The windup…

“There is no leader to this movement,” the 57-year-old Oscar winner, flanked by two security guard in black suits, barked into a bullhorn microphone. “That’s why it’s such a large and growing movement.”
[...]
Dressed casually in a sweat suit, loose brown jacket and white sneakers, Moore spoke for 20 minutes, after showing up an hour and 20 minutes late for his speech.

As expected, he railed with the passion of tent revival preacher on what he sees as the misdeeds of Wall Street, the rich and Congress, calling the latter the middleman for the first two.

…and the pitch:

Moore was in Denver on a tour to promote his $27 memoir, “Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life.”

Some days this is too easy.

That $27 might be the cover price, but the book by Occupy’s favorite upper-one-percenter is only $14.50 on Amazon. Too bad that can’t be an option for any OWS fundamentalist, because Amazon is a corporation that is traded on Wall Street. The book itself is printed by Grand Central Publishing, a division of the Hachette Book Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group, which is traded on the Paris Stock Exchange. In short, no matter how you buy the book, “the man” is getting your money.

Side note: Moore’s claim that Occupy Denver has no leader is patently false.

(h/t Weasel Zippers)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Police have made areas where Wall Streeters work off-limits, but if the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters want a closer glimpse of Wall Street enablers, all they might need to do is have a look around at some of their more famous supporters.

Three of the most prominent celebrity names I’ve read about who are supporting the protesters are Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin. All have their connections to Wall Street — just not in a “teaching them how to live with less” kind of way.

Legendary Hollywood lefty Susan Sarandon, in addition to having reaped untold amounts of money by making movies for New Line Cinema and Warner Brothers (Time Warner) as well as Paramount (Viacom), does voice-overs in ads, one for a notoriously anti-profit company you may have heard of called Disney:

At last check, Disney stock was trading on Wall Street at $30.85.

Sarandon has also appeared in ads for Revlon, which at last glance was trading on Wall Street at $12.37.

Incidentally, Disney was the parent company of Miramax, the production studio that financed filmmaker and “Occupy Wall Street” supporter Michael Moore’s most profitable movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. After the movie was finished, Disney prevented Miramax from distributing Fahrenheit, so that’s when Lions Gate Entertainment stepped in. Lions Gate is trading today on Wall Street at around $6.96. Moore is in the process of suing for almost $3 million in additional profit from the movie that will finance his crusade against corporate greed for the foreseeable future.

Alec Baldwin has defended “Occupy Wall Street” protesters by criticizing how the police are treating them. Baldwin’s involvement also helps lend the stand against corporate greed the credibility that only the star of 30 Rock, which airs on NBC, which is owned by Comcast, can provide. At the time of this writing, Comcast is trading on Wall Street at $21.30 a share.

Baldwin also shows his support for the “Occupy Wall Street” cause through other public service projects, such as appearances in ads for Capital One:

Capital One is trading on Wall Street at about $38.80 a share today, and I’m sure the company will be more than happy to comply with demand #11 of the Occupy Wall Street movement: “Across the board debt forgiveness for all.” Occupy Wall Street protesters should have Alec ask them about that.

Now go get that evil Wall Street, celebs! That’ll teach you! Er, I mean them… sorry…

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Just when you might have thought Jon Huntsman was down and out, along comes Michael Moore to breath fresh life into the possibility that Huntsman could be the one who ends up… being drafted by the left to primary Obama.

Click the pic for video at The Right Scoop:

Huntsman’s now just a Bill Maher endorsement away from sewing up the Tea Party’s support.

More Moore:

On the subject of Chris Christie, Joy Behar asked Moore if America would tolerate a fat president. Moore’s response? Yes, because people want somebody like them, and “most of America looks like me.” Deal with that insult, America. I’m off to buy rice cakes for dinner:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

“This is capitalism. A system of taking and giving… mostly taking.” – Michael Moore

As a general rule, the three most dangerous places in the world are in war-torn areas where anarchy and despotism rules the day; in Antarctica naked; and standing between an anti-capitalist and a giant pile of money. Not necessarily in that order.

Michael Moore has been trying to get his anti-capitalist hands on a big chunk of “national resource” he claims he’s been owed for some time now, and he’s refusing to settle:

Gadfly documentary-maker Michael Moore says he won’t settle with Bob and Harvey Weinstein over money he claims they owe him and wants his day in court.

Moore sued the Weinsteins in February, alleging they still owe him $2.7 million from his movie “Fahrenheit 9/11″ and accused them of using “financial deception” and “bogus accounting methods” to divert money he claims he should have been paid.

Moore told Page Six, “No settlement. No interest in one. Discovery and depositions will reveal how the accounting is done, once and for all.” Moore, who was in talks with the Weinsteins about new projects up till the day the suit was filed, told us that an independent auditor found he’s owed “a minimum of $3 million.”
[...]
While the Weinsteins declined to comment on what Moore told Page Six, sources say he’s already pocketed $20.6 million from “Fahrenheit” and that the money he says he’s owed was used to pay “union guild residuals” and other “standard deductions.” The sources noted that the film was distributed in tandem with Lionsgate, which also took a cut from its $119 million box-office take.

I hope he wins, because if he does those of us who have been victimized by the rich in a grossly unfair and unjust capitalist system can all look forward to Moore cutting us a check for our fair share of “our” money. Right Mike? … Mike?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Yesterday, Michael Moore said that the money of wealthy Americans “isn’t theres, it’s ours,” and is a “national resource.”

This is why the wealthy filmmaker has taken the unprecedented step of posting his bank account numbers online so all Americans can have access to the vital national resource that is “our” money. I’m impressed by th… what? He didn’t do that? I would have expected otherwise because he’s usually not hypocritical that way….

It also looks as if Michael should demand that the weight loss clinic give him his money back. Whoops, I mean, give him our money back.

(h/t JWF)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Nutroots hero Michael Moore sent the state of Connecticut a boycott threat and demanded that voters there recall Joe Lieberman over health care.

His Tweet:

People of Connecticut: What have u done 2 this country? We hold u responsible. Start recall of Lieberman 2day or we’ll boycott your state.

One itty-bitty problem: Connecticut has no recall mechanism.

In fact, as Caleb Howe explains:

…Moore has an article at his own website, a repost of a Politico article, featuring a Connecticut state legislator calling for Lieberman’s ouster. The article, on Moore’s own website, points out that recall is not possible under the constitution.

Is there anyone on this planet quicker to claim the constitution is being violated at every turn than Michael Moore and his groupies? So yes, to state the obvious, it’s hilarious that he’s so quick to dismiss as conveniences him.

We all know Moore is a clown, so this isn’t breaking news. But I never pass on the chance to point out the stupidity of inexplicably influential jackasses.

Beclowned!

Michael Moore: Champion of the working man…except when hiring his own film crew.

Hire as he says, not as he hires.

(Hat tip – JWF)

I think it’s fairly safe to assume he won’t be grilling Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Franklin Raines, Chris Dodd, Bill Clinton, or ACORN over their roles in creating the mess we are in now.

Go ahead. Surprise me.

Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS – with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.

And by the end of the decade 200,000 “health tourists” will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.

Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting health tourists.

Research by the Treatment Abroad website shows that Britons have travelled to 112 foreign hospitals, based in 48 countries, to find safe, affordable treatment.

Almost all of those who had received treatment abroad said they would do the same again, with patients pointing out that some hospitals in India had screening policies for the superbug MRSA that have yet to be introduced in this country.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the figures were a “terrible indictment” of government policies that were undermining the efforts of NHS staff to provide quality services.

Those who know the system best give Moore a reality check:

Sicko, like all Moore’s films, is about an important and emotive subject – healthcare. He contrasts the harsh and exclusive system in the US with the European ideal of universal socialised medicine, equal and free for all, and tries to demonstrate that one is wrong and the other is right. So far, so good; there are cases to be made.

Unfortunately Sicko is a dishonest film. That is not only my opinion. It is the opinion of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recognised the NHS as portrayed in this film, Winston replied: “No, I didn’t. Most of it was filmed at my hospital [the Hammersmith in west London], which is a very good hospital but doesn’t represent what the NHS is like.”

I didn’t recognise it either, from years of visiting NHS hospitals. Moore painted a rose-tinted vision of spotless wards, impeccable treatment, happy patients who laugh away any suggestion of waiting in casualty, and a glamorous young GP who combines his devotion to his patients with a salary of £100,000, a house worth £1m and two cars. All this, and for free.

This, along with an even rosier portrait of the French welfare system, is what Moore says the state can and should provide. You would never guess from Sicko that the NHS is in deep trouble, mired in scandal and incompetence, despite the injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

While there are good doctors and nurses and treatments in the NHS, there is so much that is inadequate or bad that it is dishonest to represent it as the envy of the world and a perfect blueprint for national healthcare. It isn’t.

Not that the filthy reality is going to get in the way of Michael Moore’s self-delusions. Look.

One of my all-time favorite journalists and role models, John Stossel, is taking on Michael Moore. Read about his upcoming special here. Babalu has more.

The bullets in the car of the Goose Creek 2 were .22 caliber rounds. The suspects are back in Tampa.

DiFi’s $4 billion Beverly Hills earmark.

Goodbye, Chuck Hagel. DLTDHYOTWO.

Finally, check out my revamped “Buzzworthy” widget in the right-hand sidebar. One of my terrific tech guys, Ed Burns, put together a cool, secret formula that draws from scores of blogs and community-based sites to bring you a constantly updated menu of the hottest blog posts of the moment. Also remember that the blogroll is right below the second ad in the right-hand margin. Just click on the banner for the drop-down menu.

Henry Gomez at Babalu Blog led an anti-socialist blogburst this week to counter Michael Moore’s anti-American, pro-Cuban health care crockumentary.

Claudia 4 Libertad strikes back:

Ask any Cuban who has recently left the island (because they can’t talk freely about this inside of Cuba) about their health care system and they will tell you that it is often a challenge just to get aspirin and they often have to get it on the black market. The run-down, dilapidated and unsanitary conditions in the facilities that the average Cuban must go to for care are a far cry from the hospitals and clinics reserved for high-ranking members of the communist party or the military. There are actually special facilities in Cuba that serve foreigners who can pay in foreign currency.

If the lauded Cuban healthcare system is so wonderful, perhaps someone can explain to me the following:

* Why some patients are taken to the hospital in wheelbarrows instead of ambulances?
* Why patients must bring their own linens for the hospital bed and often, a fan, to combat the stifling heat and lack of air-conditioning?
* Why cockroaches and other vermin are present in what is supposed to be “sanitary” health facilities? Why many common medicines are not available? If Cuba can export cutting-edge biotechnological products to other countries, surely the US embargo cannot be blamed for not allowing medicine to enter Cuba.
* Why, in a 185-bed cancer center in Santiago where some 6,000 people are treated MONTHLY, there is a shortage of basics such as codeine, anti-nausea drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, antacids, laxatives, high blood pressure medicine, antihistamines, anti-depressants, contraceptives, vitamins and minerals? This particular hospital, sadly, is the norm, not the exception
* Why 41% of patients in Cuban hospitals are undernourished, particularly after surgery. Malnutrition risks increase with extended stays in the hospital, according to the U.S. National Institute of Health.

Was any of this mentioned in “Sicko?” Of course not! The reason why is one to which I alluded earlier– Michael Moore is so anti-American, despite the fact that he makes millions off of the American people every time he makes a film, that he will do anything he can to exaggerate and distort the truth to make the Bush Administration look incompetent, evil and silly.

Well, Michael, I hate to tell you but the American people are on to you.

Val Prieto weighs in:

Is our system perfect? No, of course not. Are there serious problems? You betcha. But to throw the baby out with the bath water does not seem like a reasonable solution. Would the pharma company that funded the research study I participated in have funded it if there were no prospect of turning a profit in the end? Would any of us do the work we do if we weren’t going to be paid for it? Please!

I’m sure we all have stories about how we had to wait at the emergency room or how some doctor or other misdiagnosed us. But is socialized medicine going to solve those issues? Doubtful. More like exacerbate them. If we remove the profit motive from healthcare you might as well remove innovation. You really have to be a SiCKO to not see that.

Jim Hoft takes you on a pictorial tour of Cuba’s hospitals:

Someone should make a documentary…

***

Criticism of Moore from an unexpected corner: MTV! Yes, MTV’s Kurt Loder:

Fidel Castro’s island dictatorship, now in its 40th year of being listed as a human-rights violator by Amnesty International, is here depicted as a balmy paradise not unlike the Iraq of Saddam Hussein that Moore showed us in his earlier film, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” He and his charges make their way — their pre-arranged way, if it need be said — to a state-of-the-art hospital where they receive a picturesquely warm welcome. In a voiceover, Moore, shown beaming at his little band of visitors, says he told the Cuban doctors to “give them the same care they’d give Cuban citizens.” Then he adds, dramatically: “And they did.”

If Moore really believes this, he may be a greater fool than even his most feverish detractors claim him to be. Nevertheless, medical care is provided to the visiting Americans, and it is indeed excellent. Cuba is in fact the site of some world-class medical facilities (surprising in a country that, as Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar noted in the Los Angeles Times last month, “imprisoned a doctor in the late 1990s for speaking out against government failure to respond to an epidemic of a mosquito-borne virus”). What Moore doesn’t mention is the flourishing Cuban industry of “health tourism” — a system in which foreigners (including self-admitted multimillionaire film directors and, of course, government bigwigs) who are willing to pay cash for anything from brain-surgery to dental work can purchase a level of treatment that’s unavailable to the majority of Cubans with no hard currency at their disposal. The Cuban American National Foundation (admittedly a group with no love for the Castro regime) calls this “medical apartheid.” And in a 2004 article in Canada’s National Post, writer Isabel Vincent quoted a dissident Cuban neurosurgeon, Doctor Hilda Molina, as saying, “Cubans should be treated the same as foreigners. Cubans have less rights in their own country than foreigners who visit here.”

As the Caribbean sun sank down on Moore’s breathtakingly meretricious movie, I couldn’t help recalling that when Fidel Castro became gravely ill last year, he didn’t put himself in the hands of a Cuban surgeon. No. Instead, he had a specialist flown in — from Spain.

Exactamente!

Variety reported yesterday that Moore won’t debate Tom Delay on ABC News. He was originally scheduled to debate former Rep. Billy Tauzin:

On Thursday, former House GOP leader Tom DeLay called filmmaker Michael Moore a “plus-sized publicity hound” who is “chicken” because the controversial helmer canceled a skedded appearance this Sunday on a talker to debate health care issues, the subject of his “Sicko.”

ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous” had arranged the debate. But according to DeLay, Moore refused to provide a copy of the doc so that the ex-lawmaker could see it in advance and then cancelled without explanation.

“Guess he didn’t expect anyone to seriously take him on,” DeLay wrote on his Web site. “Had I known he was this chicken, I would have accepted on the spot, but at least I can spare myself the agony of watching one of his mockumentaries. Bottom line: his movies, his politics, and his incessant bullying are all an act.”

Delay titled his blog post, “Sicko is Scared-o.”

Looks like Moore isn’t the only one running scared. The LA Times says top Dems are ducking the movie:

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of South Carolina all have staked out positions sharply at odds with Moore’s approach. But none of them is eager to have that fact dragged into the spotlight.

If Moore’s fire-breathing proposal catches on among party activists, who tend to be suspicious of the private sector and supportive of direct government action, the candidates’ pragmatic, consensus-seeking ideas could look like weak-kneed temporizing — much the way their rejection of an immediate pullout from Iraq has drawn heated criticism from antiwar activists.

In “Sicko,” the filmmaker calls for abolishing the insurance industry, putting a tight regulatory collar on pharmaceutical companies and embracing a Canadian-style government-run system.

Advocacy groups are already planning to use the film to pressure the Democratic hopefuls.

“The candidates haven’t sensed the political fever in this country that fundamental change is called for in the healthcare system,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Assn. “What we are going to do is call on the candidates to reconsider their positions.”

Stoking the passions of rank-and-file Democrats for a government takeover of the healthcare system amounts to political folly, respond some liberal veterans of Washington’s healthcare battles.

“To presume that the private sector is going to sit idly by to see the destruction of private coverage I think is a misreading of reality,” said Ron Pollack of the advocacy group Families USA. “I think the presidential candidates understand that if healthcare reform is going to have a chance of success, it will require bipartisanship and a balance of public and private coverage. It cannot be the triumph of one ideology over the other.”

Anti-communist blogger Babalu reworks Michael Moore’s Sicko logo–and he and his anti-Castro blog mates will be doing special Sicko blogging next week. Don’t miss it.

Michael Moore is in Washington today for a screening of his crockumentary, Sicko. What’s alarming is not his pre-school level of comprehension about the health care market and pharmaceutical industry–but the fact that so many share and swallow his uninformed views.

The NYPost’s Kyle Smith has a devastating review here. An excerpt:

Regardless of whether any particular claim in “Sicko” is true, no one doubts that lots of insured and uninsured Americans face health-care crises. So far, Moore is master of the obvious. We all hate insurance companies and red tape, and we all want to improve the system. Where do we go from here?

To France, Britain and Canada, says Moore, who presents each of them as a health-care paradise. But lots of people in those countries have health-care nightmares of their own. Here’s how easy it is to lie by anecdote: Say I wanted to make a film about gay black Republicans who live in Chelsea. I find ten of them, make a film about them, and you walk out of the theater thinking: Wow, so many gay black Republicans in Chelsea! The six years it took me to find these ten guys will go unnoted.

All three countries are edging away from how Moore portrays them. Moore knows that in France, where he praises not only the health service but limits on working hours, expansive unemployment benefits and the country’s three preferred forms of exercise—street-marching, banner-hoisting and strikes—a new conservative president was just elected by promising to cut back on such nonsense. (According to Moore, if you need a babysitter or help with the laundry, the French government will send a trained professional right over.)

Everywhere he looks, Moore finds French happiness. But this phrase is as close to an oxymoron as French rock. In a poll, 85 percent of the French recently said their country is heading in the wrong direction. Right direction? Nine percent. In France in 2003, 15,000 mostly elderly hospital patients died in an August heat wave–because hospitals lack air conditioning and doctors were on vacation. The French parliament blamed the health care system. That’s five times 9/11’s toll, all of it preventable, all of it unlamented by Moore.

Moore knows that in Britain, where National Health Service spending has more than doubled since Tony Blair was elected, with little to show for it, there is a two-tier health system: the smart set carry private insurance, which Moore wants to outlaw in the U.S. The cliché in London (check out this story and this one) is that the well-shod go to the same doctor as the suckers on the National Health Service. The difference is that private clients get treated right away while the NHS losers wait two years to get their strep throat looked at.

Moore glosses over wait times, hoping his audience is too stupid to notice. He asks a handful of Canadian patients how long they had to wait to see the doctor. Oh, 20 minutes, 45 minutes, everyone says. So if Moore finds five people who didn’t have to wait, there’s no waiting for anybody!

Carter Wood further dismantles Moore’s fantasy propaganda here. And the innovators in the pharmaceutical industry aren’t going to lie back.

Reality-based documentarian Stuart Browning, who has chronicled health care woes in Canada, has a new video out that tackles the myth of the uninsured in America. Watch it.

The real “Sicko,” he says, is socialized medicine. Indeed.

Cuba characterized American filmmaker Michael Moore as a victim of censorship and the U.S. trade embargo as it reported Friday on a U.S. Treasury Department probe of his March visit here for his upcoming health-care documentary, “Sicko.”

Moore took the trip, for a segment in the film, with about 10 ailing workers involved in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center ruins.

The Communist Party daily Granma called the 45-year-old U.S. travel and trade sanctions “a criminal action that has cost lives and grave consequences for the inhabitants of the island,” as well as Americans.

“Any resemblance to McCarthyism is no coincidence,” the newspaper opined, referring to the political witch hunt that U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy carried out against suspected American communists in the 1950s.

The U.S. government’s targeting of Moore “confirms the imperial philosophy of censorship” by American officials, it added.

No, this is what the “imperial philosophy of censorship” looks like. Independent journalists imprisoned in Cuba:

***

While we’re on the subject of Cuba, Michael Moore, and far Left propaganda, Cuban bloggers are exposing the lies about the Castro regime’s Communist health care system.

Start at Babalu Blog. Then go to Cuba Watch. Fausta’s Blog blew the whistle on Princeton Public Library’s “human rights festival” shilling for Castro. More background at Gates of Vienna.

Who’s the Sicko?

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Sicko
Michael Moore: Look in the mirror, sicko