MORE ON MOORE



Joseph Farah over at WorldNetDaily reports that "Bowling for Columbine" wasn't even submitted according to the Academy's own rules for documentaries:

While critics of the filmmaker and author have called on the academy to investigate whether Moore fabricated scenes in the movie, it also appears he misled the academy about the film's eligibility on purely technical grounds.



Candidates for Best Documentary feature have unique procedural requirements for eligibility. According to Rule 12, qualification for the 75th Annual Academy Awards in this category demanded that films be exhibited in a commercial theater for paid admission for seven consecutive days in either Los Angeles County or Manhattan prior to Sept. 30, 2002, and that the entire engagement of the theatrical run be displayed in a major newspaper's movie pages.



While "Bowling for Columbine" reportedly had its qualifying run at Laemmle's Fallbrook 7 in Los Angeles County from Monday, Sept. 9, through Sunday, Sept. 15, the required major newspaper ads were never published.

I'm not surprised. Rules don't mean anything to the Left when the rules get in the way of the accepted orthodoxy.

BOY GEORGE



Abdul Kader Faris and Nadia Jergis Mohammed, residents of Baghdad, have named their now 6-week old son after President George Bush (via Fox News):

"He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him," the baby's mother, Nadia Jergis Mohammed, told the Associated Press Television News. "It was George Bush who liberated us; without him it wouldn't have happened."



Baby Bush was born July 11 to Mohammed, 34, and her husband Abdul Kader Faris, 41. His full name is George Bush Abdul Kader Faris Abed El-Hussein.

In what must come as a horror to the Euro-wanks and liberal Democrats, the mother continued by saying:

The tiny boy's mother told APTN that all Iraqis hated Saddam's regime, and that President Bush freed them from his dictatorship.



"If he hadn't done it the sons of Saddam would have ruled us for years," she said.

A picture of the adorable little George Bush can be found here.

MOORE REVISES COLUMBINE LIE IN DVD RELEASE: LIE NOW MORE PALITABLE



Will Al Franken do a book on this big, fat idiot? Unlikely. Via Spinsanity:

In the newly-released DVD version of his Academy Award-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine," filmmaker Michael Moore has altered a caption that he fictitiously inserted into a 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign commercial -- one of a number of misstatements and deceptive arguments we criticized when the film was released last year. Ironically, on the same day the DVD was released, Moore issued a libel threat against his critics on MSNBC's "Buchanan & Press," saying, "Every fact in the film is true. Absolutely every fact in the film is true. And anybody who says otherwise is committing an act of libel."

The DVD will undoubtably be a huge hit in Europe, Seattle, San Francisco, and Berekely.

STUPID IN SEATTLE



I predict that it will be only a matter of time before something idiotic like this happens in the Bay Area. The left-coast liberals have an insatiable appetite for your income (via the Seattle Times):

Foam or no foam, a latte in Seattle may soon come served with an extra dollop of taxation if city voters approve the dime-a-cup tax proposed for espresso drinks on the Sept. 16 primary election ballot.



The espresso-tax initiative � which would raise millions of dollars to go toward preschool and day-care programs � has attracted national attention, much of it incredulous.



Charging an extra tax on Seattle's iconic drink strikes some as weird, like a cheesesteak tax in Philadelphia or a jambalaya surcharge in New Orleans.



"When we heard about it we were just sort of stunned. We thought it was nuts," said Mike Ferguson, spokesman for the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

Remember, it's for the "children."

DENNIS MILLER ON FOX



Comedian Dennis Miller is now filing the occassional report over at Fox News. His debut commentary targets Arianna Huffington, the former SUV-driving candidate for Governor, who lives in a huge mansion, flies around in private jets, all while paying little or no tax:

Huffington is running for governor of California and she just released financial records which show she's paid about $700 in federal taxes and $0 in state taxes over the last two years on her earnings as an author and a lecturer. To put that in perspective, she paid less in taxes than the clerks at Borders who spend their days stacking the remainder shelf with her latest opus.

Let 'er rip, Dennis.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT MARK STEYN IS THE MASTER OF ALL COLUMNISTS



Steyn, as usual, crushes his puny liberal opponents by pointing out the absurdities and hypocracies of the Left (via the Telegraph):

Certainly, Iraq has its problems. Jacques Chirac, en vacances just up the road from me in North Hatley, Quebec, took time out of his three-week holiday to issue a statement on events in Baghdad, where 20 people died on Tuesday. But he didn't bother to interrupt his vacation to issue a statement on events in France, where so many people have died, the funeral homes are standing room only and they're having to store bodies in the freezers at the fruit and veg markets.

WHACK!! But wait! There's more!

There's an old, cynical formula for the weight accorded different disasters on American TV news. It runs something like: one dead American = 10 dead Israelis = 100 dead Russians = 1,000 dead Bangladeshis. But 10,000 French can die, and even the French don't seem to care � or not too much, and not with any great urgency.

WHAM!! And finally...

In Paris this spring, a government official explained to me how Europeans had created a more civilised society than America - socialised healthcare, shorter work weeks, more holidays. We've just seen where that leads: gran'ma turned away from the hospital to die in an airless apartment because junior's sur la plage. M Chirac's somewhat tetchy suggestion that his people should rethink their attitude to the elderly was well taken. But Big Government inevitably diminishes its citizens' capacity to take responsibility, to the point where even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the state should do something about.

You must read Steyn right now.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR THE BUSH-HATERS



Via "Reuters":

Manufacturing in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region surged well beyond Wall Street expectations in August and unemployment lines were shorter last week, lending renewed vitality to hopes for stronger growth ahead.



In a sign that the nation's long-slumping factories may be finally gearing up for a sustained recovery, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said its monthly industrial gauge leapt to 22.1 in August from 8.3 in July. The jump far exceeded economists' expectations of a rise to 9.9.

Geez, what a bummer.