What would be ideal act of civil dis in NH?

[Caleb]

Why are we talking about the CIA now? We were talking about the Bush Administration, not the CIA. And the Bush Administration said that only 3 people were waterboarded. It wasn't the CIA that said that, it was the Bush Administration that said that.

Do you even read what YOU post? You posted this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7229169.stm  The first two sentences of the very link you posted read thusly:  "The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.  CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years."  The CIA is an executive department, with its head nominated by the Bush Administration just like a cabinet officer. It is part of the Executive Administration.

There have been many people who have written liberal liar books in which they have "gone line by line down the many lies of the Bush administration", and in each and every case, it has turned out that they were either liars or misinformed, and the Bush administration was telling the truth.

Where do you get your sources? Really, I'd like to know. This is just buffoonery. Let's examine just a couple of the lies of the Bush Administration, "The British mafia has learned ..." Ok, when Bush said this, his own intelligence sources had told him that it was a lie. That's why he phrased it that way, "the british mafia has learned," but he knew at the time that what he was saying was a lie, that what "the british mafia" had learned was a bunch of bunk. He used it anyway. Then George Bush said after 9/11 [my paraphrase]: "But no one in our guvmint at least, and I don't think anyone in the previous guvmint either, could have imagined terrorists flying planes into buildings, not on that scale." Blatantly false. This from CNN: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/18/inv.hijacking.philippines/index.html  Foreign mafias also informed both the Clinton and Bush Administrations of this very possibility.  Britain gave specific warnings in both 1999 and in August of 2001. [Times Online, 6/9/02 and Sunday Herald 5/19/02 documented these prior warnings from Britain.] Egypt gave the US a warning in July of 2001. [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/09/60II/main524947.shtml] June of 2001, Germany gave the US warnings about planes being used to crash into buildings. [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,53065,00.html  this one even comes from your beloved Fox News, and there's more fun information in that story too!] I could go on and on. Bush LIED! He has no credibility. He lies every chance he gets. I could go on and on and on and on documenting bush's lies, but I don't need to. The information is all out there, but you won't believe anyone unless their facts coincide with your opinions.

I disbelieve it because the story is just so fanciful. The soldier who told the story said that there were women who stripped down and rubbed themselves against the detainees, and that the detainees were made to bow down upon a pentagram and then the guards would say "Satan is your god now, not Allah". James Yee's story is a total fairy tale that is now being used by the ACLU and other leftists to discredit the military. It is obvious that this is just another leftist fairy tale used to discredit the military.

You use these words, "fanciful" "fairy tale", but you don't have any evidence to back up your claim. There is a whole bunch of photographic evidence from Abu Ghraib that just such atrocities were perpetrated on Muslim people to attack their religious faith and humiliate them, so I find no reason to suspect that the information presented by the Chaplain is unlikely. Also, interestingly enough, the mafia isn't commenting on his allegations. They have "no comment" so we don't even have a mafia denial.

Again, it's obvious he lied about the torture. Just listen to his crazy, silly story. It's obviously false on it's face. The silliest part of the whole story was when he claimed that Guatanamo guards were making the Muslims bow down on a pentagram and say "Satan is your god now, not Allah". That's obviously fanciful. It's a total fairy tale.

Again, just more "la la la, I don't wanna believe it, la la la." nonsense from you. There's nothing in what he said that is fanciful or out of the way from what we know about CIA interrogation techniques.  These things are designed to break a person's psychological ability to resist by destroying whatever he is clinging to to give himself hope. Also, you should know that Muslims do not lie. It is punishable by hell in their religion. A secular Muslim, ok, I can see, you can make the case that he doesn't really believe it. But a Muslim chaplain? Sorry, I believe the Muslim chaplain.

Is there something about being a "leftist" that automatically makes one predisposed to lie?

As a matter of fact, yes there is.

Evidence?

I don't. But what James Yee said is an obvious lie.

Because you choose not to believe it doesn't make it an obvious lie.

I'm a "leftist",

I thought you were a libertarian.

Depends on your perspective. I am a Christian pacifist, a la Leo Tolstoy; I consider myself a Christian (as opposed to Marxist) communist.

I've read Michael Moore, and he's just about as far left as you can get.

Michael Moore is a parody of the left. I like William Blum. Or maybe Howard Zinn. Or Noam Chomsky. People you are too terrified to read, no doubt.

[Caleb]

At some point really soon, (after lunch maybe) I'm going to split this topic off. There's no reason for Luke's nonsense to commandeer another thread

[Luke S]

At some point really soon, (after lunch maybe) I'm going to split this topic off. There's no reason for Luke's nonsense to commandeer another thread

Just for the record it wasn't me who started it. It was Tom Sawyer who started it by bringing up the topic of the community service border wall workers and referring to them as "slave labor" when they weren't slave labor.

[David]

Liberty is a culture, a way of life.  You can't 'educate' culture into people.  They must choose it.  It is the actions and decisions that you make. 

Luke, and his law and order mentality is the reason conservatives are more dangerous to freedom than the gov't worshiping liberals. 
He is a walking talking authoritarian.  He firmly believes he has the god given right to do anything to anyone that he believes is 'harming' themselves, or others.  This is the culture that Luke chooses to live.  There are millions just like him. 

These kinds of people will always be with us.  Ignore them.  Don't respond to them, or waste time arguing with them.  I'm sure he is a nice guy, but his willingness to use violence to enForce his beliefs, is dangerous.  Yet he sees nothing wrong with it.  Pro gun, pro family, pro homeschooling, pro 'liberty' people who worship words on paper, in otherwords, the law, are not pro liberty, they are in fact the enemy of it.  Constitutionalism is a false path to liberty.  It sounds good, but in the words of our Decider, (george bush) "it is a goddamn piece of paper".  Inalienable rights do not come from that piece of paper. 

[Luke S]

Luke, and his law and order mentality is the reason conservatives are more dangerous to freedom than the gov't worshiping liberals.

Oh you've gotta be effin' kiddin' me. Just wait till you wake up in a country like Canada or South Africa where your freedom of speech has been taken away by "hate speech laws", and all the various "victim groups", the darlings of the government, have been elevated above you in job opportunities, and in other opportunities, and there ain't nothing you can do about it. And who can sue anybody they want for "discrimination", for whatever tiny little reason, true or false, and if you're in South Africa, you the defendant are guilty until proven innocent. Oh, and your freedom to have a gun is totally gone, so you can forget about doing any more "open carry litter pickups". Try living in a country like that for awhile and come and say that to me again, David.

[Tom Sawyer]

Awwww! Luke said effin'   

Hey, we have to put up with the fascists cause the communists are so bad. Nice try authority boy.

[Caleb]

I give up. I can't find the point at which this thread went off topic. It seems like it's mostly off topic, so I'm not going to split it off, with apologies to Dada.

[Free libertarian]

 Luke, I'm pro freedom too.  I'm pro freedom of choice.  Does your idea of freedom allow for you to tolerate somebody doing something you wouldn't choose to do?  Or does your idea of freedom
only permit people to do things you agree with?

Please define freedom.  I believe you're wrong on many issues, but I also believe you have a right to those opinions. I believe you have a right to do anything you want to as long as you're not hurting me or anyone else.  I think your understanding of freedom is inaccurate based on your comments.
Freedom means individuals will decide what is their fate, what will go in their body or not.  If spaghetti were outlawed would I be a criminal for continuing to eat it? You think that's a stretch? Okay how about fatty foods? Is that my choice? How about unpasteurized milk, is that my choice?

When you begin to outline acceptable exceptions to limiting freedom you open the door to any number of
abuses. It doesn't matter whether something is made legal or illegal. That measuring stick is laughable.
It's illegal to smoke pot, but legal to drink alcohol? Isn't that just a little bit of a contradiction to you?
Murder is illegal, yet bombing and killing thousands of innocent people if you're the US government is okay? Doesn't that raise any concern with you?  Don't you find it hypocritical that your favorite President is so tough talking and ready to start wars yet he has a "lost" military record and a V.P. that only shoots lawyers and not "bad guys" (or your version of bad guys) ? How can you hero worship such chicken hawks?  


 
 

[NJLiberty]

Okay Luke, at least now I understand you better. You grew up politically with Bush as your president, so it is natural for you to have a bit of hero worship for him. You've also spent your whole life being raised in the "just say no" culture. I was idealistic like you are now when  I was your age. I still am idealistic, its just my ideals have changed.

The first election I was old enough to vote for was Bush vs. Dukakis. Like you I was a math major in college. I was a statist then, believed fully in the rule of law, believed that the Constitution was as perfect a form of gov't as could be found, and probably would have agreed with you on every point you have raised, except the ones on drugs since I already had enough first hand experience with people who did drugs to know that the gov't was full of crap where that was concerned. I supported Bush's campaign, worked in his state headquarters when he ran for re-election, and wanted to crawl in a hole and die when Bubba was elected instead.

I wasn't informed enough at the time to see through the many lies that Reagan and Bush had foisted on the people, and too young to have really understood the Carter and Nixon administrations. I remember Watergate, but didn't understand it at the time. Like many people, the Clinton administration, and the opening of the internet to the public, really opened my eyes. For the first time I could get news from outside the United States and the first thing I noticed was that it frequently was very different from the news here. For the first time I could easily talk to people all over the United States, and around the world, and discovered that there was a lot more going on than was ever reported here. And trust me, all presidential administrations lie, but the Clintons raised it to an art form and really exposed, to me anyway, how corrupt politics actually was. For the first time I was aware of how the gov't uses the law and the Constitution as a hammer to try and force people to think a different way, to act different ways, and to deny them their rights.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't wake up one morning and have an epiphany. It was a gradual process, but I slowly reached the conclusion that my freedom, and my rights, were more important to me than the laws were. I realized that every law that didn't deal with crimes against person or property, basically just restricted someone's rights, whether they were mine or someone else's. I realized that what I really wanted was to be allowed to live my life freely, so long as that wasn't harming anyone else, and obviously extending that same right to my neighbors. But part of me still clung to the idea that if the gov't could be returned to the size and scope promised to us, that if we could just go back to the beginning, and add a few more safeguards to the Constitution that things would be okay. They wouldn't be perfect, but they would be okay. And I had a small glimmer of hope, because the son of the man who I had campaigned for was running for President and he was promising to eliminate the Department of Education, and reduce the size and influence of gov't. And we all know how that turned out.

When I came to the FSP six years ago, had you asked me my political leanings I still would have told you I was a Constitutionalist Luke. Fortunately I have had the benefit through the years of meeting some people here and elsewhere who, how do I phrase this, made it safe for me to actually envision the logical conclusion of the ideas I had been thinking for so long, that the laws aren't necessary for there to be a peaceful society. Now I do not take that concept as far as some others, and perhaps I will evolve to that point someday, perhaps not.

The point of all this is that I do understand where you are coming from Luke. I don't agree with a lot of the positions that you take, simply because I no longer believe that gov't is the answer to the problem, but rather that gov't has caused most of the problems. I struggle to find examples where the gov't (I would type the word out, but it would be disrespectful to the Mafia  ) has ever fixed a problem that the people themselves could not have fixed, or that a free market would not have fixed on its own.

You may not see it now Luke, but our gov't is a pyramid of lies, deceits, and manipulations, all under the guise of law. The concept of law, and the "protection" it offers, is a powerful thing. Unfortunately the politicians use the law for their own purposes, and will use any method to get that power. They lie to get themselves elected, lie to get their agendas legalized, and then lie about what these new laws actually mean. And then usually promise that this new law has fixed the problem, there won't need to be another after it, until the next time of course. Their intentions are not noble, nor even based on the public good. They are about power, and control, and money. I doubt you can come up with anything the Bush administration has done that has not led to the gov't having greater control and more power. Can you name any area where they have ceded control back to the people? I can't, even though he promised a reduction in the size and scope of gov't.

I'm sorry Luke, but I just don't believe the President, or the Congress, has our best interests in mind.


George

[Luke S]

How can you hero worship such chicken hawks? 

I'm going to answer this question first, because it's the first one that came to my mind.

There are 3 kinds of people in America. Chicken Chickens, Chicken Hawks, and Hawk Hawks.

Chicken Chickens are Americans who run away from their duties as Americans, and they either don't care about fighting for America, or they actively try to sabotage the war effort, which is what the Left tries to do every single war.

Now to become a Hawk Hawk, you have to fight against the military of another nation (or ,in modern times, a terrorist group) which is belligerent against the USA.

Now notice that I said "fought against an enemy military", not "fought in a war". This is because I believe that people who are on paper as having fought in a war, but in reality stood around and did nothing, or who did nothing but betray their country, do not deserve the designation of "hawk hawk". Whereas people like those Border Patrol agents who fought against the Mexican Military when the Mexican Military was trying to invade the USA, even though that was not an official "on paper" war, was still a necessary action to defend the USA against a foreign belligerent military, and thus I believe that all of those people deserve the designation of "hawk hawk".

Chicken Hawks are people who advocate war who are not Hawk Hawks. So yeah, I suppose Chicken Hawks should really try to become Hawk Hawks at some point. But Chicken Hawks are higher up on the chain than Chicken Chickens, so if you're asking me how I can hero-worship Bush and Cheney, who are Chicken Hawks, first of all I don't "hero-worship" them. As an answer to your question for why I admire them even though they are Chicken Hawks, I just have to say that most of the big names who oppose them: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Bill Clinton, etc., are Chicken Chickens. (John Kerry, who I suppose is a Hawk Chicken, is a notable exception.) And Chicken Hawks are higher up on the food chain than Chicken Chickens.

Now you might ask me, "Well Luke, how do you intend to go from being a Chicken Hawk to being a Hawk Hawk?"" And I'd answer you, "Through repelling the Mexican Military the next time it invades the USA and shoots at people, and all subsequent times it does that." The Mexican Military's little excursions into US soil are part of drug smugglers' agendas to smuggle drugs into the USA, and part of the Mexican agenda to assimilate the Southwest back into Mexico. That's why they shoot at Border Patrol whenever they encounter Border Patrol when they're on our soil. Stopping them is an even higher priority than the war in Iraq, in my opinion. Why those idiots in Washington refuse to do beans about this I will never know. But I do know that these belligerents must be stopped at all costs. Our homeland is under attack. Defending it must be our highest priority.

[Vitruvian]

Chicken Chickens are Americans who run away from their duties as Americans, and they either don't care about fighting for America, or they actively try to sabotage the war effort, which is what the Left tries to do every single war.

To cripple the war-machine is a noble act.  From your posts, I can see that nobility is a foreign concept to you.

[Luke S]

Why are we talking about the CIA now? We were talking about the Bush Administration, not the CIA. And the Bush Administration said that only 3 people were waterboarded. It wasn't the CIA that said that, it was the Bush Administration that said that.

Do you even read what YOU post? You posted this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7229169.stm  The first two sentences of the very link you posted read thusly:  "The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.  CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years."

Oops, you're right. It did say CIA.

The CIA is an executive department, with its head nominated by the Bush Administration just like a cabinet officer. It is part of the Executive Administration.

Oops again. I thought they were a Congressional department. Well then that raises a question. Everything else you've said about them aside, I remember Bush saying in one of his speeches, "War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say 'I was just following orders.'" Well we do know that the CIA was going around committing all those crimes in 1996, and they were very serious crimes, and I was talking to a couple people, and those people thought that some of those crimes might have been murders. So if they might have been murdering people all around the world, isn't that a war crime? Shouldn't it at least be further investigated? If the CIA is an executive agency, then Congress can't just step in there and stick up for them and try to protect them from punishment like they might be able to with congressional agencies. So that being said, shouldn't Bush push for them to be the first to be prosecuted and punished for what they did in 1996, since Bush was so adamant about prosecuting war crimes and punishing war criminals, and having it be no defense to say "I was just following orders".

Anyone who can give me an even semi-satisfactory answer to this, I would appreciate it. I really am curious to know the answer.

There have been many people who have written liberal liar books in which they have "gone line by line down the many lies of the Bush administration", and in each and every case, it has turned out that they were either liars or misinformed, and the Bush administration was telling the truth.

Where do you get your sources? Really, I'd like to know. This is just buffoonery. Let's examine just a couple of the lies of the Bush Administration, "The British mafia has learned ..." Ok, when Bush said this, his own intelligence sources had told him that it was a lie. That's why he phrased it that way, "the british mafia has learned," but he knew at the time that what he was saying was a lie, that what "the british mafia" had learned was a bunch of bunk. He used it anyway. Then George Bush said after 9/11 [my paraphrase]: "But no one in our guvmint at least, and I don't think anyone in the previous guvmint either, could have imagined terrorists flying planes into buildings, not on that scale." Blatantly false. This from CNN: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/18/inv.hijacking.philippines/index.html  Foreign mafias also informed both the Clinton and Bush Administrations of this very possibility.  Britain gave specific warnings in both 1999 and in August of 2001. [Times Online, 6/9/02 and Sunday Herald 5/19/02 documented these prior warnings from Britain.] Egypt gave the US a warning in July of 2001. [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/09/60II/main524947.shtml] June of 2001, Germany gave the US warnings about planes being used to crash into buildings. [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,53065,00.html  this one even comes from your beloved Fox News, and there's more fun information in that story too!] I could go on and on. Bush LIED! He has no credibility. He lies every chance he gets. I could go on and on and on and on documenting bush's lies, but I don't need to. The information is all out there, but you won't believe anyone unless their facts coincide with your opinions.

Wow, looks like you're right that Bush lied. He should have to go on TV then and admit that he lied and say that he's sorry, just like Clinton did when Clinton lied about having sex with Monica.

I disbelieve it because the story is just so fanciful. The soldier who told the story said that there were women who stripped down and rubbed themselves against the detainees, and that the detainees were made to bow down upon a pentagram and then the guards would say "Satan is your god now, not Allah". James Yee's story is a total fairy tale that is now being used by the ACLU and other leftists to discredit the military. It is obvious that this is just another leftist fairy tale used to discredit the military.

You use these words, "fanciful" "fairy tale", but you don't have any evidence to back up your claim. There is a whole bunch of photographic evidence from Abu Ghraib that just such atrocities were perpetrated on Muslim people to attack their religious faith and humiliate them, so I find no reason to suspect that the information presented by the Chaplain is unlikely. Also, interestingly enough, the mafia isn't commenting on his allegations. They have "no comment" so we don't even have a mafia denial.

No, I used the words "fanciful" and "fairy tale", because that's exactly what it is, a fanciful fairy tale.

Again, it's obvious he lied about the torture. Just listen to his crazy, silly story. It's obviously false on it's face. The silliest part of the whole story was when he claimed that Guatanamo guards were making the Muslims bow down on a pentagram and say "Satan is your god now, not Allah". That's obviously fanciful. It's a total fairy tale.

Again, just more "la la la, I don't wanna believe it, la la la." nonsense from you. There's nothing in what he said that is fanciful or out of the way from what we know about CIA interrogation techniques.  These things are designed to break a person's psychological ability to resist by destroying whatever he is clinging to to give himself hope. Also, you should know that Muslims do not lie. It is punishable by hell in their religion. A secular Muslim, ok, I can see, you can make the case that he doesn't really believe it. But a Muslim chaplain? Sorry, I believe the Muslim chaplain.

Well I don't.

Is there something about being a "leftist" that automatically makes one predisposed to lie?

As a matter of fact, yes there is.

Evidence?

My life experience with them is enough evidence for me.

I don't. But what James Yee said is an obvious lie.

Because you choose not to believe it doesn't make it an obvious lie.

Yeah but that's not why I said it was an obvious lie. I said it was an obvious lie because it's too fanciful to be true.

I'm a "leftist",

I thought you were a libertarian.

Depends on your perspective. I am a Christian pacifist, a la Leo Tolstoy; I consider myself a Christian (as opposed to Marxist) communist.

What's the difference?

I've read Michael Moore, and he's just about as far left as you can get.

Michael Moore is a parody of the left. I like William Blum. Or maybe Howard Zinn. Or Noam Chomsky. People you are too terrified to read, no doubt.

No he isn't a parody. He really is a big time leftist. He supported Nader in the 2000 election, who is very far to the left, he supported Kerry in the 2004 election, and he has written leftist books and made leftist documentaries. He truly gets on my nerves. I wish I could wake up one morning and have all his crap be nothing but a parody, but unfortunately that's not going to happen.

[kola]

calebs right, this thread has been butchered. jeesh.

[Luke S]

I remember Bush saying in one of his speeches, "War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say 'I was just following orders.'"

Ok, I looked it up, and it was actually from his speech from before he went into Iraq. So he was referring to war criminals in the upcoming Iraq war. But still, if he finds it wrong for them to commit war crimes, and he thinks they need punishment, then logically you'd think that he would think possible war crimes committed by the CIA need to be investigated, and if the CIA is guilty of committing war crimes by murdering people around the globe, which sounds like a war crime to me, then those people need to be punished too. Does that sound logical to you, or did I miss something?

[Caleb]

Oops again. I thought they were a Congressional department. Well then that raises a question. Everything else you've said about them aside, I remember Bush saying in one of his speeches, "War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say 'I was just following orders.'" Well we do know that the CIA was going around committing all those crimes in 1996, and they were very serious crimes, and I was talking to a couple people, and those people thought that some of those crimes might have been murders. So if they might have been murdering people all around the world, isn't that a war crime? Shouldn't it at least be further investigated? If the CIA is an executive agency, then Congress can't just step in there and stick up for them and try to protect them from punishment like they might be able to with congressional agencies. So that being said, shouldn't Bush push for them to be the first to be prosecuted and punished for what they did in 1996, since Bush was so adamant about prosecuting war crimes and punishing war criminals, and having it be no defense to say "I was just following orders".

Here's the problem, Luke. Congress is impotent. Ok, let's look at it this way. There's 535 of them, so no one single congressman can do that much. Look at Ron Paul. Then, even when they do get morally outraged, there's this group mentality, because they all have to be reelected and they don't want to say something offensive. So if someone says something, even if it's true, if it's offensive the others will shout him down. Remember a few years back when Abu Ghraib came out, and poor Dick Durbin got up and said something true:  "Well, golly gee, when I see these pictures it reminds me of Pol Pot's gulags. America shouldn't act like this." And who was it who shouted him down? Republicans, sure, but the loudest detractors were members of his own Democrat Party. Why? Because they are worried that even the appearance of agreeing with him would hurt their chances for reelection. So getting Congress to do anything more than a very muted investigation is not likely until the American people are outraged. Then Congressmen will be tripping over themselves to be Holier-than-thou.

As for Bush, do you seriously think that he means what he said? I mean, c'mon. Who was the WWII general who said, "I hope we win this war, cause if we don't we're going to be prosecuted for war crimes"? I can't remember, but one of them said it. The point being that war crimes are for losers. Literally. Bush never intended to investigate himself and his boys for war crimes. Those are standards we hold others to, not ourselves. Bush couldn't, anyway, because then he'd have to indict himself. There's enough evidence that he signed off on the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that would implicate himself. They're all in this together. He's not going to cut off his nose to spite his face. He scratches their backs, and they scratch his.

Yeah but that's not why I said it was an obvious lie. I said it was an obvious lie because it's too fanciful to be true.

Luke, how can you look at the photos from Abu Ghraib and believe that abuse of Muslims is too fanciful to be true?

Depends on your perspective. I am a Christian pacifist, a la Leo Tolstoy; I consider myself a Christian (as opposed to Marxist) communist.

What's the difference?

A Marxist wants to install communism via a transitional period of totalitarian socialism. Socialism is a communist/capitalist hybrid, using the mechanisms of the capitalist state against capitalism, the theory being that once the capitalist system is destroyed, the socialist state will no longer be necessary, and will wither and die, and communism will naturally take its place. This has never happened in real life. All you get is the totalitarian socialist state, you never get to the communist end. That's why I say that Marxism isn't even communism, because it never gets there.

A Christian communist believes that the form of communism ought to be established by people working from the bottom up in a peaceful way. That is to say that if I want communism, I ought to establish a commune or join one, and use my efforts to share among others for our mutual benefit. I say "commune" but it could be a little cottage industry or a co-op factory. The point is that all in the group renounce individual ownership of the means of production and agree to share the means of production and distribute what is produced equally.

No he isn't a parody. He really is a big time leftist. He supported Nader in the 2000 election, who is very far to the left, he supported Kerry in the 2004 election, and he has written leftist books and made leftist documentaries. He truly gets on my nerves. I wish I could wake up one morning and have all his crap be nothing but a parody, but unfortunately that's not going to happen.

I didn't say he isn't a leftist, I said he is a parody of the left. Michael Moore eschews substance, in favor of "impact", and plays loosey-goosey with the facts. He thus sets himself up as a lightning rod for justified criticism. He's the walking, talking Straw Man. I consider him irrelevant to my position.