Inspired by a private email from someone who should have known better, exhorting her “undisclosed recipient” list to go see F9/11, another fact-checking deconstruction of Moore’s lies and innuendo.
More detailed than most.
Fahrenheit 9/11: The temperature at which Michael Moore’s pants burn
Go read it, so that the next time someone starts wasting your time arguing Moore-inspired mythology, you have a few blunt facts in your back pocket.

Dear Mr. Nader,
I would like to thank you for your input on the Canadian federal election. Considering that you managed to receive 2882955 votes from a population of a third of a billion, while a bunch of God-fearing, capital-loving, deregulating conservatives in the Canadian Alliance managed to garner 3277037 votes from a population approximately a tenth of your country’s, I can only imagine how valuable your comments are to us.
Sincerely,
Kelvin Chan

Mark Ames has a challenge for Ann Coulter.

“So here is my public challenge to Ann Coulter: I propose that you and I spend a night together in a four-star hotel. We will wine together, we will dine together, we will harden each other’s nipples with erotic pillow talk about Sen. Joe McCarthy, and yes, Ann, we will fuck. Ann, here’s the dare: I am betting that no matter how much you try, no matter what prostate-massaging tricks a John Birch Prom Queen like you possesses, you, Ann Coulter, cannot make me come.”

Ahem.
Mr. Ames – a real man would challenge the woman not to come.

Former NDP member of parliament Svend Robinson has finally been charged with theft of a diamond ring to impress his boyfriend with. That was two months ago.

NDP leader Jack Layton was sympathetic at the time.

“Now Svend’s inner strength must be applied to a very personal inner challenge,” Layton said. “I have every confidence that my friend Svend will overcome.”

It took a special prosecutor to figure out that grabbing 50K of someone else’s stuff and leaving the premises is like, illegal. Robinson’s snap impulse had been preceeded by casing the joint a shopping trip to the store two days earlier.
NDP Lorne Nystrom, who incidentally, also had a personal shoplifting crisis a few years ago;

“It is a personal tragedy,” … “All of us, under certain circumstances, crack and do something that’s really strange and weird.”

Strange how that happens. They always “crack” in the presence of something expensive. You don’t hear of people succumbing to stress and say…. making off with the neighbor’s garbage.
Equally forgiving, was Prime Minister Paul Martin, ” who called Robinson a dedicated parliamentarian who’s clearly under a lot of stress.”
Well, you can’t say he’s inconsistent on the issue of being holding thieves accountable. Though, at least Svend gave back the ring.

I cannot look at this man without visualizing the tail of a white mouse dangling from the corner of his lips. I know this is cruel, because now, the same thing is going to happen when you look at him.

Someone else has managed to turn the normal into the diseased to carve out yet another psychology employment niche.

CTV; Child psychologist Steven Feldgaier is using a program called “Friends” — a child program started in Australian schools — to teach kids how to walk through their problems, tackle life’s stresses in small steps — and relax.
For example, “you can go to a quiet room and relax where no one can bug you,” he told one class.
The Friends program is slowly making its way through schools in Winnipeg, as well as a school in Vancouver.
In today’s hectic, fast-paced world, more and more people are feeling overwhelmed. But experts say stress is no longer just an adult problem, but one affecting children as well.
Children as young as five years old are falling victim to stress.

I have an idea – let’s make this program self-supporting, through the taxation of children’s allowances. Then, Steven Feldgaier can explain to them how it’s all for their own good. Let him convince them to go to a quiet room to think about it.
I’d buy a ticket to that.

Predictably, Ebert and Roper gave “two thumbs up” on Michael Moore’s Farenheit 911.
[Is it just me, or is there something very creepy lately about Roger Ebert’s face? There’s a Men In Black thing happening under there….]
Well, Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 has a different opinion.

“Michael Moore is a screwed asshole, that is what I think about that case.”

Asked about the Palme d’Or;

So what? I have won prizes in different places and they are mostly meaningless. The people there hate us, which is why they gave him the d’Or. It’s a meaningless prize.

hat tip – Flea

Roger Simon has a particularly good time with everyone’s favorite schlockumentarist.

Ray Bradbury’s original Fahrenheit 451, as we all know, was about book-burning. Maybe Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 is actually about pants-burning, as in “Liar, Liar, pants on fire!”

As is widely known, but virtually unreported, the Moore accusation that Bush family ties were to blame for the permission given for a planeful of Saudis to leave the US right after the attacks in September of 2001, has been rebutted by none other than former terrorism “czar” Richard Clarke.
Yes, the same Clarke that testified before the 911 commission, where he blamed the FBI. Clarke gave the approval for the flight’s departure and has confirmed that he was the highest ranking official involved.
Don’t expect this fact to have much effect on the drooling hordes who will form lines to suck up Moore’s mental pablum.

Via James Joyner;

Elizabeth Eve never thought of herself as an exhibitionist. But these days, the 33-year-old history professor with the gold nose ring can barely contain the urge to lift her skirt and flash her skivvies.

Elizabeth never thought of herself as an exhibitionist, because she isn’t one. “Exhibitionist” would be dignified in comparison. Exhibitionists have the good sense to run away before they’re caught.
No, Elizabeth is no exhibitionist – she’s a walking twat joke.

“There is something so liberating and exciting about it, you’ve got to try it out,” she said recently as she fidgeted, fully clothed, on the couch in her friend Tasha’s Manhattan apartment. “I was teaching a class on imperialism, ” she continued, “and I was delivering all this material that was kind of new and upsetting, and everyone was getting all worked up and upset, and I was getting all worked up and upset, and all of a sudden, all I wanted to do was flash my underwear! It was crazy,” she said with a throaty giggle.

There’s a better solution. It’s called Monistat.

That’s because she wasn’t wearing just any panties. Elizabeth is part of Axis of Eve, a fledgling group of rabble-rousing feminists and anti-war activists who have taken to flashing their undies as a form of political dissent. The Eves, as they call themselves, are on a mission to sex up protest. They take to the streets wearing “protest panties” which come emblazoned with anti-Dubya double-entendres like “Expose Bush,” “Lick Bush,” “Give Bush the Finger” and “Drill Bush Not Oil.” When the Eves flash them at rallies, the effect is somewhere between a 1970s’ love-in and George Bush’s worst, frat- addled nightmare of a panty raid gone awry.

No, it’s somewhere between complete idiocy and total embarrassment.
If this is considered newsworthy political speech, carried out in the name of my gender, please, make it stop. Revisit this women’s suffrage thing. It’s not working. I know that some perfectly reasonable, sensible women will be hurt, but there’s a greater good to consider – I’ll gladly sacrifice my vote to save others.

It creeps me out to see little kids on toilets in diaper ads. You know that out there, somewhere, some degenerate is taping it for his later enjoyment.
One of the commentors has a pithy observation;

If Abercrombie and Finch, Howard Stern and Ossie Osborne are the touchstones of this generation’s morality, why should this latest example of “declining decencies” come as a surprise?

Much as Jeff Jarvis would beg to differ.
hat tip; Zygote Design

“Mitch” was a guest on John Gormley Live this morning, along with his friend “Steve”.
Mitch is a rebel with political interests “from graffiti to the way we are treated as individuals in the school system and that’s why I’m 22 and never graduated but I’m going to make it in this life … hip hop is all about fighting oppression and if we can’t open our art up and nobody donates space on their walls … and it’s against the government not about the people cutting off the phallus symbols of the economic stranglehold of the US.”
In other words, a “tagger”.

Caller: “I fancy myself an artist too. I’d like to get your phone number and address – can I contact you off air so I can come over to put my art on your house?”
Mitch: “No, because it’s my mom’s house, and I don’t own it.”

Zerbisias isn’t too bright. She has overlooked one important fact about “warbloggers”.

We don’t have editors.

Is there nobody left to believe in?

Kofi Annan continues to stonewall about the growing Oil-For-Food scandal.

Via Crescat Sententia this item about “gender neutral bathrooms”.

Harvard’s lack of gender non-specific bathrooms has caused transgender and gender- variant students to alter eating and drinking habits and suffer severe cases of dehydration, according to a report released yesterday by the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA).

Hey, you were the ones who signed up for the Naughty Bit Extreme Makeover. So, deal with it.
Update – James has similar thoughts.

In the unlikely event that you are still under the impression that the 911 commission is comprised of representatives who are earnestly and soberly examining shortcomings in intelligence leading up to the attacks on New York and Washington… I direct your attention to commission panelist Bob Kerrey [D] and his appearance on the “Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” a couple of nights ago.
Michelle Malkin

Now, it would be one thing if Kerrey used his privileged position to inform Stewart’s younger audience of the gravity of the 9/11 panel’s task. But instead, Kerrey yukked it up. First, he dished with Stewart about President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s upcoming private meeting with the commission. When Stewart mocked the president’s “buddy system,” Kerrey guffawed: “He is bringing his buddy, that’s exactly right, for safety.” Emboldened by audience applause, Kerrey riffed that it was more like “Screw you, buddy.” Asked by Stewart whether people were really blaming each other over the terrorist attacks during closed hearings, Kerrey snorted: “Oh, Jee-zus, yeah.” More audience approval. (Taking the Lord’s name in vain is always good for a few cheap laughs.)
Next, echoing a profanity uttered earlier in the show, Kerrey blurted out with a clownish grin: “Life is [expletive bleeped].” When Stewart proposed that Kerrey ask the vice president, “What the [expletive bleeped] is wrong with you people?” Kerrey cracked up and promised to use the question. And when Stewart called Attorney General John Ashcroft a “big [expletive bleeped],” Kerrey chortled some more.
After nearly ten minutes of knee-slapping hilarity, it was time for Kerrey to wrap things up. Instead of paying lip service to those who died in the terrorist attacks, Kerrey used his last moments on the program to suck up to Stewart. The Daily Show, Kerrey cooed, was one of the few shows he TiVo’ed. The other, he joked, was [the PBS kids’ show] Boohbah. Ho-ho-ho.
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) was spot on Tuesday in his reaction to Kerrey’s performance: “His appearance on a program designed to satirize current events proves that Kerrey lacks the seriousness of purpose that this Commission requires and the American people deserve. This is not a laughing matter.”

I saw the show. It was pretty disgraceful, all round. But Stewart stopped being funny a long time ago too. Somewhere in his rabid partisanship, Stewart has forgotten that satire based upon false premises or misinformation isn’t satire anymore – or funny.
In the episode last night, Stewart lobbed his jokes at Bush and Cheney’s interview with commission members yesterday. Yet, he didn’t mention that his guest of a few nights earlier had left before it was over. I wonder why – there’s ripe opportunity for satire there, don’t you think?
“Kerrey explained to reporters: “Yeah, it’s a little awkward to leave early. But the president certainly understood what we were doing.”

This sad story today courtesy Colin Freeze at the Globe and Mail :

Canada, the country of his citizenship, has never been home in any meaningful way for Karim. He was a young boy when he first met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. At age 11, he watched U.S. bombs rain down as his family became part of the exodus of al-Qaeda-affiliated Arabs who fled the U.S. invasion to go to the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Forced from their homes, with nothing but the Kalashnikovs on their backs, they were.

There, he watched his father and seven other militants die last fall in a fierce battle with government forces. Karim, who was caught up in the battle, emerged partly paralyzed.

Caught at the extreme end of crossfire, so they say.

The towering 6 foot 3 big brother, 21-year-old Abdurahman, embraced Karim. They had not seen each other since being separated in Afghanistan.
Abdurahman’s life has also been eventful since the fall of 2001. He returned to Toronto a few months ago to speak publicly of his capture in Afghanistan, the time he spent as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the international spy work he says he did for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Quote from his news conference – “We were an Al Queda family”.

Increasingly comfortable as family spokesman, he stood alone to address a battery of cameras to say he’d like to see the return of Omar, a 17-year- old brother still held in Cuba on suspicion of killing a U.S. soldier.
Abdurahman said he would like the rest of his family – his 23-year-old brother, who is a fugitive terror suspect in Pakistan, and his two sisters, one of whose wedding was attended by Mr. bin Laden – back here as well.

Can they travel by urn?

One politician, MP Stockwell Day, says it’s outrageous that some members of the Khadr family have been allowed to return to Canada. But onlookers in the arrivals area of the airport were non-judgmental.

Traumatized crippled little boy. Flashes peace sign, carries flowers.
Big, bad US bombs.
Warm embrace from reformed brother.
Reformed from past association with CIA.
Mean judgemental conservative politician.
Kind forgiving Scottish grandmothers.
Oh Canada, The True North Diverse And Non-Judgemental.

Sherry F. Colb, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark, NJ, shares this essay at CNN today educating us as to the “three types of lies” – the insignificant lie, the harmful, material lie, and the beneficial, material lie. As a backdrop to her essay, she features Condaleeza Rice. She doesn’t actually mention any actual testimony by Rice, she just chose her at random –

“Until the middle of last week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was engaged in a conflict with the 9/ 11 Investigation Commission over whether or not she would take an oath to tell the truth prior to voluntarily answering their questions.”

But this Colb is a sly fox. She skillfully injects a fourth type of lie – intellectual dishonesty. She makes sure it’s a clumsy one, so we can spot it right away:

Lies, however, can be far more destructive, such as — to pick a purely hypothetical example — misleading the nation into supporting a war and sending young men and women to die for a cause of which the people are unaware and may not support.

Then, this other cleverly disguised type of lie – the lie-once-removed – “many suspect” is the clue here.

Suppose that — as many suspect has already occurred with respect to the Iraq War — our executive branch officials lie to the American people in order to motivate important votes, and those lies lead to unnecessary and unwanted death and injury.

Colb also carefully explains how she lies to get her boring mother off the phone.
So, I’m going to go out on a limb here, but my general take on the article – I think Colb would consider lies told (to pick a purely hypothetical example) to support a Democratic political agenda, to be one of those “beneficial, material lies” types, like the ones told to save Jews from Nazis.

In the past few weeks, a murmer has been growing across the blogosphere that should John Kerry defeat George Bush in November, he is likely to “stay the course” in Iraq and the greater war on Islamic fascism. The comforting argument is this; despite their differences, when it comes to fundamentals about national security and foreign policy, a Bush vs Kerry administration is a Coke Vs Pepsi debate.
Now that you’ve been properly seduced…

In an interview broadcast Wednesday morning, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defended terrorist Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr as a “legitimate voice” in Iraq, despite that fact that he’s led an uprising that has killed nearly 20 American GIs in the last two days.
Speaking of al-Sadr’s newspaper, which was shut down by coalition forces last week after it urged violence against U.S. troops, Kerry complained to National Public Radio, “They shut a newspaper that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq.”
In the next breath, however, the White House hopeful caught himself and quickly changed direction. “Well, let me … change the term ‘legitimate.’ It belongs to a voice – because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment.”

Yeah. No difference at all, really.
Hat tip – Inoperable Terran
update- Hugh Hewitt covers the non-coverage of this in the big media

This election is about the war.�Yesterday Kerry said a lot of things about the war, some outrageous, some incoherent, some contradicting other statements he has made.� Voters have a right to hear or read Kerry on the crucial subject, even if pro-Kerry reporters and editors suspect that these quotes may not go down well with the public. The Kerry interviews were not hard to come by. I had them and had transcribed and posted the key excerpts by 2:30 PM Pacific time yesterday. No wonder Americans don’t trust the media.� A combination of terrible news judgment, laziness, and bias has infected the coverage of the election, and there’s no excusing this failure on the part of the “objective press.”

Well, wasn’t that clever? And most everyone thought Morissette was making a statement about censorship in the US. Even Drudge – Morissette, hosting Canada’s annual music awards, said the stunt, in which she appeared in a provocative skin-hugging body-suit was intended to expose US “censorship.” and quotes her as saying “They’re in an era when they’re scared, when there’s lots of fear.” I’m sure she said something to that effect. (I didn’t really pay attention, as I was getting up to turn it off.)

But, of course, the tit ‘n bush suit wasn’t about censorship at all. It was about the number one source of angst in Canada – that peculiar inferiority complex we have about our cousins to the south, that we’ve code-named “Canadian identity”.
You see, Alanis Morrisette would still be playing shopping malls if it weren’t for the American market. Nickelback would be slogging the bar scene in Vancouver. Avril Lavigne would be catching the bus to her job at Wendy’s. (And they’d make her tie back that hair.)
One cannot become a bona fide Canadian superstar without gaining the approval of the USA. Not that the Americans give a damn – we do. Nobody cares about Canadian bands if they haven’t had a gig on the Grammys or scored a number one song – a chart topper makes us positively giddy. It just kills these people to admit it.
So, chubby little smirk, desperate to prove she isn’t one of them, (though of course, we all are) – decides that dressing up in Spandex and throwing a little hypocrisy around is the way to make a statement about Canadian superiority. That’s right. Not censorship at all. Throwing off a bathrobe in a faux moment of exposure makes us better than you.
Should be good for about a week of smug.
Don’t believe me? Try mentioning that “only the Europeans and the French” wear visors on their hockey helmets during a CBC Hockey Night In Canada broadcast. Then, get back to me about the freedom of the Canadian airwaves.