Michael Moore’s Chucklehead Itinerary

By Armond White

Friday, February 12, 2016

Billed as “A New Comedy,” Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next is ungenerous and condescending. Those unfunny characteristics typify propaganda just as they also describe the sorry state of contemporary political humor, which has declined in this millennium, and Moore is largely to blame. Since his first distorted documentary, Roger and Me, in 1989, he’s used stridency, partisanship, and snark to despoil an art form and demean political discourse.

Moore’s jovial pretense is immediately divisive. He starts with a satirical proposition about American foreign policy: “On January 2, I was quietly summoned to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Each branch was represented: the Army, the Air Force, the Marines. ‘Michael,’ they said, ‘we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.’” His casual anti-military jibe introduces the film’s premise: Moore, the bumptious American, visits global sites of bloodless social revolution: Finland, Norway, Iceland, Italy, France, Slovenia, Tunisia, Portugal. He seeks counterpoints to what the United States has repeatedly done wrong. Where to Invade Next is millionaire Moore’s goofball imitation of President Obama’s 2009 European trunk show, which has been described as an apology tour.

No matter that Moore’s anti-Americanism turns into sentimental patriotism at the film’s other end — both positions are shallow, and neither is credible. Moore’s only distinction as a maker of documentaries (mockumentaries, really — mocking the idea of journalistic fairness and thorough reporting) is that he doesn’t care to be convincing. Like his imperious TV progeny Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver, Moore preaches to the choir. Contrasting European and North African social programs and protests with feckless American styles of protest is no more illuminating than a TV-studio applause sign.

Moore’s button-pushing is a sign that the polarization of American politics and media that started with the 2000 presidential election has set in so deeply — bolstered by such events as 9/11, Bush’s 2004 reelection, and Hurricane Katrina — that it goes unquestioned and has become the new New Journalism. Such chucklehead political satire operates by a different sort of “logic”; argument and proof are less important than self-righteousness and a sense of snide superiority.

Media mogul Roger Ebert’s dangerously derelict praise of Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 (“This film has a point of view, and that’s okay”) was as much an oversimplification of a documentary’s purpose as the thoughtless attitude that ad hominem derision is also okay because Moore’s ultimate goal is to mock ideas and people.

Despite his humble front, Moore’s arrogance doesn’t stop. At his most offensively patronizing, he interviews a father whose child was killed in the 2011 massacre of Norwegian schoolchildren. Moore heartlessly goads the forgiving parent. He turns the screws on the audience so that our wincing is relieved only by the father’s grace. In a specious gun-control diatribe, part of Moore’s strategy is to mislabel the Norway atrocity as “terrorism.” Moore ignores the truly remarkable mystery of the grieving father’s human nature and what it says about Scandinavian pacifism.

As scattershot as Spike Lee in Chi-Raq, Moore then idealizes how other countries build spa-like prisons, and he uses scenes of brutal American prisons and vicious guards as counterpoint. There’s no investigation into the what, how, and when of European crime. This lackadaisical, dishonest storytelling satisfies Moore’s polarized studio audience, who only want him to cheerlead their distaste for the problematic United States. Moore’s romanticizing of Europe goes unchallenged by facts or even statistics. (There’s a clip from a promotional film of Finnish prison guards singing “We Are the World.”) He never asks how these Utopias were achieved, but he’s in slack-jawed awe at the different social systems — like a naïve college student: “Gee, Ma, they don’t have to wash their hands or say grace before dinner!”

In Portugal, Moore films a trinity of cops who pontificate on how “human dignity is the most important thing in life,” and another Portuguese official boasts that the country has resolved both its African-immigrant and drug-addiction crises. Apparently, Moore hasn’t seen last year’s astonishing Horse Money, Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s film about the miseries of Lisbon’s impoverished, drug-addicted black immigrants.

Where to Invade Next offers no information because Moore is uninterested in modern Europe’s difficulties as depicted in the best European art films, like Rade Jude’s Aferim!, which traces Romania’s dystopia to its historic, Buñuelian roots, a philosophical view of a kind. Rather than empathize with those suffering from the vexing social conditions of class, crime, and unrest in America, he hits all the leftist high points, from Occupy to Ferguson to Free College for All. For a summation, Moore asks one European woman to lecture America on its lack of charity. And to patronize politically correct feminism, Moore features a montage of cherry-cheeked Caucasian women posing outdoors to somehow illustrate the notion that women make better rulers than men. Rich and comfortable enough to devote his “comedy” to shaming the United States, Moore deliberately misrepresents — and misunderstands — how the melting pot boils.

Moore’s apology tour is a trip through liberalism’s Cloud Cuckoo Land. He’s a purblind tourist who avoids looking at the personal and sociological issues that result in crime and make court and penal systems necessary across the globe. Essentially, Moore has no interest in examining human nature. Portrayals of our common humanity, citizenship, and morality are what’s missing from today’s me-against-you political satire. Moore and the Maher–Stewart–Colbert gang are only interested in assigning blame to their American opponents. Thus, contemporary political satire has become both self-flattering and hate-filled. Such polarization defies the idea that we all share a polity. Moore uses satire dishonestly, hoping to achieve small-minded ideological power.

Flint Is Not a Republican Scandal

National Review Online

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

What we learned from Hurricane Katrina: No matter what happens, it’s never the governor’s fault. What we’ve learned from the contaminated drinking water in Flint, Mich.: It’s always the governor’s fault.

A bit of background first.

Flint has relatively high levels of lead in its drinking water, a cause for legitimate concern. This is a result not so much of the source of its drinking water, the Flint River, as of the city’s failure to treat the water, which, without the proper additives, leaches lead and other contaminants from pipes.

Prior to and separate from the current water crisis, Flint was in a state of financial ruination. In one of the most liberal cities in the United States, Flint’s Democrat-dominated government did what Democrat-monopoly governments do in practically every city they control: It spent money as quickly as it could while at the same time carpet-bombing the tax base with inept municipal services, onerous regulations, high taxes, and the like. As a result of this, a bankrupt Flint entered into a state of receivership, meaning that an emergency manager — or emergency financial manager, depending upon Michigan’s fluctuating fiscal-emergency law — was appointed by state authorities and given power to supersede local elected officials in some matters, especially financial ones. The contamination happened while Flint was under the authority of an emergency manager who, though a Democrat, had been appointed to the post by Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder. He was, in fact, the most recent in a long line of emergency managers, Flint having failed for years to emerge from its state of fiscal emergency.

Because the Democratic emergency manager was appointed by a Republican governor, the people from whom one expects cheap theatrics of this sort have declared the situation in Flint to be a Republican scandal.

Not so fast.

Before the appointment of the (Democratic) emergency manager, Flint’s elected mayor and city council (Democrats) had decided to sever the city’s relationship with its drinking-water supplier, which was at the time the Detroit water authority. Flint intended to join a regional water authority that would pipe water in from Lake Huron, a project that was scheduled to take three years to come online. In a fit of pique, Detroit (a city under unitary Democratic control) immediately moved to terminate Flint’s water supply, leaving the city high and literally dry.

At this point, somebody — no one will quite admit to being the responsible party — decided to rely temporarily on the Flint River. The Democrats in the city government deny responsibility for this; so does Darnell Earley, the Democrat who served as emergency manager. Earley says that the decisions to terminate the Detroit deal and rely temporarily on the Flint River “were both a part of a long-term plan that was approved by Flint’s mayor, and confirmed by a City Council vote of 7–1 in March of 2013 — a full seven months before I began my term as emergency manager.”

Meanwhile, Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality — no hotbed of covert Republican activity — seems at the very least to have suppressed worrisome findings about Flint’s water supply, and may have done worse than that. The federal Environmental Protection Agency — whose Democratic chief was appointed by our Democratic president — knew for months that there were concerns about Flint’s water, and did nothing.

In sum: The Democratic government of a Democratic city destroys that city’s finances so thoroughly that it must go into state receivership; a Democratic emergency manager signs off on a consensus plan to use a temporary water source; the municipal authorities in that Democratic city responsible for treating and monitoring drinking water fail to do their job; a state agency whose employees work under the tender attention of SEIU Local 517 fails to do its job overseeing the local authorities; Barack Obama’s EPA, having been informed about the issue, keeps mum.

Republican scandal.

Governor Snyder, of course, does bear some responsibility here and, to his credit, has acknowledged as much. No, no reasonable person expects the governor to show up in Flint with a white glove and personally eyeball what the local water-treatment plant is up to, but the people he appointed did an insufficient job. It is ironic, given the tenor of the denunciations, that Governor Snyder is as guilty of excessive bipartisanship as of any other offense: In his desire to keep Flint under the watch of an emergency manager with whom the locals were comfortable — a Democrat — he may have overlooked better candidates with more thoroughgoing approaches to reform. If you’ve followed Flint’s history of nearly criminal misgovernance, you know that what was needed was more iron fist and less velvet glove.

So while those who fault Governor Snyder are not entirely wrong, what is deeply dishonest is the story put forward by such people as the filmmaker Michael Moore, who enjoys pretending to be from gritty, blue-collar Flint (he actually hails from an affluent suburb nearby), that this is, somehow, the result of the Republican approach to government or conservative governing ideas. That is absurd. Flint is a mess made by Democrats, made worse by the Democrats in Detroit, and ignored by the Democrats in the White House. The worst that can be said of the Republican on the scene is that he failed to save the local Democrats from the worst effects of their own excesses.

But that is the Democrats’ approach to calculating the chain of responsibility: Go up the ladder or down, as needed, until a Republican is located, or a private firm, in which case capitalism can be blamed. The Democratic monopolies in Flint, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Newark? Somehow, somewhere, there’s a Republican responsible for that, even if he has to be brought in on an overnight flight from Oklahoma.

Flint is nothing more than a miniature Detroit. And Detroit is what Democrats do.

In Michael Moore’s World, ‘Tolerance’ Means Ignoring Real Difference

By Ian Tuttle

Monday, December 21, 2015

In case this election season had not endured enough stupidity, Michael Moore has gotten involved. Last week, the documentarian — a word here stretched to its breaking point — posted on Facebook an open letter to Donald Trump and a picture of himself standing on the steps of Manhattan’s Trump Tower with a sign proclaiming, “We Are All Muslim,” which he is encouraging supporters to use as a hashtag on social media.

This from the writer of a film called “Canadian Bacon.”

Whether Moore gives a pulled-pork sandwich about Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” is anyone’s guess. He’s got a new film out next week — Where to Invade Next — and he needs publicity. But that being said, it was probably only a matter of time before Moore took on Trump. Vadum vadum invocat, or: One obnoxious self-promoter calls to another.

To be fair to The Donald, though: He has not yet reached the nadir of inanity that is “We Are All Muslim.” Nor is he responsible for what is surely one of the most puerile sentences ever to shame the English language: “Just as we are all Mexican, we are all Catholic and Jewish and white and black and every shade in between.” Or, in its moronic Platonic form: “We Are All Everything.”

This is, of course, nonsense. But it’s also instructive. This is exactly what diversity-mongers have in mind when they conjure “tolerance” as the solution to conflicts in a pluralistic society: not a respectful acknowledgment of our differences, but a ruthlessly enforced neglect of them. Exhibit A, from elsewhere in Moore’s epistle: “We are all children of God (or nature or whatever you believe in), part of the human family.” Translation: “Everyone get along! We’re all carbon-based lifeforms!” Someone tell ISIS.

Genuine respect is a far more complicated notion than what titillates the neurons of Michael Moore. Unlike his mush-headed mantras, it actually embraces the individuality of persons, the unique constellation of attributes and opinions that makes them them and not someone else. I am not a woman, an Ethiopian, a cancer survivor, an Olympic mogul skier, a Miss America contestant, or a lover of kale — and it is not helpful, but deceptive, if I claim that I am. Likewise, I am not a Muslim — and it doesn’t help me forge a real, meaningful relationship with Muslims to claim that I believe the shahada (the core statement of faith that is the center of Islam). Contra Moore’s preferred metaphysics, we’re not all the same uniform expiration of the Oversoul. We’re radically distinct persons, and the challenge of an open society is to find durable common ground on which to relate. Being featherless bipeds is not enough.

This is, of course, hard work, and it gives rise to the eccentricities and frictions that make societies difficult to steer — hence liberals’ preference for homogenizing categories, for transforming communities of unique persons into malleable blobs. Moore’s tagline is just liberalism’s totalizing inclination brightly packaged. It’s for this reason that his mindless stunts require a response.

Thankfully, doing so can be enjoyable. After all, Moore’s heft has always been decisively of the non-intellectual variety.

How Bin Laden Resembled Michael Moore

The springs of U.S. hatred start here.

Mona Charen
Tuesday, May 03, 2011

In those harrowing first days and weeks after the 9/11 atrocity, Americans were traumatized — but also bewildered. What vicious hatred was this? Who was this new and terrifying enemy? What could possibly motivate people to sacrifice their lives for the honor of killing innocent American civilians — and cause thousands of others to cheer mass murder?

Naturally, some Americans couldn’t resist the temptation to ride their own hobbyhorses. We had it coming, said the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, for tolerating abortion and gay unions. (Falwell later apologized.) On the left, a veritable chorus of “blame the victim” analysis explained that America’s crimes had driven our enemies to terrorism. The Nation declared that America was “the world’s leading rogue state.” Noam Chomsky offered his own twist, calling the U.S. the world’s chief “terrorist state.” Michael Moore, who held a seat of honor at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, offered that we shouldn’t be surprised by the attack because “we have orphaned so many children . . . with our taxpayer funded terrorism.”

The rest of us wondered how Muslims could be so fired with hatred of Americans considering that the last three wars we had fought had been on behalf of suffering Muslims: in Kuwait, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

The usual suspects blamed Muslim hatred of the U.S. on our support for Israel (though that issue ranked below “infidel” troops on Saudi soil on bin Laden’s list of grievances). The rest of us have undertaken, during the past decade, a crash course in Islam, Islamism, the history of the Levant, al-Qaeda, the clash of civilizations, and jihad. No sooner had we defeated Communism than the scourge of Islamism seemed to reach straight out of the Middle Ages — a death cult promising its killers 72 virgins in paradise, and warning the faithful that only the strictest adherence to the Koran would bring salvation.

Osama bin Laden, with his talk of the Caliphate and regaining Spain for the umma, seemed a figure from the ninth century himself — an image carefully cultivated with stories of living in caves surviving on goat’s milk.

But as the years have passed, it has become less and less clear that Islamism is just a throwback, or that the zealots who fantasize about killing ever larger numbers of Americans are acting on their interpretation of ancient dogmas. The ninth century does not coexist with the 21st.

A camera panned the room where Osama bin Laden died — a room in a multi-level mansion in the suburbs of Islamabad, not a cave in a hillside near the border — and lit upon the quotidian paraphernalia of his life. On a shelf lay a jar of Vaseline, bottles of what looked like vitamins, and a prescription box that seemed to be for a nasal spray. On the floor lay a vacuum cleaner. Next door were the computers.

It’s no revelation, of course, that bin Laden was conversant with modern technology. But just as bin Laden’s home held modern products, his mind held modern prejudices. By allowing ourselves to be too distracted by the turbans and the pietistic language, we may have missed that — and in the process overestimated the role of Islam in Islamism.

In 2007, in his longest videotaped message to the world, bin Laden mouthed some of the familiar invocations of “Allah, the most high,” but much of his message to the American people could have come straight from the pages of The Nation. He decried global warming, the “greed of major corporations and their representatives,” “globalization,” and “capitalism.” Here’s his explanation of the war in Vietnam:

In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed . . . those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing.

Oliver Stone couldn’t have said it better.

Yes, the late Osama bin Laden was a religious fanatic. But if religious zeal were his only motivation, he might have turned his hatred toward China — a consistent persecutor of Muslims (and others), or India (which some Islamists have attacked — though without justification). But bin Laden’s garrulous videos reveal someone who had drunk deeply from the well of hatred for America that nourishes everyone from Hugo Chávez to Vladimir Putin. It’s a well with springs that originate right here.

WikiLeaks What-Ifs

What if they had exposed state secrets through U.S. history?

Deroy Murdock
Friday, December 17, 2010

On Christmas night 1776, George Washington and his troops silently set out east from Pennsylvania and crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey. There they pounced on snoring Hessian mercenaries at their barracks in Trenton. Washington’s surprise attack vanquished the pro-British unit. This unexpected victory rejuvenated the American Revolution just when the cause looked lost.

Had they been alive back then, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning (alleged purveyor of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks) might have forwarded Washington’s covert plans to Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s founder. Assange would have galloped on horseback through Trenton’s snow-clogged streets yelling, “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!” — all in order to “inform the public.”

Roused from their sleep, the Hessians might have crushed Washington and his men and, thus, the Revolution. If so, we would now drink warm beer at cricket matches.

WikiLeakers and their increasingly vocal apologists are stunningly oblivious to military and diplomatic secrecy’s role in preserving freedom and national security. Informing the American people is a noble objective. Unfortunately, our enemies listen in.

Germany was unaware that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt could read Adolf Hitler’s military commands, thanks to captured Nazi Enigma coding machines. England kept this secret until 1974 — 29 years after Hitler put a gun to his temple in the Führerbunker.

WikiLeaks about Jimmy Doolittle’s post‒Pearl Harbor raid on Tokyo would have knocked American airplanes from Japanese skies. Likewise, self-styled defenders of “the public’s right to know” about D-Day would have told the Nazis that Eisenhower was en route and turned the Normandy landing into an American Waterloo.

There are two possible explanations for the behavior of WikiLeaks’s operators and supporters: They either recklessly disregard the implications of their revelations or actively subvert U.S. interests, risking serious harm to Americans and our allies.

• WikiLeaks disclosed that a major Mediterranean city has become an al-Qaeda hotbed. (To limit further damage, I have excluded its name.) American diplomats there had redoubled their counterterror efforts. Now WikiLeaks has exposed this to America’s biggest enemy, placing a giant bull’s-eye on the relevant U.S. outpost and jeopardizing the country that hosts it.

• WikiLeaks posted diplomatic cables detailing critical infrastructure overseas, such as pipelines and vaccine factories. What a perfect target list for those who want to see “infidels” sick or dead.

• WikiLeaks blabbed that China seems sanguine about Seoul controlling the entire Korean peninsula. Next time Washington asks China to babysit Kim Jong Il, it will not help that leaked U.S. cables outed Beijing as less than thrilled with Pyongyang. This raises, rather than lowers, the odds that Kim will lob more explosives (conventional or atomic) at South Korea, possibly hitting American GIs, killing civilians, and even dragging America into another Korean War.

Since it is painfully clear that America cannot keep secrets (an old problem that WikiLeaks has updated), foreign intelligence sources will tend to clam up. Why whisper to American officials when the result is like shouting into a bullhorn?

Nonetheless, a group called “WikiLeaks Is Democracy” argues that “WikiLeaks performs an invaluable service to the broad U.S. and global public with a commitment to the protection of human rights and the rule of law.” Academy Award–winning filmmaker Michael Moore offered $20,000 toward Assange’s bail. “He should be thanked and honored, not abused and jailed,” Moore declared Tuesday.

Incredible.

WikiLeaks will snuff out innocent lives, if it has not done so already.

The U.S. remains at war with Muslim fanatics who plot mass murder against Americans and our friends overseas. From Mogadishu to Tehran to Pyongyang, bad men wish America the worst. That’s why WikiLeaks is neither funny nor cute nor just a “newsy” offshoot of the logorrhea that fuels breathless “tweets” about Kardashian leg-waxings and such.

Underscoring this point also serves justice. WikiLeaks’s alleged chief source, Pfc. Bradley Manning, should be court-martialed for espionage and treason. If convicted, he should be placed against a wall and executed by firing squad. (If extradited here, Assange deserves the same sendoff.) Maybe that will persuade Americans to stop flapping their gums about things that will enable murderers.

Hey, Michael Moore! Clinton, Gore and Kerry Lost the 'White Vote,' Too

By Larry Elder
Thursday, November 18, 2010

"White America does not like having a black president."

Thus pronounced Michael Moore in an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher." And Maher agreed, "That is the truth."

"The statistics don't lie," Moore plowed ahead. "I'm not talking about polls. I'm talking about that the young people in '08 was the only -- do you know this? -- it's the only demographic -- white demographic -- that Obama won, 18- to 29-year-olds. Every other demographic, over 29, Obama lost the white vote. Every single one."

Crime solved. Case closed. Book 'em, Danno. Except for one minor detail: No Democratic presidential candidate has won the "white vote" since 1964.

Add Obama's name to a long list of white Democrats who lost that demographic: Humphrey in 1968; McGovern in 1972; Carter in 1976 and 1980; Mondale in 1984; Dukakis in 1988; Clinton in 1992 and 1996; Gore in 2000.

In fact, white voters preferred Obama to Sen. John Kerry -- who lost the white vote by 17 points in 2004, while Obama lost it in 2008 by "only" 12 points. Obama improved on Kerry's share of the white vote in every age demographic, including the 18- to 29-year-olds (which Kerry lost).

Did "white America" temporarily forget Obama's skin color, only to remember just in time for the midterm elections? This, perhaps, explains why Obama's approval rating, postelection, shot up to over 70 percent before coming down.

Obama's approval rating now stands at the low- to mid-40s. So, presumably, "white America" reverted back to its historical racism. But how does Moore explain whites like Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with an approval rating at less than 30 percent, and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at 25 percent?

If "white America" dislikes having a black president, why does "white America" -- in the South, no less -- tolerate a black congressperson?

Allen West, a black Republican former lieutenant colonel, won Florida's 22nd Congressional District. Its racial demographics are 82.3 percent white, 3.8 percent black, 1.7 percent Asian, 10.7 percent Hispanic, 0.1 percent Native American and 0.2 percent other.

Tim Scott, a black Republican candidate, won South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. Its racial demographics are 74.8 percent white, 21.1 percent black, 1.3 percent Asian, 2.5 percent Hispanic, 0.4 percent Native American and 0.2 percent other.

Worse, Scott was backed by what the NAACP calls the "racist" tea party! The civil rights organization commissioned a study that purported to unmask the tea party's racism. But NAACP CEO Ben Jealous encountered unexpected skepticism when he appeared on Anderson Cooper's CNN show.

Cooper asked why the NAACP selected a "clearly left-wing group -- which is opposed to the tea party" -- to conduct the study. He said the report "does seem to use a lot of innuendo and a lot of guilt by association." Cooper played a montage of video clips showing prominent Democrats -- from the President on down -- campaigning with the mantra that it's time to "take our country back!" "Why is it when Democrats say 'take our country back,'" said Cooper, "no one says that's extreme nationalism, but when tea party supporters say it, it's ominous and racism in disguise?" Jealous stammered, stumbled and fumbled. Painful to watch.

Actor/producer/director Rob Reiner says the Tim Scott-supporting tea party is not merely racist. It is also fascist. In an appearance on Bill Maher's show, Reiner worried whether a Hitler-like charismatic leader might emerge to lead the party:

Reiner: You never get into a political discussion unless you bring the word Hitler in. You have to have Hitler, so let's put Hitler out there. Here's Hitler, OK? You have bad economic times, right? Hitler, by the way, never got more than 33 percent of the vote ever in Germany. You have bad economic times--

Maher: Well, he only had that one election, let's be honest. ... There was no 1937 election.

Reiner: He wasn't a majority guy, but he was charismatic and they were having bad economic times, just like we are now. People were out of work. They needed jobs, and a guy came along and rallied the troops. My fear is that the tea party gets a charismatic leader, because all they're selling is fear and anger, and that's all Hitler sold."

Not a "majority guy"? President Bill Clinton not only twice lost the white vote but also, like Hitler, never won the majority of the electorate -- 43 percent in 1992 and 49 percent in 1996. And the point is? Well, there is no point -- at least none one might call coherent.

A 2008 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll asked likely voters whether they would refuse to vote for a black presidential candidate. Only 4 percent said yes -- a smaller number than would refuse to vote for a woman or a Mormon.

It's not about race. The reality is simple, if less comforting to Mr. Moore. "White America" does not even like voting for a white president -- if he is a Democrat.

Capitalism: Still Popular, Despite the Bad PR

Julie Gunlock
Friday, October 16, 2009

Capitalism seems rather out of fashion these days. Whether it’s President Obama’s penchant for taking over private industry, Congress’ uncontrolled spending, or the media’s near-constant attacks on Wall Street, one can safely assume capitalism will be placed in the “out” category on those ubiquitous year-end round-ups of trends that are “in” and “out” of fashion.

Michael Moore’s myth-making on the big screen is the latest the attempt to weaken the American public’s confidence in capitalism. It could prove effective because let’s face it, more Americans go to the movies than read economic theory. Moore’s movie Capitalism: A Love Story is standard Michael Moore buffoonery—light on facts, heavy on juvenile humor. But there’s no doubt, some would also call it convincing—especially to those who don’t know what capitalism actually is--like Michael Moore himself.

In a rather embarrassing and revealing interview on Larry King Live, Moore made his ignorance of his movie’s title glaringly apparent. A caller to the show suggested to Moore that the movie’s central theme dealt more with corruption and greed and asked “what does this have to do with capitalism?” Watching Moore attempt to answer reminded me of my son learning to talk—struggling for the right words, trying to put them into a complete sentence, then trailing off. In other words, a collection of words clumsily put together, ultimately leading nowhere.

While Moore’s latest salvo might make some nostalgic for capitalism’s glory days of Reagan, Thatcher, and Friedman, the truth is that despite the recent public relations hit, capitalism remains extremely popular in this country and around the world. Why? It’s simple: People know what’s good for them.

In July, the New York Times ran a story about a new Pew Global Survey with the predictable Obama-centric headline, “Global Views of U.S. Helped by Obama, Survey Says.” Indeed, the survey did show an increase in pro-American sentiment in nearly every country since the election of Barack Obama.

However, and perhaps not surprisingly, the New York Times failed to mention some of the other (and frankly more interesting) trends the survey revealed, such as the substantial popularity of free market economics and free trade. The Pew report authors summarize the finding by stating:

“While most countries around the world are struggling with an economic downturn, this has not led to a backlash against global trade. In fact, as has been observed in recent American polls, this year there is, if anything, more support for trade than there was in 2008. Most publics continue to see trade as beneficial for their countries and for their families. Nor has the economic crisis led to widespread doubts about the free market. In the vast majority of countries surveyed, most think the free market approach to economics is good for society, even if it produces income inequalities.”

It isn’t just wealthy nations that prefer the capitalist system. The survey shows that “[s]upport for the free market approach is strongest in two of the poorest nations on the survey, Kenya (84% agree) and the Palestinian territories (82%). Palestinians are now considerably more likely to endorse free market economics than they were two years ago, when 66% held this view. Support is also high in the growing Asian giants India (81%) and China (79%).”

Proponents of capitalism tend to focus on the system’s benefits in terms of encouraging economic activity, the efficient allocation of labor and capital, and overall wealth creation. Indeed as The Cato Institute’s annual report of Economic Freedom of the World found, countries with greater economic freedoms produce on average much higher GDPs and more than double the economic growth rate of statist economies. But capitalism isn’t just good for the bottom line: people living in freer economies also tend to have higher life expectancies, less corrupt governments, more political rights and greater respect for civil liberties.

Capitalist countries are also far more generous to other nations. The largest 22 contributors of international aid are members of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development and all have relatively free economic systems. In all, these countries contribute over a hundred billion U.S. dollars each year in foreign aid and the money ends up in countries not at all friendly to them such as Cuba, Libya, North Korea, and Iran.

Women also do better in a capitalist system. The UN produces two measures of women’s well-being: the Gender-Related Development Index, which measures women’s health, education levels, and standard of living; and the Gender Empowerment Index, which captures political and economic participation, and women’s estimated earned income. When these indices are compared against Cato’s Economic Freedom of the World report, countries with high levels of economic freedom consistently score high on the GDI and the GEM, and conversely, those that score low on the Cato’s graph, score low on the UN gender indices.

Capitalism isn’t perfect but it’s the best option for creating greater health, wealth and well-being for the world’s population. While those in the White House, in Congress and in Hollywood try to weaken this country’s capitalist system, Americans know better…and so does the rest of the world.

What's Michael Moore Talking About?

John Stossel
Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Michael Moore is confused.

His new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," begins by suggesting that all was well until Ronald Reagan became president and cut the top 90 percent income tax rate. Everything was downhill from there.

But by the end of the movie, he says the problems really began in 1945, when Franklin Roosevelt died without enacting his proposed Second Bill of Rights, which would have "guaranteed' everything from a "remunerative job" and a "decent home" to "adequate medical care," a "good education" and "adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment."

Adding to the confusion, he lavishes praise on Barack Obama and his "spread the wealth around" rhetoric. But Moore also demonizes as symbols of capitalism Clinton Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin (formerly of Goldman Sachs) and Lawrence Summers, and former New York Fed President Timothy Geithner without mentioning that Rubin has been Obama's adviser and that Summers and Geithner are, respectively, his chief economic guru and treasury secretary. Nor does he acknowledge that Obama continued the bailout policies of George W. Bush.

Moore declares capitalism evil, but he's never clear about what "capitalism" means. Considering how much time he spends documenting the cozy relationship between business and government, I thought he might mean "state capitalism."

But then he uses the term "free market" as a synonym for what he doesn't like.

What does the free market have to do with businesses manipulating government and strong-arming Congress for bailouts? Moore properly condemns both.

What does he want instead of "capitalism"? He's coy about that. Claiming that the public became increasingly curious about socialism once Obama was accused of favoring it, he goes to the only self-described socialist in Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders, to ask for a definition. Socialism, Sanders tells Moore, means "the government represents the middle class and working class, not the wealth."

Huh? That's socialism? It's not government ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property and free exchange? Sanders reads Marx and Lenin very broadly. By his definition, I'm a socialist. I want government to represent the middle and working classes. Of course, Congress does that best by leaving them free, economically and otherwise.

Moore visits the National Archives to see if the Constitution establishes capitalism as the country's economic system. Seeing the words "people," "union" and "welfare" in the document, he says, "Sounds like that other ism."

That's just silly. The Constitution limits government's power to interfere with the people and their property. The Constitution is on the side of the free market.

Toward the end of the movie, Moore says capitalism is irredeemably evil and "has to be replaced." With what? I assumed he'd say socialism, but instead his answer is "democracy."

This apparently means expanding "hundreds of worker-owned businesses" in the United States.

But since workers are already free to start businesses, what's his point? A more astute observer would show how government intervention -- licenses, taxes, regulations -- inhibits such businesses.

Thankfully, I will soon have my own show on Fox Business Network to make such points. I'll invite Moore to come on as a guest.

For two hours, Moore rails against reckless banks and government bailouts, but never once mentions the government-business partnership that created the conditions for the turmoil. The fact that America no longer has a genuinely free market is the unnoticed 10,000-pound elephant in Moore's room.

Watching "Capitalism," you'd never know that the federal government colluded for decades with the financial, real estate and construction industries to divert resources into housing in the name of promoting home ownership -- even for people who couldn't afford it. You'd never know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were, and are, privileged government-sponsored enterprises that encouraged shaky loans.

At least Moore has an inkling of what's wrong: cozy ties between Wall Street and government. Moore thinks the answer is better regulators or nationalization of banks. But his own evidence suggests that the real answer is a separation of state and economy -- stripping away Wall Street's privileges.

In other words: Limit government's power. Let the free market work.

Economics and Me: Michael Moore on Being Entitled

Austin Hill
Sunday, October 04, 2009

I deserved it. I didn’t get it. And those who didn’t give it to me are evil.

That’s the “Cliffs Notes” version of some remarks made to a reporter by Michael Moore last week. Moore was on the red carpet at Washington, DC’s Uptown Theatre, the night of the premiere of his new film “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

Unlike recent interviews of Moore that you might have seen at, oh, say, CNN (Thanks Larry King for breathlessly hanging on Moore’s every word), CNSNews.Com reporter Nichloas Ballasy scored a brief, low-keyed, on-camera interview wherein he actually asked Moore an intelligent question.

Noting that Moore has been financially successful in the American capitalistic economic system, Ballasy asked “...How would you justify making a movie where you paint capitalism as evil?”

“Well, capitalism did nothing for me, starting with my first film” Moore replied. “You know, I had to pretty much beg, borrow and steal. The system is not set up to help somebody from the working class make a movie like this and get the truth out there…”

Amazing how easily one guy can dismiss an idea (capitalism) that has empowered and transformed nations for more than two centuries. .

I realize these were just spontaneous, off-handed remarks that Moore was making, but if he wants us to take him seriously – and by every indication he does – then his words are fair-game for scrutiny.

So let’s start from the beginning on this one. “..Capitalism did nothing for me, starting with my first film.” This statement indicates no comprehension of the many ways in which capitalism has enabled the very existence of the film industry, and allowed Moore the possibility of a career as a film producer. Without our capitalistic economy, there’s a good chance that neither of these things - - neither the industry, nor Moore’s career in it – would have ever materialized. Certainly neither of these things would have flourished the way they have, without capitalism.

But why bother with historical facts or, for that matter, objective reality? Michael feels scorned, so, therefore, his perceived assailants are just “bad.”

Then there’s this sentence: “You know, I had to pretty much beg, borrow, and steal.” I’ll presume that Moore isn’t admitting to actual “theft,” but rather, he is saying that he had to struggle to find the funding necessary to produce his first film.

And, gosh, think about it. Michael had a struggle in his life. He encountered challenges on his way to becoming a wealthy film producer. His career was not instantly given to him. It was difficult for him to produce his first film. Shouldn’t we all feel terrible about this?

The things Michael wanted were not simply given to Michael, so, therefore, “the system” is obviously “bad.” Moore even said as much: “…The system is not set up to help somebody from the working class make a movie like this and get the truth out there…”

Fortunately, most Americans don’t expect their lives to be struggle-free, nor do they expect to always be given what they want when they want it. A majority of us are grateful for the opportunities that the economy affords us, and we make the best of those opportunities.

But again, don’t bother with objective reality. “The system” did not give Michael what Michael believes that Michael deserved, at a time when Michael believed that Michael deserved it. The system, therefore, is evil.

Moore continued his account of his perceived victimization, telling Ballasy “… in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ if you remember, capitalism, the Disney Corporation, tried to kill that film--tried to make it so that people couldn’t see it. My book ‘Stupid White Men’--Harper Collins tried to kill that book so that people couldn’t see it. It's only because I put the light of day on it and told people what was going on did people get the chance to see these things.”

Here, Moore’s words amount to a huge non sequitur. Again, if we are to take him seriously (and by every indication he wants us to), then, where he states “capitalism, the Disney Corporation, tried to kill that film...,” we must infer that “capitalism” and “the Disney Corporation” are synonymous.

Then, with his “capitalism=Disney” formula established, Moore states that Disney’s choice to NOT do business with him on a particular film project left him, Michael Moore, victimized. Similarly, when the Harper Collins publishing group chose to NOT work with Moore on a particular book project, Moore was further victimized.

Of course, Michael Moore should be free to write, produce, say and do whatever Michael Moore chooses. But for Michael Moore, such freedoms do not apply to others. Both a publishing and a film production company made choices that Michael Moore did not approve of, so, therefore the "system" is evil.

As long as narcissistic, self-centered people like Michael Moore continue to believe that they are so incredibly entitled – entitled to a book or movie deal, entitled to the services of another professional (a Medical Doctor, perhaps?), and so forth – capitalism, and, thus, our way of life, will be at risk.

Hey Michael... "this time it’s personal..."

Michael Moore Economics is Driving Washington

Austin Hill
Sunday, September 13, 2009

Michael Moore is releasing a new movie, and I’m sooo excited about it...

More about me in a moment. First, the man who brought us Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9-11 is about to release a new film entitled Capitalism: A Love Story.

Just as “Bowling” embodied Moore’s extreme left-wing view that gun rights are bad, and “Fahrenheit” embodied (among other things) the extreme left-wing belief that Iraqis enjoyed Saddam Hussein and President Bush made their lives worse, so also does “Love Story” advance another idea that is popular among American liberals today: capitalism is evil.

“Trailers” and “promos” available at the film’s website depict Moore doing his usual shtick - - showing-up unexpectedly at select locations with a video crew, recording ambush interviews, cleverly editing video to depict targeted individuals as “stupid,” and so forth.

The website also explains Moore ’s conclusion: capitalism is “evil,” America needs something different, and that “something” is “democracy.” Perhaps Moore is unacquainted with the concept of “democratic capitalism,” or is unaware that capitalism and democracy already co-exist.

We’ve got a few weeks before the movie actually is released. In the meantime, let’s look at an editorial piece that Moore wrote back in June of this year, when General Motors met its inevitable fate of bankruptcy. He’s been grinding an axe about G.M. at least since the 1989 release of his film “Roger and Me,” but looking at his writing on the subject gives us an idea of how he thinks.

Midway through the op-ed piece, Moore states:

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with—dare I say it—joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

Whoa, hold on! Do you realize how “loaded” this little paragraph is? General Motors “ruined” his hometown ( Flint , Michigan ). How did General Motors do that? And how did a car manufacturing company become so powerful that it “caused” all those social ills?

Moore explains that G.M. “caused” all this ugly stuff because it closed a manufacturing plant and eliminated jobs. And isn’t this ironic. The man who’s been on a journey to “trash” capitalism ignores a basic concept of capitalism: as participants in the economy, we (individuals and groups alike) all have “self interests” at stake, and we are all free to make our own choices as we seek to fulfill those interests.

Maybe GM closed plants in Moore ’s hometown because Michigan ’s taxation rates were unduly high, or the UAW was demanding wages that were beyond what the market would bare. For Moore , the reasons apparently don’t matter. Michael didn’t approve of GM’s decisions, so GM was wrong.

And notice how Moore ’s thinking dismisses the leadership of Flint – and just about everyone else - from any responsibility. Why did Flint allow itself to become reliant on one corporation for an employment base? Who cares! It’s easier to “hate on GM” than it is to think intelligibly about economics.

In truth, Moore doesn’t seem to “think” much about these things, so much as he “feels,” “emotes,” and “rages.” It’s simplistic and childlike, but it’s common: "I don’t like your economic choices, so, therefore, both you, AND Capitalism, are evil.” This mindset may get a pass on Sesame Street (or in American Universities), but it’s untenable on Wall Street or “Main Street .”

And didn’t this kind of “feeling” help drive Barack Obama to the White House? “Elect me and we’ll make business owners do what we want – better wages, lower prices, go green,” whatever. Today, our President and Congress are steeped in the Moore tradition.

So imagine if we scrutinized Michael Moore with Michael Moore economics. When Moore produces a film, does he make economic choices based on everybody else’s self interests and not his own, or does he secure the best possible film crew workers for the best possible price? Is Moore responsible for alcoholism and divorce and mental illness when it occurs among the people that work for him?

The real absurdity here is that while Moore trashes Capitalism, it is Capitalism that has enabled him to make and sell books and movies, and to become a multi-millionaire.

So why am I excited about “Capitalism: A Love Story?” After a few months of Moore ’s movie, my second book will be released next spring, entitled The Virtues Of Capitalism: Making A Moral Case For Free Markets.

As if my subject matter isn’t already sufficiently interesting, Moore ’s movie will, I’m sure, drive more interest in my book and help generate more sales.

Thanks, Michael. We’re both freely making economic choices. Welcome to “democratic capitalism.”

Michael Moore, Frank Rich, Jeremiah Wright and John Hagee

By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, May 6, 2008

It is with no pleasure that I put in writing what I have long believed: Though many individual liberals have only goodwill toward black Americans, the liberal world since the late 1960s (i.e., after the major civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s) has done incalculable damage to black America and to race relations in this country. Whether out of guilt or because of its own racist views (i.e., the unspoken but regularly implied belief in the inferiority of African-Americans), the left-of-center's general attitude toward black Americans has been that they cannot be judged by the same standards as others.

From lowering standards of admission to universities to blaming the high number of black men in prison for violent crimes on white racism to decades of cultivating black victimhood and the subsequent Wright-like rage against America, liberals and their party, the Democrats, have immeasurably hurt African-Americans and America.

Should a non-black oppose race-based lowered standards or blame black criminals rather than white racism for their criminality, the liberal world dismisses that individual as a racist; and should a black express these views, he is dismissed as an "Uncle Tom," a "traitor to his race."

In just the past week, two prominent men of the left provided examples.

Appearing on "Larry King Live," Michael Moore, the adored hero of the 2004 Democratic Convention, explained the Rev. Wright's anger and racism this way:

"I'm a white guy. And I think I've got to tell you something. If you were black in this country, especially if you are of his age, of his era or even times before that or even kids today, when you look at the situation in our inner city schools, I mean, you have to ask yourself, Larry, what's it like to be black in America? And what kind of rage would you feel? And if you did feel that rage, what kind of things would you say that, at times, would be outrageous, crazy even, because you've had to live through this for so long?

"And I do not believe, as a white guy, that I am in any position to judge a black man who has had to live through that" (italics added).

To the liberal world, the black American is so oppressed that his rage against whites specifically and America generally is completely understandable, and therefore no white has the right to judge black outrage and its subsequent expressions. Blacks are not to be judged by the moral standards one judges others.

In more sophisticated language, The New York Times columnist Frank Rich also sought to dismiss the general outrage at Wright's racist and anti-American diatribes. In Rich's view, American society's outrage at Wright is but one more example of American racism. His proof? America is not as angry at a white pastor, the Rev. John Hagee, who has endorsed Sen. John McCain, as it is at Wright and his 20-year bond with Sen. Barack Obama.

In Rich's words, "Mr. Hagee's videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright's. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn't have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man. It is disingenuous to pretend that there isn't a double standard operating here. If we're to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates -- and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them -- we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick."

Thus, according to Rich, Hagee is just as worthy of censure as Wright; and McCain's relationship to Hagee is equivalent to Obama's relationship to Wright.

Yet nothing Hagee has said is comparable to what Wright has said. For example, in Wright's Detroit NAACP address, he said that African brains differ from white brains, that black English is no more different from standard English than John Kennedy's New England English was, and that America's repeated acts of terrorism are what brought 9-11's terrorism to America. And, at his own church he was recorded saying, "God damn America" and asserting that we cannot believe government denials that America started AIDS and infected African-Americans with the disease.

Moreover, the totality of Wright's views is virtually entirely race-based, including his continuing praise for Louis Farrakhan, his church's advocacy of "Black values" rather than Christian values, and his teaching that Christianity is rooted in black Africa and that Jesus himself was black.

Most Americans find such views racist. But to Rich, this reaction is "hypocrisy," since a white pastor, Hagee, whose endorsement McCain has accepted, has said equally immoral and bigoted things. Rich provided two examples -- Hagee's criticisms of the historical anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church in Europe and Hagee's statement that Hurricane Katrina may have been God's will as a result of the New Orleans gay parade that had been scheduled for the Monday after the storm.

As it happens, Hagee has completely retracted his objectionable comments on Katrina. Wright, on the other hand, has not only not retracted any of his anti-American and racist comments, he has reaffirmed them. Does this matter to Frank Rich? Of course not. What matters is indicting America for racist double standards.

As for Rich's attack on Hagee for the pastor's "anti-Catholicism," the Times columnist got his facts wrong. Hagee was not calling the Catholic Church "the Great Whore." That is an eschatological New Testament term in the Book of Revelation. Hagee teaches that the "Great Whore" will be an "apostate church" and a "false cult system" made up of all those who claim Christianity yet reject the gospel, whether Catholic or Protestant. He has stated explicitly and publicly -- and should continue to reassure Catholics -- that he does not believe that the "Great Whore" of Revelation is the Catholic Church. For Hagee, the sure sign that a Christian has rejected the gospel is an embrace of anti-Semitism. In the video referenced by Rich, Hagee chooses his examples of "apostate" behavior -- the Crusades, the Inquisition and a Hitler quote referencing the Catholic Church -- not because they are Catholic, but because they are anti-Semitic.

But while Rich and others could have honestly, if mistakenly, believed that Hagee was referring to the Catholic Church in that video, it borders on slander to compare John Hagee with Jeremiah Wright. Hagee has been preoccupied with the suffering of the Jews at the hands of Christians. One would think that the preoccupation of a major Christian leader with Jewish suffering at the hands of Catholics and Protestants -- Hagee has been just as critical of Martin Luther's anti-Semitism as with that of the Church -- would be welcomed by a liberal Jew such as Frank Rich. After all, liberal Jews and liberal non-Jews have been unsparing in their criticism of Christian, especially the European Catholic Church's, oppression of Jews. But for Rich, pointing out historical anti-Semitism is apparently less important than exaggerating contemporary American racism.

The sad irony of all the liberal attacks on white racism and subsequent justification of black rage against America is that it only increases black rage and sometimes even black racism. But it does keep 'em voting Democrat.

Liberals: A Puzzlement

By Burt Prelutsky
Monday, October 8, 2007

I’ll come right out and admit that I understand Islamic terrorists far better than I do American liberals. After all, once you realize that young Muslims are taught by their religious leaders that our nation is militarily powerful and technologically advanced because we cut a deal with Satan, you can see where they’d be upset with us. But what is the deal with liberals? How to explain their mushy heads? Was it something weird in their baby formula? Were they potty-trained when they were too young or, more likely, too old? Or is it simply something in their DNA? Are their chromosomes slightly out of whack, the way it is with homosexuals and the transgender crowd?

I’m serious. Why else would Americans so resent the United States having more influence in the world than, say, Luxembourg or Lichtenstein? Why do they seem to have no rooting interest in capitalism prevailing over all the other isms? Do they think that the reason they live so much better than the typical Russian or Turk is because they, themselves, are intellectually superior? Fat chance!

Why is it that liberals seem to believe that recycling cans is an important issue, but defeating terrorism isn’t? Why do they put so much stock in the blathering of Al Gore and Michael Moore? Why do they regard secondhand smoke as a bigger menace than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What is wrong with these people?

Why will the same folks who’d call a cop if someone set foot in their front yard be so unconcerned about 20 million illegal aliens setting up camp in their country? And why will the same saps who work themselves into a tizzy if some small town sets up a Christmas tree in the public square defend a church’s right to provide a sanctuary for foreign nationals who have no business being in our country?

Liberals would like to see us cut and run from Iraq. That’s because they enjoy seeing the American military lose. For them, Vietnam was positively rapturous. Their holy trinity consists of Jane Fonda, John Kerry and Walter Cronkite. They keep insisting that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. What they refuse to acknowledge is that we are at war with Islamic fundamentalism. Hussein may have had had nothing to do with the USS Cole or the first bombing of the Twin Towers or the attacks on our embassies and our Marine base. So what? Germany and Italy had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. It’s the mission that matters, not the venue. And our mission is to destroy Hamas and Al Qaeda and all the rest of the Islamic vermin. If they wish to fight us in Iraq, so be it. Better to fight them there than in Chicago or New York, Houston or Seattle.

I’m aware that liberals will tell you that the Islamics hate us because we’re over there, violating their sacred turf. But if that’s the case, why are they killing civilians in Holland and Bali, Indonesia and the Philippines, Russia and Spain?

If we’re not at war with Muslim terrorism, why do I have to remove my shoes before I’m allowed to board a plane? And if we are at war, why can’t airport security concentrate on Arabs of a certain age and quit behaving like a bunch of politically correct fatheads?

There’s no getting around the fact that next to the liberals in the Senate, academia and the editorial boardrooms at CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times, the biggest left-wing dunces are to be found in Hollywood. This village is filled with a bunch of idiots who, when they’re not busy getting drunk, shooting up and behaving like spoiled brats, can be found yammering about global warming and poverty in America. Oddly enough, those are two problems they could actually do something about. Assuming that carbon emissions actually have an effect on the earth’s temperature, might it not be beneficial if these clucks stopped chugging around in Hummers and limos, stopped heating and cooling houses slightly larger than the palace at Versailles, and grounded their private jets for the foreseeable future?

As for poverty, the plain fact of the matter is that the only poor people these movie folks ever encounter are maids, gardeners, nannies and waiters. Well, if these overly pampered nincompoops were really serious about eliminating poverty in America, all they’d have to do is pay higher wages and leave bigger tips!