Michael Moore: Hurricane Coming During GOP Convention 'Proof There Is a God in Heaven'
Controversial filmmaker admits he's delighted to see a natural disaster potentially interfere with the Republican event.
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
8/30/2008 12:13:18 AM
To liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, the bounds are seemingly endless. Moore has made a recent career out of attacking President George W. Bush, bashing conservatives and criticizing business. His latest outrage occurred on MSNBC’s August 29 “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and when he commented about the coincidental timing of an unfortunate disaster – the potential for Hurricane Gustav to make landfall at the beginning of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
“I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” Moore said, laughing. “To have it planned at the same time – that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for day one of the Republican Convention, up in the Twin Cities – at the top of the Mississippi River.”
After that comment, Moore backed off a bit and did say he hoped nobody got hurt and he hoped everybody is taking cover. However, he failed to make note of the $43.625 billion in damage the last hurricane to strike New Orleans caused – Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – and the billions of dollars the storm cost taxpayers.
Moore also took the opportunity to take a dig at President George W. Bush and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.
“I can’t see what you showed,” Moore said to “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann about a video clip including Bush and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. celebrating McCain’s birthday. “I don’t know if you showed the cake there that they had there, three years ago today – with McCain and Bush. When Marie Antoinette – when she said, ‘Let them eat cake,’ I think she was speaking figuratively. They literally were while New Orleans was drowning – eating cake. So, it’s, um, I don’t know – let’s hope things get better.”
Olbermann, whose opinions tend to fall on the same far left end of the ideological spectrum as Moore, said it was even weirder than Moore observed. Olbermann said “one of” Focus on the Family preachers connected to Chairman Dr. James Dobson’s was allegedly calling for everyone to pray for rain during Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic convention speech.
Moore told Olbermann he feared McCain would continue the wars that we are in and would start a new one with Iran. He defended Iran’s aggressive tactic with nuclear weapons by suggesting that if Iran invaded Mexico and Canada, as we had with Iraq and Afghanistan, even he and Olbermann would “build whatever we could do defend ourselves.”
Both Olbermann and Moore were full of praise for Obama’s speech and Moore chalked McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to cynicism on part of the Republican Party.
Moore has been a crusader for socialized health care in the United States, especially with his 2007 documentary “SiCKO.” Moore depicted the health care systems used in Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the communist nation of Cuba as what the United States should have – an expensive taxpayer-funded health care system.
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