Babel's Blog

Well I cast my ballot today. So whatever happens now I've done my part. What I would like to do is urge everyone to go out and vote. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, I'm not even going to mention a name of any of the candidates. I think I've made my views on who I voted for clear. What I do want to urge you all to do is go out and vote. Republican, Democrat, Independant. Conservative, Liberal, and those in the middle. Go out and vote.

If you think it's not worth bothering with let me tell you what one of the daughters of one of the candidates said. Several states, both states that went for Bush and states that went for Gore in 2000, were decided by a margin of just a few hundred votes. That's a powerful message. That's less then the population of a decently sized dorm hall. Your vote does matter. Your vote could make the difference. So please go vote.

For those that plan to vote but havn't yet I ask that you challenge your beliefs. Take this last day before election day to read up on both candidates. Not just press that shares the same political beliefs as yourself but those that lean the opposite. If you plan to vote for one candidate seek out press and opinions that favor the other candidate. Challenge your beliefs. I have repeatedly said that you won't get the whole truth from Republicans nor the whole truth from Democrats. You have to seek the truth out both in the print media and on the internet. Don't listen to the TV commercials. Don't bother with the 60 second segments you see on the broadcast news. Challenge your beliefs, give the arguments of the other side equal weight in your mind and make what you believe is honestly the best choice.

My time for partisan arguments is over for the next few days. I've said my peace. I've voted. I urge the rest of you to do the same.

For the last 7 decades the final home game of the Washington Redskins has correctly predicted the result of the presidential election. If the Redskins win the final home game before the election the incumbent or the incumbent's party keeps the White House. If they loose, the incumbent looses the White House. Well today was the final home game before the election on tuesday and with a decisive victory Green Bay beat the Redskins 28-14, just as John Kerry will decisively defeat George Bush on tuesday to return this country to the hands of the people and out of the hands of the rich and corporate america.

No I can't make this stuff up. I'm just not that creative. I found this on Michael Moore's website. He's actually swinging this way on his tour early next week, might go see what all the fuss is about.


Republicans, Out of Ideas, Ask Prosecutors to Arrest Michael Moore

10/6/04

Dear Friends,

You may have heard by now that the Michigan Republican Party has called for my arrest. That's right. They literally want me brought up on charges -- and hope that I'm locked up.

No, I'm not kidding. The Republican Party, yesterday, filed a criminal complaint with the prosecutors in each of the counties where I spoke last week in Michigan.

My crime? Clean underwear for anyone who will vote in the upcoming election.

Each night on our 60-city "Slacker Uprising Tour" through the 20 battleground states, I've been registering hundreds (and on some nights, thousands) of voters at my arena and stadium events. I then ask for everyone over 23 who has never voted (or didn't vote in the last election) to stand up. I tell these slackers that I understand and respect why they think politicians are not worth the bother. I tell them that I may have been the original slacker, and that I do not want them to change their slacker ways. Keep sleeping 'til noon! Keep drinking beer! Stay on the sofa and watch as much TV as possible! But, please, just for me, on 11/2, I want you to leave the house and give voting a try -- just this once. The stakes this time are just too high.

If they promise me that they'll do this, I give the guys a 3-pack of new Fruit of the Loom underwear, and the women get a day's supply of Ramen noodles, the sustenance of slackers everywhere.

I then close by having them repeat the 2004 Slacker Oath: "Pick nose! Pick butt! Pick Kerry."

It seems to have worked, as each night the volunteer tables are swamped afterwards with hundreds of new and young voters signing up to campaign for regime change for the next four weeks.

The satire of all this seems to have been lost on the Republicans. Or maybe it hasn't. The state of Michigan (where we spent most of last week) reported that over 100,000 young people recently registered to vote, a record that no one saw coming. The Slacker Tour has turned into a huge steamroller with a momentum all its own.

So, the Republican Party, to show their gratitude that so many young people will now be involved in our system, has demanded that I be sent to jail for trying to "bribe" students to vote.

Of course, this would be quite laughable if they weren't so serious about their charges. But they are. I may soon be a wanted man in Michigan -- simply because I convinced a few slackers to change their underwear and eat a healthy meal of artificially flavored noodles.

I thought I'd seen it all this year -- Disney refusing to distribute the film they paid for, right-wingers harassing theater owners who showed "Fahrenheit 9/11," conservative action groups trying to get the FEC to kick our film ads off the air, the unnecessary restrictive R-rating that forced teenagers to sneak in to see it, and all the stupid, crazy attacks on me and my movie that I've had to listen to as I watched the public ignore them and pack the movie houses anyway, where my film was being shown. And when all that failed, five different Republican groups made five different attack dog tapes (oops, "documentaries"!) against me in a period of about six weeks. But they were all so bad, so boring, so right-wing, no one wanted to watch them and they too went away, a sad waste of good videotape.

Now, after enduring all this, with no tricks left in their bag, they've just decided, "Let's toss his sorry ass behind bars -- him and his noodles and his gift of clean underwear!"

My friends, they will not catch me. Though I may be on the run, and I may never be able to return home to my beloved Michigan, I make this solemn vow to you and yours: The slackers of America shall not be denied their noodles, they will proudly wear their clean underwear as free Americans, and they will vote Bush out of office come November 2nd (though they will not show up to the polls until well after noon)!

Stay strong, stay slacker, and please remember to turn the underwear inside out every three days. As for the noodles, add boiling water, stir.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. My favorite moment of the VP debate: Cheney saying to the moderator that this was the first he heard that that many black women in America had AIDS. Clueless. Cheney, for an entire 90-minutes, only mentioned Bush's name -- that's his running mate, the "president" -- once. They should have called this the "President (Cheney) -- Vice President (Edwards) Debate."

P.P.S. Tomorrow's letter, as promised for today, will be about my new book, "Will They Ever Trust Us Again?: Letters from the War Zone." And thanks, everyone, for sending "Fahrenheit 9/11" on its first day to #1 on Amazon. If you find that your store didn't order enough copies, or to report other problems, please e-mail Sony Home video at HeySony@michaelmoore.com.

Ok, this is getting insane. I swear, if the Republicans don't win this race it won't be because they didn't lie enough and sling enough mud at Kerry. The Republicans love to pick 3 or 5 words out of a speech and go see! Look! Changed position! Don't let that fool you my friends. It's flat out not true. You have to listen to the ENTIRE comment, not the one phrase the Republicans want you to hear. And if you did that, if you heard the whole comment, you will see the same theme each time. All you have to do is read http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx@docID=269.html to see what he actually said. You won't hear this on the news for reasons passing understanding. The problem is that the Republicans have nothing they can point to, no good news that shows we are on the right track, so this is what they are reduced to, taking comments and votes out of context and posting funny pictures of the other guy.

I pulled this off John Kerry's website just so you know the skew of it. I thought he did a good job. It looked like the President was about to become unhinged there in the beginning.

RESULT ARE IN!

ABC POLL: Who Won The Debate:
Kerry: 44%
Bush: 41%

KERRY WINS
Carlos Watson: "I think when all is said and done, John Kerry ultimately will be perceived as the winner of this debate." (CNN, 10/8/04)

Bob Scheiffer: "Well, I think that John Kerry is very comfortable in this kind of a setting. He's a very good debater. He's able to marshall facts. He seems cool. He makes his arguments. The President does not seem as comfortable as a debater." (CBS, 10/8/04)

Bob Scheiffer: "I thought that that John Kerry got off to a much better start as he did in the first debate tonight." (CBS, 10/8/04)

KERRY'S STRONT POINTS
Jeff Greenfield: "I thought one of the senator's strongest points was on reimportation of Canadian drugs." (CNN, 10/8/04)

George Stephanopoulos: "You saw him (Kerry) putting those skills to work here tonight, addressing the audience members by their first name, working in Missouri in several answers, of course the citizens in St Louis, as you said, confronting President Bush, and also laying out his plans." (ABC, 10/8/04)

MORE RESULTS ARE IN!

"President Bush smirked and winked and chuckled to himself. He jumped from his stool, chopped at the air and interrupted the debate moderator. As he fought to keep his emotions in check in a testy, personal debate with Sen. John Kerry, the president asserted, `That answer almost made me scowl.'" (AP, 10/8/04)

KERRY WINS

Mort Kondracke: ". I think Kerry won this debate as he won the first debate I don't think. I thought that Kerry was much more aggressive and the president was basically on the defense and didn't have new arguments didn't have.wasn't as facile as he should have been." (Fox News Channel, 10/8/04)

Bill Kristol: "I guess I think if you think the President was doing okay and didn't need a win in this debate, he did fine, but I think, if one thinks that Bush missed an awful lot of opportunities to go after Kerry in the first debate he had to make some of them up in this debate, I'm not sure he really succeeded in doing so." (Fox New Channel, 10/8/04)

Brit Hume: "Is it now fair to say that in each of these debates in terms of marshaling arguments, and remembering them and presenting them that this is something John Kerry has proved he is very good at. And that it doesn't play to the president's strong suit." (Fox News Channel, 10/8/04)

Mort Kondracke: "I thought (Kerry) was very effective. I thought that he was also on the attack a lot and frankly I thought that the President seemed to be on the defense a lot and trying to explain things and not explaining them all that well." (Fox News Channel, 10/8/04)

Tim Russert: "John Kerry, also, energetic, forceful." (NBC, 10/8/04)

"On the question of whether Bush did everything he needed to tonight, I don't think so. I think he helped himself, but Kerry leaves these debates energized." (Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, 10/8/04)

KERRY'S STRONG POINTS

Mark Shields: "He just absolutely, I thought, demolished the President's claims about the coalition in Iraq." (PBS, 10/8/04)

James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly: (Kerry's best moment) "I think his best moment was at the series of new lines. Again like this Missouri line of saying that that I was able to do with some of my votes in the Senate what you have failed to do, which is balance the budget, so I think it was the general vividness of his approach." (CBS, 10/8/04)

Perry Bacon: "I actually was struck that Kerry was pretty strong, I thought, in the foreign policy section, actually, and sort of hit the president hard on that." (CNN, 10/8/04)