Jul 11 2007Michael Moore Blitzes Wolf

I don't get why all the big networks have a problem with stuff like Michael Moore's...we all listen to their boshit and their side with the biases for the whole year and Michaeal Moore's just expressing his side.

I think that the criticism is coming more from the fact/fiction standpoint...not from the fact that Moore has a point of view of his own, but rather that he uses false information or picks and chooses information from multiple sources (and times) and presents them differently than intended.
A simple google search will find credible sites that present the inconsistencies in his arguments with factual backup (i.e. using Moore's own sources sometimes) and pointing out how flawed or downright false some of his arguments are...
If his movies were for entertainment value only (not a documentary) then I wouldn't care.

That said, I have not seen Sicko yet, and therefore have no opinion yet...except that he makes me feel like taking a jog and a shower.

i agree with the above posters, and want to add that if mm wanted to be taken seriously, he shouldn't add in his little gimicky stunts into his films. like the previews for sicko show him trying to take 911 rescue workers to guantanemo bay for the free healthcare that is provided to the inmates. just to show them being shut out. well... duhh. 100% made me want to vomit all over myself.

The Larry King interview is just as funny as the Wolf interview. Gupta just kind of flails around and raises his eyebrows while Michael Moore goes on tirade after tirade.

Kinda tasteless there, Wolf.

Had I been a conservative pundit, I would have simply asked him about the facts during the interview instead of starting the interview with a blatantly biased piece. They're just doing the same thing they're accusing MM of doing.

So far in the fact checking, I've not seen anything to suggest that the US system is good in any meaningful way. I'd say that's the bottom line.

So not true Willravel ^
Like so many other issues where conservatives and liberals differ in opinion...the US system works in that it does require employers under most categories to offer healthcare to its employees...sometimes it sucks and sometimes its really good.
It requires that lazy ass people get jobs to receive such healthcare.
The US offers free education to those people who cannot afford education to receive said jobs.
THe US offers programs already for those people who cannot find a job and do not have healthcare.
THe US has historic low unemployment rates at the moment which leads to people getting more jobs, and as such making more money to pay excess healthcare costs as well as the obvious fact that employment equates to healthcare...albeit not free.

On the flip side, when you receive your pay check (that is...if you have a job), you notice that between 30-35% of your money is taken out already for federal tax, state tax, social security, medicare...etc...what do you think is going to happen if we pay for everyone's healthcare? How much do you think will be taken out then?

Look at how well the government handles running the DMV, you want the same thing at your hospitol?

The same people who don't think the government is good for anything wants the government to go ahead and start handling that which would be the biggest social program in world history. Yeah, that makes sense.

Right now, your employer pays a for-profit insurance company to provide your healthcare. Now, imagine your paycheck if your employer's money wasn't going to a corporation that makes money by nickel and diming everything, but yours was going to tax-supported healthcare. My guess is that the dollar amount would probably look about the same as it does now. I might buy your argument if the US's health care system worked really well; obviously it doesn't. The free market only works when there's competition and consumers have choice.

(Some) places that have socialized medicine seem to be doing it better than the US is, and that's really the bottom line.

I don't completely disagree, but I also think it depends on who you ask...my wife and I both have fairly good jobs. We don't get to the doctor everytime we or one of our two daughters have a small cough or bad case of the hiccups, so the small deductable is not an issue.
When our kids were born it was a little more expensive (for like a year). But besides that, it is pretty much a non-issue.

Also, if what you say is true, that the cost from taxpayers and employers will be about equal (so the employer would then pay the employees that excess amount...equating to the same amount of gross income...?) then again what we are focusing on is those uninsured people who are not contributing to the taxbase to begin with....I suppose I could be for it if about 2 dozen other social programs that are set up to help these very same people were eliminated.

Well, there's also small businesses and the self-employed - blogger types, say - who also get screwed by the insurance company-dominated system...

Seriously get a real job.

No kidding Vince, as if you could't get a job in insurance and just blog all day anyway...that's what I do....I mean read blogs, that is.

Touche.

The current healthcare system makes it virtually IMPOSSIBLE for self employed people to get their own individual policies if you vary slightly away from their ideal customer (PERFECTLY healthy, ideal weight, no birth defects or history of illnesses in your family).

GOOD LUCK on finding your own health insurance if you were born with ANY birth defect. I guess this is America's way of making sure genetic purity... let the weak and sick go. How darwinian.

i hate CNN so much. i haven't watched that channel since 2001. michael moore has to be outrageous just to be heard, and he does so while remaining factual.

right on mike. i'm with you.

I thought we had a whole 'nother year to wait until the multi-paragraph posts of political rhetoric and bad logic. Isn't bashing Moore kinda three years ago? Can't we find someone else whose dillegently researched and presented views on ways in which the general structure of our own society seems to neglect in a great many cases the general welfare of the it's own citizens to damn with shit-for-brains know-it-all inductive leaps, Rush Limbaugh logic and by-association hersey?

How about Rachel Ray?

Final score on CNN

Moore: 4 Blitzer 0

View Moore on night 2 Larry King. I would say Blitzer 0, Moore 1, Gupta (sp?) 1

Anyhow, I don't think I bashed him at all...except for saying that he looks like a walking heart attack. I did point out that you can google sites that point out where he was wrong or using false information, or bending the truth or splicing two different incidents...etc...
Particularly in Bowling for Columbine, but also in F911.

Anyhow, I was more stating an opinion than using 'bad logic' to lay out a point.
Nice of you to keep your post short and retarded though proteon. I would like to point out that more people abuse the system that tries to help than can be taken for granted...and that there are so many effed up programs that are supposed to be helping these very same people and they still can't pull themselves off of there lazy ass and go to school for free, or get help getting a job for free.
Why not let the government do education, law enforcement, fire protection, healthcare, military, send me my groceries, raise my kids, and pick out my tv shows as well.

Escape Monotony, Gupta was as wrong as you are. He gets a ZERO. Now excuse me while I escape from your moronity.

surprised the CNN retraction didn't get the front page treatment.

All good points R not L...in that you did not actually make one. It is funny though that I am not even being overtly confrontational or pushing any point of view all that hard and yet the likes of you and proteon will still go on the defensive (in a very offensive way) to try and point out how much of an idiot I am.
Feel free to discuss, don't be a turd.

Feel free to discuss, don't be a turd.

You might want to try that some time. Instead of, you know, claiming that you're all innocent, and truthful, and stuff.

Ok, where did I attack anyone without first being ripped? I am only trying trying to explain my opinion, or discuss it, as it were. I admitted that I withold judgement on the movie until I see it.
I made a point and responded to willravel without attacking him personally. Just said what I thought.
Vince responded and I responded to him, admitted that I didn't completely disagree.
I probably should not have called proteon's post retarded...that is about it. Obviously R not L was being an ass.

Whatever, don't discuss the actual topic if you don't want to, just try and kick me in the balls instead...that is the way the right and the left actually work anyhow.

Folks, the only people who are not getting screwed over by the healthcare companies are the healthcare company stockholders. They are getting rich by denying medical care to people, which is frankly legalized murder from where I'm standing.

Escape Monotony: "It requires that lazy ass people get jobs to receive such healthcare."
Response: Yes and no. I wish I had statistics to say how many Americans have some sort of preexisting condition, but I don't. Luckily, I was born with an extremely dangerous heart defect, called a severe coarctation of the aorta. It's probably on wiki if you want to look it up. Had I not been covered before the defect was covered, someone else would be typing this now, and I'd probably be dead because no HMO would have me. Or I would have had to come up with like $120,000 before the age of 5.
Escape Monotony: "The US offers free education to those people who cannot afford education to receive said jobs."
I wish someone would have told me that. I had to pay quite a bit for college. I don't suppose you have a source for this.
Escape Monotony: "THe US offers programs already for those people who cannot find a job and do not have healthcare."
This is actually worse than the other Western nations.
Escape Monotony: "THe US has historic low unemployment rates at the moment which leads to people getting more jobs, and as such making more money to pay excess healthcare costs as well as the obvious fact that employment equates to healthcare...albeit not free."
I would think that this has more to do with a debate on unemployment. It's a valid point, absolutely, but it doesn't strike me as being directly associated with the healthcare topic.

Thanks for posting. Anyone else for an iWatchStuff Forum?

Escape Monotony's getting his ass handed to him!

Listen, all I am saying as that Socialism has been tried at various times in various places and has not once been successful, and the closer the US gets to Socialism, the closer it gets to failure. That is all.

And all everyone else is saying is that you are full of shit. Go be a libertardian somewhere else.

EM, you don't have to go somewhere else as far as I'm concerned. Native Americans made socialism work for hundreds or even thousands of years. Not only that, but when any and all humans were in the hunter gatherer stage, they operated in what one could call a socialistic pack. It was then that basic socialism was very successful. I would argue that the US isn't democratic, but a constitutional republic. There is a place in a republic for social systems that work. As is mentioned in the Sicko movie, we have socialized fire and police protection. I wouldn't want to have to pay a premium just to make sure the police or fire brigade would come in case of an emergency.

It's kinda funny that this type of discussion is happening on a funny entertainment blog.

Put me down for "hunter gatherer".

"Native Americans made socialism work for hundreds or even thousands of years."

I love statements like this. Totally irrelevant, unless you want your Primary Physician to be a Cherokee Medicine Man. Let's not forget that they also sold Manhattan for a pile of Small Pox covered bear rugs.

Whats with the go elsewhere nonsense? And FYI, I am straight conservative republican, obviously. Liberatarian? Are you kidding me?

Anyhow, good response Joe, I was more thinking along the lines that socialism may work as soon as I can trade the blackberries in my garden for a couple of steaks at the market...socialism may have worked 500-1000 years ago when there was no actual currency and no world economy.

John Wayne, stop being an ass and say something worthwhile...saying I am full of shit and telling me how I am are two completely different things.

Regardless of your opinion of Michael Moore, one has to reckognize that even though CNN spares no expense to argue with him on any topic, they never seem to ask any government official for any evidence or even solid logic when they're trying to suspend another civil right or plan armed aggression.
The current White House has an even worse record of misinterpreting information and ommiting evidence than Michael Moore could ever build.

Isn't this a movie site? Take this shit to the YouTube comments section.

Don't read it bdarbs, this is probably a record number of posts for any of Vince's topics, and you complain and tell everyone to stop discussing. Some of us enjoy the banter...you don't have to waste your time reading it or waste your breath telling us not to write it.

Kai, I don't disagree, but don't think what you just said is a symptom of this particular White House alone.

In a nutshell, EM, are you saying the system works? Because it does, to different degrees of satisfaction. But U.S. healthcare is awful, compared either to rich or even some poor countries.
And "get a job" is way beyond a low blow for the unwillingly unemployed.

By the way, Socialism doesn't work. Striving for a better healthcare, however, is hardly a step towards Socialism.

Michael Moore's retarded.
CNN's retarded.
...so why are we spending time on this post?