in your...uhh..."article."

One friend of Moore’s did say, “We sure are happy Jim’s wife received the care she needed.”

First of all, Moore doesn’t have friends.  He has employees and allies.  Secondly, my wife was ALWAYS RECEIVING CARE.  It was never in doubt that she was going to get the medical care she and her doctors felt was necessary, regardless of cost.  I would have made it work, no matter what I had to do.  That having been said, if the well-wishes were in any way sincere...thank you.

Still, he doesn’t sound especially grateful.

Having suspected Moore might be his secret patron, he contends that his bete noir made the gift just to publicize “Sicko,” which takes aim at America’s health-care system and, we’ve heard, touches upon Moore’s covert generosity.

Oh my.  “Doesn’t sound especially grateful?” A few years ago, Moore threatened to sue me.  Add to that the fact that $12,000 is equal to his ding-dong budget for the week.  Or what it costs to make one of those suits for award shows.  Add to this growing list the fact that it was never altruism and every human being alive who knows anything about Moore knows that.  He paid $12,000 so he could manufacture a “gotcha” moment in his film.  Sounds pretty cheap to me.

What am I supposed to be grateful for?  The chance to look like an ass?  The chance to be in his movie?  For him throwing me pocket change in order to try to humiliate me later?  That’s why he did it.  Period.

I was grateful for the easing of my financial burden for 12 months.  I meant it when I said it helped us climb out of a hole.  If Mike called me up and said “It was me, and regardless of our differences I just wanted to help.” then I would have a 180 degree turnaround in attitude...but he’s not doing that is he?  He’s leaking information and trying to make me look like a complete git over it...and you, Rush & Malloy, are helping.

Was I supposed to roll over and stop looking for the flaws in everything Mikey says?  Was I supposed to stop telling the truth?  Was $12,000 supposed to buy me off?

Are any of you that cheap?

If Mikey had called me up and said “Look, man, I know we disagree on everything, but I just wanted to help.  No strings attached, and I hope she gets better.” that would be an amazing gift and a real piece of altruism.

He.  Didn’t.  Do.  That.

He’s leaking and using this in whatever way he can think of to promote his film.  He paid $12,000 so that you, the press, would focus on what a “nice guy” he is and in the same breath, make me look like a jerk.  He’s getting you to denounce and discredit me and keeping his hands clean so it’s not a Goliath-crushes-David scenario.

And you people didn’t even get $12,000!  Now that’s cheap.

Beating someone to the punch

Awhile back you may remember me discussing some personal issues here on the site, specifically my problems in getting good health insurance.  I got some great advice from readers, ultimately leading me to a good plan that costs around a thousand dollars a month, but is still less than a third of our previous out-of-pocket yearly medical costs.

After I posted about finding the plan and what the cost was, someone emailed me and asked if an “anonymous” benefactor could offer to pay my first year’s premiums.  $12,000.  I was skeptical of course, but since I’m not an idiot, I accepted.  When the check arrived, I was overly cautious.  I tracked the company that issued the check, the bank it was drawn on...I found a hotline you could call to check the status of drafts issued by this third-party company, and the number on the check (actually more like a money order) checked out.  I even went so far as to see where the branches of the issuing bank might be physically located, and there are like five of them within walking distance of Moore’s home and office in New York City.

I was still a bit skeptical, so I opened a whole new account at my bank, waited for it to clear, checked twice with bank personnel to make sure it wasn’t a scam, and waited a full 60 days before spending the money.  At that time, I started drawing on it and paying the monthly premiums until it was gone.  The whole time...from the moment I was first emailed (and I still have all the emails with full headers if it becomes necessary to publish them) I was convinced that it was Michael Moore behind it all.

I knew he was using me.  I knew he would try to turn this to his advantage some day.  That day may be upon us.  I was just warned by someone in the know that Moore is about to drop the hammer on me.

Could this all be nonsense?  Was it a truly anonymous person who was just trying to make my life easier after the hell we’ve been through the past 7 years?  is it possible that Moore has nothing to do with this and never did?

Maybe.

Is it possible that Moore is going to try to make me into one of his little puppets and pull a “gotcha?” Yes.  Yes it is.  I wish I knew what the truth was.  I don’t.  I only know my part in it.

For the record: I’m not an idiot.  I know when to say yes to something, even if the string attached is obvious.  $12,000 was like manna from heaven at that time.  As you all may remember, I was being bled dry by the scumbag that used to host the server on which this site resides.  My business was almost dead, my wife was very, very ill and I was racking up a few little health problems of my own.  That money made it possible for us to begin to turn our lives around.

If I knew that money came from the tax base, if it was government money, I would have said “no.” I didn’t and don’t believe in supporting a “universal” health care system, and I don’t think it’s the role of government to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

What I support, and what I was led to believe, was this was a private individual that wanted to remain anonymous who just wanted to help me on a person-to-person basis.  That is why I said yes.  That, and what kind of moron turns down a free twelve grand?

Again, please let me be crystal clear on what I think is the most important poiunt here: I was told this was a private individual who just wanted to help me personally.  It had nothing to do with the site, politics or anything else.  I was told it was just someone who decided they could help another person.  That is why I said yes.

If this was Moore behind it all, then I have to say...nice try, dude, but I’m not going to play your game.  You can call it a cost of promotion.  This site has sold more books and DVDs for you than that $12,000 could ever buy.  You’ve gotten your money’s worth.  If it was you, Mikey...your $12,000 doesn’t buy my silence.  It won’t buy my affection, nor will I shy away from talking about whatever may or may not be in your new film.  I’ll still be the same guy, expressing my opinion and trying his best to research facts you tend to skip over or ignore.  All you bought for your money - if it was yours - was the peace of mind of knowing you actually helped someone who needed it.  Wouldn’t it be nice if that was where is stayed?  Ultimately, my accepting that donation has absolutely no bearing on the larger debate about health care in America, and I won’t engage you or anyone else in a bank-and-forth on it so you can sound-byte my words into something they aren’t.

You can read all about any response I may or may not have in the future at Moorewatch.com.

Quick announcement

YES!  I know about the Moore documentary!  I’m in it.  :)

Remember all that talk over the last two years?  Well this was the project we were all helping with.  I just spoke to Debbie today and she said it was perfectly fine to start discussing it openly, so I will put together a post about it tomorrow night.  I can’t wait to see this thing.

We’re getting closer - time to get our house in order

I can feel it...Sicko is going to start hitting the news son, and I want to get ahead of the coming storm of activity.  I’ll admit, I have basically let you guys run the site for awhile now, the message boards and comments are pretty much the reason to come back.  I’ve had so much stuff happen this last year and change, and the easiest thing to let go of was this site.  For that I apologize.  I know we need to whip ourselves back into shape, so I want to get started in little ways that will help.

Someone’s trying again…

I just got the results of an “invalid WhoIs complaint” from GoDaddy.  Someone tried to report this site as having invalid info, which would invalidate the registration and could result in GoDaddy removing the site from DNS and canceling the registration.

Nice try, asshole.  As GoDaddy told you:

Thank you for contacting us. The WhoIs information for the following domain(s) is valid:

MOOREWATCH.COM

You cowardly little jagoff.

Hey, where’d you guys go?

Read about it here.  Fun.  *cough*

Breakin’ the (bad) law

In defiance of the blatant attack on everyone’s First Amendment rights, this website will run any ad for any politician seeking election this November, from now until Election Day.

FOR FREE.

McCain/Feingold is a blight on our free society and this site stands in defiance with thousands of other sites who refuse to take one more day of this.  This far and no further.  The buck stops here.  We will stop at nothing less than a repeal of this un-Constitutional law.

If you are a candidate, of ANY political stripe, Democrat, Green, Republican, Independant...I don’t care.  I will not refuse anyone.  During this period of civil disobedience, i will run any ad from any politician who is legally and officially in a race.  Email me at the address to your left and I’ll give you a special code for BlogAds, or we can discuss a custom ad banner or text ad.  All free.  I’ll even create your graphics if you need that done.  Again...free.

Why am I doing this?  For one very simple reason.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

McCain/Feingold silences any and all advertising by candidates until the election as of today.  This leave ONLY special interest groups with the ability to manipulate and flood the airwaves with whatever message they decide voters should hear.  Groups like MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, and yes, even the NRA has a 527.  Whatever side you are on, you cannot want these groups to be the sole voices in the media for the next two months straight.

We, along with candidates for office, are The People, and we are peacably assembling.  I think it goes without saying that each of us has a grievance against the government for one thing or another.  We have the right to speak about candidates and to have candidates speak to us.  This is where left and right, Republican and Democrat, Conservative and Liberal, gay & straight, men & women, we all come together and say “No.  You will not destroy our right to share ideas and talk in the public square so that we may determine who we wish to choose as a leader.”

If you have a website, I urge you to do the same.

Let’s build a wiki

Let’s use the wiki function built into the site to make a wiki that actually contains information we want people to know about Moore.

Here is our Wiki.

Here’s where you can learn how to use it.

I’ll be checking in to make sure no one is abusing the system...filling it with nonsense or vandalizing pages will result in bannination faster than Trogdor can hit you with his big beefy arm.  Don’t make me have him burninate you.

If we do this right, we’ll never, EVER have to hear “I went to the site and it;s just a bunch of nazi fascist neocon rightwingers talking there’s no PROOOOOOOOOFFFFFF...”

Goddamned hippies.  ;)

It’s Baa-aack…sort of

Update

IT’S WORKING!  Forums and all.  Many thanks to Rick Ellis from pMachine for talking me through it.

What a couple of days, and I’ve only gotten ONE site up and running, and this needs more work.

Well, if you haven’t heard yet, or noticed that the site looks strangely out of date, we lost ALL our data again.  Every bit and byte.  hard drive failure.

My only backup was from April.

That will NEVER happen again.

If you are an author here at Moorewatch and you want to re-post any article you’ve written since April 10th of this year, please feel free.  You might be able to reconstruct it from Google cache.

In fact, it would be helpful if people re-constructed old articles and send them to me...jimk.moorewatch at gmail dot com.  Let me know which ones you find and are willing to do and I’ll try to make sure no one does the same one.

Forums are screwed up still, but I need professional help on that one, so bear with me.

One last thing: If you registered an account in the last 4 months, you’re gonna have to do it again.  All were lost.

Uncle JimK Wants You

We’re looking for one or two volunteers to be on the MichaelMoore.Com beat.  Your job would be to read the drivel on his website (specifically his site, not necessarily TV appearances or books or anything else) and write posts about it.  You can “fisk” his ramblings, simply point out flaws and inconsistencies, whatever you feel comfortable doing.  Of course at times other writers may have something to say about some insanity Mikey posts, but generally the beat would be yours alone.  It’d be rare that any more than one or two of us would want to tackle his nonsense.

All we ask is that you be honest and do your homework.

If you’re interested, comment or email me.  Y’all know where I be at.

The ads

Consider this a focus group question: What products would you like to see advertised in the ads on this site?  Not the Blogads, the lowest-price product search ads.

No point in specifying stuff you don’t like, right?

We need your help!

It’s that time of the year again...time for the PBS Moorewatch fund drive.  I have no tote bags to give you.  In fact I’m so frigging broke I’m accepting free totebags.  I plan to convert them to clothing.

Here’s the deal: 

New ads flickering?

If you are seeing a weird flicker with the new ads...you’re using an older install of Firefox.  More here.

Looking for new writers

Read about it here.

We need your videotape

Hey fellow Moorewatchers.  I need your help for a little project of which I cannot speak freely at this time.  However, I can say that if you dig this place and you’re interested in a broader, more well-rounded, less myopic view of Our Boy Mikey...you’re going to like it.  I know that Moorewatch can be narrow of focus at times.

What we need is your help.  We need videotape.  Actual physical tapes.  News broadcasts, TV appearances, absolutely ANYTHING you have on Michael Moore.  Nothing from movies or documentaries, but TV appearances, college appearances, political rallies, demos and news footage will all work.  Physical tapes would be best.  In a pinch, if there is absolutely no way to get the source, I might be able to use downloadable video but it’s going to have to be fairly decent quality.  Definitely look to physical tapes first.

Again, it doesn’t matter what show or network it was on, or even how old it is.  I would say we could even use foreign news sources.  Mike on al Jazeera?  Sure, why not.  If you have ANY tapes with footage of Mike...please consider sending it to me.  I promise it will be put to good use.

You can send it to:

Moore Tapes
PO Box 4302
Hamden CT 06514 USA

Much thanks in advance.  Y’all rock.  :)

OT The Starkcast #020

Super Extra Mega Special Very Long All Listener Feedback Gangbang Extravaganza!  Remember when those porno chicks were all compteing to see who could bang the most guys in a single day?  Show 20 is a lot like that.  Only with phone calls.  And I’m not as hot as a porn chick.

Get it here in MP3 or here in bookmarkable AAC.

TOPICS

- Duh...YOU!  Your emails, your calls.  Thrill as you hear calls from Laurence Simon, Drumwaster, Sean the 12 year old, Cam, Jason, James, Frank, Noble Brown, Christian, Fake Satan...maybe even an Angel.  Chill as you hear alternate versions of the show!  Be amazed at memories of killing a teacher over bad grades!  Be shocked at Emily as she tries to convince me to install a sexual aid so we can...be together.  It’s all here on the big 20th show.
- Vote for me at Podcast Alley!
- THE BIG STARKCAST IPOD PACKAGE GIVEAWAY! 30GB iPod and a complete package.  Huh-huh..I said package.

Comments are yours to abuse.

ATTENTION ALL MOOREWATCHERS: Don’t do this

Someone just emailed me a photoshopped joke image that puts Mama Moonbat’s head on some fat naked chick with a guy’s finger up the ass and Moore’s head on the guy.

It says “We’ll pull out when you do.” Ha.  Very...funny.  However, what is not amusing was putting our URL on the image as though we made it or released it.  IF YOU SEE THIS THING ANYWHERE, MOOREWATCH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CREATION.

Let me restate that in simple terms: We did not make this. There are three people who are “authorized” (so to speak) to speak for this website, and none of them did this.  If you are a fan of the site and you decided to help us out by slapping the URL on there...don’t.  You aren’t helping.  We’ll do the jokes with our name on them, thank you very much.

Of course it might not be a fan...that’s certainly not anything new, creating something stupid to try to embarrass someone you don’t like.  It would be right up a Moore fan’s alley to create a lie and attribute it falsely to another in the hopes of using that lie to paint their enemy in a bad light.

Whatever the story is...it’s not ours.

Site stuff

Some of you may have noticed, and judging by my inbox, a lot of you, a new sponsor in the Blogads to the right hand side.  Someone has purchased an ad that heavily touts the progressive/liberal perspective.  And I ran it.  As we’ve always said...we’ll take your money, right or left or in-between.  So check ‘em out...who knows, maybe they have a point or two.

Also...top right corner you’ll see a link to the new iLounge.com downloadable book.  Last time they ran a contest, you people were AWESOME and you won it for me.  This time YOU can benefit.  The grand prize is a bunch of iPod shuffles to give away...and I’ll gladly give them away if I win, I wish I had more stuff to give away in contests and the like.

Basically all you have to do is click the link once every couple days.  Don’t do it constantly, I don’t want to cheat, but if you happen to click from home and work...well...that’s not cheating.  The book is WELL worth the download as well if you are interested in or own an iPod or other digital player.

If I win, I will split the lot between Moorewatch and my podcast...I will keep one of the shuffles just to play around with, but give everything else away.  So...click...and tell a friend!