Michael Moore Hates America

Well. this shouldn't last long. At the present time, one is only entitled to 18 months LIFETIME welfare. Unless their Nike wearing baby is under a year and a half, they are about done with Public Aid. FOR LIFE! People don't "live on the system" anymore. They can't even if they wanted to. Using it for a "steady income" is impossible. If someone is claiming they are doing this, they aren't telling the truth. Eighteen months and you are OUT. I know what people get on Public Aid, and I don't know how anyone could buy Polo or Nike.

 

I have to agree with Pressed Rat here.


The majority of gun-committed crimes are not committed by NRA midwestern hicks.


They are committed in big cities like New York,Boston,LA,Miami,Detroit,Chicago,Philly..and the murder capital of the world...DC.

In all of these cities...the largest groups of poor are minorities.AND gang members rule those streets.

Our gangs are completely out of control here in the USA.they always have been.

Every major city has their own branch of the Bloods and Crips...along with Hell's Angels and other well-known gangs...In my piddely town of Cleveland...we have like 6 or 7 big gangs who all blow each other away on a daily basis.they rob stores and kill the clerks...rob banks...mug and rape...shoot innocent bystanders for wearing the wrong colors.



But did Michael Moore once touch on the subject of urban gang warfare??


No he didnt.


Because Michael's real point is just point out how awful white people are.especially white men.


and not to mention....it's ridiculously unPC to dare point any fingers at non-whites for anything these days.


LA and Miami are running nose to nose to take the murder title away from DC right now.


Columbine was such a shocker because it happened in a wealthy white high school in an obscure Colorado town.


If it had been 2 black kids who killed 12 people in a big urban high school in Detroit....people would have made a smaller deal about it.



and unfortunately,this mindset is not unfounded.the majority of gang-members in the USA are black or hispanic...and in their large urban settings...crimes committed with guns is sadly an everyday part of life.


I live in the latin ghettn my tiny cul-de-sac,i see drug deals on a daily basis.Police choppers frequently flash their huge lights on my street and in my neighborhood.

Just the other day,a bunch of police were searching the field across the street from my house...for a reported dead body.

fortunately(sorta) the smell came from a poor dog who was hit on the freeway and slung into the field.a big dog that gave off such a stink that everyone was convinced it was the body of a missing teenager who has been gone for 2 months.

My husband responds to gang shootings and robbery shootings atleast 3 times a week in his base neighborhood.and he(being Mexican)claims 100% that none of the victims has ever been white.yeah there are white gangs here but their numbers are so small that they pretty much hide underground and concentrate soully on dealing ecstacy to rich college kids.ever see a Polish gang???? only in Cleveland would there be a Pollack gang.


we have gang fights and hookers on our street corners every night.


and this is just Cleveland.I can only imagine a huge city like NYC or LA.




Bowling for Columbine would have been more credible if he actually focused on something other then busting on the NRA and Charlton Heston and poking fun at the lobster-faced gap-toothed gun-toters of redneck country.


as for the claim that poor people have no choice but to stay poor and commit crimes.


that is such bullshit.


anyone can leave the trailer park or ghetto if they choose to.if they choose to set goals and go to school and work hard.

my husband grew up in a ghetto...his parents worked their asses off and expected him to the same...he did.

he could have joined a gang...he didnt.

he could have sold drugs..he didnt.

he could be sitting in jail right now...he isnt.


but people dont want to work or apply themselves.it's easier to throw your arms up and blame everyone else.


In my neighborhood. It's common for someone to driving a $60k Mercedes but they live in a hovel with their mom who collects welfare and works part time as a hotel maid while trying to feed 4 kids.

if you are gonna sell drugs and make enough to buy fancy cars...buy your momma a nice suburban home with good schools. end the chain of ghetto life and crime with you.


but they wont.because they dont want to leave their dire environment. they arent interested in helping their neighborhood or families.they only care about themselves and quickly aquiring status symbols.


My mom was living in a trailer in Montana.she could have stayed there and raised me in a tiny rusty mobile home.I could be a member of the illiterate masses right now...a member of some creepy militia cult.I could have been in Michael Moore's film with my assault rifle.

But my mom was 19,broke,and she decided that I did not deserve to live in such squallor...so she sacrificed and worked hard and moved us back to Cleveland.


she was on the verge of homelessness.didnt graduate high school.worked barely minimum wage jobs...sometimes not even min wage.we moved around from place to place.



keeping yourself in poverty or atleast in a terrible neighborhood is about choice.pure and simple.

you dont want to work

you dont want to be educated

it's easier to put bars on your doors and windows and buy a man-eating junkyard pitbull..the put forth the effort to rent or buy a home in a safer area.

it's easier to conform to a stereotype and conform to the status quo then it is to rise as a successful or goal-oriented individual.


it can be done because hundreds of thousands of blacks,hispanics,poor white trash,asians,and immigrants leave their urban poverty every year in pursuit of a better life.

 

That depends on the state Maggie.

My girlfriend is on welfare. She gets 36 months and in that time she must either be in school full time or working atleast part time.

I was on Healthy Start with my second pregnancy..that's free health insurance for children and pregnant women.

we were also on WIC.

There are probably thousands upon thousands of abusers though.


people who want welfare just so they have an extra check to spend on things like designer clothes and $300 weekly hairdos.


I cant tell you how many times in the WIC office I would see these women with like 3 kids(and she's like 20)..all the kids are wearing Tommy Hilfiger and Nike's and she's wearing Baby Phat(Kimora Lee-Simmon's hot fashion line) and her hair is a surreal and expensive style.

But they need assistance paying for food.


they'd stare at me like I crawled out from under the hillbilly rock with my Wal-mart jeans and cheap t-shirt...my kids in second hand clothing bought at the thrift store.my hair roots showing 3 inches on each side and it haphazardly put into a pony tail.


there are serious abusers out there and they are more common then we think.

 

gang members don't rule the streets in boston.

 

Otter, poverty isn't necessarily about choice.

I mean, look at the condition of these ghettos. There is just no money anywhere, not in the businesses, not in the schools, not in the roads, parks, etc...These people are born and raised in a culture that promotes this type of activity. You can't necessarily blame the gov't, but you can't blame all the individuals in those situations either. It is the way we live. And it is a terrible cycle.

And blaming it all opn gangs is just ignorance. Gangs are a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Just like a runny nose is a symptom of a cold.

 

when watching the film the question that continuously occured to me was "what happened to personal responsibility?" there are so many out there going through so much, but they don't raise a gun or violent hand to others. there's no justice in pointing your finger at other people for your problems. like they say in AA, turn that finger around.

as for welfare, there's no need to feel shame when you have had to use it. we all know that sometimes life deals you a shit hand, and you cope however you can. i have no shame in that my mother used welfare after my father abandoned us. that's what the "safety net" is for. within a couple months, she was back on her feet, and though things were tight, we managed. but do not try to tell me that there aren't those who abuse the system, i am well acquainted with several who do. i don't know where this "time limit" came from, i have yet to see it. there are 3 different women in my family here who have been receiving hefty benefits for well over 5 years and show no sign of stopping. maybe that's just new mexico. but people who abuse the system ruin it and drain the money out of it for the rest of the people who need it.

i'm a libertarian for the reason that i think people should have to be forced to take more responsibility for themselves, and the government should have no place in telling them how to live once they do. but within reason. i actually have little faith in people at large, i find assholes of every political stain since i've begun looking. government should have only the power to regulate behaviors of individuals that interefere directly with the health and well being of others, keep businesses from abusing the country, and maintain roads and shit like that. outside of that, i think as a whole we're not so lost to sanity that we cannot be expected to learn again to take care of ourselves.

 

simply a symptom??? a runny nose? baby..what world do you live in??


urban gang warfare is a friggin disease! they are the ebola virus.


I guess though..gang existance could be compared to the whole "chicken or egg theory".


it's easy to say that gangs are a symptom but you have to think about the extreme possibility...that the urban downfall(loss of jobs,money,ect)is because of the fear and crime that gang existance has caused.


for example....you have a street where there are alot of retail stores,restaurants,and grocery markets.business is good.people are making money,jobs are to be had.....then one day....the MOB(Men over Boys...a smaller but infranchised gang)decides to extend their "turf" to include that street.


suddenly...there are constant robberies,muggings,rapes,killings.all those businesses start shutting down. Pretty restaurant windows now covered with wooden planks..covered with gang grafitti.

once the stores are gone..the gangs have nothing else to do but start going after homes in the area.people move...usually to a suburb...a family with 6 kids in a 1 bedroom apartment in a suburb just to escape the gangs.

the detriment of this area causes more gang members to join...and when gangs get bigger...more area needs to be "turfed".

The only thing that claim gangs as being a symptom is apathy.

apathy breeds apathy.


if you have ever listened to a gang member talk...it's chilling. why did you join? because it sounds like fun. why do you kill people? because I can. Why do you sell drugs? because I cant buy a Lexus working at Burger King.

I have never heard a gang member give a sob story about how they were abused by their crackhead mother and the gang was their only option.

no. the truth is..they have a working single parent who cant buy them $100 shoes. their parent has too many rules(in their opinion)..they dont like school.


so they turn to street life because of the fastness of it. the cars,the chicks,the drugs,the notoriety....the cash.


not to mention our media's disturbing glorification of gang life. the movies, the rap music and videos.

gangs are fashionable..they have always been intriguing to the young impressionable person.


Biggie Smalls and Tupac. 2 examples of gang thugs who exploited their lifestyle...made gang-banging really cool.people were actually getting killed during the East Coast/West Coast war..including these 2 men themselves.


the sad thing..both men were smart enough and inventive enough to have escaped the gang life and poverty and make it all legit.

they could have left the ghetto behind and really made billions of dollars and did something worthwhile.


but they chose not too. they loved the thug life and the ghetto so much...that they brought it along with them on their rise up the ladder.


where are they now??


whether gangs are the chicken or the egg...time and time again..it has been proven that this kind of life is chosen.

people choose to live by the gun. they choose to commit crimes. they choose to sell drugs and rape women. they choose to kill rival gang members.

and when given the chance to escape it? they dont.

they choose to die by that gun.

 

Heh, he'd be better put to use as a COLOSTOMY bag.

The man is, after all, 100% full of SHIT.

Blue skies,
-Jeffrey

 

Look, you ought to go to Google.com and enter "Michael Moore Gun Lie" and check out any of the numerous websites you'll find.

They'll go into far greater detail than I will here about how Moore FABRICATED what you think you know about the NRA and Heston and the meetings they supposedly callously held amidst the mourning over Columbine.

Moore spliced together several speeches of Heston's, to the point where Heston is shown wearing two different shirts/ties but the implication is that the viewer is being shown one speech. He implies that the speeches were given in Colorado right after the shootings. The fact is that the "cold dead hands" speech was given like 9 months later in North Carolina or somewhere. It was hardly done in Colorado to be in-your-face to those who were affected by the atrocity committed there. Moore is a liar, and he put that stuff together to deceive. You were manipulated into disliking Heston by Moore.

Moore also does not mention that the NRA CANCELLED ALL NON-ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS for the meeting they held shortly after the Columbine atrocity -- in deference to their loss and in respect for the survivors and the town. The NRA held ONLY those parts of their annual meeting -- which had been scheduled for that venue YEARS in advance -- that were required by the laws of New York state, which issues the NRA's charter.

If they had not held the minimal aspects of the meeting that they did, they'd have been breaking New York state law. (They do have to account for things like how the organization's money is spent, and elect board members, etc.)

If I said the following:
"I absolutely do not like cutting up human beings and eating them,"
and you took that sentence and edited it so it said,
"I like cutting up human beings and eating them,"
you'd have the equivalent with what Moore did with various other parts of Heston's speech. He DELIBERATELY spliced sentences together that DID NOT ORIGINALLY FOLLOW EACH OTHER in order to give a very different impression. The fact that he did this surreptitiously and does not make clear that he did so reveals the fact that he is a liar.

Blue skies,
-Jeffrey

 

With this post and the one you made before it, you've won a huge amount of my respect. Rock on!

Blue skies,
-Jeffrey

 

Well, IMO Moore is a self-promoting glorified opportunist.

I saw him on Oprah and I thought "wow this guy is great!" Then I saw Bowling for Columbine and the entire documentary was an excuse to preach other things.

He never really had any answers for his own questions so he went on about poverty, pollution, corporate rule and racism, yet he could never answer why Canada doesn't lock their doors, and why we're so violent.
The only person that really made sense in the documentary was Marilyn Manson; other than that he did all the wrong things helping the two survivors from Columbine buy out all the bullets from the local K-Mart or Walmart, whatever. I mean shouldn't that money go for medical bills or therapy? And doesnt he know they'll probably have it stocked again within a week?

Then he confronts Dick Clark about his company rather than going to the corporate offices, and then he confronts Charlton Heston in a very awkward ridiculous scene.

He's taken a horrible tragedy and made it as a way to make himself look like a pioneer, blah blah. I'll see Farenheit 911 just to check out what he has to say though.

 

Given:

1. that the feds denied any independent forensic examination of the WTC following the collapse,

2. that the press has refused to assume its rightful duty by calling for a full public enquiry with judicial powers (nor did they make any effort to address the glaringly bogus claims of the widely reported coverstory)

3. that every official "enquiry" has been nothing more than a charade of handpicked career politicians with their own similar oil and MIC interests and with no mandate beyond determining the "institutional" failures (rather than the very likely and very treasonous culpability of key architects of the PNAC and their cohorts) that "led to such a security failure",

Moore is indeed undertaking his civic duty and pioneering the widespread scrutiny which the majority of the public have so far failed to make. Whether you like the man or not, at least he's making an effort to keep public debate and government accountability from being drowned completely by the polemic and soundbites which have come to replace substantive discourse in America today.

 

When do gangs just invade suburbs and take them over? And you ask me what kind of world I live in?

Gangs are cultivated in the environments that allow it. Environments where there are poor schools, poor families, single mothers that work 2 jobs and are never home, where the economy is bad, where the best paying job is at a strip-club. Now we have a media that promotes it as well. TV, and music glorifies the lifestyle and gives these kids a feeling of belonging and family.

They feel like no one cares about them (and really on a large scale we don't - we cut funding to schools and throw them in jail quicker than you can blink an eye) but a gang gives them family, people to watch their back, people like them.

Everyone is responsible for themselves, but a person is largly affected by their environment. A paticular gang member would not be in that gang if he was rasied in a rich area of the state or city. If he was sent to a private school, or even the public schools in the rich areas.

You think Cleveland is a ghetto, Otter? I grew up in Flint, MI...I had bars on the windows of my house. I would come home from school to all my belongings being gone, I never could keep a bike beyond a year or so. I knew gang members personally. Was friends with them at times. The ONLY think I acredit to being able to see this light and not follow in these footsteps is the fact that I went to a private school, after getting attacked at my public school. Now I could easily have the same viewpoint as you, but I like to see the real truth instead of hating people for something that they necessarily cannot help themselves.

I still stand by what I said earlier. Gangs ARE NOT the problem. The are a symptom or a side-effect of the problem. If you keep blaming gangs then the problem will never go away.

Let me try to give a good analogy. If someone built a machine that created monsters, and the thing was pumping out a monster every few minutes what would we do? Would we stand at the end of the machine and blow the head off each monster as they came out...or would you just find a way to turn off the machine? Which seems like a smarter choice.

Ya, you can blame gangs, but focusing all efforts on destroying the end-result doesnt help when we just keep pumping out more for us to destroy.

 

Michael Moore does not make documentaries, it's satire, plain and simple. He has changed facts, footage, and evidence to create a funny film. It would be an intellectual tragedy if anyone took his work seriously.

 

Jozak, i took a look at that bowlingfortruth link, and it isn't much different than the propaganda of Moore's films.

Like, the Walmart thing, it says

"Canadian Walmart Bullets: Either Moore breaks the law or cuts the scene."

Well it isn't Moore's fault if they sold him bullets without ID..It would be Walmart breaking the law, not Moore. Am I breaking the law when the gas station attendant doesnt chek my ID when I buy cigs?

I am not saying it as an example of the mis-truths you are claming in Moore's films, it is an example of how they can take info and make it look worse than it is by how they present it...which is no different than Moore, or any propagandist does.

So it really is pointless to bitch about moores propaganda, and just throw some propaganda our way as evidence.

 

Okay, Wal Mart or Moore breaking the law is NOT propoganda.

Secondly, did you even see the rest of the site? I mean, he bullshitted the entire video clip with Charlton Heston, let alone everything else in the damn film.

 

That site is yet another example of the right wing's lame attempts to interject polemic as any sort of credible rebuttal to the research presented by Moore. Nothing new there and certainly nothing which actually addresses the points moore raises (nor does it appreciate the difference between a claimed "fact" and scenes incorporated into the film as "illustration" of the point being made (i.e. the oft heard rants about "that particular bank or branch not handing out guns at that particular time even though it had INDEED had such promotions previously).

In the end, you simply regurgitate the baseless character assassination which is the stock and trade of the right wing when it has no answer for its own hypocrisies and abuses of power.

An intellectually honest examination of the attacks on Moore and BFC

 

It wasn't an ass-kicking, otter, it was attempted rape. But thats beside the point.

And I am not trying to say anywhere is more ghetto, I am trying to say I grew up in those conditions, and can understand the struggle.

And none of that makes anything I was trying to say any less true.

 

The problem with you is lickerish you don't see any problem with far left propoganda, whereas I see how both the left and right are ignorant.

Moore LIED the ENTIRE movie. I saw the movie as well....IT IS SATIRE....I mean, he even EDITED the Charlton Heston clip. That alone discredits the movie as a documentary.