I want to know what people's opinions here are of Micheal Moore, the film director/mudraker who suprises big business unannounced and confronts problems from a librel standpoint. Some of his documentaries include The Big One, The Aweful Truth, and, Bowling for Columbine and he has out a new book bashing bush called Dude, Where's my Country.

Personally I think he makes some good points, but tends to get carried away sometimes (Especially in his hatred for Bush.) One Point in particular is that Bush and the Bin Laden family have been business partners in oil industry for some time and on the day of Sept. 11th the Bin Laden family was visiting the U.S. When the Trade Centers went down Bush then had them flown by a private Suadi jet out of the country. Supposedly it was for their saftey.

Also Ironic is the point that during the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets America actually supplied Saddam Hussien with weapons of mass destruction.

he also fails to take into account that the Bin Laden family owns one of the biggest building contractors in the world and that Old Bin Laden (the father, dunno his name) had something like 50 kids, what Moore is doing is somehow implicating a family with an interest in the US and its economy with a son who happened to have become an extremist islamic terrorist. The Bin Laden family are in no way funding Osama, he recieved his inheritance when the old fellow died and used it for what he wanted. So in layman terms, what Moore is doing is saying that, because a member of your family is a murderer you are a murderer or in someway involved in the murderous actions of the individual, good one moore.

Ahem, after 9/11 how long was it until we had discovered the terrorist organization behind the problem was Al Queda? Maybe, a week and a half? Maybe longer? According to Dick Clark and his brand new book spanking Bush and Clinton for not keeping their eyes peeled they knew that a threat of this magnitude had been on the table for some time.

Bush had been a client with the Bin Ladens since before he was chilling in the White House, he invited memebers of their family to his ranch, he was the best buds to them. Surely he must have heard something about a certain violently religious osama. Dealing with the bin ladens was shakey ground in the first place.

And if the entire west supported Saddam does it make him any less of an oppressive jerk to his people? I guess when one person says something its a lie, rather then the truths of a chanting mob. A perfect example, again Dick Clark's book comes out and what happens? The government sends out a horde of heresayers to counter his claims and restore the public's faith in our government. Ahh how lovely, liars working together towards a common goal.

Bathory

I take Moore in the Same light that I take Clark and just about anyone else who is a Washington outsider. I look at their points and then do my own research.

But you made a well stated argument.

it didn't take them weeks to announce it was Al Queda....
it was a day or so at best, and even then, one would assume they had a suspicion as to who it was so in that case they would take the precaution of getting the Ladens out of the country before anyone could get to them. We have to remember that generally speaking, the public are the last ones to know about that sort of stuff.

That said, can anyone get an official timeline of this? eg when the attacks occured, when the bin ladens were escorted out, when the announcement came?

I don't have an official timeline, but I distinctly remember watching the towers collapse, then three days later going to OCS knowing that Bin Laden was responsible, so it wasn't as long as a week.

I can only wonder how many people we have an uncomfortable, but working relationship with now, that we might regret ten years in the future.

Uhh, yeah... I'm gonna get back to Micheal Moore here for a second, if you don't bite my flippin head off....

On of his chapters pertains to conservatives and how they work. See, conservatives believe in tradition, and order, and usually a strong hold to religion. Usually they are very passionate about these ideas and Mikey tells in his book (Ha! My conservative christian friends refuse to even acknowledge the book as evidence of anything; they're so damn stubborn!) of an experience when he was confronted (while walking in the park) by a conservative so angry at him it turned his walk into an episode of crossfire. Conservatives seem so darn sure of themselves all the time. Why is this? Are they right? No..

Mikey believes that at the core of conservatives lies a patch of deep black FEAR . Fear of what they don't understand, an unknowing of what it's like to be black and hopelessly poor, or the wishing to kiss someone of their own gender. Basically, ignorance (You think the government and the media would tell you the white-knuckle truth? Give them some credit! ) and arrogance that manifests into hatred, whether through discrimination, close-mindedness, and eventual disgust for others. He believes its a very painful and mind altering disease.

But hey, there's no cure for it, they're all too far gone to be changed.

so what? so i guess moore's books/film are also evidence of the lies and deciet the left will happily shove down the average persons throat in order to try and prove a point?

Oh come on, lighten up. Why do you have to always consider what liberals say are lies? Is it a lie that gay and lesbian people are about to be openly discriminated against in the constitution? Is it a lie that hundreds of people get canned because a bigass company wants to up their profits a quarter of a point? Is it a lie that you're afraid of change because you may not understand it?

Open your eyes, this is a democracy and we should respect and uphold the rights of anyone to be anything they want freely. I don't think Moore is lying to the public as much as the government is, but people tend to believe the majority.

As for shoving things down people's throats...

"He has weapons of mass destruction-the world's deadliest weapons-which pose a direct threat to the United States, our citizens and our friends and allies."

Who said that about a year ago?

did i say the right didn't lie, its irrelevant for this arguement anyways, Moore is just on the other end of the spectrum.

Michael Moore is slovenly and ugly.
He's also ingenius and has balls of steel.

He's everything a documentarian should be. Or George Lucas.

Azael? I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your comment

Ha, I don't know about Moore supporting Bill Clinton in any way at all. He has made numerous jabs at Bill in the past and has recently in his books and documentaries. He doesn't support Bush or Bill.

Ahem, I will admit under our Bushman here we have shown the world we are a superpower, that the United Staes is still #1 in the world Oh wait, what about medicare and hmos and equal rights and the environment and big business? Wow, I guess we're just number 1 in the "Going to War" category and thats all that needs to be adressed. Eh, who needs any of that other crap anyway?

As for "Having no ideas to make anything better," How about we look at this for a sec, okay?...
Brief Article, Page and a half..

i love it how Moore supported Wesley Clark whilst at the same time slamming the Iraq war:)

oh the hypocrisy

I have a hard time taking anything seriously from a guy who always looks like he's just rolled out from behind a dumpster.

That's what's great about Moore, he does look like he's just rolled out from behind a dumpster. He doesn't look like some preppy senator or a prim and proper aristocrat. He's breaking a stereotype, it's like seeing hello kitty whip out a gun and start killing people.

Besides, at the core Moore is a comedian, he just uses politics as the punch line.

and to push his own political agendas:)

i just have to say you can trust Moore more then you can trust the US government

Moore has never been much more than a proponent of his own political views. while they are neither completely true, they are not completely false either, and he does bring up some good points in "Columbine"

My biggest complaint about Moore is that he likes to characterize all poor people as being the victims of some sort of capitalistic conspiracy. (see "Roger and Me")

In this movie he decries GM leaving Flint Michigan for Mexico, and leaving behind a whole lot of jobless people.

While located in Flint, GM paid it's unskilled laborers far more than market rate for unskilled labor. (it was either $30K a year or $30/hr. I can't remember which) Basically, this allowed the citizens of Flint to get a very high paying job without learning any real marketable skill. When GM left, there wee no businesses who were willing to hire unskilled laborers at the inflated rate and they were screwed. They were lucky to get a job flipping burgers.

In short, if GM was guilty of anything, it was letting these unskilled workers think that there services were worth the amount of money GM paid them. Had the rate been closer to market rate, it is more likely that some of them at least would have gone to college or at least learned some sort of marketable skill.

Just for the record, it didn't take a week and a half or a couple of days to point the finger at Al-Qaeda. I remember hearing it on the radio that same day that it was Osama Bin Laden behind the whole thing. It's not like no one knew Osama was out there before this. Remember the Cole? The American Embassies in Africa? That was Al-Qaeda too.


Also, Michael Moore brings up good points, but he does come off as kinda whiny and irrational sometimes.

I did see Roger and Me, and Moore did present a one sided case. Flint went under because of the combination of GM's plant closings and the powerful unions which basically favored lazy ass workers. But still, Moore utilizes the human perspective in his documentaries, and the scene with at least a dozen families being thrown out to the curb on christmas eve pulled at my heartstrings.

Besides, if a company is in the billion dollar range for profits, don't you think they could be a little considerate? Yeah, its business but its also unbelievably heartless.

As for getting an education; the auto industry supported their fathers and their father's father, and with the unions it seemed the auto jobs in Flint were secure. The entire town depended on the plants, they wouldn't sell them...

As for what Dezavala wrote, I don't know what point you were trying to get across, probably that,yes, we knew about the threat of Al Queda long before the towers fell. I think we did too, and the sept. 11 commission keeps finding out more about this issue.

And we were right on....that very first day. That was my whole point. If you want me to state it again it is this. It did not take days or weeks to figure out it was Al-Qaeda, we knew the first day.

As I watched the 9/11 drama unfold as it happened, I felt it was more likely that anti-globalists were involved rather than Islamists. I don't know if anyone remembers, but there were some pretty intense WTO protests going on just prior to the attacks. I was actaully sort of shocked to hear it was al-queda, becuase up to that point attacking civillian targets just wasn't part of thier MO.

Prior to 9/11, Islamists had limited thier direct attacks on american interests to military targets, like the USS Cole and Al-Khobar. As unwarranted as these attacks may have seemed, they were still attacks on combatant targets, although the Geneva conventions considers off-duty soldiers to be non-combatants. I know for my intents and purposes, if they are a military threat, they are so even while asleep and therefor fair game. In this resepct I disagree with that aspect of the GC.

Al-Qaeda murdered hundreds of Africans when they blew up the US embassies there.

As a liberal who is familiar with some of Michael Moore's work, I have to say that while he makes some valid points, overall his spin and deceptive tactics reinforce a poor image of the left. Thankfully, for the sake of keeping things balanced, the right has its blights too.

lol permakid dont let joc hear you say openly that your a liberal of have left wing poilitcs.

Apparently he thinks we're the bane of his existence lol.

Only kiddin joc

I didn't like the way he left that picture outside Charlton Hestons house,show some respect dude. I agree with most of his views but he can be a bit fake and showyoffy??

couldn't help cringing at some of the stuff michael moore did in that movie. I get the feeling he, along with many other liberals, have a hard time accepting that sometimes people are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.

MK Ultra, then I guess it wasn't disrespectful that Charleton Heston held a pro-gun rally in the town where that girl was shot two days previous, or that pro-gun rally he held in columbine after the shootings. That wasn't disrespectful to anyone, was it? Or, at least not to anyone alive

And, i really don't see how leaving that picture at his house was disrespectful in any way. Please explain.

If you believe Moore is skilled in "spin" and "deciet" I would like to see an example; because otherwise that claim is total bull .

Initially, after seeing Bowling For Columbine, I was a huge Michael Moore fan. I thought this guy's brilliant documentary was an honest look at some of America's most terrible ills. I watched the movie several times, but each time, it made me a little more uneasy. "Whatever," I thought. This guy's still wonderful. So I bought and read his book Dude, Where's My Country?. That book contained some things that really sounded false - like his claim that the hydrogen fuel cell is a myth. Still I ignored my ever-growing doubt and began reading Stupid White Men. I couldn't make it through that one.

When my husband and I got a copy of Bowling for Columbine for Christmas, I watched it again with increasing scrutiny, sometimes freeze-framing the DVD. The first bit of deceit that I noticed involved something Monkyburd just mentioned.

Moore had alot going for him when he first gained attention with 'Roger & Me', but eventually fell victim to greed and his own self-importance, sacrificing truth and good intentions by employing the same deceitful tactics he accuses others of using to advance his own agenda. Besides the links that Permakid has posted, HERE'S another excellant site that delves into and exposes much of Moore's inaccuracies and half-truths.

Magikman

Permakid,

Very good link. For those that are uninformed, Moore has his own agenda, it's not gun control. It's money.

If he could find away, and I don't doubt that he will, he'll splice and dice 9/11 into an anti bush/anti clinton/anti america film. Bowling for Terrorist.

WOOT FINALLY A LEFTY WHO THINKS MOORE IS AN ASS:)
i'm so sick of people at Uni in my Crime and Criminology classes quoting moore as if he was some shrine of truth. A man complaining about the system that makes him rich, while pretending to care about the workers he'll happily exploit:P

although, perhaps, Moore is the god of satire, and as it stands, his works are actually satires of leftist satire? I mean, think about it, what Bowling does is complain about a culture of fear and how the media sensationalises it...Bowling does a similar thing...i cross my fingers and wait for Moore to jump out and say, hey dickheads, i got you good:)

I agree with bathory. Moore is a huge hypocrite.

After studying his film "Roger and Me" the guy goes against the fundamentals of democracy. I have actually been to flint, and I dont hink its that bad.

He thinks its somehow bad that GM moved its plants to Mexico and that americans lost their jobs because of it. And makes the CEO of GM look like some kind of evil man.

The fact is CEO's can do whatever they want with their companies. In a free trade economy, they can move anywhere they want, whenever they want. If job security is more important to you than a country with economic freedom then move to Switzerland were they have a massive debt! Michael Moore played heavily on peoples emotions and ignored the reality of a Market Economy.

wasn't the company paying its workers more than they should have been getting? so when the operations left town, the under qualified over payed workers were screwed?

Okay Venomshocker, if Flint isn't so bad why don't you live there? Okay.

I found some of the topics on are open-ended or ignore the real topic. Here's a part from one of the anti-moore sites (Don't you dare accuse me of "editing" this with spin or deception you cling-to-one-ideaists!)

Part of an article;"Too bad nobody at K-Mart did not accuse Moore of responsibility for Columbine. After all, he supports gun free school zones which guaranteed a safe working environment for the killers. K-Mart should have insisted that concealed carry permit holders be free to carry concealed handguns at schools. Then the next time a killer gets started, he might get stopped almost immediately -- something which did happen at a Mississippi and a Pennsylvania school.

What is the idea of a "gun free school zone"? No guns! No gun, no problem, and find a better security method. Actually bringing more guns into a school is not a way to control this.

Anyway, i can't take a site seriously that uses so many adverbs. Its just bad writing.

They made some points about the gun at the bank thing, but still, a bank giving out a free gun when you open an account? Ridiculous

Yea, actually it wouldnt be too bad.
I have a distant relative that lives there and is currently working for GM in one of the plants they still have there. Man what a nice job. All he does is sit there and watch machines put good ol GM trucks together. He always braggs about how he does absolutely nothing and gets paid over 120,000 a year. Man i wish i could just sit there and earn that much. Hahaha, he thinks its a joke.
The guy that works at GM has 2 cars, sea-doos,jet skis, multiple TV's, and a pool in his backyard. Similar to most of the other homes i saw in flint. Nice neighbourhood. Couldnt complain.

And honestly I think Moore is a joke too and his film roger and me.

So,.. better safe then sorry, right?

Change within the government is a huge way to curve murder, discrimination, and lower crime rates. Sure, its easier to hand a gun to a well trained security gaurd, but what will that do for ourselves in the long run? Why go on with an disfunctional system by just pumping it full of more ammunition? Why not make something that works a little smoothly and accomodating? It may take some time, some effort (old people dispise change) but it will ultimately benefit us.

Look, having guns to protect ourselves from a crime is much like bush's pre-emptive strikes; they cause more harm then good because certain people tend to be "trigger happy."

"Less than a year after declaring there was "no doubt the Iraqi regime
continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised," President
Bush and the White House began to openly "back away from its WMD assertions
today."

Look at a similar idea, zero tolerance:
""Terrorist threat" criminal charges were filed against two 8-year-olds in Irvington, N.J., for "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun."

Oh, i see the problem! You're Canadian! Why didn't I notice this before! Jk...

Hey, by any chance is your relative black or on welfare? Just curious.

Im canadian, whys that so funny? What are you?

No, my relative is a regular run of the mill 40 year old bachelor, obese white american.And hes been that way all his life.And his folks before that. Super nice guy. If hes earning $120,000 a year, why the hell would he be on welfare??? No hes most definately not on welfare. Working for GM he gets so many benefits, dental,helathcare you name it.

I was being sarcastic my friend, poor blacks on welfare are the group that suffers the most in flint.

What flint and other areas of the U.S. have shown us is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Laws that work to the benefit of the rich are constantly screwing over the poor. Outsourcing of jobs plays an important role in this.

What type of job does your relative have? I'm assuming a pretty high up one. To quote Office Space,"This guy has upper management written all over him,"

Oh, I'm a Michiganian. I was just messing with you about being canadian, you just have a really low murder rate or so I've heard.