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.

Wow. As a guy who grew up playing with Transformers toys but wasn’t enough of a fanboy to get offended by some big budget revisionism, you’d think I’d be the perfect audience for The Transformers, but it sucked. At times like this, I wish this was a podcast* so you could hear the revulsion in my voice. When I say “sucked”, I’m doing so in a multi-syllabic manner, like “su-u-u-u-u-ucked”, groaning the last syllable to further emphasize how much I hated this movie.

Michael Bay movies are shit. The man has never known a cinematic cliche that he hasn’t beaten to death. There hasn’t been a single moment in any of his films that hasn’t felt like an slick, contrived exercise in audience manipulation. His apologists may play the “his movies are great for what they are” card, but what’s the point in defending something that tries and succeeds at being unwatchable garbage?

That said, I went into this movie knowing it was gonna suck and it was still a disappointment. All I wanted out of this movie was to see cars turn into robots and destroy stuff, but Michael Bay’s obnoxiously flashy direction pretty much ruined that too. Why would a major studio spend tens of millions of dollars on cool effects of cars turning into giant robots and then hide all of their hard work with fast cutting and extreme closeups? You know it’s gonna look cool, so why not stop moving the damn camera so much and just focus on the action? In a movie like this, the audience shouldn’t have to mentally replay what they just saw just to try to figure out what just happened.

And while I’m talking about the action, what’s up with having the robots jumping through the air in slow-motion like The Killer? Or ripping off the “boy tries to hide giant robots from his parents” scene from The Iron Giant? Or having one of the robots piss on a guy? It would be nice if Hollywood spent some of their enormous budget to hire somebody who has an original thought or two.

* Probably for the best. My voice sounds like if Ray Romano was a Muppet.

I’m not so sure the Bush Administration’s “run out the clock” strategy with the subpoenas is going to work out so well. Compare with what happened during Watergate :

In April 1974, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the tapes of 42 White House conversations. At the end of that month, Nixon released edited transcripts of the White House tapes. The transcripts revealed conversations concerning the punishing of political opponents and the halting of the Watergate investigation. The Judiciary Committee, however, rejected Nixon’s edited transcripts, saying that he did not comply with their subpoena.

Sirica, acting on a request from Jaworski, issued a subpoena for the tapes of 64 presidential conversations to use as evidence in the criminal cases against the indicted officials. Nixon refused, and Jaworski appealed to the Supreme Court to force Nixon to turn over the tapes. On July 24, the Supreme Court voted 8-0 in United States v. Nixon that Nixon must turn over the tapes.

In late July 1974, the White House released the subpoenaed tapes. One of those tapes was the so-called “smoking gun” tape, from June 23, 1972, six days after the Watergate break-in. In that tape, Nixon agrees that administration officials should approach the Director of the CIA and ask him to request that the Director of the FBI halt the Bureau’s investigation into the Watergate break-in on the grounds that the Watergate break-in was a National Security matter. In so agreeing, Nixon had entered into a Criminal Conspiracy whose goal was the Obstruction of Justice — a felony, and an impeachable offense.

Once the “smoking gun” tape was released, Nixon’s political support evaporated. Every single Republican on the House Impeachment Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that he would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor. In the Senate, it was said that Nixon had at most a half dozen votes.

Facing impeachment in the House of Representatives and a probable conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation, to take effect at 12 noon on Friday, August 9, 1974.

From April to early August 1974. That’s barely four months between the subpoena and resignation.

Then again, this isn’t the 70’s anymore. People aren’t dumb enough to bug themselves the way Nixon and his gang were and the Bush gang have perfected the art of destroying incriminating evidence. The President may have screwed up everything else he’s tried to achieve, but he has been successful in packing the courts with judges who buy his “unitary executive” theories. Democrats are now a slow-paced, cowardly lot still trying to find their next JFK. And the modern Republican party doesn’t care about obstruction of justice anymore. So while I think the President’s plans to run out the clock aren’t going to work, the prospect of an inevitable impeachment is virtually nil.

Well damn it, I am TOTALLY opposed to this, but for once, Bush actually makes a good point and, I think, has found a positively Solomonic solution to this a tricky situation. Sometimes, despite the amount of ire we may have for him, Bush reminds us all, even his detractors, of the Leader Americans elected in those Halycon days before 9/11, before Everything Changed, and I think this might be the beginning of his long delayed comeback.

Shit, I’m impressed, and I’m a liberal! Bush has somehow managed to simultaneously appease those who clamor for Scooter’s heads and his defenders! After all, Scooter’s reputation will be fucked, and he can’t practice law anymore but he won’t be imprisoned for longer than such a decent man deserves.

I suppose at the end of the day, Liberals can at least comfort themselves that, while Bush magically managed to deflate both sides, Scooter will still suffer somewhat significantly. American Justice, though imperfect, is still the best the world has to offer, and thank god for thahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahaahahahahHAHAHHAHAHhhHAHAHAHAHhah… (cough cough cough.)

Whew.

No, sorry, that was actually Richard Cohen and David Broder’s next 15 op-eds, predicted here for your amusement. In fact, this is a 100% slam dunk ass kicking for the conservative POV. The so-called liberal elites in Washington and the conservative, ahem, I mean, independent commenters, both of whom have been slathering Libby’s reputation-cock with their salivating paeans to his good and decent decency, will be hotter than I, at age 14, when my friend Neil and I discovered his grandfather’s 4 box collection of hard core pornography. It’s going to be a sticky and musky night in Washington, D.C., let me tells you.

For those of you wondering how this breaks down, rest assured that the commutation not only provided credible cover to the Bushies - Libby, having been sentenced, cannot be coerced to say anything further since the case is still on appeal. Thus, he still gets to plead the 5th if called before Congress. Also, his commutation guarantees that he won’t publish a damaging book about the administration - it also gave the fascist sympathizers in the press their long delayed catharsis, granting the next best thing to the pardon they’ve craved for Such a Decent Man!

Now they can literally have their cake and eat it too, just like real republicans - I predict a thousand variations of “what are you complaining about? It isn’t like Libby was pardoned - Justice was done commiserate to the crime, and still, he wasn’t unduly punished for something he didn’t technically do except he did. And don’t forget, B-b-b-b-b-b-but Clinton!!!!!”

And let’s not forget this little gem:

“”That’s fantastic. It’s a great relief,” said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, who helped raise millions for Libby’s defense fund. “Scooter Libby did not deserve to go to prison and I’m glad the president had the courage to do this.”"

Millions, aye? Gee, I wonder, what can Scooter do with that money now that he’s not going to jail. Damn, I guess the money’s going to go to WAIIT A MINUTE! Could those millions be applied to the 250,000 Scooter has to pay? EUREKA! Sounds like someone’s going to be cutting a check and then it’s time for vacation. Taking a bullet for the Bushies is hard work.

Jesus, it’s really good to be republican. Even when they lose, they win.

It’s the perfect solution, unless, of course, Democrats wake up and finally realize that there’s no winning with republicans. You have to punish the shit out of them. Eking out minor little victories is worthless. You have to go for the throat. Fortunately, we can guarantee they won’t.

Meanwhile, sure, Libby took one, a big one, for the team, but let’s not forget how super sweet wingnut welfare is. Shit, G. Gordon Liddy did real jail time for being the lead Plumber in the Watergate break in and now he’s a prominent talk show host and a go-to right wing fascist. Ollie North’s military career was ruined. Fortunately, he’s got that million dollar fascism career to fall back on.

I’m fairly confident all of this horrible damage to Libby’s reputation will be good for him. He won’t be able to practice law again, I mean, until Bush pardons him on January 22, 2009, but he’ll be a Lobbyist or a consultant for a conservative think* tank faster than you can say “Duhhh!”

*I use “think” in the loosest definition of the term.

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.