If only he would use his talent for goodness instead of evil!

The bumbling fictional spy Maxwell Smart often used this phrase to describe some of the super-villains he faced on the TV spy show “Get Smart” in the 1960s. The same statement may be applied to Michael Moore, the filmmaking darling of the Left who has made another polemical documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” This time, Moore calls for the replacement of America’s capitalist system with a socialist system, including, of course, pro-communist proposals to share all wealth or profits equally.

A talented filmmaker (see our full review here where we list most of the major problems with Moore’s new subversive, Marxist diatribe promoting his radical utopian nightmare), Moore begins his latest movie by comparing the United States to the Ancient Roman Empire, where, according to his sometimes pompous and condescending narration, society became divided between the super rich and the super poor (clearly an exaggeration). He then discusses the post-war economic boom in the United States in the 1950s and early 60s. (more…)

Somewhat fresh off the trail from despicable attempts to distort the events and facts surrounding Columbine, 9/11 and the American health care system, filmmaker Michael Moore is back to perpetuate new mis-truths and to face off with a new “villain” – capitalism. In case of shear irony, in his new film entitled, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Moore sets out to unravel the very system that gives him notoriety, fame and, no doubt, opulence.

Fortunately for Moore, we live in a free society. Despite the fact that his films are comprised of antics and obnoxious absurdities that only small-minded Americans would believe in their totality, he has every right to continue his idiocy. It is the coverage of Moore and his half-witted films that cause one to question the media’s promotional motives.

Mainstream outlets can’t seem to get enough of Moore, as they offer him positive coverage galore and provide him with valuable air time to push his insidious projects. Meanwhile, conservative film projects receive little to no praise – or even attention, for that matter. (more…)

I’ve got to admit that I set out to create this video expecting the finished product to be nothing more than tomfoolery as per usual. When I sat down to review the final version however, I realized just how sad/scary this is. These people are our future. They’ll be building our airplanes, teaching in our schools and possibly… running our country. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t trust 90% of these kids with a pair of scissors.  All of this begs the question: how did they get into Berkeley?  More importantly, what the heck are they teaching over there?

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Michael Moore gets it. He understands that politics follows the culture, not the other way around. He knows this so well that his to artistic call-to-arms is as matter of fact as it is sincere. (more…)

I just found out that the two women featured on the undercover ACORN video posted on our sister site Big Government were fired by the community organizing group.  This is really good news.  First, it proves that the ridiculously funny and unbelievable video is real.  At first glance, it’s so over-the-top that one assumes it must be fake.  Now, we have the proof that these women really were ACORN employees and not the most talented improv actors to ever live.  Secondly, it means that these two women are now unemployed.

And I want to hire them immediately.

These women can navigate the tax code so well that they managed to gin up dependent child tax credits for underage El Salvadorian prostitutes.  They provided detailed instructions on how to obtain a low interest, government subsidized mortgage for a brothel.  They gave clever insight into laundering a pimp’s take of prostitute earnings into a campaign account for a would be Democratic politician. (more…)

For better or worse, I have spent the last six years or so as a “go-to” authority on Michael Moore. In 2002, he said some things about my country that I was hurt by and some things about life that I held to be untrue. I set out to make my first film, a little documentary called “Michael Moore Hates America” and began a journey that would be at times inspiring and disheartening. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people have seen that movie, but I’m now ready to close that chapter of my life with a few words about Mr. Moore and his opus on the death of American capitalism.

In the 1980s, Michael Moore was broke. He saw things he believed to be wrong in the world and set out to tell a story about them. His first movie “Roger and Me” was a success. He followed it with a bomb called “Canadian Bacon” and then rebounded by winning Oscars and smashing box office records. He built a better life for his family and put his daughter through private schools by creating and marketing a product a lot of people bought. He became a multimillionaire because of the power of the unrestrained liberties we know in America as Capitalism and Freedom of Speech. (more…)

The Democrats, after getting their butts kicked all through July, are trying to change the momentum by raising the bloody flag of class warfare. Last Friday the House of Representatives voted 237-185 along party lines to enable financial regulators to limit Wall Street pay and bonus packages they deem inappropriate. The new regulation would affect firms worth over $1 billion, whether or not they got government bailout funds. The Washington Post and AP both asserted the House was responding to looming “populist anger,” although polls suggest recent public concern has been over spending and health care. 

Class warfare rests on the assumption, usually well disguised and used very selectively, that capitalist profits are a rip-off, a heist, “unearned.” In his recent health-care pitch, President Obama declared insurance companies are “making record profits,” a questionable claim but presumably identifying both the evil enemy and the room for government to save money, if you buy that the government can deliver something as good for the same cost.   (more…)

As I sit here in a Sydney hotel listening to the news of our savior’s next plan to change America as we know it, (you remember America, the engine of capitalism, a force for good all around the globe, and the last refuge of freedom and prosperity for millions escaping tyranny and oppression), I simply can’t resist the urge to reluctantly look forward at the enormous chasm of ruin this lemming-leader is leading us toward.

We used to be a strong, quiet nation, a big sleeping lion. It wasn’t wise to poke us with a stick and arouse our wrath. Now we seem to be becoming more and more like a fat neutered bull with dull horns with no will to do anything other than chew cud and remember the good old days when we were the hero of that joke about the old bull and the young bull up on the hill checking out the hot cows in the pasture. Hmm… Do they make Viagra for bulls nowadays? I do believe our collective heroic independence and valor needs a shot in the libido. (more…)

Well after its phenomenal success of eight Oscars, four Golden Globes, seven BAFTA’s, and $350 million at the boxoffice, “Slumdog Millionaire” has managed to stay alive. As much an amazing longshot victor as its hero, an urchin from the Mumbai slums cum tea server at a phone call center who wins a fortune in an Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” “Slumdog” has kept making news in ways deeply rooted in its own depiction of the world.

Recently the film’s British director Danny Boyle, serving as jury president of the 12th Shanghai Film Festival, confided during a panel discussion that on “Slumdog” he had shed the patronizing, “imperialist” mentality, relying heavily on a local Indian crew. Boyle also observed that while it was “regrettable” that Beijing imposed censorship restrictions on its filmmakers, he’d nonetheless love to work in China, as it would be a “challenge learning Mandarin.” Boyle neglected to mention that on “Slumdog” he’d skipped the challenge of learning Hindi, necessitating an Indian co-director, and also skipped the patronizing practice of paying Western wages, and the low pay for local child actors would fuel most of the subsequent controversies. (more…)

When preaching to the choir, one directs one’s lessons to those who already agree.  Conversely, those who otherwise might listen and gain something useful get nothing.  More on that as this inter-connected series of observations comes to an end.

American Icon: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.”

Vast, determined, highly successful forces and superior technologies dominated the theaters of WWII prior to America’s entry into the conflict after Pearl Harbor in 1941.  The Manhattan Project began in August of 1942, a couple of months before General George Patton invaded North Africa.  Character, strategy, and tactics played as large a role in dealing with Panzer and Tiger tanks as did Patton’s Shermans, of course, because firepower alone was insufficient in itself.  But the defeat of one totalitarian threat by 1945 was not apt to make much difference in taking down another in a place where school children were being trained to fight to the death for the Empire— with sharpened sticks.  The Manhattan Project, through funding, research, experimentation, design, development and production, met the challenge and made the difference. (more…)

So, John Nolte didn’t much care for the new “Harry Potter” movie. If memory serves, he didn’t care for movies 1-5, either. He admits, however, to never reading the books. This is a fatal error in appreciating the “Harry Potter” films, in my opinion.

John is like Charlie Brown and the football — forever doomed to dislike these movies, but he keeps coming back for more. Because the “Harry Potter” films are made for the books’ readers, period. In fact, you might say it’s a unique genre unto itself.

Let me attempt to head off the expected response to this: a movie should stand on its own, without requiring familiarity with the source material. Ordinarily, I agree with this. And I agree that the “Harry Potter” movies would probably be better off if they tried harder to satisfy this rule.

But it seems as though the filmmakers made a conscious or semi-conscious decision at some point early on to make these movies for the readership, not for the general public. They’re really cult films. And with such lavish budgets, if they were based on any other source material, they’d be a financial debacle. (more…)

THE BIG problem with renewable energy is that it just doesn’t renew itself. The sun does not shine enough and the wind doesn’t blow enough to power the towns, cities, factories, hospitals and schools that make our lives so livable.

No environmentalist would ever allow their child to be treated in a hospital fully powered by “renewables”. They would not take the risk that the wind might stop whilst their baby was on the operating table. They would insist that the hospital and the life support systems had a fossil fuel powered back-up.

And so it is with “sustainable development”. It just isn’t sustainable. At least it does not sustain a lifestyle that those who promote it would consider acceptable for themselves. But of course that is the key. Renewable energy and sustainable development are for “other people”.

Even though environmentalists come from societies and very often families that became rich because of their use of non-renewable energy and unsustainable development they will not allow these opportunities to be extended to the poor in the developing world. (more…)

Dennis Miller started out on the political left and, as he matured (helped along considerably by the shock of 9/11), he migrated to the political right.

In this wayward sojourn, he is in fine intellectual company: To name but a few, David Horowitz (former campus radical), Irving Kristol (one time Trotskyite), and Ronald Reagan (early FDR-New Dealer).  And as is usually the case with someone who has viewed the world through both left and right prisms, Miller possesses exceptional insight into the relative strengths and weaknesses of both ideologies.  (more…)

Every day it seems as though more and more Americans have been programmed to automatically resent the success of others. Much of this has to do with how effective Democrats and their allies in the media, academia and Hollywood have been at demonizing the wealthy, especially those in corporate America. Whether it’s Wal-Mart, pharmaceutical companies, oil, timber or high finance, these industries who have done so much to improve our way of life have, at various times, been singled out for the worst kind of character assassination.

And it’s worked, but when a corrupted pop culture is your only reference point, how could it not?

This is what makes the Discovery Channel’s new show “Pitchmen,” so special and worth a look. Not only is it entertaining and well produced, but it’s also the rare celebration of the American entrepreneurial spirit combined with the added bonus of doing one of my favorite things: “Pitchmen” takes you into a universe you know nothing about - direct response marketing – and shows you how the gears turn.

‘Hi! Billy Mays here…” (more…)

Remember Gorbachev, that bold round-headed Russian tractor loving peasant-Secretary whom the West loved so much?  The West loved him perhaps because he was the first one in the short but depressing succession of the Soviet leaders who did not really aspire to wipe out Poland from the face of the earth. 

I remember him too, in a different way, though. Half of the country hated his guts back in the Soviet nightmare. Gorbachev was liked abroad but gradually became hated within his own country for the same reasons he was loved outside. He seemed not to be working in the best interests of his country, or let’s say, the interests that he was pursuing were far more interesting for the West than the people of the Soviet empire. As he was actively pursuing warm relations with the West, his own country was rapidly collapsing from within. Not that it was a country worth saving or that it was his fault or that he really didn’t care about his country. It just seemed that way.  (more…)

Gently walking through the hallway, the angular man traded his curiosity about his peculiar situation, (that of being back in his old home), for purpose. The purpose was containment of a problem. The problem was that of a young president gone astray.

The charge of his visit was given to him by Washington, who was not feeling very confident about a recent visit of his own. (See: “The Ghost of George Washington.”)

Mr. Lincoln was never one to forgo the instruction of the Founding Father, as Washington had visited him in spirit, and was always close to his heart in troubled times. So, like a soldier – on he walked.  (more…)

Whenever I stumble upon any media about JFK I’m always struck by how conservative he really was. By today’s standards, this speech would put President Kennedy squarely on the side of the Republican/Libertarian movement politically and on the receiving end of liberal media attacks worldwide. In an alternate reality I can imagine a young JFK giving this speech at CPAC as he preps for a White House run. Listen to this chilling warning about what we all know has already come to pass in Europe and is quickly creeping its way into mainstream American life unless we citizens act now to stop this train and derail it back into the ash heap of history.

President Bush’s 8 years in office was like someone taking a stick to a hornets nest that nobody knew still existed. He whacked it good and then paid the price with poisonous stings all over everything he tried to do. But the rest of us out there saw how the press and mainstream media reacted to him and that is how we came to clearly see what we’re really up against in the battle for America’s future. (more…)

Perhaps it went something like this…

Og, Bog, and Grog were out hunting mammoth one day somewhere in the mountains of Prehistoric Europe.  Grog’s job was to select the most succulent, Grade A Prime Mammuthus primigenius available in the Mesolithic grocer’s aisle and herd it towards his spear-bearing buddies who were hidden in the brush.  Grog made his choice and, using his trusty, flaming torch, chased the big woolly one brush-ward.  Unfortunately, in the midst of all the excitement, Grog forgot the cardinal rule of torch-bearing hunters everywhere: always stay at least ten stone lengths away from the back end of a mammoth after it’s eaten a fir tree for lunch.

Over Grog’s ashes, Og ponders the lesson of his friend’s untimely incineration and thinks: “I’m gonna recommend the Chief hold a hunter’s refresher course and change it to twenty stone lengths.”  Meanwhile, Bog, though he has access to the same information, processes it differently.  He ends up dismissing the whole episode as a fluke and decides that, even if the conditions were similar, the same result could never happen to him.  As Og is busy absorbing the cause and effect of Grog’s sudden demise, Bog thinks: “Let’s see, I had half a bison for breakfast, eighteen crow eggs, hand full of pine cones, pig fat smoothie with a scoop of roe deer hoof powder…which means, if I jog back to the cave reallyreally fast I can eat that entire pit of flame-broiled grubs.” (more…)

Four hundred years ago, Miguel Cervantes described an archetypal delirious fruitcake who wanted to change the world by turning the clock back to the idealized Utopian times that never really existed. Imagine what Cervantes would write today about the futility of his satirical effort, if he were to learn that four centuries later, a whole movement would arise that emulated his loony character and elected one of their kind as the leader of the free world.

Some conservative commentators are demonstratively wishing President Obama well. My heart admires their good intentions, but as I watched Obama’s inauguration on TV, my mind couldn’t help but ponder the possible consequences thereof. As someone coming from another country (ex-USSR) I don’t participate in racial debates nor do I want to. Being post-racial is fine by me. So let’s accept Obama’s post-racial premise, leave the issue of melanin content aside, and judge the man solely by the content of his agenda. And the more I look at Obama’s agenda the more I realize that wishing him well is like wishing luck to Don Quixote in wrecking the windmill that feeds me and my family. (more…)