And The War Goes On . . . And Michael Moore Goes On and On . . .

The Russian military has been attempting to overpower Ukraine with its massive forces ,but the Ukrainian army is fighting back and the Ukrainian people - including a former Ukrainian president - are helping them, making Molotov cocktails (invented by the Finns during Finland's 1939-40 war against the Soviet Union, for Stalin's foreign minister) to throw at the Russian invaders, and also getting out their guns.

And Vladimir Putin is losing his grip on reality - and on Republicans.  He's put nuclear arsenal commanders no high alert, and as more Republicans stand against Putin, more Republicans , according to the polls, are beginning to turn away from Putin and his puppet - Donald J. Trump - as most Americans and people all over the world stand with Ukraine.  

So you're probably wondering what noted liberal gadfly Michael Moore thinks of all this.

No, of course not, but he does have an opinion about the war.  Here's what he said on Facebook: 

"Of course Russia should be upset if we made Ukraine part of NATO. Like how we'd react if the Soviet Union had made Mexico or Canada a member of the Warsaw Pact. Or if Russia had tried to put nuclear missiles in Cuba. We wouldn't stand for that!"

He's not being facetious - well, he is, in a way.  He's actually saying that Ukraine should not join NATO - even though Ukraine wants to join - and he says he doesn't want U.S. troops anywhere outside the United States, even though someone has to guard against possible Russian invasion of, say, the Baltic States, which can hardly defend themselves against the Russians alone.  They tried doing that in 1940 and look what happened.  (Oh yeah, Moore once dismissed the people of all three Baltic countries as "Nazi collaborators.") 

Moore went on, urging Putin to stop the fighting in the second person: "Your people made the greatest sacrifice in World War II - 27 million dead. We couldn't have defeated Hitler without you. We in this country have never sufficiently acknowledged your suffering and your loss. And then thank God for the brilliant Gorbachev who ended the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation between us. I prefer today to think of all the good Russia has done for the world."

Yes, the Soviets - Ukrainians and Belarusians as well as Russians - made a great sacrifice.  We couldn't have defeated Hitler without the Soviets, who had in fact signed an agreement with the Germans to divide eastern Europe between them before Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union.  But Gorbachev didn't end the Cold War - Pope John Paul II did. As for the good Russia has done for the world lately . . .  what, the Bolshoi Ballet?  Ask the Finns and the Baltic peoples about all the good Russia has done for the world.  Ask the Poles, or the Czechs.  Ask the people of Karelia, an ethnic enclave in Russia next to Finland, if there are any left.

So what's Moore's advice for Putin? "Get some mental help . . .. You are no longer in the KGB. Take off your shirt, go sit in the sauna, then go ride your horse. Ukraine is not joining NATO."

Oh honey, I think Michael Moore has finally flipped out.  I thought he'd flipped out when he called Madonna a serious musical artist, but this takes the cake.

It's long since become obvious that Moore is just another so-called progressive who thinks that society must always be in a state of upheaval.  I get the impression that he really doesn't want us to have the nice things we can't have and Europeans do have because, if we ever actually get them, he's out of business.  Maybe that's not true, but that's the impression.  It seems that he doesn't want to bitch about what's wrong with America and offer solutions to fix what's wrong, he just wants to bitch.

Well, I'm not going to help him bitch for the sake of bitching.  As of today, the link to his Web site that had been on my blog for so long is gone.  

Sorry, Mike.  You've outstayed your welcome. 

A Hot Mess

Michael Moore recently wrote a somewhat incoherent and rambling essay on his Web site (you can access it here) about the thirteen things he likes about America, after having been asked the question by a Canadian on a live stream broadcast on Substack.  And among the things he likes about America - freedom of speech, popular music, pizza - was that we are a "hot mess."  Specifically, we're so messy and disorderly, it gives us a lot to do to improve These States.  As Moore wrote:

"Yes, there’s a lot wrong in America. But that gives us each a chance to fix it. There’s literally something we can do to fix something here every single night and day. Never boring! Never a dull moment! What would we do if we all lived in Denmark?! Ride bikes?"

Uh, yes?  Because I love to ride a bicycle.  I also love clean cities, reliable public transportation, paid parental leave, guaranteed health care, and politicians who don't pander to the lowest common denominator - all of the things Denmark has that we do not.  I know Moore, like I, wants us to be a country like that and he's calling on us to pitch in and make it better - to "save the America we've never had," as he put it - but we've been a hot mess for so long that I've pretty much lost my faith in anyone bringing order to anything in this country!  I'm frustrated enough that I can't get my own house in order, and I'm getting more despondent that my country is out of order!  We shouldn't celebrate that we have so much to do, because that's only because not enough people give a twit - while other countries already have what we lack and they're much more orderly and temperamentally stable because of that!  Mike, all you're doing is getting me down even more when you're trying to cheer me up!

And one more thing - stop stealing my ideas for essays!   

Michael Moore's 'Where To Invade Next'

Michael Moore has decided that we Americans need a new foreign policy.  Rather than invade a country with our military and try to influence the people there only to lose the war, he's advocating that we invade countries with our open minds and take over their ideas.  Hence Where To Invade Next, Moore's most pointed documentary ever.  He "invades" various countries and takes back with him ideas for social programs, policies, and amenities that America is infamous for not having.  And if we do invade this way, as Moore demonstrates, this time we can win.

Moore travels to different nations to observe how they handles education, workers' rights, criminal justice, and other issues.  Although he admits that other countries have other problems like we do, he's not concerned with any of that; he prefers to pick the flowers rather than the weeds (his own phrase).  After watching Where To Invade Next, though, I was enraged to see how much of a field of crabgrass America is - and why we're not doing something about it by considering these better ideas that Moore found elsewhere.  Moore travels to Italy to find nationally mandated paid vacations and shows Italians more productive at their jobs and less stressed.  He goes to Finland and France to show how school students are respected; in Finland they're encouraged to learn through curiosity rather than through rote instruction, and in France they're served real food during lunch break - and in France's poorest communities as well.  From worker's rights in Germany, where a middle class still thrives, to free higher education in Slovenia, a country the size of New Jersey with one-fourth as many people, Moore shows more humane ways in which countries treat their citizens and how they can't imagine anyone being left to fend for themselves . . . as in the United States.

Some of Moore's discoveries are astonishing.  Norway's maximum-security prisons are laid out like country clubs with rehabilitation programs for even of its most dangerous murderers (who work freely with knives in the prison kitchen), and women's rights are constitutionally guaranteed in, of all places, Tunisia.  By the time he gets around to talking about how Iceland got out of the great financial crisis of 2008 by punishing errant bankers instead of bailing them out, you're left asking again and again and again: "Why can't we do this here??"   

The joke in Where To Invade Next is that many of these ideas actually did originate here.  Europeans may boast about having eliminated the death penalty while the U.S. government has not, but Moore notes that his home state of Michigan was the first English-speaking political entity to abolish capital punishment in the world - in 1846.  Workers' vacations, prison reform, some of the ideas the Finns used to make their children the best educated children in the world - all of those ideas were thought up in the United States but were either not implemented correctly (paid vacations are a privilege, not a right, in These States) or never implemented at all.  Moore makes no more than a passing reference to high-speed rail, but he could have also mentioned that magnetic levitation rail - the next big advancement in passenger trains - was invented in the United States but was never pursued here beyond some basic experiments.  (Why not?  Because the government apparently didn't want to fund any program that might produce a transportation system that would cut into the profits of auto companies or airlines.)  The biggest and best reason to watch this entertaining and enlightening movie is to see that Moore isn't invading anyone at all for their ingenuity; like Bob Dylan with rock and roll in Great Britain, Moore's taking a stand and bringing it all back home.

(Tellingly, Moore doesn't "invade" Great Britain for any ideas.  Perhaps that's appropriate; after nearly two decades of Conservative and centrist Labour rule, the British haven't given the world any new ideas, and, ironically, they're too busy trying to implement our bad ideas these days.)

This movie made me want to do something, and I hope more people see it and decide that they want to do something - anything - to, well, make America great again. But not through the two-party system.   Donald Trump may be correct in saying that America is no longer great, but he doesn't notice the real reasons for that and offers no real solutions; Hillary Clinton says that America never stopped being great, but she doesn't notice the low literacy rates and substandard infrastructure (among other things) that contradict her rebuttal to Trump's slogan.   Moore ends Where To Invade Next with a hopeful message that explains how Americans habituated to expecting no change have it in them to change something almost literally overnight (how? well, I don't want to spoil it for you), and if enough people do see this documentary, hope and change can be more than just a mantra.

Let's do more than just occupy a street in Lower Manhattan.

Badgered

Wisconsin's fourteen renegade Democratic state senators have had the pressure ratcheted up against them, with Governor Scott Walker not only threatening them with arrest for contempt if and when they return to the state, but also with fines of $100 - per day - if they don't return to Madison and provide a quorum to vote on Walker's legislation rescinding collective bargaining rights for public employees. No one has suggested that Walker be arrested for impersonating an office.

Meanwhile, Walker has announced that he will be forced to send out formal layoff notices to 1,500 state employees, without the bill's passage, in an effort to save the state approximately $30 million. "Forced?" After weeks of protest, Walker is being "forced" to do what he wanted to do legislatively - screw the middle class to save money? A movement has now started to recall eight key Republican state senators who have supported him. Wisconsin law allows for elected officials who have served at least one year of their current term to be removed from office. Supporters have sixty days to collect anywhere from 15,000 to 21,000 signatures, depending on the district, for each targeted senator. If only three of these eight senators can be recalled, the Democrats will gain control of the state Senate.

Also, Michael Moore joined the protesters in Madison yesterday to rally the faithful and fight Walker's agenda, which includes deep cuts in social services. I don't know if this helps or hurts . . ..