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Yes.
A big problem is that people don't do their own research and come to their own conclusions.
They're content to let someone else do all the heavy lifting.
I also suspect that time was of the essence and he had to get his product out there, just like any other business.
We know him enough that he should do a film that really does go hard on facts.
We don't need his narration anymore.
We need brilliant op-eds that leave it ALL up there on screen, devastating, probing, lucid.
Moore's in-your-face personal narrations and appearances in his own films has been an essential element in his docs from the beginning. I'm not sure it is Michael Moor otherwise. At the same time his manner is very provocative and the right hates him and will not ever listen to him. Is there any voice on the left that the right will listen to? If so, it's not Michael Moore's.
Of course you're right that time is of the essence with his movies, but with the money and team he has access to now, there is no excuse for superficiality. I think there is a bit of the charlatan in him and that was true from the start too. He is said to have fudged things on the order in which footage was presented and to have pretended the Ford boss wouldn't meet with him when he would. But he had good points to make and the method was powerful -- also from the first.
I agree. Superficiality should be deleted.
There is a very valid point about him being a bit of a charlatan.
But I'm quite fine with it because his brand of charlatan is not malicious.
It's more of white lie-type exposure of people and policy he finds unsavoury.
I love it, actually, because he is willing to "fudge the truth" just like the Right does all the time.
He was fighting fire with fire, quite effectively in my opinion.
Stanley Kubrick took notice of Roger and Me, and allowed Mike to show a print of Dr. Strangelove to his Canadian Bacon crew.
Not many documentarians can claim that.
Moore is relevant and always was.
He's definitely not bulletproof, but he's on the side of Good.
You're right. But this is something I have to work out in my own mind. And in recent years I have drifted away from my earlier passion for Michael Moore. I didn't get him at first (when I saw Roger and Me) and then after the big hoopla about BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE I came to see his power and genius, and then lately he seems to have been losing it, as a filmmaker. The failure of Fahrenheit 9/11 to have any discernable effect was a turn downward, in my view. I did think SICKO was direly needed. But I'm not sure it had the effect it should have.
Your point about the right using the methods of a charlatan is well taken. We need more on the left capable of swaying the masses, of fooling people into thinking what they should, so to speak.
Wait. Did I really say that? What are you leading me into? :)
If Fahrenheit had affected the result of the 2004 election we might have avoided the economic mess.
But then again maybe not.
It may have polarized the U.S. even more, created a toxic hotbed.
But with Obama as President I think we have it anyway!
We need Noam Chomsky with a marketing team that cannot be stopped.
:)
Hard to say what if.... But I do think the financial debacle could have been lessened, if not averted. This is a human-created event. We need financial regulations. We have lost the good ones we had. That has not changed under Obama.
Chomsky for President!
I definitely second that.
Unfortunately Chomsky is a little old. I hope a replacement is coming. So far there is none.
The department of National Defence is in shambles.
Billions of dollars in "black assets" have mysteriously vanished from Canada.
And no one knows a fucking thing.
Secrets and weapons have been compromised on a scale that would make you shit your pants.
Heads should roll, starting with Peter MacKay. But we know that won't happen.
91 Conservative MP's including Immigration Minister Kenney, Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, Gerry (The Jet-Setter) Ritz and other idiots voted against women's rights.
A Conservative MP (who shall remain nameless) put forward this debate of deciding when a fetus is a human being or not.
The House of Commons voted, and it was defeated. Half of the Conservative caucus even thought it was a batshit insane idea.
Stephen Harper himself voted against it.
Why is this shit even being entertained in Parliament?
Why are they wasting precious time and resources on this moronic type of ideology and Stone-Age bullshit?
It's truly amazing how dumb the Conservative party really is.
This week I learned of the new movie WON'T BACK DOWN, which they are saying is anti-union and anti-teacher. It's (apparently, because I hae not yet seen it) propaganda in a wide release Hollywood movie, against the public school system, which would mean further promotion of "voucher" and "charter" schools that benefit business and spell the slow eroding of public eduction, which is essential to a democratic system, last I heard.
And who are the stars of this film? Maggie Gyllenhaal, who comes from an old leftie family, and the African-American star Viola Davis. And how do they justify being in such a movie? That I do not know, but they have been working up a rap, for sure.
There is money to promote this as a controversy the "people" will join with the film on. Outside the Regal Union Square, one of NYC's biggest cinemplexes, they had flacks asking people who'd seen WON'T BACK DOWN to mail off postcards they obligingly provided to show their support -- of fighting against teachers unions.
Granted, US teachers' unions may not be great engines of progress, but smashhing the unions means one thing: opposing the interests of working people in favor of "free enterprise", or in other words, profit over human needs. And after several documentaries which covertly undermined the teachers' union cause, now comes a big feature film.
Thanks for that.
In Canada, education is under attack in all kinds of ways.
Better news:
Omar Khadr returned to Canada this past Saturday, after a decade in Guantanamo Bay.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird basically said Canada had no choice but to take him back.
Well DUH!
I hope President Obama told you to do it over the phone last Friday!
Fuck what idiots these Tories are...
Better late than never.
Man's inhumanity to man is on full display in the 21st century. Where is the human progress?
Speaking of man's inhumanity, guess what Conservative MP Rob Anders let fly out of his filthy sewer?
He said that Thomas Mulcair helped to kill Jack Layton.
Yes, you heard right.
You remember Rob Anders? The Tory MP who likes to doze off and nod out in the House of Commons?
The one who was removed from the Veterans Committee because he fell asleep at a meeting in Halifax and slandered homeless veterans?
Rob issued a quick written apology to Olivia Chow, Jack's widow. She told Anders he should sponsor her in the race for cancer. (PEREFCT!!!!)
Why Stephen Harper will not fire this shithead Rob Anders is beyond me. Actually it's not.
Anders is cut from the same arrogant and oblivious Calgary Cloth.
Anders said he watched the opposition front benches before last years election (a lie- fucker was never awake) and he noticed that Tom Mulcair was pressuring Jack not to run in the election, that he should step aside. Anders said Jack ran in the election, and died.
All because of Tom Mulcair.
RIGHT.
And John Baird was in New York yesterday, at the UN, barking about how the UN never gets results.
Neither do you John.
Neither do you or your retarded corporate con-men friends.
With assholes like Baird and Anders, who needs an enemy? I'm utterly embarassed that turds like those two are Canadian. And are in a Majority Government.
Wake me when the nightmare is over.
Canadians who are switched-on should know that Stephen Harper has a few "tactics" that he employs when he is in deep shit.
One of those tactics is "stay out of the newspapers".
He never reads them anyway, but his name has not been in the papers much lately, and not because of the summer break that just happened.
Canadians should notice this.
Harper knows what it means to "be in power but never be seen wielding it".
His reputation as a control freak is tempered with this eerie desire of his to seem aloof and teflon-Don.
He wants total control over anything that he cannot control, and when it suits his needs, he'll appear to relinquish that power, all by staying out of the papers and off the nightly news.
His pesky Conservative caucus members on the other hand....THEY are in the papers every damn day.
How much of a mindfuck is Harper's government?
You can't even calculate it. It's like Tipper Gore on meth, Mitt Romney without his awesome charisma. LOL
RE: Omar Khadr
Tongues are wagging long and lean here in Canada over the return of Omar Khadr from Gitmo.
So many people who think he belongs in a U.S. jail indefinitely. After all, it was the Americans who arrested him, who saw him throw a grenade that killed an American soldier.
It's a little more complex than that.
If anybody looked at his case for more than two seconds they would see that his background is tragic.
He is pulling out all the stops to be educated and to become a contributing member of Canadian society.
I've discussed this with friends, and some feel that his "rehab in Gitmo" is a sham, a ploy, just another terrorist detainee who's grasping at freedom's straws. Some think that Khadr would no way on earth be "rehabilitated" from his crimes as a child soldier and that he would in fact be digging his heels in with his Jihad.
Maybe, if he was Osama bin Laden.
But he's not.
He's a fucking KID.
Who, largely through his parents' terrible and inhuman child-rearing, got caught up in War.
Canadians hate a case like Omar Khadr.
Because he doesn't look Canadian, because he did things that are clearly un-Canadian and because our Government has painted him like a boogeyman. Canadians somehow have got it in their heads that the Government is always right, that Harper should be trusted 1000%.
It makes me sick to my stomach.
Nobody THINKS anymore.
I hope somebody thinks up there. Did anybody watch the Obama-Romney debate last night? I didn't; I went to a revival of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF with Tracy Letts, the Steppenwolf Company from Chicago.
Nobody should ever be put in jail for ten years for involvement (putative) in a war. It's unheard of. That's over. And he was a kid. Some of the young Gitmo victims were safely returned to England. Mabe Canada has picked up some of the jingoism of the USA?
Justin Trudeau, Liberal MP and son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, officially announced his bid to be Leader of the Liberal party.
This is interesting, but I wonder where he was while Ignatieff was busy being a disaster?
This bid to be Liberal Leader is very smart for the Liberal party.
Their party simply will remain in third unless they can Hulk-Out with a Titan candidate for Leader.
Trudeau is that man.
He has proven that he is not to be underestimated.
(See the boxing match THRILLA ON THE HILLA- he beat Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau).
The only problem is that he's never held power in any capacity. But he has his father's Legacy to draw on and Trudeau is a very likeable guy.
He would be a Prime Minister who would restore dignity and honor to Parliament.
But the NDP are full-steam ahead, and I've cast my lot in with them.
The Liberals had me and they lost me with their chickenshit. They did robo-calls too.
The NDP did not. The Liberals had Ontario disaster Premier Bob Rae be the interim Leader, all the while gaining no traction.
Public opinion hasn"t changed on the Liberal party. People still remember the sponsorship scandal and LOTS more...
Trudeau could ignite something Revolutionary here in Canada, but I'm not sure he can pull it off.
He needs to have a campaign of stellar planning.
This is his time to make History.
But I think it's too little too late.
Tom Mulcair will be our next Prime Minister.
I can feel it in my Bones.
Canada has picked up U.S. jingoism.
Our government is REPUBLICAN.
Mitt Romney would win in Canada.
WITHOUT all his money.
The Khadr case is a great example of how a government can show it's true colors.
He languished in Gitmo for almost two years after the Canadian Supreme Court told Harper's government to get on it.
I'm certain President Obama himself called up Harper and told him to shit or get off the pot.
Trudeau sounds like an unknown quantity, but a promising one. Your government certainly needs a new lease on life.
Just found out that Harper's Government approved spending millions and millions of dollars this year on ads for their "Economic Action Plan", the biggest slice of propaganda since The Third Reich.
Imagine that!
Spending the taxpayers money on your own political agenda with no one to stop you.
Well, it's a REALITY here in Canada.
In a sane world, they would be charged with fraud and charged with criminal negligence causing debt.
Joe Shithead is running for provincial government in British Columbia for the New Democratic Party.
I hope that man wins, because he will sort out shit in government REAL QUICK.
He's been the guitarist/vocalist of D.O.A. for 35 years, and I witnessed their final farewell show in Ottawa on Saturday night.
(video is up on Facebook).
Joe said:"If I win, I can't play in D.O.A. for 4 years. If I win a second term, it's 8 years. If I don't win at all
I STILL OWN MY GUITAR.
FUCKING AWESOME JOE.
Get those Liars For Hire up against the WALL.
Google Images pictures of Pierre Poilivere.
His visage should revolt you, without hearing a single word from his arrogant prick mouth.
It's obvious his daddy never laid a hand on him, as Pierre probably would have called child services on his own parents for disciplining him.
He's THAT slimy and slick.
He's just got an attitude and face that I want to deck at full throttle.
I would PAY GOOD MONEY to slap Pierre around. I hate him that much.
He never worked a day in his life and never earned a single dollar.
This is the same guy who took a limo to Parliament Hill and told his driver to bypass security because he is Pierre Poilivrere.
I'm 5 years older than him with a helluva a lot more life experience.
All he ever did was sit in his seat at school and then sit in his seat in the House of Commons.
Achieving ZERO for anyone or anything except himself.
That's why all the Google Images of Pierre are of him smiling like a doofus.
He's knows what a scam he's running on Canadians and he can't believe his luck.
Give me 15 seconds alone with him.
Please God Please.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has resigned.
That's what happens when you piss off every single teacher in the Province.
Good riddance.
Let NDP Andrea Horvath take over, like she should have IN THE LAST FUCKING ELECTION!!!!!!!
Watch this and cringe hard.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9aJKDqqP4A
I guess you're not alone in your contempt for this chap.
The Harper government is being taken to court by the Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page for refusing to disclose the billions of dollars in cuts from the last budget.
Kevin Page has warned the Tories for weeks that if they do not comply with Budget requests (and they haven't- they only provided 23% of the cuts) he will sue them.
And he just filed court action against the Conservatives.
This is BEAUTIFUL NEWS, because the position of the Parliamentary Budget Officer was CREATED for just this very thing, by the Conservatives themselves!
Must be a hard pill to swallow that their man is taking them to court.
Guess what Finance Minister Jim "The Fleecer" Flaherty said about it?
"Frankly, this is not part of Mr. Page's mandate".
Oh Yes it is Jim.
You fuckers are TOAST.
You don't want to be transparent and accountable?
We'll fuckin' SUE YOU ASSHOLE.
Get the fuck out of our Parliament you criminal shithead!!!!!!!
The Parliamentary Budget Officer is one of the few 100% HONEST people in Parliament.
If he demands accountability with taxpayers money on 5.2 BILLION worth of cuts,
THEN YOU FUCKING GIVE IT TO HIM.
These Tories have fucked everything up to the point of no return.
HANG THEM ALL.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle4626742/
Read it and weep.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says he's ready for a 2014 warm-up By-Election, and SO AM I BABY!
3 by-elections have been called by Stephen Harper for November, and he will lose all three seats.
TRUST ME.
He will never win another election in his life.
These Conservatives are a thousand times more incompetent and corrupt than the Liberals were.
Holy Dogshit will I celebrate their obliteration.
(and I'm sure readers are ready for this thread to end on a positive high....)
Keep faith!
It will!
The Fleecer Jim Flaherty and Treasury President Tony Clement keep repeating that Kevin Page's job as Parliamentary Budget Officer is limited only to EXPENDITURES, not money that hasn't been spent.
These two fucktards need to read the actual description of the job, which includes the IMPLICATIONS and IMPACTS of budget cuts.
Without that knowledge, the PBO cannot accurately assess Canada's budget and debts. He needs the government to be 100% forthcoming with it's numbers or we're all flying blind.
The Conservatives have witheld vital information before- remember when the Harper government fell on a non-confidence vote over not disclosing information to the Official Opposition?
I FUCKING DO.
And I also remember that Canadians didn't care and handed Harper a Majority.
Now Harper is ignoring the PBO- not just opposition parties.
Tories can't use partisan politics anymore to defend their Fuckery.
THEIR OWN MAN IS TAKING THEM TO COURT- OVER 60 FEDERAL DEPARTMENTS HAVE BEEN SERVED LEGAL NOTICE!!!!
Anyone who thought I was off my rocker for writing this thread: YOU'RE WELCOME.
I did all the heavy lifting for you.
And wasn't paid a penny.
That makes me a true Conservative Canadian.
LOL
The Harper government has refused requests for Military veteran funerals to be covered if the veteran is homeless.
Homeless shelters in Canada actually provide better burial coverage for the poor than the government does for veterans.
Is there anything more sick? or more callous?
HOW THE FUCK DO THEY SLEEP AT NIGHT?
He wouldn't even give his personal opinion on how veterans are being treated! POLITICAL ALL THE FUCKING WAY!
Hang him out to fucking DRY.
Here's the article:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/St...842/story.html
I guess their model is down here.
It's better to get killed in a war. That's what you're meant to do anyway, isn't it? Than to survive and come home.
Yeah. Right. Ha Ha
As a famous Navy Seal said once: Getting a Purple Heart is like being awarded for not doing your job.
Blasphemy!
How dare these soldiers ask for a proper burial! They didn't die with Honor in the combat zone!
Only tools in the game.
Finance Minister Jim "THE FLEECER" Flaherty has just announced that the deficit in Canada will not go down until 2017 and that $5 Billion has just been added to our National Deficit, making it now $26 BILLION.
The Tories were handed a surplus of $16 Billion in 2006.
Now we have a deficit of $26 Billion.
What an awesome job they are doing.
An aweome scam job.
Simply incredible.
Who or what will they blame for the ass-pounding they will recieve in the next election?
Every last Conservative MP is FIRED.
You don't earn your pay if our debt goes up $5 Billion in only one year.
How many whoppers will they continue to lay on Canadians until people wake the fuck up????
Extreme correction to Canada's national deficit:
At 11:59 PM tonight, the national debt will hit 600 BILLION DOLLARS.
NOT 26 Billion as I had posted before.
I learned today that the Harper government stopped caring about the National debt in 2008.
(When Obama won the Presidency?)
So........
What do you think of THAT,
CANADA?!?!?!?!?!
I'm glad you've brought us up to date on the actual figures and one can see that a $26 billion national debt for a rich First World economy would be chicken feed. The US national debt is $9 trillion, by the way. In the American system a trillion is a thousand times a billion. I think you have to ask yourself whether, if we're upset over a debt that was really 25 times less than the actual one, we really have any idea what we're getting upset about.
I think the problem is not so much that there is a debt or that it's a lot of money but how it was created and what creating it was used for -- which takes us back to the fact that we don't like who's in charge and what they're up to. And I think that while this situation reflects a great deal of careless and exploitative spending, it is at this point simply a bugaboo that is being used to exploit you, because it isn't the aspect of the economy that you ought to be concerned about right now.
I just want to remind you that this period of global "Great Recession" is the last time to be instituting austerity measures for the illusory goal of curbing "debt. Using debt now, as an excuse for austerity is how neoliberal governments and transnational corporations squeeze the poor and middle class and increase the wealth of global powers and concurrently, the 1%. This is the message I sent you from Paul Krugman, the simple but practical Keynsian principle that during times when the national economy is weak the government needs to stimulate it with spending, not pay off debt. That, paying off of debt, must be done during boom times. Remember? You agreed and thanked me. So why now are you panicking or roaring about the national debt?
Look up natiuoinal debuts by country here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...by_public_debt. Would you like to move to Uzbekistan or Algeria, whose national debts are 6-7% of their GNP? No? Then what about the fact that Germany, which is pretty solid, has a national debt that's 82% of the GNP? Now I'll grant you that Qatar and Kuwait also have national debts that are 6-7% of their GNP, but they achieve this lovely situation through very undemocratic situations and by being tiny countries swimming in oil.
Maybe you should be worrying more about the United States: 105%. Canada's is only 83.5% of GNP, not far from Germany. Where we don't want to go is where Greece is, with a national debt that's 165 % of GNP. Zimbabwe, a rogue state in the hands of the receivers, is well over 200%. But when you look at Spain and see its debt is only 69% of GNP, it begins to appear that these figures really don't tell us much by themselves.
Anyone who has a mortgage (as I do) has at least one a big debt. The real question is whether it was incurred for something worthwhile (I have a nice house) and what the prospects of are being able to service it (so far, so good). It was a valuable tradeoff to incur this debt. Of course it is not growing; it is slowly diminishing. More or less. But paying it off is not my goal. To try to do so would take money that is better used elsewhere. But it's really not valid to compare individual and family economics with government economics, because the rules and scale are quite different.
The figure for Canada's current national debt, $600 billion, means nothing in itself. Do you even know what is billion dollars is, in any practical terms? You have to see this all in a global context and within an understanding of government economies. Above all you have to see it in terms of what national economies need right now, which is stimulation via spending, not focusing on halting the rise of "debt"
A kindres spirit?
Here are some thoughts about Canada's $600 billion (Canadian) 'national debt.' I culled it through an online search, and you'll find it and more here.
You may like this guy, a Canadian of about 62 whose name is Dave Patterson. In fact I think you and he have a lot in common and you ought to find him very simpatico. He is as angry about the debt as you are. And reading his partial bio, he has been pursuing the issue for a long time, at least from the Eighties. He's sort of a hippie era ex would be rock star whose "professional" training is in ecology, and who's published writing is a series of children's books. He also worked for CUSO in Thailand, working with NGO's. His website's mission statement and white papers make him sound crazily utopian. But to be that at 62 is quite admirable. This is not to say that I agree with his, and your, concern with debt or his fascination with getting off a debt-based monetary system, though in idealistic terms, the liberation from this system that the Glasgow-based group Patterson cites sounds great:Quote:
Scam of the Century - the Canadian National "Debt" [Excerpt]
. . .The doctrine of odious debts: "...If a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interest of the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress the population that fights against it, etc., this debt is odious for the population of all the State.... This debt is not an obligation for the nation; it is a regime's debt, a personal debt of the power that has incurred it, consequently it falls with the fall of this power."
- from MY perspective, this applies pretty well to the Canadian so-called "national debt" - it was NOT a necessary debt, when the Bank of Canada had been historically used to provide most of the necessary money when the government faced a shortfall - and, with the possible exception of the one hundred or so billion, the great bulk of the money that has been collected to "service" the debt has, rather obviously, NOT been used for the service of the Canadian people. The debt was incurred, and whether or not one can prove it was done intentionally, it has been used as a weapon against the people of Canada, used as an excuse to roll back generations of advancement in terms of providing safe and secure lives for Canadians, on the excuse of turning literally hundreds of billions of dollars over to those "investors" holding the debt ....
"Prosperity," this group hopefully calls itself.Quote:
Money Reformers advocate that the virtual Monopoly of Money Creation must be removed from the corporate banking system and we work to establish a publicly-created supply of debt-free money, created on behalf of the people, by a public body.
This money should be spent, not lent, into society on the basis of proven need. This will gradually reduce the overall burden of debt in society, break reliance upon the private banking system for the supply of money, open potential for change, and empower people democratically.
The Money Reformers’ proposal is not a left-wing, or right-wing idea. It’s just good sense!
But as I said, I don't think all that is what we need to be focused on right now because it's the economy that needs spending, not draw down of debt. And I think Dave Patterson is aware of that.
Not the lead editorial in today's (Nov. 23, 2012) NY Times, "Britain's Place in Europe":
Quote:
. . .over the past year, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has been destructively pushing her partners to enact laws that would prolong the recession by setting rigid deficit ceilings, denying countries the fiscal flexibility sometimes needed to revive growth.
I roar about the debt because a country as rich as Canada shouldn't have one.
And neither should the United States.
No excuse under the sun can convince me that it is needed or was necessary.
It's bad management, through and through.
How can creditors get upset over minscule household debt if the government doesn't give 2 shits about monstrous debt?
I'll never understand that.
I'll never cull "logic" from numbers like that, global perspective or not.
Kick the Can is our mantra and it always will be.
In the grand scheme I don't really care. I can't affect jack or shit. I just squawk about it. I just bark about it.
My house is still Awesome.
Music still plays.
I'm just attempting to figure out the precise parameters of the Class War.
Every country has a debt Jason. Learn to life with it.
Or roar. Whatever you like.