86414 by Ernest Canning on 7/12 at 4:59 pm

Skruff,

Remember, we’re not talking. 

You’ve made your point,

86081 by jbart on 7/11 at 5:23 pm:

Any of you have any real solutions?

Unite, don’t divide.

To Jbart 86081 and many other posts here. Nothing is ever going to change unless the people do exactly what you mentioned: take up arms.  Things will never get fixed any other way.  We will be in Iraq for the next hundred years in our comfortable military bases and this country will never get any kind of universal health care.  The government and multinational corporations simply don’t care if any of us live or die as long as we continue working hard for the benefit of the CEOS and we send them our children to defend liberty and freedom.  We need another American Revolution.

86081 by jbart on 7/11 at 5:23 pm

When you attack a person personally (calling him a “dirtbag” and such.) it might be informative to readers if you would elucidate regarding your complaints. I have no post to reference, and no subject narrow enough to review.

If you are upset that I feel both Mike and Wolf are on our airwaves to make BIG BIG money, well sorry ‘bout that, it’s a fact!

Just one more item:

Is free airing of opinions irritating to you?  If so, you might wish to change venue.

I’ve admired Mr. Moore’s work since “Columbine” and continued that affinity in “Fahrenheit 9/11”.  I’m late in commenting but I’d like to address some of those listed earlier and add a few personal opinions. First:
SeanMauriceHart # 85568…
You’re ABSOLUTELY correct when you observe the “marketing” strategies of the Corp. Pharmecuticals. Get the medical profession to “actively” endorse” your “patented” drugs and, prescribe. Brilliant!. Is there a “kickback? Just wondering.
Mr. Biker #85787..Here, Here !! Lou Dobbs is a blatant media whore who collects big $’s for his biased opinions. But don’t forget the other right wing whores when you cricify him. As we all know who they are, I won’t belabor the point.
SKRUFF #85669 Now this is going to to fun you consummate dirtbag....You’re a “sickening” example of the current human condition. You are a part of the “foundation of wrongness” that continues to permeate American society. Please, if you really CARE about the health, and future of American Society...Do it a favor.  Move away, or die !!! Your kind is becoming too common for my taste.
Truthdigorg. # 85805...All I can say is that I TOTALLY AGREE !!
My last, and favorite…
CYRENA #85808 & 85826...You Go !!!  I like your opinions, and perspective(s). Alot. You keep on keeping on.
Now, on to me…
You guys are all “on target” but, the biggest issue is(at least as I see it)creating a unity. A base of objection. I don’t have solutions to this, but only point out the problem. I wish we were “back” to the early “70-tees” where there was as modicum of cohesion and solidarity. But, with the speed of life now, it’s much more difficult. I’d welcome some opinions of “real potentials” to involve myself in real involvement. I’ve got a single child, a daughter, that I want to make the world the best it can be for her life (and maybe her children?). I’m at a loss of how this can be accomplished without, heaven forbit, taking up arms (not literally, of course) to “fix things”. I don’t believe I’m in the minority in this. I just think that none of us knows how to bring effective change to the currently deteriorating situation. Any of you have any real solutions?

As a follow-up to Tuesday’s debate between Mr. Moore & Dr. Gupta on Larry King’s show, I was disappointed in BOTH of them for straying from the main problems with our health-care system. They spent nearly the entire debate quibbling over numbers, i.e. whether Cuba is 39th in the world or whether the U.S. spends $6000 or $7000/person on health-care, or whether the numbers were estimated or current, etc.

The debate should have raised awareness that: 47 million Americans are still w/o health insurance, 9 million children do not have any health insurance, that we have a health-care system run by private insurance, pharmaceutical companies, and the AMA, that our health-care system is far too reliant on prescribing drugs or recommending surgery vs. a more preventive approach, that, for those of us who are fortunate enough to have medical insurance, we pay a huge tax in the form of copayments, deductibles, premiums, not to mention fighting the insurance companies with our precious time for every visit to the doctor, because as Mr. Moore does point out correctly, there’s a man in a cubicle 1000 miles away looking to contest or deny your every claim. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent following up with insurance companies about why they’re questioning a claim, whether it’s due to mis-coding, being exploratory in nature, related to workman’s comp, etc.

While Mr. Moore’s numbers and facts may not be 100% accurate(whose are?), they’re pretty close, and his film will hopefully act as a catalyst for some meaningful reform to a woefully inadequate health-care system.

I GIVE A STANDING OVATION TO THE PEOPLE WHOSE COMMENTS CAME BEFORE THIS!!!!!!!!!!

I’m amazed at the erudite, insightful and well-spoken comments you all have posted.

I often feel alone in this America with my frustations of the corporate takeover of our resources and the media’s complicity at covering it up.

CNN went from the most trusted news source in the U.S. (under Ted Turner) to infotainment pablum since he sold.  I couldn’t be sicker about it.  I expect it from Fox, not from CNN (at least not the old CNN).

Michael Moore has long been my hero - now you all are, too.

NOW let’s all go out and take action - and not just sit around and type about it.  If we do, the other 95% of apathetic/stupid Americans would go along like the sheep they really are.  If CNN can mesmerize ‘em with days of Paris-going-to-jail coverage, we’ll blow ‘em away if we march in the streets!  And CNN won’t be able to cover THAT up!!!

THANKS, EVERYBODY!!!!

In a word , Wonderful! I applaude Moore for having the guts to take on powerful social issues, and powerful media moguls. Truth is a hard thing to come by, and even harder to defend.

There are a lot of references to the Bush administration among your respondents. Is it not time to call it by its rightful name, i.e. “maladministration”?

I just think Michael Moore is so real, I saw him in person (with at least 3,000 other people) at a rally in Portland, Oregon, this was John Kerry was running for president.

Michael Moore is just a straight talking guy, I am sure he will never run for president.  He is too honest for that.

Margaret Currey, Portland, Oregon

While I agree with Moore’s views on most things, I think his anger seemed overdramatic...it almost looked like he would’ve gotten angry no matter what the people at CNN said just to make a fuss. and while CNN and Sanjay Gupta might not have gotten all the facts right, and yes, they’re probably paid a lot by the corporate world, the news piece wasn’t exactly damaging to Moore, in fact I think I wanted to see the movie more after the piece. Fox News deserves the whooping more.

For those that have forgotten this is call passion

Moore blew the dust and cobwebs out of CNN!

Corrections to my previous post: Sorry, Michael. Moore says $6,096 per capita in the U.S. with projection of just over $7,000; while Cuba spends $229 per capita. I didn’t at first spot link to Moore’s rebuttal of Gupta before commenting here, nor have I seen the movie, as I noted. Figures are posted there, along with Moore’s own noting of the fact the U.S.’s embargoing of Cuba is a factor in per-capita expenditure difference. I was glad to see that at the link. One might add that Cubans have suffered in most every way from the ridiculous embargo. And STILL live longer on average! (More movies for Moore to make—about what’s wrong here, not in Cuba.)

Moore does a great job at the link of rebutting Gupta, who did appear earlier today on CNN to correct himself on having reported $25 in Cuba. Alas, that was the only correction he made.

While I have assumed people like Lou Dobbs and Wolf Blitzer to be paid corporate propagandists whose job it is to mold the facts and stories so that people are brainwashed into buying corporate perspective on major issues of the day. Now, I guess I can add people like Dr. Sanjay Gupta to the list.

i can not believe that i am discovering too little too late that cindy sheehan and michael moore were right all the time i was thinking they were left wing nutcases....i guess i was the nutcase and had fallen under the spell of the b.s lying press and electronic media...so now i call my representatives once per day as an act of contrition for my previous lack of vigilance.

we need a truth revolt in america…
please call your reps all the time and let them know your mind.

As a physician, I can’t tell you how many times I have been left screaming at the television screen from the tripe that Gupta propogates. His fondness for junk science and medical nonsense is breathtaking. Glad to see a lay person finally take him down.

Oh wow. two millionaires have a spat on the Walmart of news media, and folks thing the revolution is on. 

News is entertaining, and if folks can’t see white cops run down and arrest black men, they will settle for the battle between ultra fat and super skinny.

The bottom line is Wolf WILL get that raise Cafferty suggested, and hundreds more people will see Moore’s movie after this prime-time advertisment.

Next time though, Moore should show up in a too small tutu, carring a parisol, and have Wolf armed with a chair, top hat, and a whip.

Pleeze, I’d rather watch a Jimmy Stewart movie!

Had occasion to see it live, as I was watching the Wolf-man at the time. First, of course, CNN repeated a hit (not too serious) piece by Sanjay Gupta that was first run last week or the week before.

The only good thing that can be said for CNN was that Moore was invited to appear this time and that he was granted more time than is usually granted guests. Otherwise, CNN, not unexpectedly, thinks viewers are supposed to take Gupta’s “facts” over Moore’s “claims,” as though CNN practically by definition possesses more credibility than Moore ever could. Moore did a fine job of blasting CNN for having cheer-led the war, as can be seen, and in demanding an apology from CNN. But so much for CNN’s own claims to mystifying “objectivity.”

One outstanding example of how media mystifies involved the accurate (according to rankings) statement that Cuba ranks behind the U.S. in overall delivery of healthcare. Something like $235 or so are spent annually per capita in Cuba on healthcare versus the $7,000 or $8,000 (according to Moore) spent in the U.S. What Gupta didn’t mention (and maybe Moore doesn’t either, since I’ve not seen the movie) is that just maybe Cuba lacks dollars thanks in no small part to the U.S.’s long-standing embargoing of Cuba. Healthcare isn’t delivered in a political-economic vacuum. Nor did Gupta mention the ratio of doctors per capita in Cuba compared to that in the U.S. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that Gupta is a member of a closed professional “union” (AMA) that limits membership, which is one reason the ratio is so much worse in the U.S. (I’m very skeptical that Cuba really does rank below the U.S., but can’t prove it doesn’t, depending on criteria used to construct rankings.) Gupta hardly seems a “journalist” without a vested interest in his own version of the “facts,” even if he did finally admit the U.S. healthcare system is “broken.”

Anyone who caught Moore live would also have seen that afterward, when Wolf cut to Dobbs (who appeared briefly to promo his upcoming show), Dobbs went off wondering what in the world was Moore was talking about, since Moore “must love profits,” as well as that Moore sounded like Hugo Chavez, who’s become Dobbs & Co.’s favorite whipping-boy. Dobbs delivered this stuff to a still sheepish-looking Wolf in his well-known slightly crazy-sounding cackling mode, which often seems intended by Dobbs to indicate that he doesn’t really have time for people like Moore as he gazes down upon them from god-like heights. (No wonder Dobbs and Hitchens get along so well!) Apparently, Dobbs doesn’t yet know Moore is hardly a socialist, which Chavez is. Capitalist Moore actually is, I doubt he “loves” profits in the way Lou does, despite Dobbs’ positioning-- politically as populist--himself as champion of the middle-class, if less so also of the working class. Lou has long resided in contradiction, as he, like all capitalists, can’t seem to grasp the brute reality that wealth, by the logic of capitalism is absolutely relative to massive poverty.

I can’t recall whether it was Dobbs or Cafferty who told Wolf that whatever “they” (CNN, one assumes, though who really knows?) were paying him wasn’t enough.

Finally, Wolf turned to cantankerous Cafferty, who after starting to read yet another fairly tedious viewer email got in a whine that Moore had taken up some of his time, a fact for which one could only feel gratitude.

I can’t ever recall anyone blasting mainstream media the way Moore did to CNN’s face. However good his movie is, I can’t imagine it being as good as this was, so goddamn refreshing was it, not least in observing the consternation of Dobbs and Cafferty. Moore’s righteous scolding was truly priceless.

Blitzer lets it slip that “this is a business” in response to Moore’s attack on the integrity of their reporting. And Blitzer is precisely right...unfortunately CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, and beyond, don’t take the pains of informing their viewers that the “news” they are dispelling is basically an extension of the ads they are endlessly pounding their viewers with in between their attrocious segments of infotainment - positioning their networks like hookers on Sunset Blvd to gain even more clients.  Rock on Moore...You represent a nationwide growth spurt. People are beginning to wake up to out of the world represented in mainstream news and information channels...hopefully not too late.

Kucinich/NADER - 2008! The rest are just more extensions of those ads.

AMEN, brutha Moore!

Truths are often revealed while turning manure in the field of assertions and assumptions. You, Gore, Kucinich and Dr. Wasfi are modern heroes working the fields of elite BS. Thank You!

Sprint corp. has today proposed that they were
thinking of dropping all accounts that made more than 6 customer service calls in a month.  This is not the type of corporate mindset that should be allowed in the medical community. go sicko

Yay for Michael.  He really does not need to do more Huck Finn act, so what he gets death threats, love he needs and this how he surely gets it.  Next few more months he can also say again there is a 9/11 coverup.

I haven’t yet seen Moore’s recent film, but I daresay, it will bring to light the truth of yet another venerable institution of this country.  Why do we all act surprised when capitalism is shown to be, just what it is?  The making of wealth for the few at the expense of others.  I worked in the Dental field for twelve years where the insurance business had the well-earned reputation of getting out of paying claims however and whenever they could.  I actually attended seminars where the topic was the devious means of insurance claim denial and how to circumvent it.  That was for claims in the $100’s ...imagine if claims are in the $10,000’s how the motivation increases.

Sanjay and Wolf are true idiots. Neither one of them seems to have a clue how dumb they are.

There’s another type of courage and that’s intellectual courage:that’s what Michael Moore has. I respect his virtue and hope that it will be a lesson for all of us to stand up and be counted. I worry that Moore has to take too may shots alone while many of us “ quietly” approve his valor.

Fire the Wolfman and deport that tool Gupta.

Imagine if Congress had the courage Michael Moore has; bush would respond to them the same way wolf responded to Michael. “Da, da, Dr. Gooptoes, was embedded...” “Give him some too!”

Most people are not commenting what Lou Dobbs said about Michael Moore before the Guppy Gupta slimy smear piece.

Lou made some obscure reference between Michael Moore and the ultra left wing and Hugo Chavez???  How stupid and ignorant...Obviously Lou Dobbs was trying to make a distinction between his populist message and Michael Moore’s populist message...Its like the popular kids on the school ground bolstering their own popularity by making fun of the loaner; in my mind it exposes the weakness in there in own character and to prop up their own self perception.

Now for Gupta to do a propaganda piece on health car system and Michael Moore is not true Journalism, it is him protecting the status quo and his Medical Corporate Establishment.

Doctors are “indoctrinated” early on in medical school...they are wined and dined by the Corporate Pharmaceutical companies and that is where they make all of their money...If you want to see this in action go to your local for profit medical center and just hang out for a while you will start to notice out of place fresh faced hyperactive (probably on prozac or ritalin or their companies versions of these legal stimulants) young people with boxes of free samples of their drug wares...they are the 21st centuries version of the snake oil salesmen...it is hilarious, disgusting, disturbing, and infuriating as they interfere with the wait times of sick older americans by meeting with the doctors that are on duty...they get in to see the doctors before the people that are waiting to be healed.  It is really unbelievable to see this process in action.

This country is totally in control of the greed mongers and that will be the future historical view of this age that we are in.

I think we must look at the “me generation” culture the baby boomers that are in charge of everything now and how it is destroying our culture.

The overriding feeling in the country now is “cultural insanity” in every facet of life and I think we must look at root causes in our national psychology.

How refreshing !! A great way to start the day…

Whether you agree with Mike Moore or not he laid issues on the table that ought to be discussed in America.The job of the 4th estate in informing the American people in a run up to war and how medical service in this country is handled.Mike Moore spoke up will you.

We need an “Surge” of Michael Moores.  Okay, maybe he can be abrasive, but if that is what it takes to defend the average American, so be it.

His riff on WMDs and Iraq aside, I found most of that outburst to be out of order, even if one grants that his criticism of CNN’s fact-checking was valid.  A calmer refutation would have been much more effective, in my view.  I especially chastise Mr. Moore for his impudent pronunciation of Mr. Gupta’s name as if it were a pejorative.  This, to my ear, seemed almost a ‘makaka’ moment for Mr. Moore, and I say this as someone who generally agrees with him.

Bravo to Mr Moore for taking the press to task on allowing the Bush administration and Cheney to have their way with perpetuating the Iraq War and lining the pockets of the war industrial complex. We need more people like Mr Moore to ask the tough questions and hold the government accountable for this incredibly wasteful and disastrous conflict. The news media, including CNN, have been derelict in their duties here.

Oh, and the expose on the health care industry and the puppets of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, including Dr. Sanjay Dooped-Taah, was right-on!

It’s nice when a little “Democracy Now” filters through a CNN newscast. Similar, in this case, in that it was not just a soundbite, but some real ideas, which were communicated fully.

To his credit, Wolf really did allow Moore to make his points over several minutes, with Moore getting some ideas out normally not heard on CNN.

Moore’s anger makes a lot more sense if you first watch Sanjay Gupta’s truly sloppy “news” piece.

Mr. Blitzer and Dr. Gupta----YOU GOT SERVED!!!!!