Madonna and Michael Moore are BFF, reports the AP, and were hanging out at the Traverse City Film Festival, where Madonna was showing her documentary about the AIDS crisis in Malawi, I Am Because We Are (trailer above; warning: unrelenting bleakness). Madonna said, "We need, I need, Michael Moore in my life."

Karin Badt's review of the movie on The Huffington Post suggests Moore might not be a positive influence on her:

Here is a deleted scene from the Michael Moore documentary SiCKO. Norway is the best country to live in, let's see how they set that standard.

/How Norway stacks up the world.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/

The Westboro cult is a fascinating real life story about religion gone horribly wrong. If you have never heard of them, you should check out their Wikipedia page for more info, as they are possibly the most hated family in America today. The family consists mostly of lawyers, but today I learned that they finally got what they deserved.

The brokenhearted father of a Marine killed in Iraq won a long-shot legal fight today after a federal jury in Baltimore awarded him nearly $11 million in a verdict against members of a Kansas church who hoisted anti-gay placards at his son's Westminster funeral.

The jury's announcement 24 hours after deliberations first began was met with tears and hugs from the family and supporters of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, whose March 2006 funeral was protested by members of the Westboro Baptist Church with signs including "Thank God for dead soldiers."...Read More on the BaltimoreSun.com...

More info, this time in the form of video, for those still unfamiliar...

First, an hour long BBC Documentary with Louis Theroux who spent two weeks with the Westboro Cult last year.

And Second, Michael Moore having a little bit of fun.

In 2004, a leading critic of the Bush administration issued a stinging critique of the U.S. government's war on terror. He charged that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Bush continued reading to children "a little girl's story about a goat and its butting." The critic insisted that Bush invaded Iraq because of "oil and more business for his private companies." Bush knew Iraq posed no security threat but "the black gold blinded him." As a consequence, "Bush's hands are coverd with blood" and Iraq has become a "quagmire." Yet Bush refuses to change course because of "the enormity of the contracts won by large corporations like Halliburton." Moreover, in the name of fighting terror, Bush has "brought tyranny and the suppression of liberties" through such measures as "the Patriot Act."

Michael Moore? Al Franken? Nancy Pelosi? Actually, it's Bin Laden in his address to the American people on the eve of the 2004 election. In his latest video Bin Laden is at it again, doing his best Michael Moore imitation. Remove the Koranic references and exhortations to convert to Islam and Bin Laden sounds indistinguishable from Moore. He attacks Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the neocons, and he denounces the role of money in politics. (Alas, he forgot to mention that Guantanamo captives get better health care than 9/11 survivors.) Now think of how odd this is. Imagine if Hitler had issued regular missiles during World War II in which he praised a group of Americans and cited from their writings and repeated their arguments with such precision that it would be hard to tell his words from theirs. The reaction in America, I'm sure, would be one of unmitigated outrage!

So what's going on here? My book The Enemy at Home has the full story, but we get a hint of the answer from Bin Laden himself. In his latest video he says that there is a twofold solution to defeating Bush's war on terror. "The first is from our side...and the second is from your side." The first part lies with his jihadists, who he says are doing their part to create the terror. The second part lies with the American left, which is expected to use the terror to demoralize the American people and urge them to retreat. Bin Laden specifically directs our attention to the writings of folks like Noam Chomsky, whom he praises as offering a correct (i.e. Bin Laden's own) view of the situation. So Bin Laden is trying to sway American public opinion by mouthing the arguments of the American left--including calls for campaign finance reform!--and he is also counting on leftists like Moore and Chomsky to convince the American people to retreat from Iraq and give up on Bush's war on terror.

So far the Bin Laden strategy is working beautifully. But given all the leftists and Bush-bashers that Bin Laden has cited by name (Robert Fisk, William Blum, Michael Scheuer, Noam Chomsky), I wonder if Moore is a little upset that Bin Laden isn't giving him enough credit.

Michael Moore is on a media roll. Politicians are talking; SiCKO is expanding to more theaters; he seemed to come out on top of the recent CNN spat that stirred the public; and most importantly he nailed his appearance on the Colbert Report.

Norm over at onegoodmove.org highlighted this clip from Moore's appearance on Hardball.
Chris Matthews enjoys sitting down with controversial figures hoping to pinch out a good sound bite. I thought this one was pretty good.

Many people who use the internet for news and information can sympathize with Michael Moore's anger towards the mainstream media. The last 10 years it seems television news is more and more difficult to watch, and honest voices believe it's hurting America.

As an outsider looking in, it's bizarre watching American news, it's easy to understand why people are starting to believe it's purposely trying to dumb down viewers. Remember the round the clock footage of the Anna Nicole Smith death, even The Daily Show spent 9 minutes covering it... The best 9 minutes of coverage on the topic, says I. You can understand why people out there agree, the Main Stream Media wasn't doing it's job during the lead up to this war (with exception to Knight Ridder) and they still aren't.

Here is an open letter Moore wrote to CNN on July 14th. He is angry with the state of the media, he is not alone, blogyoulikeahurricane.com has written an open to Michael Moore asking him to create a documentary about mainstream media.

The clip below is an excerpt from the July 15th edition of Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz. Huffington explains why Moore i mad. You can watch the full video here, but it's simply another example of crummy TV media... Two talking heads spewing out quick talking points, if you want to save yourself the headache you can read the transcript here.

We have witnessed some pretty intense debates here on NB regarding the American Health Care system. Although I understand most polls are bs, I found this one presented by GallupTV pretty interesting - specifically these numbers:

"Has there been a time in the past year when you could not afford medical care" (to paraphrase)
USA - 32% said Yes
France - %12 said Yes
Canada - 8% said Yes
Food for thought. Watch that Gallup Video here.

Here is Michael Moore speaking with Keith Olbermann on July 12th about his recent tiff with Sanjay Gupta. He also touches on health care and the democrats lack of action.

For an alternative point of view on "Federalization" of Health Care look no further from this George Bush speech from July 10th in front of a very supportive "town hall" audience.

Footage courtesy of Democracynow.org (transcript), Michael Moore testifies to the California Legislature last week.

Also reported by the San Jose Mercury. In the opening few minutes of Michael Moore's speech he talks about the video that inspired him to do Sicko. I posted that clip not too long ago, if you missed it you can watch it here. Below is the portion that features the Moore testimony, the full episode of Democracy Now is available here.

Before "Bowling for Columbine" and "Sicko", Michael Moore had a television series titled "The Awful Truth". I watched this series, I enjoyed how Moore stuck it the man.

Today I learnt Michael Moore secretly donated $12,000 to his harshest critic Jim Kenefick of moorewatch.com, Jim was having financial troubles and his wife was ill.

This reminded me of a classic clip from "The Awful Truth", one where Michael Moore and his documentary crew set out to save a mans life. According to wikipedia it's this segment that inspired Moore to do a documentary about health care. Have a look, no matter how much you hate Michael Moore you must insist he did a good thing here by saving this mans life.

To go along with this story, I would like to point out this sign of the apocalypse. Fox News says that Moore has "Matured" and that he has produced a "Brillant and Uplifting documentary".. Right here, on Fox News.

Michael Moore has a new documentary coming out, naturally it's going to be controversial. An ABC affiliate reports.

You also may have heard about the riff between Fred Thompson and Michael Moore. It all started with this May 2nd article in the National Review. Michael Moore responded with this challenge. Fred might have got the last laugh by sharing this video message.

So the feds are looking into whether Michael Moore violated the travel embargo by taking ailing 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba. I'm more concerned about Moore as an intellectual fraud. Who's going to investigate him for that? I'm not talking about a government inquiry, naturally. Rather, I'm talking about a truth-squad to keep track of Moore's growing mountain of factual and logical whoppers. I better clarify, because otherwise Moore will try to make himself look like an official victim of the government and use that to promote his forthcoming movie. The film is called "Sicko," and no, it's not an autobiography. Rather, it's Moore's expose of what he calls our "profit-oriented" health care system. Isn't it nice to know that Moore himself works for free? And why do all these leftists continue to make pilgrimages to Cuba? I guess because it's the only socialist society left, if you leave out North Korea. Besides, there is still an odor of romance about Cuba, at least in the fevered leftist imagination. I'm sure we're going to be hearing all about the wonderful Cuban health care system. People are oppressed and poor and unemployed but they all get free birth control and hip replacements. None of this is to deny that America's health care system has problems. The main problem is that the hospitals are not accountable. When someone else is paying, there is no incentive to keep the costs down. In short, the problem isn't capitalism but not enough capitalism. Maybe I'm wrong about this, and there are better answers. But we won't get them from Castro, and if his previous movies are any indication, we won't get them from Michael Moore.

"The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently the whole world needs the United Staes to lose the war in Iraq." So writes Gwynne Dyer in a recent book. And here is Michael Moore: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'the enemy.' They are the Revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow--and they will win."

The most striking thing about such sentiments is not their insistence that America will lose. It is their enthusiasm over the prospect of an American defeat. Clearly there is a segment of the left that wants America to lose in Iraq, and perhaps more generally in the war on terror. You can see this not only in what they say but also in how they behave. If you presume that this group wants America to win, then its actions become virtually incomprehensible. On the other hand if you presume that it seeks America's humiliation and defeat, then everything it says and does makes perfect sense. ( have been using this formula to predict the content of New York Times editorials for years.)

But why? I don't think that calling these people traitors accurately describes their motives. The mystery deepens when you realize that, unlike the socialists and the Communists, who at least appealed to liberal principles (egalitarianism, the welfare of the proletariat) the radical Muslims are the most illiberal people in the world. We all know what they would do if they could have their way with Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank or Ted Kennedy. So while the left's sympathy for the enemy during the Cold War was to some degree understandable, the left's campaign on behalf of the Islamic radicals is utterly bewildering.

I think the best explanation for the left's behavior is that not that Michael Moore and his friends hate Bin Laden and his radical allies less, but that they hate Bush and his conservative allies more. These thoughts are explored in my column today on Townhall, which you can read here. The bottom line: The left seems willing to the the enemy abroad succeed in order to defeat what it perceives to be the more-dangerous enemy at home. Us.