Dear God,

The other night, James Dobson’s ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be canceled.

I see that You have answered Dr. Dobson’s prayers — except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don’t blame You, I know You’re angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an “Act of God” — when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

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Amid all our talk about VP picks, look what just popped up in my inbox:

Dear Caroline,

We’ve never met, so I hope you don’t find this letter too presumptuous or inappropriate. As its contents involve the public’s business, I am sending this to you via the public on the Internet. I knew your brother John. He was a great guy, and I know he would’ve had a ball during this thrilling and historic election year. We all miss him dearly.

Barack Obama selected you to head up his search for a vice presidential candidate. It appears we may be just days (hours?) away from learning who that choice will be.

The media is reporting that Senator Obama has narrowed his alternatives to three men: Joe Biden, Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine. They’re all decent fellows, but they are far from the core of what the Obama campaign has been about: Change. Real change. Out with the old. And don’t invade countries that pose no threat to us…

What Obama needs is a vice presidential candidate who is NOT a professional politician, but someone who is well-known and beloved by people across the political spectrum; someone who, like Obama, spoke out against the war; someone who has a good and generous heart, who will be cheered by the rest of the world; someone whom we’ve known and loved and admired all our lives and who has dedicated her life to public service and to the greater good for all.

That person, Caroline, is you.

I cannot think of a more winning ticket than one that reads: “OBAMA-KENNEDY.” [DREAM ON]

If Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney or Chief Justice John Roberts applied for private health insurance, they wouldn’t get it.

Neither would Michael Moore for his obesity or Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went to the hospital in 2005 for rapid heartbeats.

An organization called the Medical Information Bureau would take a quick look at their histories and tell 470 companies they are hopelessly bad risks. Their work helps health insurers cherry-pick prospects to cover only those who are unlikely to get sick.

So much for universal coverage and the faith that Republicans, including President Bush, have in the marketplace. After the removal of his five polyps last month, he would have trouble getting health insurance himself.

CBS reported recently that a survey by the Commonwealth Fund last year found that 89 percent, or 52 million, of those looking for individual health insurance didn’t get it because it was too expensive or they were turned down.

“Insurers are getting double the profit that they make in the group market. Why is it so lucrative? Because they exclude anybody and everybody who has even a remote sense of risk associated with their health care,” said Dr. Bryan Liang, who has studied the insurance industry for more than a decade.

Someone should break the news to Rudy Giuliani, who loves the current system. His 2001 treatment for prostate cancer would rule him out for coverage in a New York minute.

Cross-posted from my blog

See it here.

The real outrage was not so much Blitzer, who was his usual self, tongue-tied and clueless in the face of Moore’s justifiably relentless criticism, but the segment on Sicko by CNN’s resident medical expert Sanjay Gupta. In what was essentially a point-by-point evaluation of the accuracy of some of Moore’s statistical claims in Sicko — with no such evaluation of Moore’s critics, those who oppose reform and defend the status quo or call for greater Big Pharma- and HMO-friendly initiatives, let alone with any self-evaluation — Gupta failed to address the most serious flaws of the American system, namely, the enormous costs even to those with insurance and the utter lack of insurance for millions. Does it really matter whether emergency room waiting times are this much longer or that much shorter in the U.S. than elsewhere? Does it really matter how much, in exact figures, the U.S. spends on health care compared to other countries, those with “socialized” health care (i.e., universal coverage)? It does, in a way, but the relative merits of different systems cannot be judged solely on the basis of selected statistics. The real problem with the American system is that it leaves out millions and destroys the lives of many of those who are fortunate enough to find coverage.

But CNN would rather attack Moore than present the truth — and would rather present attacking Moore as analysis than report on what is really going on in American health care. (And Moore was fully right to point to all the Big Pharma ads on CNN, a clear conflict of interest.) Not that one expects much else even from CNN — this wasn’t Fox, after all, which is far worse — but this was simply appalling.

Wright, The Detroit News

It must be wonderful to be the smartest guy in a world of morons, the only honest person left on earth, the last great truth-teller in the universe.

On Good Morning America yesterday, Michael Moore took time out from promoting The Word on health care in America, to lecture Chris Cuomo on the failure of “the people in this building” and the rest of the media to prevent the war in Iraq. To his credit, Cuomo was having none of it.

Deconstructing Michael Moore is difficult because his heart is usually in the right place, but his judgment and journalistic ethics are off on some other planet. Documentaries are journalism, not audio-visual polemics, and he has erased the line between them.

Jon Stewart, no defender of MSM, was on point as usual when he told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on “Crossfire” that they were partisan hacks: “You should be doing debate, which would be great, but you’re doing theater.”

Moore is purporting to enlighten, but despite his pretensions, he is doing theater. He may give audiences vicarious satisfaction in dramatizing the idiocies of our health care system, but he isn’t telling them anything new and he certainly isn’t making any positive contribution to the debate over improving it. He is, however, making money and getting a lot of attention for himself.

Analyzing the media’s share of the blame for the war in Iraq is important, as Bill Moyers showed in “Buying the War,” but taking smug cheap shots is something else.

When Moore blithely blamed his hosts for the death of 3500 American soldiers and Cuomo challenged him to be careful about such sweeping assertions, Moore’s answer was “I don’t have to be careful.”

That says it all. Moore has made his reputation and millions of dollars by aspiring to be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. But his visions have been, to put it kindly, cockeyed.
Cross-posted from my blog:

This is the film that has been marketed with the help of the Bush administration (which let it be known they are investigating his unauthorized trip to Cuba and have surely helped increase interest in the film). An AP video posted on You Tube:

Is this the battle of the 21st century? The box-office-money-increasing controversy continues over Michael Moore’s upcoming film “Sicko,” which put the controversial not-a-Bush-friend filmmaker under the Justice Departments microscope for his trip to Cuba….and ensured that Moore’s film will rake in tons of dolares.

And who’s the latest GOPer who is (unwittingly, we presume) helping Moore hype his film? Actor, former Senator and conservative dreamboat Fred Thompson.

In this latest twist, Moore on his website blasted Thompson for blasting him. Details here.

Now, shouldn’t Thompson move on (excuse the expression)? Perhaps sensing it is his Sister Souljah Moment, (the “Sister Souljah” Moment is now a pukingly excruciating cliche, as bad as “defining moment,” or “tried to change the subject”) Thompson has responded to Moore again — perhaps enhancing the box office interest in “Sicko” multifold and most assuredly guaranteeing that some folks who might not see the movie will now see it. Or go because they don’t like Thompson and feel they want to make a statement by going to the movie.

But make up your OWN mind after you watch this. Ours? Content aside, Thompson does know how to communicate (which makes him formidable if he runs):

It’s controversial filmmaker Michael Moore versus the Bush administration — again.

And it’s Michael Moore getting a Santa Claus stocking full of free and priceless promo publicity to ensure his movie will be a smash at the box office….promo gifted to him by his opponents…again.

At issue is a trip the opinionated documentary maker who liberals love to love and conservatives love to hate made to Cuba. And what better way than to ensure his message gets out than to have the government go after him? But you suspect this is what the Bush administration — which seems to need some advice from people who know how p.r. and modern marketing works — did not have in mind.

But that is what’s happening. The AP:

Filmmaker Michael Moore has asked the Bush administration to call off an investigation of his trip to Cuba to get treatment for ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers for a segment in his upcoming health-care expose, “Sicko.”

Moore, who made the hit documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” assailing President Bush’s handling of Sept. 11, said in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday that the White House may have opened the investigation for political reasons.

“For five and a half years, the Bush administration has ignored and neglected the heroes of the 9/11 community,” Moore said in the letter, which he posted on the liberal Web site Daily Kos. “These heroic first responders have been left to fend for themselves, without coverage and without care.”

How could Moore say these things? Because by going after him, editors have now been given a great “news peg” for an irresistible story. It focuses attention on Moore’s upcoming flick. Even if the government is doing this a pro forma probe, it is going to be seen in some quarters as retaliation for Moore’s previous films, harsh criticism of President George Bush and the Bush administration, and for his focus on an issue embarrassing since it’s potentially one more chip in the aura the administration has tried to project on its handling of anything surrounding 911.

And because Moore’s previous movies were so popular all over the world, it ensures that any news stories about The Filmmaker Versus The Government That Wants To Shut Him Up (even if that is not what is going on) will get excellent play in newspapers (in many languages). Also: Moore is going to be an increasingly hot guest speaker on college campuses due to this (he can probably increase his already big fees).

It’s clear that Moore understands the publicity windfall here, as does his movie distributor: Read the rest of this entry »