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Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent
Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."
Whether you like him or not, believe what he says or not, you have to agree that Michael Moore is influential.
If you are for P2P, I'm not sure if this is the guy you would want on the other side of the debate.
Sunny
Be my Friend
To paraphrase a certain someone.... "Real men don't stash copies of their possibly illegal movies in other countries. They leak them to BitTorrent and let the world mirror them." -Michael Moore
Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind the bans on cuba. There are much nastier places that people are allowed to deal with. I always get a kick living in vancouver because anywhere there might be american tourists, there is usually a big sign saying "cuban cigars".
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Other movies BitTorrent has recently saved are Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ocean's Thirteen, and Knocked Up. Thank god for BitTorrent!
Remember that the most important thing about Michael Moore isn't that he's fighting to change the health care system, it isn't that he's tried to open America's eyes about the severe gun violence problem, it isn't that he's tried to do his bit to stop George W Bush's war in Iraq, it isn't that he's tried to get capitalism to actually fulfill the promises of helping all citizens and not just the richest, it isn't any of those things. None of those things are important.
The most important thing is that he's fat and his voice is a little whiny. If you can't see that and channel your rage accordingly, I feel sorry for you dirty hippies.
...set of lies and twisted "truths" from this nutjob, who wouldnt know the actual truth if it came up and bit him.
Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.
Whatever you make of MM, the point he makes in this movie is both a profound and necessary wake-up call. It's the kind of movie you don't even need to have an open mind to appreciate. If you're still dubious about state-funded healthcare then this should open your mind for you.
How about this one? Universal coverage for 1/2 of what we're paying.
The ______ Agenda
here are two takes on it, one interesting, and the other bordering on the ridiculous. first, apparently michael moore himself approves of people sharing. he was quoted to have said that:
"I make these books and movies and TV shows because I want things to change, so the more people that get to see them the better, so I'm happy when that happens. I think information and art, ideas should be shared."
So far so good, hats off to the guy for the message.
Now, onto part two. The funny thing is that there are some people in the so-called "blogosphere" (who seem to disagree with Moore), who have posted the movie for download, pasted a ton of ads on their website, and then gone to write something like so:
"Now I fully expect [...] Moore's people asking me to take this down. Which I will, because unlike Moore and most liberals I actually do respect things like copyright laws and property rights. "
Ain't that sweet, and ain't people on the internet nice -- you rip someone off while saying you "respect" copyright, you're making money off ads on it, and you have the audacity to say the movie is all bulshit. Cheers for the copyright 'lovers' on teh internet, really.
How simple minded do you have to be to assume that hating Michael Moore equals loving Bush?
Need a fancy medical scan? (MRI, PET, etc.)
Depending on the political power your region of the country holds, you may be out of luck. It's not the market (number of sick people) which determines where these devices are installed. It's pure politics, and the resulting distribution is not even remotely fair.
That's not really an improvement.
...and Michael Moore is one of the few people with enough influence who has the sense to keep harping on it. I just saw Sicko (via bittorrent) and it was very good.
Of course as a nation we really are insane; most people still don't see the problem with putting the richest corporations in charge of absolutely everything and calling it "freedom".
Caveat Utilitor
Our problems do not come from a "failure" to socialize medicine. When I was up in Canada, the news was that brain scanners were mostly going to places with powerful politicians. Quebec got an unfair share. Money was disappearing for political reasons. Over in the UK, people are being sent to France for surgery because they'd die on the waiting lists if they didn't go. Here in the USA we install brain scanners (lots of them too) where there will be patients and we don't die on waiting lists for anything other than an organ transplant -- and that only because we made it illegal to pay the dead person's estate.
Our real problems are:
Some of these problems are not really solvable. Economics is what it is, people like new technology, and nobody wants to see their little children die. The lawyers have some mighty lobbiests, but a change would at least be theoretically possible. The same goes for the co-pay insurance system, which could be replaced by a sliding scale or percentage system. (example insurance fix: the patient's payment must increase by at least 10 cents for every dollar of the treatment cost up to "$200 for $2000", then by 1 cent per dollar thereafter)
Since when is flatulence "Flamebait"? ...oh...
Blank until
Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.
There is no such thing as the free market, because access to every market is controlled by special interest gatekeepers. If you don't believe me, just try visiting the NYSE and buying some shares directly. Free market think tanks are as prone to special interest pleading as anybody else - unless you really believe, say, that the Cato Institute takes money from the oil and tobacco industries and is totally uninfluenced by it.
And here in the UK, we have had to move away from the medical profession being allowed to regulate itself as a result of numerous scandals. Although the great majority of physicians are doubtless more altruistic than the majority of society, it's been said that trade unions are like dishwater - the scum rises to the top.
I think that experience in Canada, the UK and most of Europe shows that you must be able to vote for the people that control the health care system, because there are too many ethical, special interest, and economic factors to be left to people acting blindly in their own interests. Adam Smith never foresaw a world of mega-corporations, and his understanding of capitalism was a long way short of that of Marx.
Pining for the fjords
...set of lies and twisted "truths" from this nutjob, who wouldnt know the actual truth if it came up and bit him.
I kind of liked The Onion's take on it:
Half Of Nation Outraged At New, Not-Yet-Released Michael Moore Film
[...]
"This film is absolutely tasteless and misguided, and I can't believe theaters are even showing it," said GOP presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who, along with the rest of the nation, has not yet seen the film.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Actually if you watched the movie, no wait if you even watched the promo's you would know he didn't go to Cuba to show how great Castro medical centers were. He went there as he heard that suspected terrorists got free and better health care then most Americans and tried to get to Gitmo to get health care.
/. pointing out anything positive on the movie get down rated, while those calling Moore fat seem to be get positive ratings.
I also find it funny that a lot of posts on
Sure make fun of the guy. It is easier to ignore the actual message that the US private Healthcare system is a total mess.
Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.
Because when someone disagrees with a liar they are automatically telling the truth.
For example, I too think Bush is a liar. Also, your hair is on fire.
Bush, Rush, Coulter etc. vs Clinton, Moore, Franken, etc... it's the circus part of the bread and circus formula. Their goal is to really change very little but get you all worked up about it in the process.
Or when sounded as A, as in neighbor or weigh.
Sorry, ex-English teacher, had to say something. (Sidenote: always nice to see an old spelling mistake in a new word. I see far too much of "concieve" and "beleive" and not nearly enough "siezing". Of course, that is because I don't typically teach children older than middle school, and they don't have much call to say "seizure" unless it is in the context "Spelling nearly gives me a seizure".)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
"Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us."
Right, so piling on more mistruths is totally justified. I feel full of insight, now.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Health care is administered by the provinces, so the number of MRI or PET machines put into service is a local decision. People who need them get them.
0.46% is litigation
The cost of defending U.S. malpractice claims is estimated at $6.5 billion in 2001, only 0.46 percent of total health spending. The two most important reasons for higher U.S. spending appear to be higher incomes and higher medical care prices.
The medical insurance companies are making lots and lots of money, and that's not because they are giving services for the dollars they are taking in.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Actually if you watched the movie, no wait if you even watched the promo's you would know he didn't go to Cuba to show how great Castro medical centers were. He went there as he heard that suspected terrorists got free and better health care then most Americans and tried to get to Gitmo to get health care
What does that mean though? If the US government didn't give free and good healthcare to people detained indefinitely at gitmo, the public would complain. Quite rightly in my opinion. Part of the vast death rate of Russian soldiers captured by the Germans (and vice versa) in WWII was caused by denying them healthcare. And the cost of providing healthcare to detainees is probably negligable anyway if you look at it as a percentage of the vast cost of keeping gitmo open.
Like everything else he does it's stunt designed to show the irony of the situation. But it only does that until you start to think about what would happen if things were the reverse of what they are. And then it doesn't seem so ironic anymore.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Michael Moore movies are like Wikipedia articles with one editor. Tons of links to questionable articles from all over the Internet, filled with POV content and unverifiable original research, and generally achieving no community consensus on anything. But be sure to cite it early and often in every term paper you write on the subject!
That said, I haven't seen Sicko, but I do agree with Moore that health insurance is essentially legalized gambling. It's also essentially a redistribution of wealth from the healthy to the unhealthy, with lots of middle men taking their cut along the way. The big question, though, is how do you fix it without making the average quality of health care worse?
Moore has made a name for himself by making documentaries holding a far leftist slant wherein he rants about the evils of conservative politics, but if you ask virtually any conservative if the current health-care system is working, they will undoubtedly say no. If they don't, their either completely out of touch, or lying. Now, if this is a documentary showcasing the benefits of a government run, full coverage tax-paid health-care system, then that would fit his style and I wouldn't have even bothered commenting, since I don't actually like him or his movies. But if all this is doing is dramatizing how bad it is currently, well, that boat already sailed and he's wasting his time and money. I don't like him, but I believe he and other political filmmakers are doing an important thing, generally, bringing political discourse to the mass market. But just making a doom and gloom movie about how bad the current health care system is, is not going to tell anyone anything they don't already know, is not going to get people to care about issues they don't normally (because everyone cares about their own health already), and is generally no better than making fiction. Which is fine, but since the movie is probably not very entertaining, pretty much demotes him from "mostly useless" to "completely useless".
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
IMO these statements about there not being government funded health care in the US are all bullcrap.
Why do I say that? Well, personal experience. My income is about $12,000 a year, and about two months ago I had an operation to diagnose a kidney disease. That is, this was not life threatening, but for diagnostic purposes. I didn't have to wait two years either, rather I only waited about a month and a half.
What did I pay for it? Nothing. No co-pay, no co-insurance, no cost for anethesia, no deductable. Nothing. Nada. Even my prescription drugs are free, everything from simple pain killers to the latest and greatest name brands. Who paid for it all? The state of Arizona. One acronym: AHCCCS. Similar programs exist in all 50 states.
If this isn't providing health care to those who can't afford it, then I don't know what is. It has all of the benefits of private health care, in fact it works into the private health care system, so you get all of the same doctors and everything you would get in most private health care plans. The particular plan I am on is called Health Choice AZ, and there are many such plans to choose from, including a few PPO plans. I am not making any of this up, google it and you shall see. The information is sitting right at your fingertips.
Why do people like Michael Moore completely omit this fact when they bash America's health care system? They act as though poor people get nothing here - its just not true. If our health care system was like Canada's, hell I could be on dialysis right about now with how long it would have taken for me to get a proper diagnosis. I don't know about anybody else, but I wouldn't trade our current health care system for anything else.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Michael Moore is a pretentious hack. Every time I want to see his smirking face like he's teaching the world a thing or two I want to gouge my eyes out.
Every time I hear Ann Coulter talk about the liberal media bias I want to light something on fire and throw myself in it.
So which am I, fucktard GP? Right or Wrong? Left or Right?
I'm a goddamn self-critical thinking American who realizes we've fucked up but also realizes that distorting the truth in a documentary is probably the worst thing you could ever do for the industry. You want to present an opinion - cool, say it's your fucking opinion. But saying right is left and the sky is actually a pretty shade of lime and presenting that as not coming from you, but coming from facts is the lowest thing you could do in documentary journalism. It's as bad as any (insert ideology) media bias and worse for the hard-working true blue documentarians who want to present both sides of an issue but are shown that doing that isn't sexy enough, that they won't get the respect they so richly deserved by allowing both sides to speak and letting the audience decide, or by presenting their opinion and letting the audience decide whether it's right or wrong.
Moore makes me as sad and pissed off for my America as any other partisan lobby-owned political hack.
you can find it on Google Video.
4 032752909
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=900641484
I am not an american either, but i would find it very surprising if one movie is what matters in the US elections. There were number of factors that weighted on the outcome in 2004 that come to mind that would seem more relevant than Michael Moore -- like the weak democratic party candidate, the war in Iraq (and all the propaganda associated with it), the terrorism scaremongering, the huge profits for the military industrial complex (and the support from them), the oil business (and the support from them) etc etc. There was event the plain human vanity -- I doubt many people in 2004 wanted to come out and say "I was wrong about W". So, (as they say in one Eastern European country), don't go look for a calf under the ox. It wasn't Michael Moore, it was the American electorate.
I am an American, and I'd say you're completely wrong. "Fahrenheit 9/11" did not help Bush get re-elected. The Republican supporters who rallied together were people who would all have voted for Bush anyway, and the rest of the population mostly ignored them.
The main reason Bush won is that the Democratic party couldn't offer a good alternative. Nobody liked Kerry, including the people who voted for him. Kerry was a mediocre candidate. So many people hate Bush that Kerry almost won anyway, but the people who didn't hate Bush didn't feel compelled to vote for Kerry.
A bigger reason is the ties between the GOP and the "religious right"; a lot of Christians somehow got the idea that the Republican party is the party that God supports, while the Democrats are Godless heathens. I'm not sure if this idea originated with the GOP trying to attract Christian voters, or if it originated with religious leaders who aligned themselves with the GOP in an effort to influence public policy, or some combination of both. Fortunately, it looks like people are starting to wake up, and the Democrats stand a good chance of convincing Christians that voting for a Democrat isn't a sin.
Of course you're right that they're all crooks, but that's OK - our government was brilliantly structured deliberately with this idea in mind. As long as everybody in politics is an evil greedy bastard who thinks only of himself, everything generally works out OK. The problem is that this system doesn't take political parties into account at all, and party loyalty messes everything up. The last mid-term elections helped to straighten this out a little bit - on November 8th 2006, there was a sudden massive attitude shift in the White House. I don't expect things to get any worse for awhile; the downward spiral has stopped. Of course this attitude shift came far too late to actually help anything in Iraq, but it may help with other issues like global warming and healthcare.
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Ever put up with specific instances or shut up.
We've heard that crap since Fahrenheit 9/11, and his movie has stood up to scrutiny. Take that incident with the gun and the bank. The bank *lied*, claiming they did not give guns in the bank office itself. Nevermind Moore is seen aiming the gun in the presence of bank staff.
Yet you still read idiots like yourself claiming Moore forged this incident. That's revolting.
Quid-pro-quo, ne?
Stay the fuck out of our world, and we'll stay out of your politics.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Yeah, sure, except US politics affects the rest of the world. US politics is everybody's politics.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Cuba is run by a fairly bad dude
The issue isn't that he is good or bad. The issue is that he isn't a "friend" or puppet of the US Government. The former rather ironically since Castro was perfectly happy to have normal relations with the US...
I didn't know insight smelled like a cattle farm! Thanks Mikey Moore!
OK, how about this:
The number of malpractice filings 1992-2001 was pretty much constant (around 1% net decrease over that period), and over that period 54% of malpractice judgments came from 5% of doctors.
Except Al Franken actually tried to change things. Instead of ranting like an idiot, he sat around for 3 hours and talked to experts, pundits, wonks and Norm Ornstein. It's one thing to say your opposition is wrong, it's another to spend a few hours and go indepth and discuss actually *why* they're wrong using things like truth(which has a liberal bias, wierdly enough).
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Moore is about publicity. I don't say his documentaries are wrong, faked or anything, just that he knows how to push buttons and he knows the art of leading a story by omission. He's not lying to you. He just leaves a few key informations out to give you his side of the view.
Pretty much what everyone else does that tries to sell an opinion rather than giving you unbiased information.
He's also a master of publicity. He didn't cart those people who fell through the US social network to Canada or Mexico, no, it had to be Cuba. Why Cuba? It makes little sense in a medical way, but it does make a lot of sense when you think about it from the point of publicity and when you try to create a lot of discussion.
And a more interesting question, would they have gotten the same treatment if they were Cuban or was it a publicity stunt for Cuba as well? That's a question that isn't answered.
Now, I think Moore's films are important as counter-spin to the spin of our corporations and government, but you have to realize that this is what is is: spin. It's not "the awful truth".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ironically its become what he tried to remove.
Huh? You can disagree all you want with Castro, you can't accuse him of having become anything like his predecessors.
While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.
Compare this to current US allies.
I dunno, Saudi Arabia. Not only isn't there any of the rights afforded to Cubans, but they don't even have any of those that the Cubans lack; try to exercise freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia, and see how long your head stays attached to your spine.
You could also take China. No freedom of speech, rampant corruption, massive inequalities, and on top of that atrocious environmental violations. It's only nominally communist, when Cuba has at least what looks like true equality among its citizens.
Compared to many places in the world, Cuba is a sweet place to live. That doesn't make it an ideal place, far from it. But considering how much the US spends on trying to "fix" it, and how it focuses on it, this is a major fraud in my opinion.
Florida is a "swing state" with many cuban voters. They left cuba for a reason and that reason is that they hate Castro. So much so that they would rather see the family and friends they left behind live in poverty than give any legitimacy to Cuba by trading with them. So any party that would get rid of the idiotic embargo (China is a preferred trade partner for crying out loud!) loses the Cuban vote in Florida and thus lose any election.
THAT is why the embargo is still in place.
I know everyone loves M. Moore and his message and I would be the first to root for him...if he was genuine. This guy seems to have no journalistic integrity, at least there is enough information out there to be very skeptic. He likes to manipulation just the same as the people is he critical of. Just for some balance: http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html. (I am not affiliated with this site in any way, just a random google pick. There are plenty of other sources, just google for "michael moore fraud".)
We would, if you could stay the "frak" out of our business.
USA still has a lot of international say and use it in a not so civilized way at times.
Stop kidnapping our citizens and send them to Guantanamo for no good reason.
Stop keeping "secret" prisons in our countries.
Stop your european missile shield program.
Stop invading souvreign countries to protect american profit interests.
Stop pushing SW-patents and other bad ideas onto the rest of the world.
Stop being the top polluter in the world.
etc...
Your politics affect us, and as long as that's the case, we really can't stay the "frak" out of your politics.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
It isn't a case of either fully private or fully social health systems. Both have their problems. Fully private misses the poorest who can't afford it, fully social always has limited funding and waiting lists.
The third way is "Compulsory health insurance". You don't need to run a huge health service, or even manage a state health insurance system. It seems to work in several European countries, (Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany) the poorest benefit from the lower premiums which are brought about by the universal coverage. It doesn't prevent the state from providing a healthcare system, neither does it require it to do so.
Deleted
Most countries with universal health care do not have "socialised" health care.
France, Germany, etc, have "socialised" health insurance.
Care itself is mostly private. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists have private practices. A majority of hospitals are state-run, but there are plenty of private hospitals, too.
You are free to go to any doctor you want.
"Leaked to BitTorrent" just gives the anti-piracy jerks more ammunition to use against BitTorrent. At the very least, change it to "Leaked via P2P" or even better, just "Leaked".
Everyone knows what you mean. I actually use BitTorrent exclusively for legitimate downloads (yes, I realise that sounds unlikely, but it's true) and I would be very disappointed if use of it was criminalised because of clueless lawmakers who are deriding their information from subjects like this.
Look, I'm actually more to the left than he is, as usually is the case in Europe. What by US standards counts as "conservative" and "liberal", in most of continental Europe would pass for "ultra-conservative" and "conservative". Yeah, we're a bunch of commie mutant traitors like that ;)
I even agree with some of his points. Well, dunno about this particular movie, but I ended up buying a couple of his books because the back cover said they were "hilarious." (Ooer. Americans must be quite a cheerful and fun loving folk, if even that kind of bitter whine counts as "hilarious".)
That said, his endless "auugh, the government is out to get me" is starting to look stupid already, for a start. Look, if the government wanted to silence him, he'd be silent already. If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes, he probably wouldn't even be alive at this point, or at least someone would have framed him for something already and sent him to a maximum security jail.
This is just yet another such publicity stunt, for conspiracy theorists. How about waiting until the government actually does something about it, before "leaking" the movie? Or if he wants to distribute it via P2P, fine, that's a mighty fine way to distribute your works, really. But it's just a choice of distribution, not some great act of resistance against fascism.
Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it. Same here. Not only it makes his bitter whine sound even more bitter, it doesn't even serve his purposes that well, since you never know what's a genuine assessment and what's another of his over-the-top hyperboles. It's like the boy who cried wolf: by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time, noone (sane) takes it seriously any more.
Such ego-stroking stunts are just that kind of bad hyperbole. Yes, probably some people above would dislike his point, but some might even agree with him. Either way, he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.
More importantly, there are always two sides to each issues. There's rarely a free meal: to get X you give up some Y, or viceversa. And neither extreme is an utopia, so you have to figure out your own least crappy compromise among all possible crappy compromises. Which is why there's a political debate and more than one party and platform. One thinks that it's totally worth giving up X to get more Y, one thinks the opposite, one thinks the balance is good enough as it is, one wants to give up both X and Y to gain Z, and yet another one runs around with pencils up its nose and thinks it's an airplane.
The reason why the government does X instead of Y, may not always be the best, may not always even be honest, but aren't always "let's oppress someone for the fun of it either" either. Whether it's about health care or letting the Bin Laden family fly away after 9/11, there are real issues ranging from costs to international relations to ideology behind those choices. And by ideology I mean "what we think is best for the economy", not just "let's be neo-conservative because the conspiracy told us to". Those ideas might well be wrong (everyone can't be right at the same time, or you wouldn't need more than one party), but painting one side with the broad brush of "auugh, they're all bought by their industrialist friends and trying to silence me" is just an ad-hominem.
Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.
Or at least I hope it's hyperbole, because otherwise he'd have to be paranoid schizophrenic to actually believe all that. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It's probably hyperbole.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What's your excuse for continuing the attempt to redefine the debate?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is, from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh.
One of the main points of the movie isn't people without insurance - it's people with insurance who think they are covered but find out they are screwed when they hit their benefit caps when hit with a serious illness/accident. Start paying attention to the numbers of charity events in your area ment to help people pay medical bills. Start paying attention to policies that pay for organ transplants but not the $3,000 a month people have to spend on the anti-rejection drugs.
The state of the American health care system is atrocious, and anyone who defends it is either ignorant, a crazy Libertarian, or a tool for the insurance industry.
If cuba is so bad, and Fidel is so evil and they want him dead (isnt that against the law somewhere?)
Why is Bush so chummy with a bad ass MOFO ex KGB guy like Putin that wants the old soviet russia back.
If Putin is so pro west (ie sanity vs insanity) then he would have made the KGB not so evil.
He is nothing more than a global school bully with nukes.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I wish I had read your posts before replying to 2 others. I agree that Michael Moore is a hack, but I think that his 9/11 movie raised some important questions. I just wish he hadn't been in the movie. The evidence he presented was so eloquent that all he had to do was not screw it up, but his very screen presence is so obnoxious that people want to disbelieve him, even if all the evidence comes from independently verifiable sources. He is an impediment to his own message.
SiCKO got also uploaded in full on Youtube. http://www.i4u.com/article9613.html
the issue is the middle class. they are the ones saddled by bills and unable to afford health insurance, and ineligible due to income level for the wonderful arizona program you love
the poor and the rich in the usa get just dandy healthcare. the rich can afford it out of pocket, and the poor benefit from generous state and federal programs. it is the middle class who are screwed by the us healthcare system
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That must be nice. I make about $22,000 a year, making me inelegible for the plan you're talking about. Health care is available to the "impoverished" of America, but totally out of reach of those of us just keeping our heads above water.
While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.
No, you're wrong. People are tortured daily in Cuba. Their religions are mocked. They have no access to education.
Haven't you ever heard of Guantanamo Bay?
What? That's run by the USA? Oh.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I'm tired of all of this crap about Moore's documentaries being nothing but lies. His documentaries are heavily biased against the Bush administration and the direction of the country, but, for the most part, his facts are pretty accurate. This new documentary was created to point out how bad the national health care situation is currently. His using Cuba to demonstrate national health care shows his bias, but it doesn't make his point less accurate or factual. Health care in this country is screwed up. When needing medical care could mean years, or even decades of extreme debt, even when you have "insurance" (if it can be called that with the crap these companies pull), we have an issue.
I'm tired of the ad hominem attacks here. If you disagree with the man, fine. If you don't want to watch the movie, fine. But if you want to disagree with him as vocally as many do here, counter his facts, stop the BS and petty name calling.
Clones are people two.
And they're making millions of dollars in the process.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
For me, I don't see him as lying, I see him as bending the truth.
I've watched this movie, and he's glossed over the fact that our (the UK) NHS infrastructure is a bit shoddy. Sure, it's one of the best in the world, but it's a giant money hole.
Also, it appears to be an advert for Clinton. Would have been nice to see this party-neutral. Ah well.
If you ignore the partisan politics, this is a fantastic film with one important message: Societies are not judged by how they treat their heroes, but how they treat the bottom rung. Only with universal healthcare, free at the point of need (that's need, not want - no free boobjobs, obviously) can the US elevate it's status as one of the worst infant mortality rates, poor general health and positively narcissistic health corporation which have done nothing but bolster corporate profits.
The US is a fantastic place, but I'd never want to live in a country that didn't care about everyone - regardless of whether they're a billionaire or a meth-addict in dire straits.
Well, that's unarguably correct, so about two seconds of analysis of Moore's argument should result in something to tell us what he was actually complaining about. Now, let's see. The argument was something like "9/11 first responders got worse healthcare than suspected terrorists at Gitmo." We've eliminated the possibility Moore might be complaining about the standard of healthcare given at Gitmo. So, that just leaves us with the 9/11 first responders.
Now, here's a thought. I realize you have to stop typing for a second to think it, but could it be, maybe, that Moore's problem is with the healthcare of the 9/11 first responders? You know, what he could be complaining about isn't that healthcare given to suspected terrorists is too much, it might be that the healthcare given to genuine heroes is too little?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Okay, I'm going to take your post, and do to it what Michael Moore does with the video he shoots:
.
Please post an actual lie that Michael Moore had in his movies. The arguments in Fahrenheit 9/11 were presented in terms of evidence--government documents, congressional transcripts/testimony, interviews, books, etc. You can interpret the facts differently if you wish, but that doesn't mean he's lying.
I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is , from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh
ZOMG, you just said Michael Moore is pretending that he's Rush Limbaugh!!!!
Now if you said that was a lie, and that you said no such thing, and I retorted saying those were your words, who would be right? I dare say you would be. It is a lie, and not a "bending" of truth.
Here is an example: In the movie "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore wanted to paint the NRA as a nasty gun club that lacked compassion for the Columbine shooting. Here is how he did it. First he spliced in some video of children crying outside columbine, then cut to Charlton Heston saying "from my cold, dead, hands", then cut to a billboard about an NRA meeting in Denver while Michael Moore tells us that after Columbine Charlton Heston decided to have a pro-gun rally in Denver, then cut to a video of Heston's speech (except utilizing the above demonstrated edit job to alter the message).
The problem with this is that Heston's "cold, dead, hands" speech wasn't even from his Denver speech. And after the Columbine shooting, the NRA didn't suddenly decide to hold a gun-rally. Their National Convention has been planned to be there for years. And it wasn't even a pro-gun rally, as all the exhibits and committee meetings were canceled in respect of the recent tragedy. The only thing not canceled was the members meeting, which could not be canceled due to state laws governing non-profits.
When you imply something untrue by using careful editing and splicing, you are lying. I'm sorry that we live in a world where lying is so casually dismissed (thanks to our current and last president), and that lying about somebody we don't like is okay. But the fact remains that Moore is a liar and his "documentaries" aren't worth the film they're printed on.
I'll tell you why: The concept that both might be right or wrong in some instances escapes some people. That, and we live in a society where people in power will skew "the truth" to make themselves look good, regardless of the reality of things. When was the last time you heard a president apologize for being wrong about something? Anything? Show humility?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
You can't chalk that one up to poor presentation. Changing a man's words to mean the opposite of his intent is a falsehood. Either he got it wrong because he's incompetent or he got it wrong because he's deceptive.
It's hard for me to believe that you've really looked into this if you believe that Michael Moore has no intent to deceive his viewers.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
My wife just had an MRI, she needed one just to check something in her head to make sure it was ok. Not a critical procedure. She was put the bottom of the waiting list. It took 1 month to have the MRI done. You know who gets put in front of the line? The people that need it most. Anybody that goes to america for treatment is most likely just a paranoid hypochondriac. People will REAL serious problems get treated first in Canada.
Meh.
Maybe if you only saw the first half of the movie. The other half paints her as a opportunistic corporate shrill that will sell her own mother to get into the presidential race. Since the movie is about nationalising the health industry in America, and H. Clinton was the only one to bring this up in the last 20 years, I would have been surprised that Moore would have not mentioned her
Personally, I loved the movie. His best since Bowling. I also think a lot of the French and British will complain in their own respective countries about how it paints their health system as pixies and fairies. But, the conclusions are still correct. (For instance a few nights ago the BBC showed a documentary about how dirty/unclean hospitals are in England and the huge cases of MRSA related deaths due to this. They also showed how other countries dealt with MRSA. They didn't pick America. They picked Denmark (or was it the Netherlands?) where, the biggest hospital there, has 0 deaths from MRSA.)
Oh my god, he killed Kennedy. You bastard!
I pay less than the price listed on that website ($3300 per capita per year). I live in America and I get 1-2 day response times on doctors visits ... my wife is currently having an issue diagnosed and she is in and out of the hospital in under a days notice at times, with either a $25 or $0 copay. My son was sick a month ago and got into the doctors later the same day we called. I have no complaints about American health care coverage. And I've been at all ends of the spectrum - from making less than $15,000 a year and having to buy it out of pocket (with a wife and child) to having a comfortable job where they help pay for it.
And I have friends in Canada, who wish they were back in America, and health care is one of the big reasons why. The amount of time spent waiting for service is unbelievable. They've told me they wait, in some cases, a month for service. I can't take that. Even though I'm apparently paying less than a Canadian, I'd gladly pay more for prompt medical service.
A lot of the problem isn't with the poor. It is in the gap between poor enough to be granted state-funded medi-care, and rich enough to afford health-care on your own. They are the working poor.
The people who get lost are those working low-wage jobs and are just making ends meet. The state doesn't recognize them as being poor enough to need assistance, and to these people it is more important to put food on the table than purchase independent health-insurance. If they get sick, often what little health-insurance they may have through work will not cover their needs. This leaves them with enormous medical bills, and no way to pay them.
Actually I think the poor are well looked after in the states, if you are unable to work or qualify for state-assistance you can be better off than people who work two jobs and make just enough money to scrape by. It's the people in the middle that fall between the cracks. I only have heard anecdotal evidence that that gap is getting larger... but I don't have any real evidence at hand to justify that statement so it could be false.
This is not a sig.
I don't know what Michael Moore's arrangement with Lionsgate is, but I suspect that he has a much higher financial interest in his movies than the vast majority of musicians do in their CDs.
At any rate, I'm going to go see it in the theater. Aside from being the right thing to do, I really enjoy Michael Moore's movies and I'd like to encourage him to make more by voting with my dollars what is worth paying to see and what isn't. Here's the trailer, it looks like it might be his best one yet.
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth. The difference between Bush and Moore, is that Bush maintains he is telling the truth, even when the facts suggest otherwise. Moore claims only to give an opinion, and is frequently on record as saying his movies are 'op-ed pieces'.
Schnapple
Most medical care is not emergency, but rather falls into three categories:
- Proactive care (physicals, etc)
- Non-emergency illness (flu, strep throat, etc--treatable at doctor's office rather than ER)
- Treatment of chronic conditions (diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, etc)
These aspects of medical care can easily satisfy the requirements for market forces, at least as much as other markets.
- Information - There is no shortage of information available on proper proactive care and the most common illnesses and conditions, as well as their most common and effective treatments. Patients are awash in information today.
- Elasticity - The numbers of people who get sick are not dependent on market forces, but where they go is. If people had to pay for their own strep treatment, don't you think they'd drive an extra 15 minutes to the next clinic to save $50? If it's not a life-threatening emergency--and most medical visits are not--then there is elasticity.
- Barriers to entry - Of course it's still hard to get a doctor's license. But it turns out that many of the services above can be performed by nurse practioners or physican assistants. And, this is not an issue with who is paying, but rather with the nature of the service. Many other specialized-skill markets suffer from this deficiency.
Furthermore, it's not like medical care is the only market that has the aspects you describe. In fact the conditions you describe are true for many specialized professions. For instance the legal market suffers from all the same deficiencies in information, elasticity, and barrier to entry. Same with civil engineering.
Finally, your garbage collection analogy is terrible. For one thing, garbage collection works the same for everyone--and typically anything outside the norm is not collected. And garbage collection is a mature technology. There is no great need to encourage innovation in garbage collection.
Put another way: garbage collection is a commodity. But even that doesn't automatically qualify it for goverment provision. Food is a commodity too, one that suffers from many of the defects you list above. Yet, the private market does just fine providing it to most people.
What many people do is look at the medical system and envision a system that is mostly provided by government, with some private service on top. But that system sucks when it comes to flexibility and innovation. A better system is one that is mostly private markets, with the governement picking up the few at the bottom, who the market does not serve. It works for food and housing and legal care.
It's important to keep in mind that the failure of our medical system today is a failure of this particular system, not all private systems. History is full of industries that were inefficient until the right market structure or business model or technology came along.
We need to better expose consumers to the actual cost of their most common care. Right now the system is actually run pretty close to a garbage-collection system, with the insurance companies as the intermediary between consumers and their care. What is needed is a system where consumers can better force down the cost of the most typical, non-emergency health care. Insurance should be for broken legs and other emergencies, not a pill you take every day for your asthma. We don't pay for all home improvements and repairs through an insurance company--just the emergency stuff. Health care should work the same way.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
As for the speech, here is a comparison someone transcribed from F911 and from Heston's actual speech.
Here is a link to Moore's website where he responds to attacks on his movie. The page is long and there is a lot there, so I'll copy the text where Moore responds to this specific charge. I'm going to leave it as is, without correcting the paragraph/formatting errors.
At this point, there's nothing more to say, really. Judge for yourselves if Moore is being honest or dishonest.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
So then MM should be talking about fixing the health care plans of the NYPD and NYFD... not the entire freaking country. Instead of using selective, anecdotal evidence to make a *national* case, he should be trying to fix the individual problems (i.e. the lousy health care that cops and firemen get). See, I get very good health care for cheap through my company. My wife gets good coverage for FREE through her company. Neither of us are complaining (and neither are any of my friends or family). I don't need MM to come in and use the problems of a particular set of individuals as a means to enact a social system that will both cost me more and lessen the quality of my coverage.
WATYF
I'll jump on this since I also have some experience.
My family was on PA Medicaid when my first daughter was born. We didn't have to pay a dime out of pocket and we saw doctors very frequently (first pregnancy, it's an average of every other week). The major differences I saw between "public" health care and the HMO I'm on now.
1) It was easier to see a doctor on Medicaid. It might not be the doctor you want, but we saw a family doctor and she was great. In addition, doctors spend time with you. A lot of time. If my wife went in and I had a cough, they would check me out. In addition, the buck stopped there. With my HMO I have to get referrals, doctors refer to specialists so they aren't liable..... and on and on and on.
2) Technical evals (blood, imaging...) are severly limited with Medicaid. We got one Ultrasound, and every time she needed to pee in a cup, we had to traipse across the city to a "testing site". I assume this is to limit costs.
3) Hospital choice. We didn't get a lot with Medicaid. We had to go to a teaching hospital. We had a lot of younger doctors. There are cases where this is ok, and cases where that is not cool.
These are the main differences. If I could pay into Medicaid I would. (Note: I realize that I subsidize it every day with my taxes). If you need to get a 4D hyperbeam imaging when you twist your ankle, Medicaid is not for you. If you just need a doc to wrap it up and give you a prescription, Medicaid +1.
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Cuban exiles living in Miami ... you mean just like Jose Posada?
Well pardon me if I don't have much trust in avowed terrorists.
The primary criticism of the Bush "prosperity" is that the economic growth is being driven primarily by firms outsourcing high-paying jobs overseas. So, the bulk of the wealth that is being created is going to the already very wealthy, while the middle class is exchanging their previous high-paying jobs for lower paying jobs. Most of the jobs being created are low-paying service sector jobs.
Yes, there is widespread speculation that a recession is coming, fueled mainly by the crisis in the housing market, but people speculate about the market all the time. This speculation is coming from economists in general, and is certainly not limited to the left wing.
Also, the Film Actors Guild (FAG) was a fictional organization in the film "Team America: World Police". The acronym is part of the humor. So, while your point of view is legitimate, you may want to research your assertions before throwing bile at fictional entities.
Also, while Moore undoubtedly plays up certain aspects of his films for entertainment value and to prove his point, he does often bring up quite a few good points that are solidly based on fact. To ignore a point of view out of hand merely because it comes from a source you find distasteful is closed-minded.
For the record, Moore agrees with you; he doesn't characterize what he makes as documentaries.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
It would have been more apparent had they not put the NRA billboard between the two scenes. And I doubt most people noticed the different suit, lighting, etc. But even if you ignore that part, the part about the mayor telling him not to come there and that they were already there...that is blatantly deceptive editing and is dishonest.
It is sort of ironic to have a Moore supporter accuse the other side of discrediting the intelligence of the viewers.
Wait, Bush's alterations of the truth aren't entertainment?
-Turkey
Because like Al Franken, I know the comedic value of a funny name like Norm Ornstein.
But I was still serious. I mean, sure, Al was on radio station that was financially fucked since day 1, but let's face it, he's leaving to PARTICIPATE in the process, not just kibitz and abuse drugs. Those were his SNL days.
(Well, actually, most SNL insiders pegged Al as being one of the 3 guys on the set in the 70's who didn't abuse drugs. So there goes the fuckin' Rush/Drughead/useless pile of shit gag.)
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Come on guys!!! I'm stuck at 93%!!!
You can't take the sky from me...
It all started with "Roger & Me" Moore documentary, he claimed he had NEVER interviewed Roger. There is clear and overwhelming evidence that he had interviewed him TWICE. ... they did the prep work for 30 (THIRTY) days so he can show up and get his rifle at the bank. Yes, it's moronic that a bank would give away rifles as a promotion, but, to show it as if you could just walk in fill in some papers and then walk out wit a rifle is a lie.)
It's all downhill from there. (The rifle stunt in Columbine
Anyhow, have a look at the "Manufacturing Dissent" documentary.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
You can't take the sky from me...
As for Heston's "mixed ethnicity" line at the end, that is clearly another edit job. Moore claims the interview was shown in its entirety, yet the clock in the background shows a lot of it is missing. It shows Charlton Heston getting up and leaving the interview 23 minutes in. But the whole interview only takes up less than 6 minutes on film. That is nearly three quarters of the interview edited out? I'm figuring the "mixed ethnicity" line was, like just about everything else, taken out of context.
I saw that part of the film. I am anti-gun, and I still didn't reach the conclusion that Moore is said by his critics to have foisted on me. That's part of what I find odd about the criticisms of his movies. Politically I'm in his neighborhood (roughly), but I never saw what everyone says he is showing. I take hyperbole for hyperbole, rhetorical questions for rhetorical questions, metaphor for metaphor, and so on--I guess I'm not literalist enough to feel that he's trying to lie to me. The main ideas of the film are what matter to me, and oddly, I haven't seen those questioned. I just see them thrown out altogether, sight unseen, because Moore spliced two speeches together and "that means we can't trust him."
I agree it was his best since Bowling, and I also agree about the gloss. I live under the Canadian health care system, and it sure as hell has it's problems. I think this movie's best point is going to be for the Americans who watch to realize that there are alternatives, and that "socialized health care" is not demonic.
### I never watched "Bowling for Columbine,"
Then go watch it, the movie isn't contra guns, in fact it comes to the conclusions that guns are not the real problem and the real issues are lie elsewhere, i.e. "climate of fear". But yeah, its of course much easier to bash him for no good reason, then to actually take time and watch what he has to say...
I agree with your first two sentances. However..
I seem to recall the first four years of the Bush Administration being called a recession, I wouldn't call what we're seeing here doing "quite well" it's more of trying to catch back up to where we should be.
I think you also mean Screen Actor's Guild the acronym for which is SAG, while not nearly as amusing as FAG, it's more technically accurate.
Eternity is a time bomb.
Consider how the economy has done quite well during the Bush tenure, and all you hear is how the prosperity is just a pause before the financial storm.
I've yet to see my personal economy recover. "The economy has done quite well"- only if you think the stock market is the economy, and can afford to invest instead of living life getting eaten by usury, credit cards, subprime loans, and bad bankruptcy laws.
Of course, if you're over the age of 37 you've already escaped all that- and "fuck the future, I've got mine" has always been the neocon liberal baby boomer's defiant motto anyway, never mind the broken homes, hearts, and lack of financial ability you left behind in your divorces and drug use.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's interesting to me that the total failure of Hostel 2 at the box office is being attributed by the filmmakers and studio to a workprint of the film being released onto the net, and now that Sicko has also leaked (methinks it's likely a Lions Gate vendor -- probably someone at the sound mixing company -- or someone internal at LGE) Michael Moore is publicly defending P2P. P2P Torrents DON'T help the box office, and I think studios are rightly justified to closely guard their IP through release. Moore seems to think that everyone out there who downloads his movie will also see the movie, but that really wasn't the case with Hostel 2.
Would you like to repeat that to Jorge Luis García Pérez (his memoires in Spanish), who spent 17 years in jail for shouting "Away with Castro!" on the central square of his city, and got beaten with machetes while being there? Of course, the officers in charge were too clever to do most of the torturing themselves - they just promised other prisoners some private hours with a woman if they messed the guy up. If they didn't just let the dog loose on him.
One of they reasons this guy was treated as bad as he was, is that he is black. And blacks don't count in Cuba. So when blacks raise their voice, as he did, by having all the prisoners sing the national anthem on October 10th (they day slavery was abolished in Cuba) they get punished hard (in this case: with machetes). So there goes your equality as well.
Bush maintains he is telling the truth, even when the facts suggest otherwise. Moore claims only to give an opinion, and is frequently on record as saying his movies are 'op-ed pieces'.
Hey, when Moore starts talking to the Creator, then we'll talk. Till then, I'll put my faith in God's little buddy. I, for one, think Bushie is doing a heck of a job.
lol.. I love that part in the film where Moore is in the UK talking to staff in Hammersmith hospital and they're just laughing at him for suggesting that someone should pay for healthcare. It's a shame that we in the UK are blatant commies for having such a system of healthcare-for-all. Oh well. :D
Requiem for the American Dream