http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/12/16/larry.king.finale
Larry King ends his record-setting run on CNN
Michael Martinez, CNN
December 17, 2010
Larry King: 25 years of making news
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Larry King amassed 6,120 shows in CNN's archives over 25 years
He fought back tears several times and ended his show with "instead of a goodbye, how about so long"
King will next work on special projects for CNN
Hollywood, California (CNN) -- Larry King, America's interviewer-in-chief, ended his record-setting career as CNN's prime-time, talk-show host Thursday night with a serenade from Tony Bennett, a greeting from President Obama and a "Larry King Day" proclamation from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Those guests and others capped his 25-year run behind the microphone with CNN.
"Welcome to the last 'Larry King Live.' It's hard to say that," King said in his opening remarks to his last show.
He was joined on the set by comedian Bill Maher and television host Ryan Seacrest.
On several occasions, King stifled tears, especially when Maher put King in the same company as TV legends Johnny Carson, Steve Allen and Walter Cronkite.
"This is not Larry's funeral," Maher interjected early in the show. "Larry is hopefully going to be in our living rooms for years to come. This is the end of a show, not the end of a man."
Regis Philbin sings to Larry King King wore his signature suspenders -- a pair of red ones with a red-and-white polka-dot tie over a black shirt.
At end of his hourlong broadcast, King became choked up with his final sentences.
"It's not very often in my life that I've been without words," King said. He thanked his staff and producers.
"When I started 25 years ago in a little studio in Washington, D.C., I never thought it would last this long or come to this," King said. "I'm going to do specials on CNN and do radio work ... so you're not going to see me go away, but you're not going to see me on this set any more.
"I don't know what to say, except to you my audience, thank you. And instead of goodbye, how about so long?" King concluded.
His set then went black -- except for a spotlight illuminating his chrome microphone.
In his overall 53 years in broadcasting, King amassed 50,000 interviews, 6,120 shows in CNN's archives, 10 Cable ACE Awards, an Emmy, a Peabody and an entry in the Guinness World Records for having the longest-running show with the same host in the same time slot.
Among the guests on the last show was Schwarzenegger, who appeared by a satellite transmission from the capital of Sacramento. The governor extended congratulations and displayed the written proclamation declaring Thursday as belonging to King.
"Thank you," King said, adding this quip: "and keep this in mind: I'll be back."
King will be working on special projects for CNN.
In a pre-recorded videotaped message, President Obama called King "one of the giants in broadcasting."
"You say all that you do is ask questions, but for generations of Americans, the answers to those questions have surprised us and they have informed us," Obama said.
From a studio in New York, talk show host Regis Philbin tried to engage King in a song, but King was caught off guard.
"I lost the $500 question," King joked.
Joining Philbin in New York was Donald Trump.
"You shouldn't be leaving anything, Larry," Trump said. "Nobody ever did it better."
Also in New York was comic Fred Armisen, who dressed up exactly like King and then started interviewing him.
"Now Larry," Armisen said, "what has been my favorite interview?"
King: "You know you've done so many, it's hard to pick one out."
Armisen: "Larry, what is the most interesting thing about me."
King: "The most interesting about you is you're a little whacko."
Armisen: "What question have you asked more than any?"
King: "Why. You see the best question of all, Lar, is why. Because it can't be answered in one word and it forces the person to think."
Armisen: "Besides holding up my pants, why do I wear suspenders?"
King: "I will not stop wearing them. No matter what I do in life, the suspenders will remain."
News anchors Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, and Brian Williams joined talk show host Barbara Walters in extending farewells. They were also telecasted from a set in New York.
"We are your protégés, your groupies," Sawyer said, giving King a pair of suspenders embroidered with the four guests' and King's names.
"All of us have done heads of state" interviews, Walters said. "No one has done more than you."
After King moved the conversation to Williams, Williams remarked: "You've just done what scores of network executives have been unable to do. You just snatched airtime from Barbara Walters."
Couric read from a poem she wrote for King, in which one verse went:
"You made NAFTA exciting and that's hard to do.
"And you scored the Paris Hilton post-jail interview," Couric recited.
Former president Bill Clinton, who just returned from a visit to Haiti and was in Little Rock, Arkansas, said he admired King's work ethic. Clinton had appeared 28 times on King's show.
"I'm like you," Clinton said in a live feed from Arkansas. "I have to keep working. I don't know if it keeps me young, but it keeps me out of the grave."
Seacrest read from a letter written to King from the Rev. Billy Graham, who wrote: "You will be greatly missed in my evening routine."
Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw joined the Hollywood set toward the end of the show and asked King how he felt.
King turned the question on McGraw: "How am I doing?"
"With grace," McGraw said.
"You never like to be the center of attention," McGraw later said. "You ask short questions." Turning to Seacrest and Maher, he added: "He told me years ago, if it's more than 2 sentences, it's too long."
King was then joined by his wife, Shawn, and two sons, Chance, 11, and Cannon, 10, to hear Tony Bennett sing "Best is Yet to Come" from Lake Charles, Louisiana.
"How about them apples," King said afterwards.
"Thanks for all the great interviews you've given us, Larry," Bennett said.
Chance said he looked forward to seeing more of his father.
Cannon then stole the show momentarily with an uncanny impersonation of his father, as if he were talking to him and then his mother:
"Get in the car. I'm too old for this. I've done this for 50 years," Cannon said, with an entertaining imitation of King's gravelly voice. "Stop doing your makeup. This is the last show. We're going to be late."
When King ended his last show and the airtime moved on to Anderson Cooper for his show, the anchor summarized: "a remarkable moment and a remarkable man."
Showing posts with label Larry King. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Larry King. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
CNN broadcasting legend Larry King to step down
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/29/larry.king.steps.down/
CNN broadcasting legend Larry King to step down
June 29, 2010
'I would like to end Larry King Live'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
King has interviewed every U.S. president since Richard Nixon
By one count, King has interviewed more than 50,000 people
Says Nelson Mandela was most extraordinary person he has met
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Larry King, the iconic TV interviewer, will step aside from hosting of his prime time CNN show later this year, he said Tuesday.
King, 76, made the announcement with a short posting to his Twitter account, citing his desire to spend more time with his wife and young children.
"I want to share some personal news with you. 25 years ago, I sat across this table from New York Governor Mario Cuomo for the first broadcast of Larry King Live. Now, decades later, I talked to the guys here at CNN and I told them I would like to end Larry King Live, the nightly show, this fall and CNN has graciously accepted, giving me more time for my wife and I to get to the kids' little league games," King wrote.
"I'm incredibly proud that we recently made the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest running show with the same host in the same time slot. With this chapter closing I'm looking forward to the future and what my next chapter will bring, but for now it's time to hang up my nightly suspenders."
"He will end his run with Larry King Live on his own terms, sometime this fall," said Jon Klein, president of CNNUS. "Larry is a beloved member of the CNN family and will continue to contribute to our air with periodic specials."
During his Tuesday night show, King told guest Bill Maher "there's a freedom" that came with his decision.
"I want to expand," King told the comedian. "I want to do other things that I haven't been able to do."
The idea to step aside came to him after he completed his week-long 25th anniversary celebration, he said.
"I'm thinking to myself, I've done 50,000 interviews," he said. "I'm never going to top this."
King said he would exit the host's chair "maximum November." But, he told Maher, "Then I'll be doing specials. You'll see me in other places."
Asked whom he wants to replace him, King cited "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest. "He's curious, he's interesting, he's likable," King said. "If he has a great interest in politics, I would recommend him. But I'm sure there's a ton of people who could do it. Come on. It's Q and A."
"It's not easy," Maher responded. "That's the trick."
In a telephone call to the program, former first lady Nancy Reagan told King, "I couldn't let you do this without my calling you. You didn't call me and ask my permission."
King said he had made no plans about his future, but added, "I'm looking forward -- I feel open to so many things. Life will be better."
ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer chimed in: "I just want to say, Larry, what a monument of vitality you have built for all of us and I cannot wait to see your specials because everybody in the world wants to talk to you and to see you do them in a concentrated way -- when you choose to do them it's going to be a thrill."
King's decision followed months of media speculation about his future as his ratings declined.
King was hosting a nationally syndicated overnight radio talk show when CNN founder Ted Turner persuaded him in 1985 to try his interviewing skills on cable TV.
"All I had to do was everything I'd been doing since I was a kid," he wrote in his best-selling 2009 autobiography, "My Remarkable Journey."
His gentle but persistent interview style drew big-name guests, and "Larry King Live" became a place for major personalities to break news. Billionaire Ross Perot used the show to announce he was running for president in 1992. And the show was the setting for the historic NAFTA debate between then-Vice President Al Gore and Perot in 1993, a debate that for more than a decade was the highest-rated program in cable history.
King, who was initially based in Washington, became a mandatory stop for politicians. Over his career, he conducted sit-down interviews with every U.S. president since Richard Nixon.
His program was sometimes a place of real-time diplomacy. In 1995, he hosted a program on the Middle East Peace process with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
His suspenders, large glasses and vintage desk microphone are as recognizable as the countless celebrities lined up to have an intimate chat with King while the world listened in.
And there have been a lot of guests, including Marlon Brando, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Paul McCartney, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, L. Ron Hubbard, Madonna and Martin Luther King, Jr.
After extensive coverage over many months of O.J. Simpson's trial for murder, Simpson himself called the program the night he was acquitted.
King says that Nelson Mandela was the most extraordinary person he has met.
In his autobiography, King confessed that he never plans a question, that he likes to be surprised by the answers. He says he asks his interview subjects to explain things.
"All I do is ask questions," he wrote. "Short, simple questions."
Born in Brooklyn, Larry Zeiger moved to Miami, Florida, in 1957. He began his radio career that year with a new name, Larry King. His first television job was hosting a local interview show in Miami in 1960.
While some critics have called King a throwback, he embraced the online social networking tool Twitter. He had 1,648,920 Twitter followers as of Tuesday.
On Monday, King used Twitter to respond to a fan's question about the highlights of his career:
"Winning 2 Peabody Awards & an Emmy. Perot-Gore Debate a show highlight," King tweeted.
In addition to earning the Emmy and two Peabody Awards, he was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1992.
King also has an extensive film resume, having played himself in 20 movies.
King has suffered a decline in ratings. His show, which was once on top, sometimes has come in fourth among cable talk shows during the 9 p.m. hour.
King faced highly publicized personal problems this year. He and his eighth wife, Shawn Southwick-King, filed for divorce in April, but reconciled weeks later.
King has repeatedly talked about the importance of spending time with his children, including his two boys from his marriage with Southwick-King.
"I'd love to see Chance and Cannon talk about how their Dad took them to play when they were kids," he wrote in his autobiography.
After suffering a heart attack in 1987, King underwent quintuple bypass heart surgery. A year later, he created the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, which he said was to help those "not so lucky" to have medical insurance. In 2009, the foundation paid for 287 life-saving surgeries.
And through it all, the interviews continued.
"Only God failed to show up for a Larry King interview," said Tom Johnson, who was CNN's chairman for more than a decade, ending in 2001.
"Larry has been my close friend since I joined CNN in 1990," Johnson said. "We never had a single disagreement in my 11 years as CEO, although he never thought much of my suggestions for more shows about North Korea."
Is there anyone he would like to interview that he hasn't so far? For years, he joked in his autobiography, he answered that question "God."
"And my first question would be, 'Do you have a son? Because there's a lot riding on the answer.'"
CNN's Alan Duke contributed to this story.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
YouTube Video of the Week
Oliver Stone and Jesse Ventura kicking ass on Larry King
Part One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYSmb3ZaMTM
Part Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XACSElgWQKg
Part One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYSmb3ZaMTM
Part Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XACSElgWQKg
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Who are the actual "crazy" people in American politics?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/04/crazy/index.html
Thursday, Mar 4, 2010
Who are the actual "crazy" people in American politics?
By Glenn Greenwald
My Salon colleague, Mark Benjamin, writes about last night's Larry King Show -- featuring a debate between Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson and GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann -- and does so by repeatedly branding Grayson as being every bit as "crazy" Bachmann. Beginning with the article's headline ("Bachmann and Grayson: A diary of crazy") to his sarcastic description of "these two towering intellects" to his claim that Grayson and Bachmann are "the Candy Stripers of Crazy of their parties," Benjamin denigrates Grayson's intellect and mental health by depicting him -- with virtually no cited basis -- as the Democratic mirror image of Bachmann's rabid, out-of-touch extremism. This view of Grayson has become a virtual Washington platitude, solidified by The New York Times' David Herszenhorn's dismissal of Grayson as "the latest incarnation of what in the American political idiom is known as a wing nut."
There are so many things wrong this analysis. To begin with, it's a classic case of false journalistic objectivity: the compulsion of journalists to posit equivalencies between the "two sides" regardless of whether they are actually equal (since I'm calling a GOP member of Congress "crazy," I now have to find a Democrat to so label). Benjamin cites numerous Bachmann statements that demonstrate her penchant for bizarre claims (and there are many he omitted), but points to only one Grayson statement: his famous floor speech in which he claimed: "If you get sick in America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly." One could reasonably object to that statement as unduly inflammatory rhetoric, but Grayson was one of the only members of Congress willing to forcefully connect health care policy to the actual lives (and deaths) of American citizens. There's nothing crazy about dramatically emphasizing that casual connection; far crazier is to ignore it.
But more important, Grayson has managed to have more positive impact on more substantive matters than any House freshman in a long time (indeed, he makes more of a positive impact than the vast majority of members of Congress generally). He has tapped into his background as successful litigator and his Harvard degrees in law and public policy to shape public discussion on a wide range of issues -- from his highly effective grilling of the Fed Vice Chair regarding massive, secretive Fed activities and aggressive investigation of the fraud surrounding the Wall Street bailout to his unparalleled work exposing defense contractor corruption, his efforts to warn of the unconstitutional underpinnings of anti-ACORN legislation (a federal court proved him right), his creative (if not wise) legislative proposals to limit corporate influence in politics, and his successful, bipartisan crusade to bring more transparency to the Fed. What conceivable basis exists for disparaging as "crazy" one of the few members of Congress who is both willing and able to bring attention to some of the most severe corruption and worst excesses of our political establishment?
The most significant point highlighted by this attack on Grayson as "crazy" is that, in our political discourse, the two party establishments typically define what is "sane," and anyone outside of those parameters is, by definition, "crazy." "Crazy" is the way that political orthodoxies are enforced and the leadership of the two political parties preserved as the only viable choices for Sane People to embrace. Anyone who tiptoes outside of those establishment parameters -- from Ron Paul on the right to Dennis Kucinich on the left, to say nothing of Further Left advocates -- is, more or less by definition, branded as "crazy" by all Serious, mainstream people.
The converse is even more perverse: the Washington establishment -- which has endorsed countless insane policies, wrought so much destruction on every level, and has provoked the intense hatred of the American citizenry across the ideological spectrum -- is the exclusive determinant for what is "sane." As long as one remains snugly within its confines, one will be shielded from the "crazy" appellation regardless of how many genuinely crazy views one embraces. Positing proximity to the Washington Establishment -- of all things -- as the Hallmark of Political Sanity is about as irrational as it gets, yet that continues to be the barometer of Political Normalcy.
Just consider who is supported and embraced by those who slap the "crazy" label on the forehead of every perceived dissident. Hillary Clinton -- the ultimate embodiment of Democratic Party Seriousness and Sanity -- supported the invasion of Iraq by warning of scary weapons and Al Qaeda ties that did not exist ("Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members"), and she spent her campaign beating her chest and doing things like threatening to "totally obliterate" Iran. While in office, Barack Obama has endorsed putting people in cages with no charges, assassinating American citizens with no due process, eavesdropping on Americans en masse with little oversight, increasing military spending beyond its shockingly inflated levels while searching for ways to cut Medicaid and Social Security, and blocking judicial review of presidential felonies and war crimes on the ground that those criminal acts constitute vital "state secrets" and must be protected. Most Serious, Sane Democrats have supported all of that insanity.
Meanwhile, the GOP establishment from top to bottom spent a decade cheering on torture, disappearances, abductions, unprovoked wars, chronic presidential lawbreaking and truly sick McCarthyite witch hunts. Both of the Sane Parties conspired to transfer, with little accountability, massive amounts of public wealth to the very Wall Street firms which virtually destroyed the entire world economy, while standing by and doing very little about tragic levels of joblessness or future risk of Wall-Street-caused financial crises; kept us waging war for a full decade in multiple countries (while threatening others) even as we near the precipice of bankruptcy, the hallmarks of under-developed nation status and the disappearance of the social safety net; and are so captive to the corporate interests which own the Government that they viciously compete with one another over who can be a more loyal servant to those interests.
While all of that is happening, those whom all Serious, Sane people agree are Crazy -- people like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul and Alan Grayson -- vehemently oppose most if not all of that and try to find ways to expand the realm of legitimate debate and political alliances beyond the suffocating stranglehold of those responsible. So who exactly is Crazy? That Grayson sometimes treats our political discourse as the ludicrous freak show that it is, rather than pretending that it is substantive, sober and Serious, is evidence of his sanity -- not the opposite.
Are there positions held by people like Kucinich, Paul and Grayson that are fairly characterized as radical and wrong? Certainly: that's true for everyone, most of all the mavens of the Washington Establishment whose followers claim a monopoly on Sanity and demonize as Crazy all who deviate. But between establishment crazies and those who have been marginalized by them as Crazy, the former have wrought far more damage than the latter. It's not even a close call. There are many legitimate ways to measure Craziness; the extent to which one deviates from the orthodoxies of the political establishment is most assuredly not one of them. If anything, given the character and record of the American political establishment, such deviation is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for actual sanity.
Thursday, Mar 4, 2010
Who are the actual "crazy" people in American politics?
By Glenn Greenwald
My Salon colleague, Mark Benjamin, writes about last night's Larry King Show -- featuring a debate between Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson and GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann -- and does so by repeatedly branding Grayson as being every bit as "crazy" Bachmann. Beginning with the article's headline ("Bachmann and Grayson: A diary of crazy") to his sarcastic description of "these two towering intellects" to his claim that Grayson and Bachmann are "the Candy Stripers of Crazy of their parties," Benjamin denigrates Grayson's intellect and mental health by depicting him -- with virtually no cited basis -- as the Democratic mirror image of Bachmann's rabid, out-of-touch extremism. This view of Grayson has become a virtual Washington platitude, solidified by The New York Times' David Herszenhorn's dismissal of Grayson as "the latest incarnation of what in the American political idiom is known as a wing nut."
There are so many things wrong this analysis. To begin with, it's a classic case of false journalistic objectivity: the compulsion of journalists to posit equivalencies between the "two sides" regardless of whether they are actually equal (since I'm calling a GOP member of Congress "crazy," I now have to find a Democrat to so label). Benjamin cites numerous Bachmann statements that demonstrate her penchant for bizarre claims (and there are many he omitted), but points to only one Grayson statement: his famous floor speech in which he claimed: "If you get sick in America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly." One could reasonably object to that statement as unduly inflammatory rhetoric, but Grayson was one of the only members of Congress willing to forcefully connect health care policy to the actual lives (and deaths) of American citizens. There's nothing crazy about dramatically emphasizing that casual connection; far crazier is to ignore it.
But more important, Grayson has managed to have more positive impact on more substantive matters than any House freshman in a long time (indeed, he makes more of a positive impact than the vast majority of members of Congress generally). He has tapped into his background as successful litigator and his Harvard degrees in law and public policy to shape public discussion on a wide range of issues -- from his highly effective grilling of the Fed Vice Chair regarding massive, secretive Fed activities and aggressive investigation of the fraud surrounding the Wall Street bailout to his unparalleled work exposing defense contractor corruption, his efforts to warn of the unconstitutional underpinnings of anti-ACORN legislation (a federal court proved him right), his creative (if not wise) legislative proposals to limit corporate influence in politics, and his successful, bipartisan crusade to bring more transparency to the Fed. What conceivable basis exists for disparaging as "crazy" one of the few members of Congress who is both willing and able to bring attention to some of the most severe corruption and worst excesses of our political establishment?
The most significant point highlighted by this attack on Grayson as "crazy" is that, in our political discourse, the two party establishments typically define what is "sane," and anyone outside of those parameters is, by definition, "crazy." "Crazy" is the way that political orthodoxies are enforced and the leadership of the two political parties preserved as the only viable choices for Sane People to embrace. Anyone who tiptoes outside of those establishment parameters -- from Ron Paul on the right to Dennis Kucinich on the left, to say nothing of Further Left advocates -- is, more or less by definition, branded as "crazy" by all Serious, mainstream people.
The converse is even more perverse: the Washington establishment -- which has endorsed countless insane policies, wrought so much destruction on every level, and has provoked the intense hatred of the American citizenry across the ideological spectrum -- is the exclusive determinant for what is "sane." As long as one remains snugly within its confines, one will be shielded from the "crazy" appellation regardless of how many genuinely crazy views one embraces. Positing proximity to the Washington Establishment -- of all things -- as the Hallmark of Political Sanity is about as irrational as it gets, yet that continues to be the barometer of Political Normalcy.
Just consider who is supported and embraced by those who slap the "crazy" label on the forehead of every perceived dissident. Hillary Clinton -- the ultimate embodiment of Democratic Party Seriousness and Sanity -- supported the invasion of Iraq by warning of scary weapons and Al Qaeda ties that did not exist ("Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members"), and she spent her campaign beating her chest and doing things like threatening to "totally obliterate" Iran. While in office, Barack Obama has endorsed putting people in cages with no charges, assassinating American citizens with no due process, eavesdropping on Americans en masse with little oversight, increasing military spending beyond its shockingly inflated levels while searching for ways to cut Medicaid and Social Security, and blocking judicial review of presidential felonies and war crimes on the ground that those criminal acts constitute vital "state secrets" and must be protected. Most Serious, Sane Democrats have supported all of that insanity.
Meanwhile, the GOP establishment from top to bottom spent a decade cheering on torture, disappearances, abductions, unprovoked wars, chronic presidential lawbreaking and truly sick McCarthyite witch hunts. Both of the Sane Parties conspired to transfer, with little accountability, massive amounts of public wealth to the very Wall Street firms which virtually destroyed the entire world economy, while standing by and doing very little about tragic levels of joblessness or future risk of Wall-Street-caused financial crises; kept us waging war for a full decade in multiple countries (while threatening others) even as we near the precipice of bankruptcy, the hallmarks of under-developed nation status and the disappearance of the social safety net; and are so captive to the corporate interests which own the Government that they viciously compete with one another over who can be a more loyal servant to those interests.
While all of that is happening, those whom all Serious, Sane people agree are Crazy -- people like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul and Alan Grayson -- vehemently oppose most if not all of that and try to find ways to expand the realm of legitimate debate and political alliances beyond the suffocating stranglehold of those responsible. So who exactly is Crazy? That Grayson sometimes treats our political discourse as the ludicrous freak show that it is, rather than pretending that it is substantive, sober and Serious, is evidence of his sanity -- not the opposite.
Are there positions held by people like Kucinich, Paul and Grayson that are fairly characterized as radical and wrong? Certainly: that's true for everyone, most of all the mavens of the Washington Establishment whose followers claim a monopoly on Sanity and demonize as Crazy all who deviate. But between establishment crazies and those who have been marginalized by them as Crazy, the former have wrought far more damage than the latter. It's not even a close call. There are many legitimate ways to measure Craziness; the extent to which one deviates from the orthodoxies of the political establishment is most assuredly not one of them. If anything, given the character and record of the American political establishment, such deviation is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for actual sanity.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Ventura Delivers Some 9/11 Truth On Larry King Live

Ventura Delivers Some 9/11 Truth On Larry King Live
“Why is it off limits to question and ask questions?”
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009
Former Governor of Minnesota, ex-Navy SEAL and retired pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura raised some important unanswered questions regarding the 9/11 attacks in an interview with Larry King on CNN last night.
Ventura spoke about and gave a sneak peak of his new Tru TV show, Conspiracy Theory, set to air Wednesday night.
Footage from the 9/11 based episode showed Ventura attempting to gain access to the infamous hanger 17 at Kennedy International Airport where debris from the World Trade Center is kept away from public scrutiny.
“The 9/11 conspiracy is simply that the government hasn’t been truthful with us.” Ventura stated.
“I mean, Larry, a couple weeks ago, the head of the 9/11 Commission legal, I believe former attorney general Farmer from New Jersey, came out publicly and stated unequivocally that at some point the government decided that the American citizens would not hear the truth about 9/11. I find that very disturbing.” he continued.
“I find it very difficult that those buildings could fall at the speed of gravity without being assisted in some way. And I used to do demolition for a living. And how could those buildings fall as fast as I used to freefall out of an airplane?”
“If you took a billiard ball and dropped it the height of the twin towers and you just merely stopped it and started it every floor in freefall, it would take over a minute and a half to reach the ground. The buildings were down in ten seconds.”
“So you think there was something on the inside.” King replied.
“Here is the big point I make on 9/11,” Ventura asserted.
“Why is it off limits to talk about it? Why is it off limits to question and ask questions? You know when I went through Navy SEAL training I was taught in demolition that there is no dumb question, that if you don’t understand it then it is not dumb. That’s how I have lived my life and I have a lot of questions that the government refuses to answer.”
King also asked Ventura his opinion on the troop escalation in Afghanistan:
“It angers me because it reminds me a great deal of Vietnam.” Ventura answered.
“I mean, the Russians couldn’t beat them, the English couldn’t beat them over there. You are not going to get a military solution in my opinion in Afghanistan. It’s impossible, yet we’re just like in Vietnam, are we propping up a phony government, like we did in Vietnam?”
“Remember, the United States blocked free elections in Vietnam. Had there been elections in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min would have won in a landslide. Well is this the same thing going on?”
“I would pull out of Afghanistan and I would pull out of Iraq and I would bring our boys home. It is our job to protect their safety, and not be sending them off to wars. What are we accomplishing there? I look at it from a personal point of view. I don’t see how these two wars have helped Jesse Ventura or the USA one bit, other than to drain our economy.” Ventura fumed.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Prejean made 7 other sex tapes, dozens of nude pics


By Soraya Roberts
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, November 13th 2009
Didn't you mean biggest mistakes, plural, of your life when you apologized for that sex tape, Carrie Prejean? Seven more have been uncovered, says a report.
It looks like Carrie Prejean spoke too soon when she called her recent sex tape the "biggest mistake" of her life.
Either the seven other sex tapes that have just surfaced aren't actually salacious, or else the former Miss California has a little more to atone for.
RadarOnline.com has just learned that the dethroned beauty queen has no less than eight sex tapes and 30 naked photos to her name. As in her previous sex tape, she performs solo on each video.
Some of the new sexy photographs that have been unearthed Prejean allegedly took herself, of own reflection in a mirror, alternately topless and completely naked.
Prejean created a national controversy earlier this year when she spoke out against gay marriage during the Miss USA pageant. Her stance put her at odds with the pageant committee, which she later sued for libel, claiming she had been discriminated against for her religious views.
Prejean settled out of court on November 3 after her first sex tape surfaced. On Wednesday she threatened to walk off Larry King Live when the host questioned her about the deal.
Perhaps she can chalk up the moment as another error to add to her growing list.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Michael Moore: Capitalism has proven it's failed

Michael Moore: Capitalism has proven it's failed
Story Highlights
Filmmaker Michael Moore takes on capitalism in his latest documentary
Moore says Wall Street took our money and made bets with it
Moore: Richest 1 percent in America are wealthier than bottom 95 percent combined
September 24, 2009
(CNN) -- It has been 20 years since filmmaker Michael Moore took on General Motors in "Roger and Me." He's still sticking it to big business for what he sees as the deliberate shafting of the little guy.
Filmmaker Michael Moore says Wall Street created a "invisible virtual casino" with people's money.
His new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," opened Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles, California, and opens nationwide next week.
Moore talked with CNN's Larry King about whether capitalism is key to the American dream or the cause of an American nightmare. The following is an edited version of the interview.
Larry King: You describe this movie as the culmination of all the films you've made. Does that mean this is it?
Michael Moore: No. I hope not. It means that, for 20 years, as you said, I've been doing this. I started out by showing people what General Motors was up to and how this was a company that was making a lot of bad decisions and it wasn't good for the company nor for the country. That was 20 years ago.
And since then, I've covered a number of issues and different things. But it all seems to come back to this one issue of "follow the money."
Who's got the money? And whoever has the money has the power. And right now, in America, tonight, Larry, the richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.
King: You're in that 1 percent, though?
Moore: I don't think I'm in that 1 percent, but I make documentary films. But I mean, obviously, I do well because my films have done well. But, you know, even if I were, I think it's my responsibility -- my moral duty that if I've done well, that I have to make sure that everybody else.
King: Does well too or has a chance?
Moore: Well, has at least a chance but that -- and that the pie is divided fairly amongst the people and not just a few people get the majority of the loot and everybody else has to struggle for the crumbs.
King: Are you saying capitalism is a failure?
Moore: Yes. Capitalism. Yes. Well, I don't have to say it. Capitalism, in the last year, has proven that it's failed. All the basic tenets of what we've talked about the free market, about free enterprise and competition just completely fell apart. As soon as they lost, essentially, our money, they came running to the federal government for a bailout -- for welfare, for socialism. And I thought the basic principle of capitalism was that it's a sink-or-swim situation. And those who do well, the cream rises to the top and, you know, those who invest their money wrongly or, you know, don't run their business the right way, then they don't do well. Watch Moore talk about corporate greed
And if you run your business the wrong way, where does it say that you or I or anybody watching this has to bail them out?
I understand why everybody seemed to get behind it, because a lot of people were afraid, because these people down on Wall Street had taken our money and made bets with it. I mean, they essentially created this invisible virtual casino with people's money -- people's pension funds, people's 401(k)s. They took this money and they made bets. And then they made bets on the bets. And then they took out insurance policies on the bets. And then they took out insurance against the insurance -- the credit default swaps.
King: You started filming before Lehman Brothers went belly up.
Moore: Yes.
King: The stock market tanked. Now, how did the events, as it occurred, affect the movie? Did it change gears?
Moore: It didn't change in terms of what I was looking at, but it did, obviously, offer probably the best example of why this is a system that is really corrupt at its core -- corrupt because it doesn't, it isn't run with democratic -- small "d" -- democratic principles. There's no democracy in our economy. You and I and the people watching have no say in how this economy is run. The upper 1 percent, the people down on Wall Street, the corporate executives, they're the people that control this economy.
King: And they don't want to see the economy do well? They don't want to see people...
Moore: Oh, they sure do.
King: Don't they want people to make money so they can buy the products? I mean it's silly if they want people unemployed?
Moore: Oddly enough, yes.
King: Why?
Moore: I'll tell you why. Because your employees are your biggest expense. And, as you've noticed in the last few months, as the unemployment rate has gone up, so has the Dow Jones. Now, you'd think, you know, that Wall Street would respond with "Oh, my God, unemployment is going up, you know, this is bad for business." But the reality is, is that Wall Street likes that. They like it when companies fire people because immediately the bottom line is going to show a larger profit.
King: Are you saying the investor is more important than the employee?
Moore: Yes. The investor -- and the investor, these days, they want the short-term, quick profit and they want it now. But in the long-term, here's what happened. When I was on this show 20 years ago, 20 years ago this week, I was here with "Roger and Me".
King: I remember.
Moore: And General Motors, that year, made a profit of $4 billion. And yet they had just laid off another 30,000 people. Now, why would you lay people off when you're making a record profit of $4 billion?
I mean that was totally insane. But they thought, well, you know, we can make a bigger profit. Maybe we can make $4.2 billion if we move those jobs to Mexico. And so they're always, you know, we can make a little bit more money if we do this. By firing those workers, Larry, they got rid of the very people who buy their cars.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Ventura: "Coleman's always been a hypocrite"

Jesse Ventura: "Coleman's always been a hypocrite"
By Emily Kaiser
Tuesday, May. 12 2009
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura appeared on CNN's Larry King Live to talk about President Obama, the GOP, and the Minnesota U.S. Senate race.
No surprise: Ventura didn't hold back on anything, calling Coleman a hypocrite, George W. Bush the worst president of his lifetime and then offering to waterboard Dick Cheney. He even made a pitch to be appointed ambassador to Cuba.
King asked Ventura if he was ashamed of his state's recount process, but Ventura was quick to point the blame at Coleman for continuing to drag out the election. Ventura beat Coleman in his race for governor in 1998.
"He never does what he says. He said on Election Night when he won that Franken should drop out and he should be the senator. Well, the same should hold true after the recount."
King also discusses interrogation techniques with Ventura. The former guv says he has been waterboarded as part of his military training and called it torture.
"It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning... I'll put it to you this way: You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."
Monday, July 16, 2007
Dr. Gupta's Bias
http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/dr_guptas_bias?tx=3
Dr. Gupta's Bias
Submitted by Bill Scher on July 11, 2007
Michael Moore and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta faced off yesterday on Larry King Live, following Moore's on-air criticism of Gupta's anti-SiCKO piece which accused Moore of "fudg[ing] some facts."
Moore, on his website, is ably taking Gupta to task on the factual points.
And as Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar notes, during Larry King Live, “Moore cites his source for every statistic offered ... yet Gupta ignores it, all of it, including Moore restating, again, that all of this was available in this email [sent by Moore’s team to CNN] from June 28, 2007.”
But what was most striking was when Gupta showed the heart of his bias, a bias against having our government guarantee universal health care.
Gupta says to Moore, “You criticize the government so soundly. But you're willing to hand over one of our most precious commodities, our health care in this country, to the government.”
Moore rebutted, “I actually love our government ... It does a great job of administrating Social Security ... the problem is who we've put in power who holds office.”
Then in response, Gupta made a completely misleading attack on Medicare:
Michael, one of the best examples of health care, at least some sort of universal health care, would be Medicare. I think you would agree with that.
It's going to go bankrupt by 2019. It's going to be $28 trillion in debt by 2075...would you say that this is going to be still a working system 20 years from now?
Is this some evidence that our government can’t be directed to fix our broken health care system? Economist-blogger Dean Baker doesn’t think so:
CNN’s health care analyst is now telling people that Medicare is going bankrupt. What does this mean?
Medicare’s costs are projected to exceed its revenue and drain the surplus from its trust fund in a bit over a decade, but this has been true at several points in the past. Did Congress tell tens of millions of beneficiaries to get lost? No, Congress appropriated the money needed to keep the program going...
...If Dr. Gupta meant to imply that Medicare, as a government program is uniquely inefficient, then he is way off the mark. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Table 13) per beneficiary costs have risen in nominal dollars by 519.5 percent since 1980. By contrast, the cost per enrollee of private insurance has risen by 676.6 percent over this same period.
That gets at the heart of Gupta’s bias.
The pressures on Medicare’s finances are not the fault of our government, but of skyrocketing health care costs across the board.
Yet Gupta’s cherry-picks his facts to attack a government guarantee of universal care, and raise the prospect of dismantling Medicare, just like how conservatives sought to do the same with Social Security.
Health care costs are a major problem, but as Baker notes, “Eliminating Medicare would raise health care costs, not lower them.”
Whereas directing our government to ensure universal health care, as Medicare already does for seniors, can contain costs by pooling risk and maximizing bargaining power.
In the Health Care for America plan -- a Medicare-style public plan for those under 65 which would compete with private insurance – policy architect Jacob Hacker writes:
Because Medicare and the Health Care for America Plan would bargain jointly for lower prices and join forces to improve quality, they would have enormous combined leverage to hold down costs. Cross-national evidence and the historical experience of Medicare show conclusively that concentrated purchasing power is by far the most effective means by which to restrain the price of medical services...
...Other nations spend much less for the same medical services than we do because their insurance systems bargain for lower prices. And though Medicare covers less than a seventh of the U.S. population, it has still controlled costs substantially better than the private sector, especially since the introduction of payment controls in the mid-1980s.
When was the last time you saw a mainstream media report that merely raised the possibility that our government’s Medicare plan does a better job at containing costs than private insurance companies?
There is one thing said by Gupta that I have no disagreement with: “It makes it very hard to advance the argument if you're not getting the numbers right.”
Dr. Gupta's Bias
Submitted by Bill Scher on July 11, 2007
Michael Moore and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta faced off yesterday on Larry King Live, following Moore's on-air criticism of Gupta's anti-SiCKO piece which accused Moore of "fudg[ing] some facts."
Moore, on his website, is ably taking Gupta to task on the factual points.
And as Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar notes, during Larry King Live, “Moore cites his source for every statistic offered ... yet Gupta ignores it, all of it, including Moore restating, again, that all of this was available in this email [sent by Moore’s team to CNN] from June 28, 2007.”
But what was most striking was when Gupta showed the heart of his bias, a bias against having our government guarantee universal health care.
Gupta says to Moore, “You criticize the government so soundly. But you're willing to hand over one of our most precious commodities, our health care in this country, to the government.”
Moore rebutted, “I actually love our government ... It does a great job of administrating Social Security ... the problem is who we've put in power who holds office.”
Then in response, Gupta made a completely misleading attack on Medicare:
Michael, one of the best examples of health care, at least some sort of universal health care, would be Medicare. I think you would agree with that.
It's going to go bankrupt by 2019. It's going to be $28 trillion in debt by 2075...would you say that this is going to be still a working system 20 years from now?
Is this some evidence that our government can’t be directed to fix our broken health care system? Economist-blogger Dean Baker doesn’t think so:
CNN’s health care analyst is now telling people that Medicare is going bankrupt. What does this mean?
Medicare’s costs are projected to exceed its revenue and drain the surplus from its trust fund in a bit over a decade, but this has been true at several points in the past. Did Congress tell tens of millions of beneficiaries to get lost? No, Congress appropriated the money needed to keep the program going...
...If Dr. Gupta meant to imply that Medicare, as a government program is uniquely inefficient, then he is way off the mark. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Table 13) per beneficiary costs have risen in nominal dollars by 519.5 percent since 1980. By contrast, the cost per enrollee of private insurance has risen by 676.6 percent over this same period.
That gets at the heart of Gupta’s bias.
The pressures on Medicare’s finances are not the fault of our government, but of skyrocketing health care costs across the board.
Yet Gupta’s cherry-picks his facts to attack a government guarantee of universal care, and raise the prospect of dismantling Medicare, just like how conservatives sought to do the same with Social Security.
Health care costs are a major problem, but as Baker notes, “Eliminating Medicare would raise health care costs, not lower them.”
Whereas directing our government to ensure universal health care, as Medicare already does for seniors, can contain costs by pooling risk and maximizing bargaining power.
In the Health Care for America plan -- a Medicare-style public plan for those under 65 which would compete with private insurance – policy architect Jacob Hacker writes:
Because Medicare and the Health Care for America Plan would bargain jointly for lower prices and join forces to improve quality, they would have enormous combined leverage to hold down costs. Cross-national evidence and the historical experience of Medicare show conclusively that concentrated purchasing power is by far the most effective means by which to restrain the price of medical services...
...Other nations spend much less for the same medical services than we do because their insurance systems bargain for lower prices. And though Medicare covers less than a seventh of the U.S. population, it has still controlled costs substantially better than the private sector, especially since the introduction of payment controls in the mid-1980s.
When was the last time you saw a mainstream media report that merely raised the possibility that our government’s Medicare plan does a better job at containing costs than private insurance companies?
There is one thing said by Gupta that I have no disagreement with: “It makes it very hard to advance the argument if you're not getting the numbers right.”
'SiCKO' Truth Squad Sets CNN Straight -- Again
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/news/article.php?id=10026
July 11th, 2007 8:44 pm
'SiCKO' Truth Squad Sets CNN Straight -- Again
[In response to Sanjay Gupta's appearance with Michael Moore on the July 10th broadcast of Larry King Live (VIDEO: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)]
GUPTA: "Well, I mean, he pulls $251 from this BBC unsourced report ... Where you pulled the $251 number was a BBC report, which, by the way, stated that the per capita spending in the United States was $5,700. You chose not to use the $5,700 from one report and chose to go to a totally different report and you're sort of cherry picking data from different reports ... Well, why didn't you use the $5,700 number from the BBC report?"
THE TRUTH:
Actually, the number 'Sicko' cited for per capita Cuban spending on health care - $251, a number widely cited by the BBC and other outlets - comes from the United Nations Human Development Report, helpfully linked on our website. Here it is again:
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/indicators/52.html.
That UN report does list American health care spending as only $5,700, but it's a few years old. Since then, the U.S. government has updated it's projections for health care spending, to $7,498 in 2007. So we used that number. It's the most recent, and comes right from the Department of Health and Human Services. If the Cuban government gave a figure on 2007 projected health spending, we'd have used it.
GUPTA: "Medicare is going to go bankrupt by 2019, and is going to be $28 trillion in debt by 2075 ... Look, I believe the very measure of a great society is in how we take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. But would you say that this is going to be still a working system 20 years from now?"
THE TRUTH:
Medicare indeed has enough money to cover all seniors until 2019. At that time, it will simply need more funding. That shouldn't be hard to find in a nation spending trillions of dollars to invade other countries.
Medicare is not in trouble because it is socialized medicine. Medicare faces the same economic problem private health plans do - health care inflation is out of control, far outpacing inflation for other goods and services. And in fact, Medicare is much more efficient at dealing with this inflation than is private insurance. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Table 13), per beneficiary costs have risen in nominal dollars by 519.5 percent since 1980. By contrast, the cost per enrollee of private insurance has risen by 676.6 percent over this same period. So Gupta should instead be pointing his finger at the inefficiency of private insurance. (Social Security and Medicare Myths, Lies, and Realities. Institute for America's Future. http://www.globalaging.org/health/us/myths.pdf; "Gupta Says Medicare is Going Bankrupt," Dean Baker, Beat the Press blog. http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press)
There is a clear way to make our health economy more efficient. We waste $400 billion dollars per year administering our mess of a private, profit-driven system. The answer is switching to a single-payer, Medicare-style system and taking absurd profits and administrative costs out of the equation. (Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Terry Campbell, M.H.A., and David U. Himmelstein, M.D., Costs of Health Care Administration, N Engl J Med 2003;349:768-75 )
GUPTA: "The point is, though, and I think you would have to concede this point, Michael, that you are trying to lead people to believe, again, people who are really concerned about this issue, that it is free in these other countries. And that is what I think is - (MOORE): It is free. (GUPTA) It's not, Michael."
THE TRUTH:
'Sicko' doesn't hide from the obvious fact that higher taxes are needed to pay for free, universal health care. Former UK MP Tony Benn reads from the National Health Service founding pamphlet, which explicitly states that "this is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers." And 'SiCKO' also acknowledges that the French are "drowning in taxes," a line that clearly stuck with Gupta since he used it himself during the broadcast.
The medical care in countries with socialized medicine is still free. Gupta doesn't seem to grasp that. Here in America, when you go to the library and check out a book, it's free. When the fire department puts out a fire at your house, it's free. In Canada, when you go into the hospital for chemotherapy, it's free. You don't walk out with a bill. Yes, citizens pay higher taxes in countries with socialized medicine, but they don't pay the premiums, co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket medical costs that we face in America. Moreover, in other industrialized countries citizens are not bankrupted by huge bills during a medical crisis – as is the case in America, where the leading cause of bankruptcy is medical bills. (Medical Bills Make up Half of Bankruptcies. Feb. 2005, MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895896/)
GUPTA: (On the lone expert shown in the original piece, Paul Keckley). "His only affiliation is with Vanderbilt University. We checked it, Michael. We checked his conflict of interest. We do ask those questions."
THE TRUTH:
Keckley left Vanderbilt in October, 2006 to become the executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. The chyron on CNN even notes his new position. ('Vandy administrator to head Deloitte research center,' Nashville Business Journal. Nov. 1, 2006. http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2006/10/30/daily20.html).
The independent chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions is Tommy Thompson, who was George W. Bush's Health and Human Services Secretary from 2001 to 2005 and is currently running for president as a Republican. ('Meet Tommy G. Thompson, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/employee_profile/0,1007,sid=80772&cid=86217,00.html)
Keckley has made large contributions to Republican candidates and organizations. He gave $1,000 to GOP Senator Bob Corker in 2006, $1,000 to the Tennessee GOP in 2002, along with $1,500 to two GOP Congressional candidates, and $1,000 to the Tennessee GOP in 2000. (www.fecinfo.com)
Keckley was also the CEO and Founder of EBM Solutions Inc., of Nashville, Tennessee, which counted among it's customers Blue Cross of Tennessee, the drug company Aventis, and others. Considering Keckley makes his living in the for-profit health care world – a world 'Sicko' argues should be abolished – viewers should have been told exactly where Keckley was coming from.
When will "the most trusted name in news" correct these many factual errors?
July 11th, 2007 8:44 pm
'SiCKO' Truth Squad Sets CNN Straight -- Again
[In response to Sanjay Gupta's appearance with Michael Moore on the July 10th broadcast of Larry King Live (VIDEO: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)]
GUPTA: "Well, I mean, he pulls $251 from this BBC unsourced report ... Where you pulled the $251 number was a BBC report, which, by the way, stated that the per capita spending in the United States was $5,700. You chose not to use the $5,700 from one report and chose to go to a totally different report and you're sort of cherry picking data from different reports ... Well, why didn't you use the $5,700 number from the BBC report?"
THE TRUTH:
Actually, the number 'Sicko' cited for per capita Cuban spending on health care - $251, a number widely cited by the BBC and other outlets - comes from the United Nations Human Development Report, helpfully linked on our website. Here it is again:
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/indicators/52.html.
That UN report does list American health care spending as only $5,700, but it's a few years old. Since then, the U.S. government has updated it's projections for health care spending, to $7,498 in 2007. So we used that number. It's the most recent, and comes right from the Department of Health and Human Services. If the Cuban government gave a figure on 2007 projected health spending, we'd have used it.
GUPTA: "Medicare is going to go bankrupt by 2019, and is going to be $28 trillion in debt by 2075 ... Look, I believe the very measure of a great society is in how we take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. But would you say that this is going to be still a working system 20 years from now?"
THE TRUTH:
Medicare indeed has enough money to cover all seniors until 2019. At that time, it will simply need more funding. That shouldn't be hard to find in a nation spending trillions of dollars to invade other countries.
Medicare is not in trouble because it is socialized medicine. Medicare faces the same economic problem private health plans do - health care inflation is out of control, far outpacing inflation for other goods and services. And in fact, Medicare is much more efficient at dealing with this inflation than is private insurance. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Table 13), per beneficiary costs have risen in nominal dollars by 519.5 percent since 1980. By contrast, the cost per enrollee of private insurance has risen by 676.6 percent over this same period. So Gupta should instead be pointing his finger at the inefficiency of private insurance. (Social Security and Medicare Myths, Lies, and Realities. Institute for America's Future. http://www.globalaging.org/health/us/myths.pdf; "Gupta Says Medicare is Going Bankrupt," Dean Baker, Beat the Press blog. http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press)
There is a clear way to make our health economy more efficient. We waste $400 billion dollars per year administering our mess of a private, profit-driven system. The answer is switching to a single-payer, Medicare-style system and taking absurd profits and administrative costs out of the equation. (Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Terry Campbell, M.H.A., and David U. Himmelstein, M.D., Costs of Health Care Administration, N Engl J Med 2003;349:768-75 )
GUPTA: "The point is, though, and I think you would have to concede this point, Michael, that you are trying to lead people to believe, again, people who are really concerned about this issue, that it is free in these other countries. And that is what I think is - (MOORE): It is free. (GUPTA) It's not, Michael."
THE TRUTH:
'Sicko' doesn't hide from the obvious fact that higher taxes are needed to pay for free, universal health care. Former UK MP Tony Benn reads from the National Health Service founding pamphlet, which explicitly states that "this is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers." And 'SiCKO' also acknowledges that the French are "drowning in taxes," a line that clearly stuck with Gupta since he used it himself during the broadcast.
The medical care in countries with socialized medicine is still free. Gupta doesn't seem to grasp that. Here in America, when you go to the library and check out a book, it's free. When the fire department puts out a fire at your house, it's free. In Canada, when you go into the hospital for chemotherapy, it's free. You don't walk out with a bill. Yes, citizens pay higher taxes in countries with socialized medicine, but they don't pay the premiums, co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket medical costs that we face in America. Moreover, in other industrialized countries citizens are not bankrupted by huge bills during a medical crisis – as is the case in America, where the leading cause of bankruptcy is medical bills. (Medical Bills Make up Half of Bankruptcies. Feb. 2005, MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895896/)
GUPTA: (On the lone expert shown in the original piece, Paul Keckley). "His only affiliation is with Vanderbilt University. We checked it, Michael. We checked his conflict of interest. We do ask those questions."
THE TRUTH:
Keckley left Vanderbilt in October, 2006 to become the executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. The chyron on CNN even notes his new position. ('Vandy administrator to head Deloitte research center,' Nashville Business Journal. Nov. 1, 2006. http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2006/10/30/daily20.html).
The independent chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions is Tommy Thompson, who was George W. Bush's Health and Human Services Secretary from 2001 to 2005 and is currently running for president as a Republican. ('Meet Tommy G. Thompson, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/employee_profile/0,1007,sid=80772&cid=86217,00.html)
Keckley has made large contributions to Republican candidates and organizations. He gave $1,000 to GOP Senator Bob Corker in 2006, $1,000 to the Tennessee GOP in 2002, along with $1,500 to two GOP Congressional candidates, and $1,000 to the Tennessee GOP in 2000. (www.fecinfo.com)
Keckley was also the CEO and Founder of EBM Solutions Inc., of Nashville, Tennessee, which counted among it's customers Blue Cross of Tennessee, the drug company Aventis, and others. Considering Keckley makes his living in the for-profit health care world – a world 'Sicko' argues should be abolished – viewers should have been told exactly where Keckley was coming from.
When will "the most trusted name in news" correct these many factual errors?
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