Like You Didn't See This Coming?

Michael Moore has come out and endorsed Obama in the elections. Wow. Consider me floored.

I couldn't see that one coming like a hurricane (or a 300 pound Jabba the Hutt look-a-like).

Moore informed everyone, like we actually care what he thinks about politics, in a 1,100 word manifesto that touched on why he dislikes Hillary Clinton and what makes Obama his guy.

Obama's experience isn't what does it for Moore. Actually, Moore points out that Obama doesn't have any. Of course, when Moore spews, he has to throw in his jabs at the Bush Administration, even as Bush isn't running again. The anti-Bush zealots are so conditioned to hate Bush that they're going to go running around like headless chickens come January 2009.

Lamenting the lack of a valid primary in his home state of Michigan, Moore writes that Obama's experience and voting record isn't as important as his "basic decency" and ability to inspire.

"What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change," Moore writes. "My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate."

The 54-year-old Oscar-winning filmmaker was hardly as kind to Clinton.

"Over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting," he writes, saying that she has tried to "smear" Obama — "Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity."

Most of Moore's ire is directed at the Bush administration "and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world."

"I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for eight long years," he writes. "That's why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters — that big 'D' on the ballot."

Moore says he is disappointed with the Democratic Party, too, for failing to end the war despite public outcry and for "do(ing) the bidding of the corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgment ..."

The fact is that Michigan lost its delegates because the state chose to move its primary forward and the DNC chose to strip it of its delegates.

They have no one to blame but themselves. Hillary is doing what she thinks is best to win her the nomination and that means going after Obama for his lack of a record, lack of accomplishments, and that hope and change are nothing but empty slogans. The media seems to miss this salient fact on a daily basis. Obama hasn't accomplished anything other than getting elected as a first term US senator from Illinois by a quirk of local politics and a sex scandal.

Obama's soaring rhetoric doesn't stand any intellectual rigor, and while it is appealing to talk of hope and change, most of the country wouldn't like the change Obama's pushing, which is a leftist/socialist mix of failed policies that would make the economy worse, punish business and investment, and engages in class warfare.

In other words, Obama is the perfect candidate for Moore.

What McCain-Feingold Has Wrought

It has meant that judges now get to determine what is political speech and what isn't. Here, they've decided that a film about Hillary Clinton is campaign advertising subject to McCain Feingold. The film happens to be anti-Hillary.

The early reviews are in, and three federal judges appeared in agreement Wednesday that a movie lambasting Hillary Clinton seemed an awful lot like a 90-minute campaign advertisement.

Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, is challenging the nation's campaign finance laws, which require disclaimers on political advertisements and restrict when they can be broadcast. The group argues "Hillary: The Movie" and related television advertisements are not political advertising even though the New York senator is in the presidential race.

Attorney James Bopp argued that they should be considered "issue- oriented" speech because viewers aren't urged to vote for or against the Democrat.

"What's the issue?" asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph, a federal appeals judge sitting on a mixed panel to review the case.

"That Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist," Bopp replied. "That is an issue."

"Which has nothing to do with her campaign?" U.S District Judge Royce C. Lamberth interjected.

"Not specifically, no," Bopp replied.

"Once you say, 'Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist,' aren't you saying vote against her?"

Bopp disagreed because the movie did not use the word "vote."

"Oh, that's ridic...," Lamberth said, trailing off and ending the line of questioning.

Under campaign finance laws, Citizens United would be required to disclose its funding for the ads. It would also have to disclose donors and pay the costs of airing it on cable television from a political fund.

The movie is scheduled for two screenings in theaters, once each in California and Washington. It is also being sold on DVD. Neither of those methods are regulated under campaign laws. The advertisements, however, are scheduled to run during the peak presidential primary season and would be regulated.

Of course, you remember that Michael Moore purposefully released Farenheit 9/11 right before the 2004 elections, and yet that was okay. I'd say that there's a double standard if this film gets restricted, but that's the court system for you - it's all about your venue. That too is a flaw in McCain Feingold, which places far too much power in the courts and tramples all over the First Amendment.

You do remember the First Amendment, don't you? It is straight forward with respect to what Congress can or cannot do:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

What part of Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech did McCain and all the other lemmings who approved this bill not understand?

McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform, which has done nothing to actually reduce the amount of money in politics, has created an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. The First Amendment was specifically written by the Founding Fathers with political speech in mind, and yet Congress approved it, President Bush signed it into law, and the Courts approved it. Just because they approved the law doesn't make it right - just look at how the Courts had no problem approving Dred Scott and separate but equal laws until Brown v. Board of Education and its progeny.

The fact that the courts get to decide whether something is political speech or not is abhorrent to the US Constitution and should be abhorrent to anyone who seeks to uphold the Constitution and the First Amendment.

We now have to live with the repercussions of this abomination, and I hope that the courts realize that they're supposed to uphold the Constitution of the United States and strike down this repellant law.

Stunted

Just who does Michael Moore think he's kidding? Does he actually believe that health care in Cuba is superior to anything found in the United States, let alone New York City? Yet, that's exactly what he's trying to say in his latest piece of agitprop.

He is taking a number of workers from Ground Zero to Cuba for treatment:

The trip was to be filmed as part of the controversial director's latest documentary, "Sicko," an attack on American drug companies and HMOs that Moore hopes to debut at the Cannes Film Festival next month.

Two years in the making, the flick also takes aim at the medical care being provided to people who worked on the toxic World Trade Center debris pile, according to several 9/11 workers approached by Moore's producers.

But the sick sojourn, which some say uses ill 9/11 workers as pawns, has angered many in the responder community.

"He's using people that are in a bad situation and that's wrong, that's morally wrong," railed Jeff Endean, a former SWAT commander from Morris County, N.J., who spent a month at Ground Zero and suffers from respiratory problems.

A spokeswoman for the Weinstein Co., the film's distributor, would not say when the director's latest expose would hit cinemas or provide details about the film or the trip.

Responders were told Cuban doctors had developed new techniques for treating lung cancer and other respiratory illness, and that health care in the communist country was free, according to those offered the two-week February trip.

Cuba has made recent advancements in biotechnology and exports its cancer treatments to 40 countries around the world, raking in an estimated $100 million a year, according to The Associated Press.

Those supposed advances must be put in the context of this: the actual conditions in Cuba's medical community. The claims of a modern Cuban medical care industry are a myth. Hospitals that are unsanitary. Castro had to have doctors from Spain come in to try and deal with his ailment - complete with his own medical equipment. Hospitals overrun with vermin and little in the way of medicine or modern equipment.

Medical tourism is one of the few ways that the communists in charge can sustain their own lifestyle. There's a two-tier system that is nothing more than medical aparteid.

Moore is doing nothing more than supporting the communists with his agitprop. Cubans don't get anywhere near the kind of care that the tourists receive, which is still well below that which can be found in any American city, let alone New York City with its major medical research facilities, level one trauma centers, and where Ground Zero workers have access to health care the likes of which no one would have to travel to Cuba to receive.

Yet, Moore would like people to believe that medical care in Cuba is superior to that found here in the States? Get real.

UPDATE:
The Flake and flack brigade (Reps. Rangel and Flake) think that Cuba has moved to a post-Castro era. That's most curious since for all intents and purposes Cuba hasn't budged one step from its Castroite communist roots. It's still a totalitarian regime where only the elites have the power to detain and imprison political enemies.

Today, Cuba may be on the cusp of change, and we need to take a fresh look. Raúl Castro, at age 75, is a committed socialist. He has convicted some pro-democracy activists, released others from jail and continued harassment of dissidents. He has also allowed a debate over past repression to open up in Cuba's cultural sector.

He acknowledges that his role is transitional, a bridge to Cuba's next generation, and his greatest interest is to set the stage for socialism's long-term survival.

It is a safe bet that he will seek to accomplish that goal through economic reform. His reformist record dates to the 1980s, and he has Cuban economists busy developing policy options. Dissident Vladimiro Roca calls him Cuba's "number one reformer."

It's a safe bet that Raul will do what is best for Raul, not what is best for the country. Rangel and Flake are clueless as to what they think Raul would do going forward, but with history as a guide, openness and freedom are the last things on his agenda.

There's absolutely no reason to believe that economic openness will be considered. As Fidel's right hand man, he had decades to preach economic liberalization but all that happened was more of the same communist economic failures.