Author: Greg Saunders

It looks like the GOP primary has a front-runner :

In a new AP/Ipsos Poll, 25% of Republican respondents say they are either undecided or would prefer someone other than the current field — more than the vote share of any actual candidates listed in the poll. Compare this to the Democratic side, where only 13% of respondents are undecided or prefer none of the above. In the horse-race numbers, Rudy Giuliani leads the GOP side with 21%, followed by Fred Thompson at 19%, John McCain at 15%, and Mitt Romney at 11%.

Here’s a photo from Mr. None of the Above’s press conference :

Finally, a Republican candidate that’s intentionally funny.

In CNN’s hit piece on Sicko (in which they congratulate themselves for “keeping them honest”), they claim Moore “fudged the facts” because Moore’s numbers don’t match match theirs. When Moore got a chance to confront Sanjay Gupta with his own “fudging”, the Michael Moore double standard made itself clear.

With all of the cross-talk and interruptions in last night’s mini-debate, the exchanges aren’t exactly transcript friendly, so forgive me for editing these for clarity. Here’s a link to the full transcript and you can find a video of the segment here.

MOORE: This year Health and Human Services says that we’re going to spend about $7,400 per person in this country, not 6,000, as Dr. Gupta said. He’s using 2004 statistics.

Now, here’s the sad thing about this, Larry, is that this is now the third time this report ran. It first ran on “ANDERSON COOPER” right after I was on your show on June 29.

The day before, on June 28th, we spoke to Dr. Gupta’s senior producer, Chris Gajilan, and we gave her in — writing — all the facts and all the evidence and the backup for those facts. So they’ve known now since June 28th that all their facts are wrong —
. . .
GUPTA: Well, you know, look, we try and look for some of the best sources that we can possibly find, because we think we owe that to our viewers.

You know, Michael has a lot of different numbers here and he’s pulling them from different places.
. . .
MOORE: I posted this e-mail that we had with your producer a day before this report ran so that you had all the facts. You ran the story knowing that the facts were wrong and I posted this five minutes ago —
. . .
GUPTA: Just because you say they’re wrong, I mean it doesn’t make it so, Michael. I mean we try and do what you do. We try and get the best available data

It’s okay if CNN’s numbers are questionable because they’re trying to get “the best available data”, but if Moore’s numbers don’t line up with theirs, he’s a liar. This is ridiculous. There are so many different healthcare studies being done around the world that there is no definitive set of data. If you choose to quote the numbers from Health and Human Services over the World Health Organization, it doesn’t mean you’re trying to deceive people. You just made a different judgment call. CNN’s failure to understand that is what’s most infuriating about their “fact check” segment they used to trash Sicko (and avoid getting angry phone calls from wingnuts).

This other bit from Gupta, attempting to trash France’s heathcare system, is laughably bad :

GUPTA: I also think the whole idea, Michael, of just calling it a free system I think is a little bit nebulous to people who don’t fully understand what you mean by that. Yes, you’ve got to raise taxes significantly. I mean France is drowning in taxes. They’re running a $15.6 billion debt.

$15.6 billion! That would be scary if we weren’t spending that much money every month in Iraq. In France, they’re willing to go into debt to keep their citizens from dying of preventable diseases and injuries. Here in America, we save our debt for wars and tax cuts.

Last week, Bush’s British lapdog Tony Blair stepped down and was replaced by Gordon Brown, a move that’s widely expected to signal British withdrawal from Iraq. Now, if you were a terrorist that resented the “coalition” occupation of Iraq, wouldn’t this be a good thing? The Bushies tell us that the surge is working, that we’ve got the bad guys on the run, and that – this is the most important part – our weakening resolve emboldens our enemies.

Looking at what’s happened in the U.K. since Brown took the reigns seems to tell a different story. The moment Blair is replaced by a PM less enthusiastic about the war, we suddenly see a new wave of terrorist plots. But wait, I thought a new leader that doesn’t want to “fight them over there” would make the terrorists happy?! Odd how that works out, huh? It’s almost as if they want us to stay in Iraq.

Atrios thinks he’s got it all figured out when it comes to torture…

We shouldn’t torture. There should be no procedures in place for torture. Everyone should understand this. But if the Joker does in fact have a nuclear bomb ready to go off underneath Gotham, and vigilante crime fighter Batman needs to employ a little force to learn the magic code needed to stop it before the timer counts down to zero, then I imagine that if Batman does in fact manage to stop the destruction of the city that no jury would convict or that a presidential pardon would likely take care of things if they did.

…but let’s not forget what happened the last time the Caped Crusader saved our fair city.

What those flat-foots in the Gotham P.D. don’t realize is that torture is perfectly fine when it’s done by the good guys.

Anti-climaxes are all the rage these days :

Ohhh…I get it. Hillary Clinton was just killed by Johnny Sack. Seems like an odd way to end the campaign, but whatever.

As far as the choice of campaign song, picking “You and I” by Celine Dion is weak. Putting aside the fact that Celine Dion totally sucks (which is hard to do, I admit), does it strike anyone as strange that the campaign would choose a song by a French Canadian singer? It may be a petty complaint, but no more so than John Edwards’ haircuts.

On top of that, the lyrics of “You and I” are ridiculous :

High above the mountains, far across the sea
I can hear your voice calling out to me
Brighter than the sun and darker than the night
I can see your love shining like a light
And on and on this earth spins like a carousel
If I could travel across the world
The secrets I would tell

What the hell does that have to do with anything? Compare those lyrics to her husband’s much better campaign song, “Don’t Stop” :

If you wake up and dont want to smile,
If it takes just a little while,
Open your eyes and look at the day,
Youll see things in a different way.

Dont stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Dont stop, it’ll soon be here,
Itll be, better than before,
Yesterdays gone, yesterdays gone.

Yeah, it’s cheesy baby boomer bait, but it does a good job summing up the theme of the campaign. That is, unless the Clinton ’08 campaign theme is that “this earth spins like a carousel”.