34 Comments

1. Richard Nieporent:

A box of Cuban cigars: $50.

A trip to Cuba: $2000.

Seeing Michael Moore being made a fool of: priceless.

May 15, 2007 - 2:24 pm 2. Bruce Wechsler:

Very welcome comic relief. Nicely done.

May 15, 2007 - 2:32 pm 3. Buddy Larsen:

Michael Moore nude sunbathing on Cuban beach (ht Maggie’s Farm).

May 15, 2007 - 2:35 pm 4. Ray Zacek:

Bravo, Fred, for treating Michael Moore with the disdain he deserves and swatting him like a gnat.

May 15, 2007 - 2:54 pm 5. freetotem:

I agree with Roger. I don’t need to see any more. I’m voting for Thompson based solely on this video!

May 15, 2007 - 3:20 pm 6. Webutante:

Fred has got to run and have a helluva good time doing it or else we’ll all die of terminal seriousness.

May 15, 2007 - 3:21 pm 7. Webutante:

Fred has got to run and have a helluva good time doing it or else we’ll all die of terminal seriousness.

May 15, 2007 - 3:21 pm 8. Lem:

I remember when McCain faintly attacked Moore during his RNC convention speech in NYC. The crowd came alive. Moore, who was inside, fled outside and was visibly shaken, perhaps surprised at the level of animosity just the mere mention of his name had stirred.

Thomson is tapping into that. He has not even announced yet and he’s already feeding us the red meat.

Get ready to have some fun.

May 16, 2007 - 8:13 am 9. markus:

If Moore is going to become a spokesman for national health insurance, he needs to lose some weight.

Still, how can anyone argue that Thompson is NOT being a hypocrite when he calls for an investigation of Moore for violating the trade embargo. When called out on the facts, change the subject and launch an ad hominem attack on your opponent. I thought that was something only “Marxists” did.

May 16, 2007 - 8:14 am 10. Steven Mitchell:

Naw, sometimes they try to change the subject, because they don’t appreciate where we are going with the subject at the moment. Markus, you are as tiresome as you are predictable.

It’s way past time for certain idiots liberals to be mocked mercilessly. Whether or not Fred gets in the race, gets the nomination, or wins, I hope he continues to perform this valuable public service. It will lead to us having a better president, and one less likely to “grow in office”, no matter who wins.

May 16, 2007 - 8:42 am 11. markus:

Steven — Thompson’s a hypocrite, don’t you think his cigar choice is going to hurt him in FLA?

May 16, 2007 - 8:54 am 12. Roger:

Markus, you are pathetic to defend Moore. I work inHollywood and can tell you the man is a despicable ultra-right winger. Yes, you read that correctly. His viciously anti-union record with writers is beneath contempt and well known. He wouldn’t sign with the Writers Guild (and give his writers health insurance!) when he ran his TV show. His continual lying about facts is also well known to all. Thompson is right to give him the back of his hand. Grow up!

May 16, 2007 - 9:17 am 13. dclydew:

We need more mockery in Politics. In fact, I am entirely behind a return to public displays of disapproval. I believe that I should be able to throw rotten tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, eggs etc at Michael Moore, Dick Chaney, George Bush, Al Gore, John Kerry and Alberto Gonzales… as well as the idiot group Citizens for Community Values, based in Cincinnati and currently trying to push through more authoritarian laws about strip clubs.

I should have the right to throw Limburger cheese on stage during a political rally, debate or photo op. It shouldn’t be a crime to put a cream pie in the face of these clowns masquerading as politicans. From Reid to Pelosi, from GWB himself, to George Tenant, no one in public life should be immune to public mockery and stinky rotten foodstuffs.

Screw the vehement rhetoric of protests. Dump the punditry, the screeds, the fiskings… just plaster them with garbage until they decide to act like decent human beings again. The next Senator or Congressman that is caught with their hand in our pockets should go to jail, but first spend some time in the stocks, personally meeting those that they stole from and lied to. Maybe that would cause them to think twice before sticking cash in their freezer, buying yachts or chatting up young boys on IM.

I vote for the return of Olfactory Reinforcement.

May 16, 2007 - 9:21 am 14. Aitch748:

If by “hypocrisy” Markus is referring to the bit about Thompson enjoying his Cuban cigars, my understanding is that most “Cuban” cigars are actually manufactured in the Dominican Republic. (I read this on another post last night; feel free to correct me. )

May 16, 2007 - 9:23 am 15. ricpic:

Let’s hear it for stinky rotten foodstuffs!

May 16, 2007 - 9:29 am 16. dclydew:

Aitch748,

Those would be DR cigars then and not Cuban cigars. Many people smoke DR’s as a replacement for Cubans and they taste almost identical… but if someone truly smokes ‘Cubans’, then they’re smoking stuff rolled in Cuba. It’s sorta like getting sparkling wine from somewhere other than Champagne, France except more stinky.

However, then entire embargo against Cuba appears to have little actual value and is mostly ignored by the powerful in this nation (I know a number of VP’s/CxO’s etc that are loyal Conservatives, but still have their Havana’s). The entire subject is a pathetic example of a reactionary Federal Government.

“peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” – Jefferson

May 16, 2007 - 9:33 am 17. Steven Mitchell:

“Steven — Thompson’s a hypocrite, don’t you think his cigar choice is going to hurt him in FLA? ”

Not nearly as much as you continuing to be associated with it will hurt “universal health care”. Not that I mind, though. See, I can play that game, too. It’s not about the subject, but the person speaking on it. Usually, the practicioners try to be more subtle, though.

We wouldn’t want anyone to notice that Fred indirectly compared the health care in Cuba to what is being proposed here, would we? That would seem to emphasize the slapdown, validate Roger’s points, and raise uncomfortable questions that Moore has no intention of confronting.

May 16, 2007 - 10:09 am 18. Lem:

Aitch748 Esta correcto about the Dominican-Cuban Cigar connection.

“…, because many Cubans fled their country during Castro’s rise to power, taking with them their knowledge and their tobacco seeds, many of the cigars produced in the Dominican Republic literally do have Cuban roots. This, undoubtedly, gives the cigars some commonalities, but, because they are grown in different soils and on different lands, the cigars also maintain some differences.”

The cigar culture is so well rooted in DR that when someone is drunk he is said to have un humo – witch literally means smoke.

BTW The Clintons just got a beach house there.

May 16, 2007 - 10:30 am 19. markus:

Roger — I didn’t defend Moore, I criticized Thompson. I won’t let you change the subject. Here is the relevant paragraphs from the Hayes article in the Weekly Standard. Note the explicit reference to Montecristos from Cuba, not from the Dominican Republic. Note how indifferent Hayes is to the breach of the embargo. Indeed he highlights it to flatter Thompson as an unscripted, genuine candidate. Note the rank hypocrisy.

“Thompson’s work space looks just like what the home office of a successful politician or CEO should look like–though a little messier: a large desk, dark wood, leather furniture, lots of books and magazines and newspapers, a flat-screen TV, and box upon box of cigars–Montecristos from Havana.

“The presence of the cigars and the absence of a press chaperone were clues that Thompson is taking a different approach to his potential candidacy. A campaign flack would have insisted on hiding the cigars–Senator, how did you get those Cuban cigars? Isn’t there a trade embargo?–and might have dampened Thompson’s natural candor. On subjects ranging from Social Security to abortion, the CIA and to Iran, there would be lots of candor over the next several hours.”

May 16, 2007 - 11:07 am 20. tim maguire:

Markus, I’d say you have a point that Thompson should obey the law he seeks to enforce (and agree that just because people widely ignore a certain stupid laws doesn’t make it ok for the people who make the laws to ignore stupid laws).

However, cigars v. Health Care? There’s a proportion problem with your objection. Michael Moore made a movie attacking the US Health Care system. Regardless of how you feel about that system, Michael Moore was making a huge and controversial statement by comparing it negatively to Cuba’s. Particularly since Cuba’s health care system is a train wreck.

And by doing so, Michael Moore is trying to get people killed (by making our helath care system even worse). He is a loathsome sociopath willing to sacrifice anything and anyone for his own aggrandizement.

A little different from chomping on an illegal cigar, don’t you think?

May 16, 2007 - 11:47 am 21. Lem:

There is a Dominican version of Montecristo.

I would not be surprised if the article has it wrong and the cigars turn out to be Dominicans and not Cubans.

May 16, 2007 - 12:01 pm 22. markus:

Tim — Like you and everyone else, I haven’t seen his film. My understanding is that his trip to Cuba is somehow tied in with the Cuban offer to offer Anmerica assistance with Hurrican Katrina, which was baselessly rejected. I doubt that he is offering the Cuban health care system as model for the U.S.. If he is, he is being idiotic. There are quite a few affluent industrial CAPITALIST states that have better models of partially-socialized, centrally planned health care delivery. And whatever genuine problems with rationing in these countries could be addressed by spending the same proportion of GDP on health care as the USA currently does.

May 16, 2007 - 12:06 pm 23. Sandy P:

Ahhh, that wonderful cuban health care:

Via Babalu Blog:

You get what you pay for…
With this weekend’s premiere of the film “Salud” (the castroite propaganda fluff piece on Cuban healthcare) at the Princeton “Human Rights” Film Festival along with the screening of same at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, there’s no better time to expose the reality of Cuba’s lauded “free healthcare.”

Cuba Watch has put together one of the more comprehensive assesments of Cuban healthcare available which can be found in this introduction post on pdf format. It is today’s must read and the starting point of our consolidated effort to bring the realities of Cuba’s “free healthcare” to light.

http://www.babalublog.com/archives/005150.html

There’s a list of links w/pics.

Do a little research, Markus.

May 16, 2007 - 12:06 pm 24. markus:

Sandy P — That’s a strawman. I would like to see, however, a comparison between Cuba and other Third World countries.

May 16, 2007 - 12:20 pm 25. Sandy P:

How did that go?

“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face, there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, of course, have national health care and 100% literacy.”

May 16, 2007 - 12:21 pm 26. Webutante:

Fred is having too much fun making mincemeat out of Michael Moore.

What a candidate to spice things up!

May 16, 2007 - 1:16 pm 27. dclydew:

Oh come on, this whole argument is silly. No sane individual (this obviously doesn’t include Mr. Moore), would try to compare a Third World health care system with a First World health care system. Markus hasn’t done that either (unless you wish to interpret his words in some wankey way).

Further, our health care system sucks. We can debate the value of social health care (which I’m not in favor of)… but please, let us not lie to ourselves about the current situation. America can be the Best nation in the world to live in, but only if we honestly and constantly see what problems there are and work to fix them. Today’s health care system needs something… not government intervention, necessarily, but it needs something.

My recommendation is to send all of the trial lawyers to serve in Iraq. No one will mind the causalities and Doctors won’t get sued for more money than their malpracticed patient would ever make in two lifetimes.

In all honesty, though… I think that we could find a compromise in health care. I am of the opinion that it would go something like this:

1. Employers can offer health care as they do today. Employees can get health care as they do today. If an employer offers health care he gets a nice tax break.

2. Employers that don’t offer health care don’t get the tax break.

3. Insurance companies that provide an option for unemployed or low income citizens also get a big tax break.

4. Either State or Federal governments (up for debate) manages a low cost health care system which any American Citizen can join. Their monthly cost should be on par with what most employees pay ($40-$80 or so). This, in theory would be a very large group of people and they should be able to use the same type of bargaining that existing health care providers get.

5. Stronger laws on malpractice suits are put in place to drop the cost of liability insurance.

6. Patents on drugs should be reviewed (I would recommend that the patent holder would be required to provide a name brand and generic themselves, or have a generic partner lab).

7. Realize that there is no 100% fix and continue to try to find improvements in all aspects of American Life.

That’s one idea from me… instead of ranting about Cuba, maybe someone has a better idea?

May 16, 2007 - 3:01 pm 28. Roger:

The issue of Cuban Health care is a bit more complicated, alas:

Markus is right in one regard. Leaving aside the notorious aspects of Castro’s heinous regime (the jailing-killing of homosexuals, the placing of political dissidents in mental hospitals, the impoverishment of the Cuban people while the Cuadillo is a near billionaire, the lack of any kind of basic human rights, etc., etc.), the Cuban health care system is probably better than that in many Third World countries. Unfortunately, the scientific advances of this system have been put to other uses that should be of concern to all of us…..

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagmc121.php

May 16, 2007 - 5:37 pm 29. papertiger:

I found an advertisement which might be pertenant to todays topic. ( Montecristo Cigars SMOKE ONE and you’ll know why… )

May 17, 2007 - 2:06 am 30. tim maguire:

Markus: I have not seen the movie. The Cuban angle includes the claim that Moore took Americans to Cuba for treatment in Cuba under the Cuban health care system.

My remarks assumed that this claim is correct–that Moore did indeed take Americans to Cuba for treatment. How to interpret this action except as a statement that they will receive better care in Cuba than in the US?

May 17, 2007 - 7:52 am 31. dclydew:

Tim,

I haven’t seen it either, but I think it would depend greatly on the individuals he took to Cuba. If they were middle class, insured individuals, then Cuba’s health care wouldn’t hold a candle to ours. If however, they were low-income, uninsured… then anything would be better than their current options here in the States (perhaps with the exception of a local Witch Doctor).

When you have no health care, even third world health care is a better option, isn’t it?

May 17, 2007 - 11:52 am 32. Steven Mitchell:

“Further, our health care system sucks.”

No, it doesn’t. It provides *the* best health care anywhere in the world–not a small feat when you consider the pace of medical advances. Problem is, it’s always so on the cutting edge, that people expect that latest thing to be *affordable* today, which obviously can’t happen. And then the delivery system has all kinds of brakes on it that rachet the cost up–especially for those cutting edge treatments. The oft-cited slow FDA approval of new drugs is simply the tip of the iceberg.

For example, you got leukemia in 1970? You died quickly. You got it in 1980? More often than not, you lived. (I know a guy who is currently 39, that has lived with it since his mid teens. You can’t say that for anyone that is around 50 years old.) However, it was a *lot cheaper* to treat in 1970. I have an uncle pushing 70 that has lived almost half of his live with a rare disease that used to be fatal in months. If he’d been two years older, he would have died ages ago–because he was in the first round of the experimental treatments that worked. Then there is the cousin that died in 2005 at age 49, of a cancer that will probably have much higher treatment success in less than a decade. They were announcing the start of a construction on a new facility to treat those kinds of cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, the week she died.

Those are personal anecdotes that are easily replicated if you look. Heck, each of those three people personally knew many others in the same boat.

Bottom Line: Health care is cheaper in places that “socialize” it, because in such places the pace of medical advances slows enough that people simply die. It’s why socialized societies make a fetish of prenatal care. It’s the one place where they can lead. (As I’ve said many times, preventive care is a different animal.) If you focus on prenatal and early child care, and *neglect* treatment on the elderly side, you statistics look very nice at first glance. Average life expectancy goes up, and anyone with a “quality of life” issue typically gets off the stat sheet and into the graveyard quickly. It doesn’t, however, produce the kind of care we say we want for Granny–or ourselves, if we are approaching Granny age, which is why people come here for treatment, from all over the world, if they can manage it.

If society had a more honest appreciation for the costs and risks of cutting edge treatment, we wouldn’t have a problem. Cutting edge would be labeled such, you’d only try it when normal, cheaper methods were exhausted, and you’d try it knowing that the treatment might kill you. Lawyers not welcome to participate at that point. That’s the only way I can to preserve the rapid advances. There has to be this attitude that once you cross the line into experimental, you are statistically dead. Yesterday you did die. Today, maybe you don’t. But that’s a gift, not an obligation society owes you.

“That’s one idea from me… instead of ranting about Cuba, maybe someone has a better idea?”

If you see why Cuba doesn’t work, you’ll also see why moving towards Cuba, even a little bit, doesn’t help. That said, you left out the need for a serious accounting with the AMA about their low-balled fiction of the number of doctors and nurses this society can reasonably produce.

May 17, 2007 - 12:00 pm 33. Sandy P:

Go to the link and lokk at the pics, guys, and read.

Cuban hc is so great they needed to import a doc to take care of el barbudo.

The childrens’ hospital I was in in Russia looked better than that.

Geez, even in “1st tier” England, didn’t they suggest to not wash the sheets after a patient leaves, but just turn them over and use them again?

May 17, 2007 - 2:40 pm 34. tim maguire:

dclydew: I have to disagree. The american health care system is equally available to everyone–we do have universal health care in that sense. Where we are not equal is in who gets the bill afterwards.

That’s an important distinction.

Carrying further the assumptions we operate under (and anyone is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong), the people Moore took to Cuba were suffering from World Trade Center related injuries. This group would do just fine under our system–there are plenty of programs to pay their medical bills.

The idea that Cuban health care is better than American for even the poorest of Americans is just silly.

May 18, 2007 - 7:08 am

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