And no, I did not rearrange anything for the photo.
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Always file under ‘fiction’…September 6th, 2004 |
 30 comments to Always file under ‘fiction’… |
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Another de Havilland high wing. But then, even Katie Couric (US Newscaster) has winged this turkey.
OTOH, note that it’s the only book with its face, and not its spine, facing the customer.
Perry should have taken the copies of one of the other books and moved them to have their cover face the customer, and make Michael Moore’s book have only its spine facing out. 🙂
Shouldn’t that be in the toileteries section?
…sold in 2, 4, 8, and family sized 12 packs.
Number of deaths of American service members directly caused by Michael Moore’s “lies”: 0
Number of deaths of American service members directly caused by George Bush’s lies: 993.
Always file under ‘remainder bin’.
Hey Tucker, and how many anti-Saddam Iraqis are not dead today because of Bush’s “lies”? Oh, sorry, I forgot that Iraqi lives are not worth anything to you, what with them being all, you know, brown and along way from Kansas.
Snide, that’s quite an interesting question, given that plenty Iraqis are dying on a daily basis & not particularly being counted.
Does anyone have any figures on the number Saddam was killing per year? Can we compare it with the number killed in the violence which has ensued since the invasion? Yeah, the people dying now aren’t being selected for their political affiliation; it’s just random a lot of the time, but I doubt that’s much compensation for their friends & relatives.
(before anyone jumps on me, this isn’t meant to be a ‘gah! we should never have invaded’ point; just questioning that oft-repeated justification that we have overall saved lives by invading. Perhaps that’ll hold true in the long run, but for now, I have trouble imagining that Saddam killed this many on a regular basis.)
Number of deaths of American service members directly caused by George Bush’s lies: 0
Number of George Bush’s lies: 0
Number of deaths of American service members directly caused by the moral liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s tyranny: 993.
A_t:
I’ve argued in some other threads that the Iraqi lives saved (if we’re going to do the moral calculus) are those who would otherwise have been killed by the UN sanctions and the Oil-for-Saddam’s-palaces program. If we really believe the idea (usually put out by the same sorts of people who opposed Gulf War II) that 500,000 people were killed by the sanctions, that comes to over 40,000 a year killed by the sanctions. As far as I can tell the death toll since the start of Gulf War II is well under that.
Of course, this also implies that you actually believe 500,000 people were killed by the sanctions, and that Saddam’s baby funerals weren’t for show. Saddam would never have done something like that, would he? 😉
Shawn, I’ve got used to your 1,000 year clash of cultures stuff, but come on… you expect me to believe:
“Number of George Bush’s lies: 0”
He’s a politician! Need I say more?
Now, can I interest you in the purchace of this bridge I own in Brooklyn…
“He’s a politician! Need I say more?”
Yes, its called proof. Otherwise its just slander.
“Shawn, I’ve got used to your 1,000 year clash of cultures stuff,”
Its not mine its history. Try reading abook sometime. I suggest Srdja Trifkovic’s ‘Sword of the Prophet’, but really, any history book on the last thousand years of European Islamic history would be a good start.
GWB lies include the Nigerian yellowcake claims in the STOU, his claim in his ghostwritten autobiography that he flew jets for several years, that he served in the Alabama ANG, that Saddam had WMD, that Iraq agents met with Otta overseas when the FBI repeatedly told GWB that Otta was stateside, the “trifecta” speech, claiming there were no spies in the international inspection teams in Iraq, and of course, the constant litany that “Saddam and Iraq are an imminent threat to the US” that began on September 12th, 2001 and continues to this day.
And these are the lies I recall off the top of my head before coffee.
Chris:
Try decaff.
Well, Chris, right off the top of my head I can tell you that three of your “lies” are baseless.
Bush never claimed that Saddam went looking for yellowcake in Nigeria. He said he went looking for it in Africa (which is true), according to British intelligence (which is also true).
Umm, Saddam had WMD, which he used on his people. We have found traces of his stockpiles since the war, and evidence of programs for producing more. How big his stockpiles were pre-war and what happened to them is still unknown.
Finally, Bush never said that Saddam was an imminent threat. He said we couldn’t afford to wait until he was an imminent threat.
Bush is no saint, being a politician and all, and I have no doubt he filters and uses information to achieve his ends, but you’re going to have to do better than that.
Moore has more in common with libertarians than many would want to admit. Check out the discussion of “fear based-politics” over at Econlog. Free-market economists share many ideas (about how politicians get what they want from us) with those on the far left and in fact Arnold Kling sounds very much like Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 911 in today’s post. Moore’s analysis of the color-coded terrorist alerts and the civil liberties we need to forfeit should be pretty interesting to libertarians of every stripe.
Sad that market-oriented bloggers have been so enraged by Moore’s deceptions and attack on the President that they haven’t been able to build on the good parts of the movie. Why should it be left to a big leftist blo-hard to powerfully demonstrate that in a world of billion dollar contracts a politician who makes $400,000 may become beholden to those who pay his “real” salary?
Did Moore prove that Bush is on the take? Definitely not. Did he offer a model that public choice economists would find attractive? Most assuredly. Is it good for journalists who normally assume bureaucrats to be without their own agendas…to get a most powerful introduction to other possibilities? You be the judge.
Shame on us if we find him gathering an armful of Acadamy Awards and we haven’t done our part to build on his presentation.
Some of you pinko libertarians are always trying to find any bit of a liberal’s point of view you can use to suck up. I think Saddam killed over 30,000 a year. Does anybody have verifiable numbers?
So if Kerry and Moore have long records of supporting leftist killers from Nicaragua to Cuba to the ancient Lenninist who ruled the Soviet Union, why would we want to see his dumb movie?
Let’s recognize, people on the left are our sworn enemies.
Did Moore prove that Bush is on the take? Definitely not.
That pretty much ends my interest in the rest of his screed.
Did he offer a model that public choice economists would find attractive? Most assuredly.
Not sure what you mean here. If Moore wanted to illustrate the corruption that can be induced via the revolving door of big government/big business, there are plenty of real life examples he could have used. The fact that he didn’t use any real-life truthful examples makes me think htat we wasn’t really interested in showing this kind of corruption, but was instead trying to put a hit on Bush.
dave,
The thing that angers me about Moore is not his attacks on the president, it started before that. I have yet to make it all the way through a Moore book without wanting to puke on the floor, so I stopped trying. The stuff that turns me off is his incessant ranting about how bad everything is and how my generation will never be as successful as the previous and how everything is a conspiracy and so on and so forth and blah blah blah as long as its nothing positive.
There may be a place for pointing out mistakes and corruption and suspicion of such, but to have it be all that you say makes you essentially worthless. I can see whats wrong on my own, thanks much. I have no respect for someone who offers no viable solutions, and even less for someone who presents socialist solutions. I also have little respect for anyone supporting the “anyone but Bush” line, because it is irrational and irresponsible. I dont much like the frying pan myself, but I have enough of a brain to not jump towards the fire. Even when being pursued, your best course of action is to watch where you are going, not to look back over your shoulder at your pursuer as you run headlong towards a greater danger or a trap, or a cliff, etc. Vote libertarian, if enough people do, it wont be a wasted vote, even if all it does is send a message to the current political class.
From the Washington Post:
Editors note: Remainder of FOUR PAGE comment deleted. As we have said here in the past to both supporters and detractors and as clearly stated in the comments information below:
This comment section is for succinct remarks, not multi-page essays!
limberwulf: “The stuff that turns me off is his incessant ranting about how bad everything is and how my generation will never be as successful as the previous…”
Successful by what measure? The world of just 50 years ago is beginning to seem primitive by the measure of today’s living standards.
Moore’s standard is the resentment standard – a tired political ploy.
Dear Limberwulf:
I think voting libertarian is a good choice, tho I would have been more excited about it if we had nominated an experienced talk show host or a wealthy, well-connected movie producer. For a party that espouses a non-violent approach to life we seem to have a hard time finding a way to get a reasonable compromise going. Even a coin flip might have been suitable.
As to Moore. There are times to learn from master communicators… and it is possible to study his technique without becoming evil like him. Fruthermore…. if we are the party that keeps getting less than 1% of the vote…. we may need to study Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point and look for new modalities. Gladwell suggests that even the big players need to look for waves they can ride, rather than expecting to generate all that motion on their own. For a product at 1% market share, but with brilliant ideas… we may need to catch a ride here and there.
Of course Moore wasn’t trying to teach his audience public choice economics. He completly forgot to mention George Mason University. Still, for the liberals I watched the movie with… it is a perfect time to start reconsidering their proclivity to expect good service from all their government programs and agencies.
A wave for you and me to ride if we choose to. What liberals do you know who’ve seen the film? Or are you one of those libertarians who think conversion is too hard, and you’ll just stay home, thanks?
Who turned Thomas Sowell? Robert Nozick? Nearly half the authors in LFBooks are former liberals. Who have you turned?
Dave
Nah, deleting the message has NOTHING to do at all with refuting R.C.s cooments.
Nothing at all.
OK, Again, Saddam HAD WMD. By the time the US invaded, he didn’t have any WMD.
Where are the thousands of gallons of sarin and tabun that was ready to be deployed on 45 minutes notice? This is not something that can be flushed down the toilet, even on 45 minutes notice.
As for Bush never claiming that there was an imminent threat, well, even a blind pig finds the occasional acorn. So R.C. is correct in claiming that he never said that out loud.
However, GWB’s shills and mouthpieces sure used that Imminent Threat claim a whole lot.
And finally, let’s ALL remember an Iportant Fact:
Saddam and Iraq had NOTHING TO DO with the 9/11 attack. Not one sodding thing!
Osama who?
while browsing at the Books Etc… in the Whiteleys shopping center the other day i came accross this book, in quite a preeminent position:
Michael Moore is a big fat stupid white man
provided most want to know the straight shit about the guy, we can expect it to be a best seller by the end of the year!
See: things might turn out better than previously thought by Christmas
Chris Tucker: Quite why you think our comment behaviour requirements would not apply to you is a mystery.
We have lots of people who comment here who do not agree with things we write but we only delete remarks from people who post excessively long remarks (which you do) or are uncivil boors (which you frequently are). We have also done this to people who agree with us! We sometimes tolerate a degree of incivility and excessive droning on here but rarely both at the same time from the same person.
Much like the interminable ‘race realist’ neo-fascists that we keep banning from commenting here, I have no doubt you feel you are persecuted the only because of the irrefutable power of your arguments, rather than the fact you act like a jerk.
Well I have better things to do that spend too much time setting your straight on that one but the truth is… if we do not cut you any slack it is not because of what you think, it is because your generally just make statements (even cited statements) without actually making arguments, but far more importantly, you are rude and boorish and so we have no intention of indulging your behaviour on our property.
Admin, use your real name, why dont you.
I use MY real name. You don’t have anything to hide, right?
If I am a bit suspicious about motives for actions here, it’s because I have yet to meet a “Libertarians” who wouldn’t hesitate to lie through his teeth, if he thought it would advance his cause.
Perhaps I’ve been unlucky and have only met delusional Libertarians. Hard to say.
But, that said, if I did post something overlong, I do apologize.
Guess that makes you a libertarian. Next time you get the urge to post utter nonsense, remember the rest of us can actually find out that it’s nonsense. If you’re trying to discredit yourself and your point of view, congratulations. Otherwise, you’ve got a lot of work to do.
When we, the editors, whose names are in the sidebar if you took the time to look, feel the need to post ex-cathedra administrative policy statement on this blog, we do so as ‘Admin’. As you seem to want to insult us, do not be surprised if we just start deleting your comments. Why on earth do you expect us to indulge you if you are rude?
I was in Canada last week and, while I was in Vernon, BC, I noticed that Moore was filed under ‘humor’. I thought this was far more appropriate than filing him under ‘non-fiction’.