Michael Moore is the very thing that he condemns

Michael Moore is currently promoting his latest film: "Capitalism: A Love Story". Not surprisingly, the focus is bashing greed, capitalism, and Wall Street in general. Predictably, liberal pundits are praising it already. But this is not a review.

During a recent interview with Larry King, we hear this:

Moore: Who's got the money? And whoever has the money has the power. And right now, in America, tonight, Larry, the richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.

King: You're in that 1 percent, though?

Moore: I don't think I'm in that 1 percent, but I make documentary films. But I mean, obviously, I do well because my films have done well. But, you know, even if I were, I think it's my responsibility -- my moral duty that if I've done well, that I have to make sure that everybody else.

Moore is right. He's not just in the top 1%. He's in the top one-tenth of 1 percent (0.1%). He makes more than 90% of the people in that top 1% category. In short, he's the elite of the elite - while attempting to deny it.

Using 2005 data, the top 1% of earners earn more than $327,000 a year. The top 0.1% of earners earn more than $1.1 million per year. Since most estimates are that he has a net worth in excess of eight figures, it would be anywhere from 10 to 99 million dollars, with most putting the estimate right in between, at about 50 million. And since he's been successfully making films for the last 20 years, just do the math. It's very safe to say his average annual income has actually been far above that 1.1 million threshold.

This man, who dresses like a regular Joe, and acts like one during his films, is wealthier than 99.9% of Americans. Let that sink in for a moment.

Another fun fact: The huge investment bank Goldman Sachs, which was one of the targets of criticism for their greed, are the ones who bankrolled the film. Future of Capitalism writes:

[In the film] Mr. Moore shows up at Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan driving an armored Brinks trunk and announcing, "We're here to get the money back for the American people." Maybe Mr. Moore should look in his own pockets.

Finally, Moore says at the end of the film:

“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is Democracy.”

Wrong. To start with, these things aren't mutually exclusive.

But the logical fallacy goes farther than that. Since Capitalism is an economic system, and Democracy is a political system, he's comparing apples and oranges. No, he's not even doing that - he's comparing apples with apple peelers and oranges with orange juicing machines. These things are totally separate concepts, like politics and religion; two things that Moore himself has often criticised President Bush for mixing up.

Pure capitalism (which no country practices) allows natural market forces to set the value of goods and labor. Socialism, on the other hand, puts government controls on the process. All nations have a combination of both, and only differ in their amounts of emphasis on one or the other. I would be very curious indeed about what is this magical "third way" of running an economic system. If Moore can explain that, I'll even give the film a good review.

UPDATE: Some grammatical fixes.

UPDATE 29 SEP: Chris Moody at Big Government points out some very similar hypocrisy during Moore's interview on Keith Olberman's program.




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Iranian shopkeepers forced to put veils on their mannequins

A hijab shop in Iran, by Paul Keller

In another example of Iranian lunacy:

Iranian police have warned shopkeepers not to display female mannequins without a hijab, or showing bodily curves, Irna news agency reports.

But that's not all!:

Display of bow ties and neckties, and the sale of women's underwear by men are also banned, the police said.

Lest you think this was an isolated incident, in 2007, shopkeepers were forced to saw the breasts off of mannequins that were considered "too revealing".

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One species almost down, just a few thousand more to go

Beryx splendens, aka "Splendid Alfonsino"

...until only humans are left.

This is an article, about a fish I never heard of before. Nevertheless, it is a bell weather of things to come. This is the world we are leaving to our children:

How much do you know about the splendid alfonsin?

No, me neither.

At first I thought he must be the mannish hero of some cheap boys' novella - a Pimpernel in the face of organised crime, a Zorro jumping on the cat-stroking villainry of world domination, a musketeer with liberty carved into his very eyeballs.

Somewhat disappointingly, in one sense, it's a fish.

And I know this: if trawlers used to catch 60 tonnes of them in a single hour back in the 1970s and now they catch only one tonne in an hour, something has happened to the alfonsin that he must consider entirely the opposite of splendid.

Eat it while you still can, I suppose. Restaurants won't be able to carry it much longer.

It doesn't matter how many laws are passed. The vast space of the world's oceans, the hunger of an ever-growing human population, and the myriad of hundreds of international complications, means that no fish can be saved from extinction without the use of military power to defend it. I hate to be so blunt, but there it is.

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Khaled El-Masri beats up local mayor

El-Masri and his attorney

Khaled El-Masri is in the news again, this time for beating up a local mayor (in German).

If you don't know who he is, I wrote about him earlier here. In summary, he is a Lebanese born German citizen. In 2003, was apprehended by police in Macedonia and transferred to the CIA, in a case of mistaken identity (he shared the same name as a terrorist). Afterwards, he was held in a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan for 5 months. He was released in 2004.

He claimed he was tortured by Afghanis and by the CIA and became a symbol of the anti-Bush/anti-rendition movement. In 2005, with the help of the ACLU (of course), and under much fanfare from left-wing groups, he decided to sue the CIA. His case was denied. His lawyers pushed the case to the US Supreme Court and was declined without comment in 2007. As you can read at the link above, later in 2007 he faced charged for arson after burning down a department store, and in another incident, assaulted his driving instructor. Incredibly, he received only a 2-year suspended sentence.

The man who was championed as a victim of the CIA became a victimizer himself. And he still keeps going.

In the latest trouble, on September 11 this year, El-Masri was arrested after allegedly attacking Gerold Noerenberg, the lord mayor of Neu-Ulm. Shortly before the attack El-Masri tried to meet Noerenberg, but made such a scene that the police were called to send him away. He returned later, and rushed directly into the Mayor's office. He punched Noerenberg repeatedly in the face and threw a chair after him. He was arrested two hours after the attack in Senden. He admitted to the attack, but the motive is unknown.

Incidentally, since Little Green Footballs has been such a topic this week, it's worth mentioning that once upon a time Charles Johnson also reported on this man. Of course, it goes against his current politics, so he doesn't mention him any more.

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I'm not alone! [Updated]

Wow - my last post on the changes at the Little Green Footballs website generated a huge surge in traffic, as well as plenty of comments and mail. I was linked by plenty of other websites that I hadn't even heard of before. Apparently, I'm far from alone in my disappointment with LGF. There's The Other McCain, Blogmacracy, Saber Point, the Pirate's Cove, American Power, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, and the Infidel Blogger's Alliance. I'll monitor these sites a little while and possibly add a few to my blogroll. Fluidoz has the most comprehensive list of blogs disgruntled with LGF, although his layout is poor.

There's also Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs. It's on my blogroll now; I should have added a long time ago, as it has linked to my site several times.

I want to reiterate something, however. Once again, there's nothing wrong with Charles Johnson changing his political views, per se (although it's strange that he doesn't see it himself). And I even agree with many (but certainly not all) of his attacks on racists or right-wing extremists. What does disturb me is the the way he accuses everyone who disagrees with him of racism (this recent post is evidence of that) and his insistence that you must be with him or against him. Several people both in my comments page and my email, claim they were banned from his site and/or had their IPs blocked simply for expressing support for me. That's a very unhealthy level of paranoia for any website.

Meanwhile, LGF gets the endorsement of Andrew Sullivan, someone else who has jumped to the left. Big surprise.

UPDATE: There's also the 1389 blog, Right Wing News, and Founding Bloggers. Whew! Bonus: Hotair moved LGF from their "war blog" category to their "Left Channels" blogs!

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Goodbye Little Green Footballs, Hello Powerline

The Ubiquitous Green Football

This was a difficult post to write.

Over on my recommended sites list to the right, Little Green Footballs has been replaced by the Powerline Blog. To some readers, this won't matter in the slightest. But there is a story to tell here.

First, a little history: In its prime, the Little Green Footballs website was one of the most popular blogs in the world (although in the last year readership has plunged, see chart below). It came to national prominence in 2004 when it exposed the Bush National Guard memos as fakes and eventually took down Dan Rather of CBS. It's owner, Charles Johnson, was a big inspiration for me when I first started this blog. I linked to his site often, and he returned the favor. Several times I sent him correspondence and he actually praised some of my articles and he directly referred to them on his front page (here and here for example), greatly increasing my site traffic (I was using my old url then: www.shieldofachilles.blogspot.com). I didn't always agree with him, but I greatly admired the way he unwaveringly took on the left wing media, and was one of the few powerful media voices supporting the US war against Al-Qaeda.

But times have changed, starting around October 2007 in a dispute with Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal, among others. Since then, he has repudiated all the other blogs he was most closely associated with, accusing them all of "white supremacism". Charles never even writes about terrorism anymore; his current obsession is the evils of creationism, attacking anyone on the right (such as the tea party protesters), and defending Barack Obama. Additionally, the man who was once a great skeptic of global warming now believes in it. Yet, incredibly, he still maintains that it is everyone else who has changed, not him! Many other bloggers have written about this problem; see here, here, or here, for just a few recent examples. It's a heated topic on the sites wiki page. Some sites, like Jammie Wearing Fool, which was a spin-off of LGF, don't even link to it anymore, which is telling all by itself.

Here are Little Green Football's site stats since the "change" started, courtesy of Alexa. The effect on the web site's readership is pretty clear:


Now don't get me wrong: People have the right to change their minds (heck, I never really agreed with his skepticism of climate change anyway). But the guy can't just disagree with anybody; he's entered a phase of pure paranoia, and either you're with him or against him. Anyone who disagrees with him at his site is immediately banned. Even I didn't think he had gone that far, until I found out for myself (see down below).

Now, how does this dispute affect regular people who don't read blogs? Well, at first glance, it looks like it doesn't. But in the long run it really does, because LGF was a very large web community, one of the few places where conservative thinkers could network. A place to put out information that the mainstream media would ignore. The political left already have huge networking sites like The Huffington Post, The Daily Kos, or Democratic Underground. With LGF gone, the only large site conservatives have now is Red State, and that's only for Americans. I guess this is partly the folly of relying too much on the whims of one site administrator.

For me, this controversy came to bear in his recent dispute with the Powerline Blog. Several of the commenters there claimed that Charles Johnson had banned them from LGF for disagreeing with him, and in some cases, just for downvoting his posts or comments! I was really surprised at the number of people claiming this, and decided I wanted to try and find out for myself. I thought that it wouldn't be a problem; I'm a pretty reasonable guy, and I've never had trouble with Charles Johnson before. Boy was I wrong. The man who I considered almost a friend (I say "almost", because I had never met him in person) banned me for even asking these questions. The Charles I knew several years ago never acted like this; it's like some alien had taken over his body.

You can see the full comment thread here, although it would take a great deal of time to sift through it all. Most people would not be interested in reading it. For those who are curious enough, I made it easier by pasting the relevant portions below the jump:

Note: Of course, there were far more comments than these - many of then hurling insults at me. I pasted only the key ones here for brevity.

My comments actually started at #240, which Charles deleted too quickly for me to get a screen capture. But in it, I simply quoted several commenters at Powerline, who claimed they were banned from LGF simply for disagreeing with Charles, such as here, here and here. I then, without making an accusation, simply asked if there was any truth to what these men were alleging. Here is how the conversation went after that:

Surprisingly, Charles himself pops up right away! For perspective, keep in mind that this is a site with about 3,500 comments per day...! The post he quotes to here, is about someone who was deliberately insulting and vile. That is a straw man, and has nothing to do with what I was asking about.

He's deleting it because he can't stand criticism. Some of us welcome debate. Some of us fear it. In the past, he had no problem with linking to criticism of his site. I certainly have no problem with it at my site.

I simply asked one of my questions again. This was me being polite, and pointing out things on which we agree to help keep the conversation on a civil tone. He wasn't interested.

He sort of has a point here, but he still avoids the question. And I guess even someone asking makes him steamed. Already he sees an enemy where there is none.

I summarize my original question again. He doesn't like people asking questions...

So far, I haven't broken any of his rules - all I've done is ask questions. And already he is talking about banning me. The crazy thing is, I've had heated debates with people at The Daily Kos, Balloon Juice, and many other sites with plenty of hot-heads. I have never, ever had anyone threaten me with banning, nor have I seen anyone else threatened with it for simply asking questions.

This one was by someone else, but it is instructive. Does this guy really believe this? What, I wonder, was truly "disgusting" in any of my following comments?

Apparently (as I found out from others later), he's extremely sensitive about people downvoting anything (there are little buttons on his posts where members can vote them up or down). But he set up the system - why get so upset at people using it? I was simply downvoting his posts that were critical of me, just as other people were doing to me. That's how it works on all social networking sites. If you are so sensitive over a single vote against you, why put the system in place?

Note that if it's hard to read the above, you can click on it to make it larger.

Since I saw the way the conversation is going, I gave some history and tried to make it clear that I didn't visit today as some fly-by-night troll. I realize now that maybe this backfired - it reminded Charles of how much his site has changed in the last few years.

When I read this, I was really taken aback. Was this really the Charles I knew?? In his paranoia, he sees only the most malicious interpretation of my being there. I doubt he even read all the way through my last comment.

There were a few minor exchanges after this - I bent over backwards to be as polite as possible and clarify my intentions, and get the conversation back on track. But I needn't have tried - once someone is intent on finding an excuse to attack you, they will. And I already had my answer.

Now my last message in the thread was at 3:55 pm. After that, I absently left it up on my computer while I did some other work. Over the next 3 hours, I came back to the page two or three times to read some more responses, and upvote/downvote some new comments. But I didn't write anything more. Then I went away for awhile. When I came back later, I happened to see this new comment:


I was stunned. Note the time: more than three hours later. Even for the "new" Charles Johnson this is really, really petty and sad. Is this what the great Lizard blogger has been reduced to? Keep in mind that this is a guy with an average of 100,000 visitors a day, and 1,200 online at that time. So he is so insecure about one single dissenter that he was constantly monitoring me for three hours, watching my votes, and stalking my IP address to see if I was still on his page. Wow. How many times does he repeat this behavior every day? (And he calls me pathetic, which is really rich - I was only on for one afternoon) I really get the feeling that this is someone who needs to step away from his computer once in awhile. A long while...



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Wow, over a month! And still the topic is Health care of illegal immigrants!

"A Day without immigrants" protest, San Francisco, May 2006, by Matt Cohen

It's been over a month since my last post. I had never gone that long without one before. But it's almost providence, because the last post is as timely as ever.

The media is currently going into a fit over Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst during President Obama's speech (with everything else going on in the world now, is this really important?).

What's been lost in the chaff is the reason why he called Obama a liar. Obama claimed that illegal immigrants would not be covered under the new health plan. And his supporters claim they are right because the bill specifically says illegal immigrants are not eligible. But the Democrats took any enforcement language out of the bill!

So that's like saying no one under 21 will drink alcohol, because it's illegal; but we will refuse to ask for any proof of age!

So, first of all, it's a lie because there won't be any enforcement. Interestingly, Politico gave this accusation only a "half truth", because they claim the IRS would prevent illegals from getting the tax credits, since many of them use falsely obtained social security numbers. But that doesn't matter because you don't need an SSN! Has everyone forgotten about Taxpayer ITNs (individual taxpayer identification numbers)? These numbers allow illegal immigrants to legally file taxes, so they would be able to apply for tax credits toward health care payments like anyone else.

Second of all, it's a lie because anyone will be able to buy into the public option, just as anyone can buy their own insurance out of pocket right now. Andrew Sullivan says this is OK, since Obama claims the public option would pay for itself. Well, since he's a die-hard Obama supporter, he's very trusting of that claim. But even if Obama is right on this (and that's a stretch because anything can happen, and medical costs tend to skyrocket), does anyone really believe that if the public option system went bankrupt, that the public wouldn't bail it out? Does anyone think that for even a second?

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