Here’s a selection from an email going around that I thought was on point.

1. You have to truly believe that people who are privileged from birth, achieve success all on their own.
2. You have to believe that government should stay out of people’s lives but it needs to punish anyone caught having private sex with the “wrong” gender.
3. You have to believe that pollution is ok, so long as it makes a profit.
4. You have to believe in prayer in schools, as long as you don’t pray to Allah or Kali.
5. You have to believe that the best way to encourage military morale is to raise the troops overseas while cutting their VA benefits.
6. You have to believe it is wise to keep condoms out of schools, because we all know if teenagers don’t have condoms they won’t have sex.
7. You have to believe that federally funded universal health insurance is Socialist and wrong, and that HMO’s and insurance companies only have your best interests at heart.
8. You believe that “tobacco’s link to cancer” and “global warming” are “junk science”, but Creationism should be taught in schools.
9. You have to believe that waging war with no exit strategy was wrong in Vietnam but right in Iraq.
10. You have to believe that Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney was doing business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.
11. You have to believe that what Clinton did in the 1960’s is of vital national interest but what Bush did decades later is “stale news” and “irrelevant”.
12. You have to believe that trade with Cuba is wrong because it is Communist and oppressive, but trading with China and Vietnam is just dandy.

The camera has proven to be mightier than the pen. Cinematic technology has reached such quality that we’ve begun to lose sight of the difference between the movies and the real world. Worse, we now prefer seeing the world through a Hollywood lens in 8-second cuts. We want to be shown what’s important and told what we need to believe, rather than have to pay attention and make those decisions ourselves.

For such a powerful medium its a shame that its usefulness has been limited except in rare circumstance to placation and subjugation. Its much easier to tug on someone’s sentiments than it is to try and change their mind - especially when you have to fight to keep their attention. That’s why 20 million people paid $8 to see Spiderman 2 last weekend. See, most people just don’t like to think — not that much anyway. When confronted with something they don’t understand, especially something that challenges basic notions, people can get afraid and angry. They lash out with irrational responses because they know they don’t have rational ones.

‘America’s Heart and Soul’ is a new documentary released by Disney in a see-through attempt to triage the effects of a movie they were otherwise unable to suppress. Apparently it is a “vacation where one can feel free to take the back roads and spend time sitting on a porch and talk to an old friend.” Though they insist it is not a direct response to Moore, these reader reviews reveal that Disney has nonetheless hit their mark.

This movie is a true documentary. It should be shown everywhere Moore’s blasphmey fictious movie is shown. This movie depicts the very best and most diverse of who we are. The America Michael Moore hates, the America the terrorists hate. I shed a few tears at the greatness of our wonderful land and its wonderful people.

This is exactly the kind of irrational response I was speaking of. The suggestion that Michael Moore hates America is simply ridiculous. Ever heard of Roger & Me? America is the only country where films like his could be made. Michael Moore loves this country, and like anyone who truly loves something he wants to make it better. He wants soldiers to stop dying for an immoral cause. He wants America to be a place where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the rich.

I try not to write when I’m mad but ignorance really pisses me off. You can’t hold it against someone that they’re stupid but you can hold it against them if they don’t even try. It shouldn’t be so easy to pull the wool over our eyes! Ironically, rodrunr867 did say something intelligent. The people in America that Michael Moore hates are the Americans that the terrorists hate. The Americans who use poverty, religion, and fear to exploit the rest of the world. Moore just stands up to them in a kinder and more American way.

The Kerry/Edwards ticket is being blasted as extremely anti-business by republicans and business owners nationwide. Even the US Chamber of Commerce announced that they may repeal their standing order to stay out of politics in order to help republicans keep the two out of office. John Edwards was a trial lawyer who his career pursuing malpractice and other consumer protection litigation. As a senator, he’s called for greater corporate responsibility and championed consumer rights. Republicans call him an ‘ambulance chaser’ responsible for higher court settlements and malpractice insurance costs. John Kerry’s long history of activism includes a multitude of legislation for the protection and preservation of the environment. Big business seems to think this sort of legislation stifles productivity and growth while increasing the costs of compliance.

If the well being of consumers and this planet’s ecology are not good for business, exactly what is? What does it say for how much pride you take in your work if you are unwilling to stand behind the implied warranty of its quality? If GE had not produced quality products from each of their business units for the last 60 years they would not be the second largest conglomerate on the planet. If doctors in fact cared about their oath to do no harm, they would not shy from the spectre of malpractice.

Apple Computers has maintained very high consumer approval ratings for decades. They focus not only on satisfying needs and wants but on the well being of their customers. No one ever heard about how the Melissa, Nimda, and I Love You viruses didn’t bring down Macintoshes across America. Speaking of malpractice why didn’t anyone ever sue Microsoft for the damages caused by these security failings?

On February 18 2004, over 60 leading scientists – Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors, and university presidents – signed a statement [link] voicing their concern over the misuse of science by the Bush administration. His administration has severely misrepresented scientific findings in order to avoid legislation over vehicle and power plant emissions. President Bush has not added a single species to the endangered species list unless forced to do so by federal courts. Indeed he has been the worst adversary to face the conservatory effort since Nixon signed the act into law in 1973. He has also been openly aggressive his defiance, for example in his attempt to classify salmon hatcheries as extensions of natural rivers in order to remove Coho salmon from the endangered species list.

It is cheap to pollute. It is cheap to build unsafe products. But it is shortsighted to think that the money saved up front by dodging corporate responsibility will pay off in the long run. Sure, it may pad the pockets of every Kenneth Lay and Martha Stewart out there but look at Firestone - years of corner cutting killed hundreds of consumers and all but bankrupted the company. Oh yeah, and when it comes to environmental protection, don’t forget that no environment = no customers.

President Bill Clinton’s book My Life was released last week. No doubt the timing of its release is intentionally adjacent to a tough upcoming presidential election. Still, Clinton always struck me as above cheap tricks and propaganda. So on a recent visit to Barnes and Noble I picked up a copy.

Actually I didn’t buy the book, I bought the audiobook - as read by the author himself. 6 hours one-on-one with Clinton seemed a far more fitting way to experience the tale; After all this is a personal history not a work of literature.

He starts off by smugly explaining that one of his remaining life goals is to write a good book. “It’s a great story”, he laughs. There’s no question that this man has a big ego. In fairness a successful president needs a well developed ego, but this is not however a common requisite of a successful writer. His narcissistic tone obscures most of the first two CDs and I found it almost impossible to listen through it. Just get to the good stuff I kept thinking to myself, hoping that the inside scoop on his eight years in office was material worth suffering for.

As I had expected, the material gets increasingly compelling as the story progresses but his focus seems to shift from writing a good book to clearing his name. He frequently and irritatingly segues from the narrative in order to address scandals such as Whitewater and Lewinski. It starts to look like he has a pretty big chip on his shoulder.

Never give up on Bill Clinton. As the story unfolds it becomes pretty clear that he’s not simply trying to defend every misstep he’s been accused of. At many points he is actually extremely critical of himself and apologetic to the listener. Rather, he’s making a statement about 8 years of gross misconduct by the GOP. With little to no respect for legal precedence and ethics the GOP relentlessly harassed President Clinton. In just a few years we had a stronger economy, an effective new crime bill, universal healthcare for children, lower taxes for the middle class AND lower capital gains taxes for the wealthy. Such success by a democrat was devastating to the republican party. Clinton’s work even shrunk the bloated federal government, traditionally a republican preoccupation.

There was no avenue for them to attack the policies of his White House. The best they could do was to forget politics and attack the person. Whitewater was a recurring banner of propaganda, despite the fact that federal prosecutors had on many occasions stated that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the president OR the first lady. Ken Starr actually waited until AFTER the mid-term elections before releasing findings from months prior that confirmed this. In public statements Newt Gingrich admitted to being purposely argumentative and bipartisan with Clinton during the budget standoff. The list of blatant interference Clinton gives is overwhelming - the republicans were playing dirty and he was constantly in battle.

Clinton did some stupid things, but then everybody does some stupid things. In the grand scheme of things, having a tryst with a White House intern is mild when compared to how George W. has lied to the American people about an international threat in order to make money and settle a family score.

My Life, though sometimes whiney and egotistical in tone, ultimately paints what is likely a fair picture of the eventful political life of Bill Clinton. Its prose will win no awards; the only eloquent moments come when he quotes his own speeches. Still, it is clear that Clinton is trying to communicate how much of an uphill struggle his presidency was — that the more he fought to build a more perfect union, the more the republicans fought to discredit him.