....Thursday, March 30th, 2005 is “Stop the Draft” day, brought to you by Michael Moore and friends.

Over at his site today, you can see that Moore is offering his support to the “issue du jour” with a link to what amounts to a very confusing protest.

Is that actually supposed to be a burning draft card?  (THERE ARE NO DRAFT CARDS!!!!)

I hate to be the party pooper Paratrooper here, but I feel compelled to explain that while the draft is NOT on the table, the one sure way to compell the Government to revive the draft is to make sure people are not able to volunteer for the Military. You see, if you stop Military recruiting, then the Government must then reinstate the draft, to provide for that “common defense” we always hear so much about.

I particularly find amusement in the idea of “shutting down recruiting stations” as a way to stop the draft. Is it just me, or is this quite possibly the dumbest protest ever? 

Gun Crime

Moorewatch reader “Tribe has Spoken” just sent me this interesting article.

DAVID HENCH, of the Portland Press Herald Writer ( Maine) reports:

Maine rates low in violent gun crimes

Maine has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country, but when it comes to violent crime, those guns are seldom put to use.

Figures published this week by the Muskie Institute show that guns were involved in 92 of the 1,067 murders, robberies and aggravated assaults recorded by the state in 2003. That means just 8.6 percent of violent crimes involved firearms in Maine, the lowest rate for any state in the country.

Gun control opponents say Maine is a clear example that the availability of guns does not lead to more crime.

Maine is actully the third lowest in violent gun crimes, after North Dakota and Vermont. Accoring to the Portland article, the US averages about 27% of it’s violent crimes committed with firearms. 

Compare this to Moore’s fabled Utopian “crime free” Canada,: “... despite seven decades of mandatory handgun registration, the use of handguns in firearm homicides has been steadily increasing from 27% in 1974 to 66% in 2002."

Sure, I won’t argue that the US has more crime, but it doesn’t seem to be as “firearm specific” as Moore would lead us all to believe. ( We’ve already stated this many times, but I love when a new study proves us right again and again.)

The Revolution will be blogovised

I recieved an e-mail from the author of this piece, and in it he solicited my comments about the article.  Go check it out, then c’mon back to see what I sent him in reply.

Ulterior Motive?

If you’ve been wondering what Mikey has been up to lately, wonder no more.

Authorities in Monroe are searching for a man known as the “Michael Moore bandit.”

The man, who police say earned the nickname because of his resemblance to the filmmaker, is wanted in the armed robbery of a Standard Federal Bank at about 9:20 a.m. on Saturday.

Police said the man entered the bank at 602 Monroe Avenue and implied that he had a weapon. An undetermined amount of cash was taken in the robbery.

The man was last seen walking south from the bank.

He’s described as white, in his 40s, 6 feet tall, with a beard and wearing a plaid shirt and a baseball cap.

Police said the man is also wanted for two robberies in Westland and for a robbery in Carleton, Mich.

Now we know why Mikey was so adamant that those guns shouldn’t be in the bank.

A common refrain.

Moorewatch reader “Holdek” sends the following request:

A common refrain on Moorewatch is that Michael Moore was wrong in F-911 to approach congressmen and ask them to help get their kids to fight in the war that they (the congressmen) voted for.  Well, now it looks like none other than the United States Army is about to do the same thing. 

It’s time for you and the other keyboard warrior chicken hawks to apologize to Moore on your site.  Or do the next best thing...put your money where your mouth is and join up.  They need you!

Yes, Holdek, the Army is having a tougher time recruiting these days. I wonder why?

*UPDATE*

Holdek e-mailed me accusing me of making up the whole student protesting the recruiters story.

Here’s a video link from Moore’s website.

It’s pretty funny when it is revealed that they are actually protesting the Army Corps of Engineers at frist , before someone points out to them that they are civilians, also note the college asshat screaming “Get these terrorists out of our school"and then “Get these Commies out of our school”. Funny

Read on....

The Face of Death

A reader sends in this link to some British news website, which had a small article up about the recent school shooting.  Guess whose picture is up there next to the article. 

The latest school shootings

I have nothing new to say.  Parents, you can prevent this kind of thing.  Schools, you can actually respond when a kid tells you that he’s troubled.  Beyond that, I don’t know what else we can add.

I’m sure our fine filmmaker friend would have a whole other set of reasons.

“My son was killed because we were poor’’

Lila Lipscomb, star of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” appeared this weekend at a Chicago protest marking the second anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Columbine Copycats in Canada

Not to be too flippant, but weren’t we led by Mikey to believe that this kind of thing couldn’t happen in Canada?

Three teenage boys have been arrested for allegedly conspiring to seize control of a school and methodically murder some of its students and teachers.

Police found gunpowder and other material used for making pipe bombs at the boys’ homes and believe the youths had practised making bombs.

The boys, aged 15 to 17, were Saint John air cadets and their alleged plot was planned for April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre where 12 students and a teacher were killed.

At a Saint John bail hearing for the two eldest teenagers on Wednesday, police Constable Rick Russell said the boys were plotting a “planned takeover” of Saint John High where one of the boys is a pupil. The other two are from Harbourview High.

He said the boys had been practising making bombs for some time, and were planning to attack the school’s administration offices with explosives, where they intended to kill the principal and other officials with bombs and guns. He said the boys then planned to order a list of “hated” students into the offices, one by one, to be executed.

Const. Russell said police had found writing by the boys naming the people they planned to kill.

He said the 17-year-old had also written: “I hate my life ... I hate everyone.”

The thing we all need to remember is that it’s easy to point to a place and say “See, they do things better.” Well, the truth is no one is doing things much better than anyone else, and almost no nation on earth has the same challenges we face as a society in America.  From the sense of entitlement to the clashings of culture to the fact that we grant mankind the freedoms he so deserves (well...we grant *some* of them.  Not enough of them.), we allow things no other nation allows and we mix cultures in a way that no other nation does.  It’s simply not accurate or fair to compare the United States to any other nation when it comes to controlling the population in any meaningful way.

But Mikey did it.  He tried to tell us in “Bowling for Columbine” that Canada was doing it better.

But they aren’t.  Why?  Because it’s not the guns.  It’s not satellite delivery missiles.  It’s not Charleton Heston or Dick Clark or the culture of fear or the Michigan Militia.

There are two primary reasons why kids decide to kill people in a grand and horrifying way.  Those two things are brain chemistry and parenting.  Some kids, through nature or nurture, have bad brain chemistry.  Emotional problems feed off of and feed into that chemistry and the whole thing becomes this exponential growth.  Couple that with parents that simply don’t care and you end up with a recipe for disaster.

You want to make certain your child is not one of these kids?  Be a better parent.  Get involved in your kids life even if they hate you for it.  Your kid only needs enough privacy to develop a sense of independance.  They should not be able to build pipe bombs and saw off shotguns in their bedroom the way the Columbine kids did.  Music and video games have no negative effects on a healthy child raised by loving, involved parents.

If your child is wired wrong, seek professional help.  There are very few conditions that cannot be treated.  Now, that doesn’t mean stick a Prozac in their mouths and plop them in front of the Xbox.  It means ongoing care and evaluation, something you signed up for when you gave birth to a child.

Brain chemistry and parenting.  It doesn’t matter if you’re Canadian with your door unlocked or a Republican in the States with 73 guns and a job at a weapons manufacturer.  You can raise your child right.  Healthy kids with good parents don’t kill their classmates and teachers.  Period.

And if you ignore your children and let the school, TV and Internet babysit them...and God forbid they have something just a bit off in their head and these ideas take root...you’ll never find out until it’s too late.  That is an international truth.  Canadians are not immune, no matter what Mikey tries to sell tell you.

The future of Michael Moore.

I was just over at Moorelies, where Jason Clarke, co-author of “Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man”, stole the thoughts right out of my head when he wrote:

After Bush’s reelection, F911’s Oscar failure(s), a hugely successful election in Iraq, and now massive pro-democracy protests in Lebanon, doesn’t Moore’s current homepage seem hopelessly, pathetically dated? Is there anything less original than another in a long line of anti-Halliburton, Bush-is-Hitler articles, let alone an entire web-based broadsheet full of them?

Is Moore still relevant in any meaningful way, other than as a circa early-2003 curiosity?

Let’s be honest, it’s been a slow Michael Moore news year, as he has had very little to say since January.  His website “updates” daily, however, it’s the same old stuff, “Students reject recruiters” or “ Bush meets with resistance to Social Security Reform” or something of the sort, nothing in the way of any original material, just links.

Where once there were about 20 articles being written about him every day and linked to Google News, there are now about only 4 per week. The media circus that has surrounded Moore for the last 6 months of 2004 seems to have folded it’s tent and gone home.

He may be busy working on his next project or even taking a vacation, but what I find interesting is the releative silence of his fans.

Perhaps the changes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are having a Tryptophan-esque effect on the moonbats, or maybe, just maybe, they simply don’t like him any more. After investing so much moonbat hope in the effectiveness of the “Michael Moore method of political dissent” during the last election, only to have their dreams crushed by the wing nuts, might they now be looking for a spokesman who doesn’t actually drive the other side to vote in greater numbers? The Democrats are still reluctant to throw one of their own under the bus the way the Republicans often do, ( think Gingrich, Lott, etc) , but I think the left may follow the lead of Hollywood and issue Michael Moore a first class “snubbing”.

So to answer Jason’s question, “ Is Moore still relevant in any meaningful way, other than as a circa early-2003 curiosity?”

In my opinion, Moore is still relevant, not as a threat to future aspiring Republican or Moderate Democrat candidates he was once thought to be, but as a textbook example of what happens when a political movement goes over the edge. People seem to be realizing that simply having the loudest voice in a political debate in not enough. Mark my words, in the next election, calmer voices and personalities will become the spokespersons for the Democrats, and Michael Moore will be a reminder of what not to do.

Is there a Tax Lawyer in the house?

This just in, forwarded by Moorewatcher DJ:

The New York Times Reports:

The documentary filmmaker Michael Moore seems to be a fan of the novelist Rick Moody.

In December, Mr. Moore and his wife, Kathleen Glynn, transferred the deed of an apartment they own on the Upper West Side to a corporation named after Hex Raitliffe, a character in one of Mr. Moody’s novels. Papers were filed with the New York Department of State on Dec. 3 to create Hex Raitliffe L.L.C., and on Dec. 22, ownership of the couple’s condo was transferred to the corporation. It is not uncommon for condo owners to place their property under a corporate name, often for tax reasons.

I hate the current tax code, I H-A-T-E IT, therefore, It would be hypocritical of me to criticize Moore for transferring his home ownership into an LLC type situation where he would possibly pay less in taxes.

However, if this is about taxes, I do notice the appearance of conflict with Moore’s tax ideology:

1) Michael Moore explained that he thought that folks who make the kind of money he does should be taxed at about 70%.( in his Bill O’Reilly interview)

2) The money collected from property taxes doesn’t go to fund the war (which I assume he opposes) , it goes to fund public schools, cops, fire fighters, and free health clinics for the poor, (which I assume he supports).

Now don’t get a hissy about my questioning whether Moore did this to simply pay less in taxes. I don’t know if he did or didn’t, I’m simply pointing out that if he did, he’s kinda being a hypocrite himself. Perhaps one of you egghead-tax-lawyer-types could explain this “ownership transfer dealie” to me ( and the rest of us) Maybe there is another reason to transfer the ownership of one’s home to a “corporation”. I simply don’t know. Perhaps we should all set up dummy corporations and do the same thing. Maybe we’re missing out on something.

I’ll hold off analyzing further until someone can educate me about this.

Is it World Protest Day again already? Oh, how time flies.

They’re countin’ down the days over at Michael Moore.com until March 19th , when the “world” will hold another massive protest to mark the anniversary of the Iraq invasion two years ago.

I wonder if this one will be somehow different from the last 50 protests. I mean, with the exception of the recent protests in Lebanon, when is the last time a protest actually accomplished anything? After investing all those man hours protesting the war, you’d think that they would want to see some results at some point, yet our policy on the Middle East hasn’t changed a lick.

Maybe they’re doing it wrong? Or maybe, they’re using the wrong posters-on-a-stick.  After seeing 50 gazillion different incarnations of the Bush=Hitler motif, perhaps it’s time to abandon that concept and try something new.

I’ve made up a few samples, and welcome your suggestions for your “Protest the Iraqi War” poster.