We need NHC.

Having Moore as a spokesperson is the kiss of death. He is too interested in winning each point.

i.e. Re the government:

Our parents and grandparents get their checks every single month on time and for the correct amount.

Not true and anyone who wanted to could find many, many ancedotal instances where the amount was wrong and then tell of the difficulties in correcting it.

We had FDR, who defeated the Nazis and then the Japanese and Mussolini in less time than it's taken us to secure the road from the airport to downtown Baghdad.

Yes, and we also had a 100% united country that brooked no protests, had a draft, censored individual letters and news from the battle fronts, put Japanese citzens in camps, used military tribunals, rationed gas, sugar, auto tires, cooking oil, etc.. And, at the end when faced with huge lossess if we invaded Japan we used the nuclear option.

(Please let's don't into an argument over the above. I'm just saying that's what the Right will say.)

In addition his exchange saying:

MOORE: It is free.

GUPTA: You pay for it through taxes --

MOORE: It is free.

GUPTA: I mean, in France, there's a 13.5 percent --

MOORE: Yes. We pay for it --

GUPTA: -- payroll tax.

MOORE: We pay.

That will make a perfect commercial showing a rational Gipta, an incorrect Moore, a rational Gupta showing Moore wrong, and Moore admitting to being wrong.

Moore will run off the middle and stiffen the Conservatives.

Plus, arguing over who has the "best" system is counterproductive. The real question is what it will cost and how will we pay for it.

Some of the biggest suckers for cons and physics are scientists, because, well, they're smart don't you know, and would just know if someone was cheating. The Amazing Randi was says that when testing 'physics' a scientist should always have a trained, professional magician to observe as well.

So, the CNN fact checker needs a fact checker?

I've met lots of neurosurgeons and the number who are not bastards can be counted on the fingers of one hand with some spares.

Now, to be fair to neurosurgeons no dummy - and no one with clumsy hands - makes it into, much less through, a decent neurosurgery residency and the neurosurgery boards are ghastly.  Not just anyone mucks around in brains. In addition Gupta is a teaching surgeon at Grady, a major teaching hospital. Very impressive.

All that said, Dr. G. is burning the candle at both ends, trying to carry two full time careers.  If he's a decent doc, the one he's slighting is journalism.  It's also clear that he's got a bad case of the infallibles , as cpinva said:  he's smart, he's decided, and he's right.  No fat guy with messy hair can tell Dr. G. anything.

It would be helpful if, in the second meeting that Larry King promised, Michael Moore brought a doctor along.  Preferably a high-powered surgical type.  Dr. G. will never listen to anyone else:  cf. how he was shaking his head and smiling derisively whenever MM spoke.  It would also help if MM found the articles the good doctor was quoting about cardiac cath - they're on line- and had someone to discuss the assumptions that G. was making.  A Canadian physician with a policy background discussing the weaknesses of their system - a main one being that it's been underfunded and has fallen behind - would be dynamite.

Finally, it would be nice if Dr. G. were both less provincial - other medical systems have their excellences, which we should imitate, and their weaknesses, which with planning we could avoid - and less obviously afraid that health care reform will cut his income.  

I don't know how often they do this because they want to suck up to the big boys, how often they do this for fear of retribution and being accused of having liberal bias (like that really matters anymore--clueless as ever these idiots), and how often they do this because they really do have it in for people who dare to tell the truth and do their jobs properly (not having done theirs for so long it's natural that they instinctively hate those who still do). But it's crap, and they would all be cleaning up plastic bags and coffee cups off the sides of highways if there was justice in the world. How do they look at themselves in the mirror?

great.  be good fact checking diligent journalists.  but ALSO be good fact checking diligent journalists when the nation is running headlong into war too!!!!

i really agree with the point being made here.

And Gupta and King (and this morning, CNN's Roberts) all play dumb in berating Moore for getting US and Cuban expenditures from different sources, when they know MM got the US figures from the US HHS, which tracks US, not Cuban expenditures!

If what he is talking about is a shortfall in their medical program, they are in fact still doing better than what we are projecting to do with medicare, and they are covering a larger number of people - their entire population versus our seniors.  

I think Soledad O'Brien has for some time apparently been considered to be something of a loose cannon, on occasion her behavior being deemed unpredictable, and the people at corporate didn't like that, it makes them nervous.  During the hurricane Katrina debacle she veered sharply off script, and let everyone see her outrage at what the Bush administration was allowing to happen. Of course they couldn't do anything about her then, when it became obvious to everyone that the President of the United States was a total incompetent who cared nothing for the people of this country, but they've had her marked for removal at least since that time.

Of course they'll claim it's because of ratings, but that's just a cover for the careful expansion of control of media content. It's important to place pliable controllable individuals in anchor positions so that they can present a dispassionate face of calm to the people no matter what happens.  It's important to keep us all believing that what we see can't be that bad, because nobody on TV is too upset about it.  Dr. Sanjay Gupta is the perfect model for a commentator who can be counted upon to spin stories in a way that appears objective, but in fact is a means for achieving a specific objective handed down to him and others on CNN by their editors, who in turn receive less and less subtle directions from those up the corporate ladder.  Sanjay is the calming face of the likable doctor who reassures us that we have nothing to fear from the lobotomy that's being performed upon us.  "Relax -- this won't hurt."

Time Warner and the other corporations who have a stranglehold on the major media outlets in this country have a great fear of anything that smacks of socialism, anything that might cut into their corporate dollars.  Michael Moore is a real threat to their moneymaking operations, specifically the insurance company and pharmaceutical lobbies which have a network of connections that stretch all the way to CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC etc.. When someone starts talking about free healthcare they start squirming in their seats, notice how Michael Moore kept repeating that phrase specifically, "it's free, it's free, it's free."   Those are perhaps the most frightening words anyone can utter in a society where capitalism and profits trump every other consideration, when it comes right down to it.

Michael knows exactly what he's doing what he accuses CNN, he is specifically referencing those standing behind the network, and he made a point of mentioning the pharmaceutical and insurance companies.  Our media's corporate Masters are deathly afraid that the American people might catch on to what's been done to the networks which have always made a great show of putting the interests of the American people first, though close scrutiny often reveals a secondary competing agenda. Moore went out of his way to say at the beginning of yesterday's part 2 segment that he didn't want his words to be edited or cut in any way, I imagine if they hadn't agreed to that on camera, he would've ended the interview with Wolf right there.  Obviously the network had agreed to this stipulation in advance, but apparently Mikey doesn't trust them.

It's interesting that so many people on the right have been praising Sicko, and why do you think that is? It's because they and their families have to deal with the horribly compromised health care system in this country as well, and they don't like seeing their loved ones suffer and at times even die unnecessarily either.

If things keep going the way they're going, very soon the people on the Left and the Right are going to wake up in a country where they have both been marginalized, and we are going to finally realize that blaming each other is all part of a larger scheme to keep the people distracted and fighting among ourselves, while our country is quietly sold out from beneath us.

The Bush administration is a perfect example of a federal government that has been manufactured, packaged and sold to us by corporate America, and if the elections were in fact legitimate, then the majority of us were willing to buy it, and come back for seconds.  Of course we seem to be having a bit of buyer's remorse these days, but that hardly matters since there man in the White House has nothing further to fear from the people of this country, he's got our money (country) and there's really nothing we can do about it until the next election.  We thought that the Congress might be able to provide an alternative means for getting our money's worth, but we found out quickly that they have apparently been effectively compromised as well.  Now we are left to ponder the direction we will take with our next purchase, thinking maybe the next time we'll make a wiser choice, having learned a hard lesson, but the best salesman can keep selling you the same thing over and over again, while convincing you that you're actually buying something new.  Bush and his band of corporate raiders was the test product to see if we would actually swallow unadulterated shameless corruption in our government, and even though we've choked a bit, we did end up swallowing it and keeping it down.  So I suspect they have many more such governments in store for us.

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He turns off many in the middle and stiffens the resolve of the Right. Read my comment about him being wrong in the interview...Moore is an entertainer, a movie maker and has a huge ego. That's fine, but it is also divisive.

Getting NHC will be a real fight. We don't need anyone making inflamatory statements and claims. People understand the problem, what they need is a solution that is explained calmly and rationally.

Moore reminds me of someone screaming about the need for a traffic light after a bad accident has harmed several people. Everyone knows that. What we need is people willing to figure out how to install the light and what it will cost.