I’m sure you would all like a chance to weigh in about the debate.

A few thoughts to get the conversation started.

1) It seemd to me that both candidates prepared for a 60 minute debate, rather than a 90 minute debate. There was a lot of recycling of material.

2) Kerry had a hard time defending the charge that “Bush mislead us” or as Lehrer said “Bush lied”

3) Bush abused the 30 second rebuttal rule by asking for more time and then not responding to specifically what Kerry had just spoke about.

4) Kerry misjudged the language he used when he spoke about putting all of our efforts into catching Bin Laden and left himself open to look “uninformed” when Bush rebutted with “ The war on terror is more than just in Afghanistan”.

5) Bush spent a lot of time memorizing specific quotes and dates from Kerry in support of the war, but should have been prepared for other obvious questions, and answered them quicker.

6) Kerry nodded in agreement with a lot of the things Bush was saying, I don’t know if he realized that he was projecting that.

7) Bush looked like he was leaning on the podium, kinda hunched over, not a big deal, but a stark contrast to Kerry’s posture.

8) Kerry looked like an uninformed outsider on the issue of Korea and China.

9) Bush declared “we will win” about 67 times too many. Obviously at this point in the game, if he hasn’t felt like he’s convinced us of that, he should just quit saying it. It’s obvious and a waste of time.

10) Kerry repeated the line “A fresh start” in reference to bringing in new coalition partners, but we know that France and Germany said that they would not join us, no matter who is President ,just this week.

11) Kerry looked like a liar when he accused the Pres of cutting funding for police, and then Bush cited the actual figures.

12) Bush should try reeeeealy hard to not stick out his tongue so often, he reminds me of my crazy aunt when he does that.

That should be enough to get us started.

*edit*

For all of you lurkers out there, this is a pretty good time to register and give us your quick opinion on this subject.  At any given time there are over 100 of you out there, and we’d like to hear what you have to say.

British Teeth

You know the UK, which has “free” universal medical care for everyone?  Well this guy couldn’t get in to see a dentist, so he opted for the at-home variety.

A DESPERATE man pulled out three teeth with rusty PLIERS because he could not find an NHS dentist.

Divorced George Daulat, 47, numbed the pain by downing half a bottle of vodka.

He said: “People will think I am crazy to have pulled my own teeth out but I just could not stand the pain any longer.”

Dad-of-one George had failed to get an appointment at an emergency NHS dentist.

And a friend called almost 20 NHS and private dentists in vain.

George explained: “I had terrible toothache for weeks and the pain killers had stopped working.

“I was lying awake at night, driven mad by the pain. In the end I simply couldn’t take any more.

“I had a pair of pliers in a tool box. They were old and a bit rusty but I knew they would do the job.

But I’m confused.  In the UK, where the government is so compassionate that it provides all the free medical care anyone could ever need, how could there be a situation like this?  This sort of thing should only happen here in fascist corporate Amerikkka!  That’s what Michael Moore tells us, anyway.

His home town of Scarbrough, North Yorks, is so hard-hit with the lack of NHS dentists that queues stretched hundreds of yards earlier this year when one finally opened.

Around 3,000 people tried to join — but they were left stranded when Dutch dentist Aria Van Drie fled after it was revealed she had criminal convictions.

George says he is still searching for a dentist to finish off his DIY removal.

He added: “It is the most horrible thing I have ever done but I was driven by desperation.

“The Government needs to sort out the problems in the NHS so that no one else ever has to go through this.”

Odd, isn’t it, that I don’t ever remember seeing people standing in a line hundreds of yards long to get dentistry here in America.

Junior Speaks

Remember the big deal that Michael Moore made when Dale Earnhardt Jr. took his pit crew to go and see Fahrenheit 9/11?  He’s still got a link to that factoid on his website.  The idea Mikey was promoting was that even the die-hard Southern redneck NASCAR types were interested in hearing “the truth” about Bush.  Well, tonight on 60 Minutes Earnhardt was asked about that incident, and it’s hardly what Mikey portrayed.

Politically, Junior does side with a voting block known as NASCAR dads. He’s a Republican and he supports George W. Bush. Yet, he took his crew to see Michael Moore’s movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Why?

“I like hearing both sides of the argument. I thought the movie was well done. But my dad was a Republican, and I’m a Republican, and so [it’s] not that I came out of there going, ‘I ain’t voting for Bush again,’” says Earnhardt Jr. “That didn’t happen, and I didn’t expect that to happen. I just wanted to go and enjoy the movie. Because I knew Michael Moore would try to push a few buttons. And I just wanted to see how hard he mashed them.”

In other words, Earnhardt was much like a whole lot of people who went to see Mikey’s craptastic lie-fest, which is why he’s crapping himself at the prospect that it’s not going to unseat an American president like he had hoped.

Red Carpet

Tomorrow night I wil be at the official premiere of Michael Moore Hates America, out at the Writer’s Guild in Beverly Hills.  If you’re in the LA area and would like to attend, you can get info from the link above.

Genesis

My mailbox is filling up quickly. 154 e-mails today and counting. Most are folk responding to our pleas for ideas about how to get 5000 DVD’s to Iraq. Thanks to everyone who e-mailed with their ideas. Well, almost everyone. In the middle of my happiest moment, working on a super cool, super secret project to send these DVD’s to our boys and girls in green, I received my first hate mail. I guess I should be happy that it is only my first. For the most part, since I enlisted here to write stuff, I have had a genuinely enjoyable honeymoon period with readers.

Now, this particular hate mail wasn’t worth re-posting, in fact, it was barely worth remembering, nearly forgotten already by the time I hit the delete button. However, the main sentiment kind of stuck in my head, because I have heard it so many time before:

“Why would you dedicate a whole website to insulting/debunking/ picking on/ obsessing on/ one man?”

If I had a nickel for every time I read that sentiment, I’d have to change my name to Nickeltrooper.

Why do we dedicate a whole website to keeping an eye on just one man? Most of you kinda know already, but here is why I throw my two cents (or nickels) in. 

Young Lions

Not everyone believes Moore’s nonsense.

But here’s what I noticed in the DFAC today: young faces. Young determined faces. Not much older (but far wiser and much more mature) than the crowd at a high school lunch room. You can tell without asking what these guys think. They look you in the eye. And if you can stand to look back you’ll see into the eyes of the undefeated. There is no quit here, no early out, no cut and run. These are young men with an ugly job, America’s finest sent to do our worst and best, and they make me feel old and inspired all at the same time.

So here is the first impression of your fine young sons: They walk straight and tall with heads held high in this war-torn world, in this sagging land. I wish you who can only read of defeat trumpeted in your newspapers or on your TVs could have walked among them and seen this for yourselves.

I read where someone said George Bush and Dick Cheney are the only people in America who think Iraq is going well. That may be so, but I don’t believe for a minute they think it’s a picnic.

And I saw 300 young Americans in Iraq today who didn’t look like quitters.

Good for them.  And Moorewatch will be able to help 5000 others feel the same way soon.

A lot of this obviously has to do with media coverage and perceptions.  For the left to win the battle of public opinion, things have to be horrible.  Tragedies have to occur so they can point the finger of blame.  In this particular issue, the troops have to be at their lowest so they can both complain publically how much they hate Bush and fail in their mission (and failure means death, but no one wants to admit that is precisely what they’re hoping for, a series of tragic events they can exploit).  That way we can all blame the CiC and the left, no matter who is at the helm, carries the day.

Yeah, well, that’s a bunch of crap.  And we’re going to make sure that the men and women risking their lives know that America does not want them to fail.  We’re going to fight these false perceptions, the way we fight Moore’s false assertions about our country.

“They walk straight and tall with heads held high in this war-torn world, in this sagging land. I wish you who can only read of defeat trumpeted in your newspapers or on your TVs could have walked among them and seen this for yourselves.”

Exactly.

We’re getting through

John* over at Right Wing News listed the top 125 political websites (not just blogs) and guess who came in at #74?  That’s right, us.  Now, I’m not sure we deserve to beat sites like the Creator of Worlds (who mixes humor and commentary to an expert frappe and deserves a lot more traffic!) or Chronwatch (the site that kind of made Lee and I go “Hey, what about a ‘Moorewatch?") or one of my absolute favorite blogs, Powerline, but it amused me greatly that we beat the BlogsforBush site, although I’m not entirely sure why I find it funny. 

The rankings are pure traffic, based off the numbers at Alexa.

So people are seeing the things we say, folks.  No matter what the trolls say, we *are* making a difference.  I’ve always believed it, but some times that simple point gets lost in all the brouhaha of running a moderately popular blog or website.  Or I lose sight of it, which is probably a more accurate statement.

Changing the subject just a bit, Michelle Malkin talks here about how some people say the blogoshphere is dominated bya few major players.  Yeah, well guess what?  When I first started posting to my own blog, I was excited to get 5 unique readers a day.  Now I do 500 a day consistently.  Small, but good for me.  I don’t need the extra pressure of a hugely successful personal blog.  I know Lee was happy enough to call me the day he broke 50.  Now he does anywhere from 2500 to 5000 depending on current events.  Amazing growth in a short time.  When we started Moorewatch, Lee and I almost threw a party when we started to consistently break a hundred per day.  Now we’re on “the list.” Michelle is right: new blogs can and do break in all the time.  A year ago I never heard of half the blogs I read every day.  Two years ago I read maybe 5 or six of the over 150 blogs I have bookmarked.

So why did we make it?  Well, we’re not the only Moore debunking site out there.  But we are the only one on the list.  I don’t exactly know why we made it.  We’re awesome?  Our striking good looks?  Rumors about our big p///// uhh, server?  Whatever the reason, I am thankful to have a place to go to both impart my opinions and learn from others.  We have a good thing going here, and I think it’s safe for me to speak for Lee and Para when I say we will continue to try to make it better and more informative for as long as you’ll have us.

Update

* For some reason, my clouded brain confused Charles at LGF with John Hawkins at RWN.  My apologies!

Has the bloom come off the rose?

American RealPolitik says Moore Re-Run Flops

Well, the irritating news is that Michael Moore re-released Fahrenheit 9/11 over the weekend...but that’s where the good news starts!

By my calculations, less than 7 people showed up to view each screening of Moore’s epic slander-fest leaving him to ponder how all-too-quickly-quickly the all-embracing, smother-love of the liberal left can turn to complete and utter apathy ass their amazingly short, unfocusable attention spans and wonderfully reality free minds forget that he even existed. Box Office Mojo has the weekend figures and this is how I break it down…

Fahrenheit 9/11 played in 603 theaters and grossed $250,000. That is about $414.59 per theater for the three days counted which means each theater took in about $138.19 per day. Let’s assume that each theater showed the film three times per day (I figure that most do at least two and in the cities and burbs where this was probably heavily re-released it was played many more) which amounts to about $46.06/showing. Let’s assume that the price was $7 per ticket (I think $8 is the average but I’ll give my pal Mike a break like he does all of his subjects which means that about 6.58 people attended each showing. I don’t know about you but that really renews my faith in America as even jogging the figures around a bit doesn’t make the picture much rosier.

Interesting.  I honestly would have expected a re-release to do better.  Could it be that people are starting to see the forest for the trees?  Is it possible that the truth is out there?  I want to believe.

Next week: I write short posts in nothing but cliches from musical theater. 

Counter to Moore’s latest lie

SpongeMike Sweatpants’ new message is all about how Kerry has never taken any position on Iraq except believing President Bush.

That is a lie. 

Kerry argued FOR a pre-emptive strike against Iraq AND he did it while Bill Clinton was the POTUS. Furthermore, he insulted Russia and France while doing it and implied they had a monetary concern for not supporting a pre-emptive strike.  So much for all this talk about how he would fix relations with our allies.  He never believed in the French and Russian perspective on Iraq until he decided he wanted to be President.

Can you say flip-flop?  I knew you could. 

Kerry is lying and Moore is lying.  No matter how you feel about Bush or Iraq, these lies should not be forgiven just because you agree with the political idealogy these men pretend to represent.

Idea to accompany the DVDs

I’ve been sitting here pondering just how to effectively get the message that we, the people, care about these soldiers AND their mission, and that we support them not just in word, but in deed and spirit.

And the bottom line is, nothing works like a personal letter.  If I had a nickel for every time I was told about, or read an account of, how a personal letter, even from a stranger, improved troop morale in thefield, I would be rich enough to buy all 5000 DVDs myself. 

This leads me to a dilemma: how to get letters in the hands of troops and make sure the crackpots aren’t taking advantage of our need for speed on this issue...but I think I have the answer.  Take a look at this idea and shoot holes in it if you can, because I want to know before I start if it will work.

I’ll set up an email address.  We’ll publicize it here and around the Internet, and people will write supportive letters to the troops and send them to this email address.

I will weed out the crackpots and spam, and pick say, 5-10 of the best, most poignant and well-written letters, and print 5000 copies of each letter at Kinkos or Staples.  I’ll then ship these copies to whomever helps us distribute the DVDs, with instructions that one of each be included with each DVD.

The costs, based on my best guess, would be around 1500 bucks for copies, and a boatload for shipping that much paper (probably near to 300 bucks or more depending on what method we used and how fast we needed to ship).

Anyone see any unfixable hurdles in this idea?

I need your help- NOW!

Ladies and Gents,

I am so incredibly happy to announce to you that I have just secured 5000 free copies of Fahrenhype 911 for distribution to the troops.

Yes, you read that right. FIVE THOUSAND COPIES!

I will be giving more details in the near future.

But for now. I need your help.

I need to know who handles shipments like this to Iraq. Organizations, charities, or even official avenues.
How can we get them distributed? How fast can it happen?

I need addresses, names, phone numbers, anything.

Time is very short, and we must move quickly.

Also, I will still need help covering the distribution and freight costs to get them there, so stay tuned for the new site on monday where you can paypal some buck-a-roos to help us get them into the hands of the troops.

Thank you to all of those who helped with this so far , and thanks for all of those who will donate next week.

This is amazing.

***UPDATE***

Please be aware that we will be sending the movie “FAHRENHYPE-911” not Fahrenheit 9-11, some confused e-mails are coming in about this.  We are not sending the Moore movie. 

Un-Duping the Troops

Well folks. Either our idea to help educate the troops about the lies in F911 is spreading, or other great minds are thinking like us. A link from the Blogfather (Instapundit) led me to an article over at JunkYardBlog where they are planning to try to raise money to purchase and ship copies of Fahrenhype9-11 over to the troops in Iraq.

All this has me thinking, blogosphere. We need to counter Michael Moore’s propaganda. We need to find a way to get some kind of counter material into the hands of our troops in the field, so that they have some kind of balance and a truthful take on the war. Ideally, this remedy should debunk Moore’s ideology at least as it relates to the war.

This is a fine idea. I spoke with Jason Clarke via e-mail last week, (author of MMIASFWM), who appears in the movie, and he says it avery well done piece. David Hardy also appears,as does Dick Morris, Zell Miller and Ann Coulter? ( at least the troops can enjoy the eye candy) Jason also has a link to this on Moorelies.com

The idea is spreading.

The DVD’s sell for $14.99 so for every three folks who can spare 5 bucks, we can send a DVD over there which will be seen by dozens of US and coalition Troops.  This is a fine idea. The Film is already completed, and is a better “product” to send as opposed to our photocopied lists and such. ( not that that was a bad idea either)

We still need a list of addresses, so if anyone knows.........e-mail me. Any ideas about how to co-ordinate this, do the same.

I think it’s time to put the word out , get the wallet out and let’s roll with this. As soon as I have all of the details, I will let you know who to Paypal or where to send checks.

Until then , please consider whether we can count on you for some help. And fire up your e-mail lists.

**Update** This is growing hair by the minute. I have already been contacted by one group who sends care packages to the troops and just spoke with Clarke who says this is moving along quickly. Stay posted. And seriously, think about donating a few bucks.