I love Micheal Moore...

rhpot1991

Ms. Haiku wrote:

Out of all of Michael Moore's films and books would you:

a - recommend the films more or the books?
b - out of your answer for a which is your favorite (film or book?)

I have read quite a few of his books and have seen most of his movies (and TV shows). It depends if you like movies or books better, they are really close to each other.

As far as which ones are best, I would say Bowling for Columbine is his best movie, and both Stupid White Men and Dude Where's My Country? are good choices as far as his books go.

gabers

onelongsong wrote:

if you like one sided pathological liars.

C'mon now you don't honestly believe that do you? A pathological liar? The man makes films, and in doing so he has probably taken some liberties, as all filmakers do, I don't think he ever intentionally lied about any of the points he has made in his books or films. It's so easy to dismiss his message in such a fashion but my question to you is, do you think he's not done this country a service by the subjects he's tackled in his works? What is your real problem with him?

inmytree

onelongsong wrote:

if you like one sided pathological liars.

oh, the irony.....:rolleyes:

onelongsong

gabers wrote:

C'mon now you don't honestly believe that do you? A pathological liar? The man makes films, and in doing so he has probably taken some liberties, as all filmakers do, I don't think he ever intentionally lied about any of the points he has made in his books or films. It's so easy to dismiss his message in such a fashion but my question to you is, do you think he's not done this country a service by the subjects he's tackled in his works? What is your real problem with him?

my real problem with him is that he lies to the american public and they believe him. some people still believe that F9/11 was real. here's a guy sitting in california claiming to know what top government officials were thinking and where they were at any given moment. he was privy to the same news reports we were.
he's made movies but so has steven spielberg. cnn had moore on a couple times but they also had others on that tore the film apart. first; non-cuban residents MUST pay for medical services; unless they're making a film trying to discrace the us. there is a seperate hospital for non-residents. doctors in cuba make $20.00 per MONTH. patients have to supply their own sheets and food. the pictires showed big wards with beds packed in. the windows didn't have screens and the sanitary conditions would not be accepted in any other country. canada has announced that sheets will no longer be changed between patients. they will be turned over and washed every other patient. since americans insist on service and clean conditions; moore is full of s**t.
canada has a movement now where they're trying to get private healthcare for those who can afford faster service and better care. i'll try to find a link for you.

Bu$chlager

Nice job by CNN. Looking forward to this tonight.

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/

onelongsong

onelongsong wrote:

my real problem with him is that he lies to the american public and they believe him. some people still believe that F9/11 was real. here's a guy sitting in california claiming to know what top government officials were thinking and where they were at any given moment. he was privy to the same news reports we were.
he's made movies but so has steven spielberg. cnn had moore on a couple times but they also had others on that tore the film apart. first; non-cuban residents MUST pay for medical services; unless they're making a film trying to discrace the us. there is a seperate hospital for non-residents. doctors in cuba make $20.00 per MONTH. patients have to supply their own sheets and food. the pictires showed big wards with beds packed in. the windows didn't have screens and the sanitary conditions would not be accepted in any other country. canada has announced that sheets will no longer be changed between patients. they will be turned over and washed every other patient. since americans insist on service and clean conditions; moore is full of s**t.
canada has a movement now where they're trying to get private healthcare for those who can afford faster service and better care. i'll try to find a link for you.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110010266
Who's Really 'Sicko'
In Canada, dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week. Humans can wait two to three years.

BY DAVID GRATZER
Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

TORONTO--"I haven't seen 'Sicko,' " says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health-care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.

In the U.S., 83 House Democrats voted for a bill in 1993 calling for single-payer health care. That idea collapsed with HillaryCare and since then has existed on the fringes of the debate--winning praise from academics and pressure groups, but remaining largely out of the political discussion. Mr. Moore's documentary intends to change that, exposing millions to his argument that American health care is sick and socialized medicine is the cure.

It's not simply that Mr. Moore is wrong. His grand tour of public health care systems misses the big story: While he prescribes socialism, market-oriented reforms are percolating in cities from Stockholm to Saskatoon.

Mr. Moore goes to London, Ontario, where he notes that not a single patient has waited in the hospital emergency room more than 45 minutes. "It's a fabulous system," a woman explains. In Britain, he tours a hospital where patients marvel at their free care. A patient's husband explains: "It's not America." Humorously, Mr. Moore finds a cashier dispensing money to patients (for transportation). In France, a doctor explains the success of the health-care system with the old Marxist axiom: "You pay according to your means, and you receive according to your needs."

It's compelling material--I know because, born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.

Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore's claim that ERs don't overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. "The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits," reported a national newspaper. While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients receive care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.

This problem hit close to home last year: A relative, living in Winnipeg, nearly died of a strangulated bowel while lying on a stretcher for five hours, writhing in pain. To get the needed ultrasound, he was sent by ambulance to another hospital.

In Britain, the Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients wait more than a year for surgery. Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.

With such problems, it's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Private clinics--some operating in a "gray zone" of the law--are now opening in Canada at a rate of about one per week.

Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favors privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered the contracting out of some primary-care services--perhaps even to American companies.

Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.

Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.

Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real, and they represent a major trend in health care. What does Mr. Moore's documentary say about that? Nothing.

Dr. Gratzer, a practicing physician licensed in Canada and the U.S. and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care" (Encounter, 2006).
__________________

Jeanwah

Thank God for Michael Moore!

We SO need someone like him willing to be ostracized in the name of getting the truth out!

inmytree

onelongsong wrote:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110010266
Who's Really 'Sicko'
In Canada, dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week. Humans can wait two to three years.

BY DAVID GRATZER
Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

TORONTO--"I haven't seen 'Sicko,' " says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health-care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.

In the U.S., 83 House Democrats voted for a bill in 1993 calling for single-payer health care. That idea collapsed with HillaryCare and since then has existed on the fringes of the debate--winning praise from academics and pressure groups, but remaining largely out of the political discussion. Mr. Moore's documentary intends to change that, exposing millions to his argument that American health care is sick and socialized medicine is the cure.

It's not simply that Mr. Moore is wrong. His grand tour of public health care systems misses the big story: While he prescribes socialism, market-oriented reforms are percolating in cities from Stockholm to Saskatoon.

Mr. Moore goes to London, Ontario, where he notes that not a single patient has waited in the hospital emergency room more than 45 minutes. "It's a fabulous system," a woman explains. In Britain, he tours a hospital where patients marvel at their free care. A patient's husband explains: "It's not America." Humorously, Mr. Moore finds a cashier dispensing money to patients (for transportation). In France, a doctor explains the success of the health-care system with the old Marxist axiom: "You pay according to your means, and you receive according to your needs."

It's compelling material--I know because, born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.

Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore's claim that ERs don't overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. "The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits," reported a national newspaper. While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients receive care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.

This problem hit close to home last year: A relative, living in Winnipeg, nearly died of a strangulated bowel while lying on a stretcher for five hours, writhing in pain. To get the needed ultrasound, he was sent by ambulance to another hospital.

In Britain, the Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients wait more than a year for surgery. Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.

With such problems, it's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Private clinics--some operating in a "gray zone" of the law--are now opening in Canada at a rate of about one per week.

Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favors privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered the contracting out of some primary-care services--perhaps even to American companies.

Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.

Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.

Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real, and they represent a major trend in health care. What does Mr. Moore's documentary say about that? Nothing.

Dr. Gratzer, a practicing physician licensed in Canada and the U.S. and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care" (Encounter, 2006).
__________________

http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=22429

onelongsong

Jeanwah wrote:

Thank God for Michael Moore!

We SO need someone like him willing to be ostracized in the name of getting the truth out!

but it's only his truth; not reality.

chopitdown

Jeanwah wrote:

Thank God for Michael Moore!

We SO need someone like him willing to be ostracized in the name of getting the truth out!

how about getting a different view point out? I don't think, in this case, either side is telling the truth...whatever, that happens to be in this case.

Abookamongstthemany

onelongsong wrote:

but it's only his truth; not reality.

Is your truth reality? Probably not. Almost everyone, it seems, thinks their own truth represents reality. All one can do is express their own truth.

onelongsong

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

Is your truth reality? Probably not. Almost everyone, it seems, thinks their own truth represents reality. All one can do is express their own truth.

i just posted facts with links to back them. everyone forms their own opinion based on what they believe.

onelongsong

chopitdown wrote:

how about getting a different view point out? I don't think, in this case, either side is telling the truth...whatever, that happens to be in this case.

every administration since nixon has been trying to impliment socialized medicine. it won't work in the us. americans demand the best and are willing to pay for it.

Abookamongstthemany

onelongsong wrote:

i just posted facts with links to back them. everyone forms their own opinion based on what they believe.

And Moore presented facts, others here have posted facts....it depends on which facts you choose to believe and which facts are more important to you.

chopitdown

onelongsong wrote:

every administration since nixon has been trying to impliment socialized medicine. it won't work in the us. americans demand the best and are willing to pay for it.

i agree, but again, I'm glad MM is at least putting an opinion out to challenge the current status quo. Hopefully it leads to reform of the current system and not to socialized medicine.

callen

onelongsong wrote:

every administration since nixon has been trying to impliment socialized medicine. it won't work in the us. americans demand the best and are willing to pay for it.

there are two reasons why we won't get socialized medicine....prejudice and our political sytem. White folks cringe at the thought any of their money going to pay for minorities healthcare costs. Our political system runs on money...and politicians don't think they can run without special interest group money....really simple.

Now to all those that think Moore's not telling the truth....soooo all Americans do get federally funded healthcare and Canada doesnt'??? What am I missing??

chopitdown

callen wrote:

there are two reasons why we won't get socialized medicine....prejudice and our political sytem. White folks cringe at the thought any of their money going to pay for minorities healthcare costs. Our political system runs on money...and politicians don't think they can run without special interest group money....really simple.

that first reason is crap. Now if you say the affluent don't want to pay for poor, that may be more accurate. But I haven't heard one person say that white people don't want to pay for minorities. It usually goes like, why should I have to pay for people who aren't working and don't have jobs. Perceived laziness has much more to do with hit than race. The second reason is exactly right.

onelongsong

callen wrote:

there are two reasons why we won't get socialized medicine....prejudice and our political sytem. White folks cringe at the thought any of their money going to pay for minorities healthcare costs. Our political system runs on money...and politicians don't think they can run without special interest group money....really simple.

Now to all those that think Moore's not telling the truth....soooo all Americans do get federally funded healthcare and Canada doesnt'??? What am I missing??

you're missing the taxes. nothing is free. canada pays more taxes to pay for the healthcare. same with every other country. cnn had moore on; and 2 others at different times. one guy just bashed moore and it was clearly one sided. the other tried to prove moore right but couldn't. he was the one that found out the truth about cuban healthcare. he traveled to canada and britian and visited hospitals and doctors offices. he contacted the insurance companies of the people featured in sicko. all he did was prove moore wrong. the average wait for a doctors appt in canada (toronto i think) was 4 hours compared to 20 minutes in the us. they found a man on a gurney in a hallway in a canadian ER that had been waiting 7 hours to be treated. britian faired about the same. check the cnn website and you should be able to find this information.
i only believe what i can verify. since supposed "facts" from the movie can be easily rebuffed; it's just another fairy tale.

onelongsong

chopitdown wrote:

that first reason is crap. Now if you say the affluent don't want to pay for poor, that may be more accurate. But I haven't heard one person say that white people don't want to pay for minorities. It usually goes like, why should I have to pay for people who aren't working and don't have jobs. Perceived laziness has much more to do with hit than race. The second reason is exactly right.

i agree; i won't pay for a layabout.
secondly; america cannot limit a doctors earnings.
thirdly; we have medicaid for the poor. so the working class is paying for the lazy.

chopitdown

onelongsong wrote:

i agree; i won't pay for a layabout.
secondly; america cannot limit a doctors earnings.
thirdly; we have medicaid for the poor. so the working class is paying for the lazy.

the only way america can limit doctors earnings is if they limit them at a very high amount. If we were going from a place like canada where it is limited it would be no problem to cease limits, but to ask people to take a 50% pay cut will not fly at all...I read somewhere that Canadian MD's make about 1/2 of what American MD's make.
The working class is paying for the lazy, but they are also paying for the very sick and those unable to work, which I think definitely has to stay.