I Am SO Popular in Cuba

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the Wikileaks scandal, but there is one little aspect that came to light recently.  A diplomatic cable claimed that Michael Moore’s Sicko was banned in Cuba.  According to the cable, Cuban doctors were concerned—stop me if this sounds familiar—that the idyllic healthcare system portrayed in the film was at variance with reality (something we have demonstrated over and over again right here at Moorewatch).

Well, you just knew Mickey wouldn’t let that go unanswered:

It is a stunning look at the Orwellian nature of how bureaucrats for the State spin their lies and try to recreate reality (I assume to placate their bosses and tell them what they want to hear)

Of course, if you follow Michael’s bullshit, you would know that he thinks the Wikileaks revelations are 100% accurate when they embarrass the United States.  But have someone gainsay his movie, and that’s pure fiction.

There’s only one problem—‘Sicko’ had just been playing in Cuban theaters. Then the entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008! The Cubans embraced the film so much so it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of ‘Sicko’ were set up in towns all across the country.

I want you to step back a moment and think about this.  Michael Moore is boasting that his film was beloved by one of the most oppressive regimes in the Western hemisphere.  He is boasting that his film was used as propaganda by that regime to fool their own people into believing their broken useless (but free!) healthcare system was so much better than the dynamic, innovative (if flawed) system employed by their nemesis.  He even quotes from one of the approved Cuban news agencies.

We’ve occasionally joked around here at Moorewatch by calling Mike some variation of Mikey Riefenstahl.  It’s very rare that he himself tries to own up to that moniker.

But the bigger issue here is how our government seemed to be colluding with the health insurance industry to destroy a film that might have a hand in bringing about what the Cubans already have in their poverty-ridden third world country: free, universal health care. And because they have it and we don’t, Cuba has a better infant mortality rate than we do, their life expectancy is just 7 months shorter than ours, and, according to the WHO, they rank just two places behind the richest country on earth in terms of the quality of their health care.

First of all, if the government were colluding with the insurance industry, they would have been broadcasting Castro’s love of Mike’s films. Their popularity with the Cuban government would do more to discredit them than anything we could type here on Moorewatch.  Only when you’ve drunk as deeply from the totalitarian well as Mike has, does Castro’s endorsement seem like a good thing.

Second, he never learns, does he?  We’ve talked about how the numbers coming out of Cuba are bullshit.  I’ve personally deconstructed the infamous WHO report.  And yet he’s still flogging these long-debunked numbers.

Well, that’s propaganda for you.  They don’t change their opinions to fit the facts.  They change the fact to suit their opinions.

Hawaii Bye Bye

It’s hard times for the kiddies in Hawaii.

Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched.

Gov. Linda Lingle’s administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program. A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.

“People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free,” said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. “I don’t believe that was the intent of the program.”

What?  How can this be?  You mean that when the government provides something for free it provides an incentive for people to take advantage of the system?  My God, who could have ever dreamed of such a thing!

State health officials argued that most of the children enrolled in the universal child care program previously had private health insurance, indicating that it was helping those who didn’t need it.

This is why universal health insurance is such a bad idea.  It encourages people to do things that they normally wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) do.

Update Here’s a quote, generally attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler which so perfectly predicts and illustrates this dynamic.

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependence back into bondage.

This is why I’m a Libertarian, and why the less government we have in our lives the better.  Nobody will listen, though.  They’ll keep on looking at the ample teat of government as a place to suckle for free, always expecting other people to pay for things they should be doing themselves.  When you remove the incentive for responsible behavior you end up with citizens behaving irresponsibly.

Which, I’m sure, would NEVER happen in Michael Moore’s fantasy healthcare utopia, would it?

Canadian Hands

At one point, during the promotional period for Sicko, Michael Moore said something to the effect of, “Do you think you could find anyone in Canada who would trade their healthcare system for ours?” (If you can remember the exact quote please post a link or, if you’re a fellow poster, put it as an update.) At any rate, recently there was a debate held over universal healthcare, and one of the panelists arguing in favor of it was Paul Krugman, liberal economist and New York Times columnist.  Here’s a portion of an exchange from the debate.

PAUL KRUGMAN
And private insurance? That’s the thing, I— Actually, can I just —I wanted to ask a question. And—

JOHN DONVAN [MODERATOR]
Please—please do—

PAUL KRUGMAN
—and I wanted to ask, actually two questions, to the audience. First, how many Canadians, would Canadians in the room please raise your hands. [ONE PERSON APPLAUDS, LAUGHTER]

JOHN DONVAN
We have about seven hands going up—

PAUL KRUGMAN
Okay, not as many as I thought. Okay, of those of you who are not on the panel who are Canadians,, how many of you think you have a terrible health care system. [PAUSE] One, two—

JOHN DONVAN
We see—almost all of the same hands going up. [LAUGHTER]

PAUL KRUGMAN
Bad move on my part. [APPLAUSE]

Remember, folks, Canada is a utopia where everyone gets all the super awesome magical unicorn healthcare they need, and only evil rich corporations pay for it.

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.)

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!

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). 

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.

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.