ARTIST AS ASSASSIN

Here's an excerpt of the Rolling Stone interview with Michael Moore:

Doing what's right, for Moore, at the moment, means one thing: unseating George W. Bush. With Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore is not simply promoting a movie. He's campaigning against a sitting president. Moore turned down an offer to do a one-man show on Broadway so he could focus on the election. He plans to send film crews to Florida in November in case there's a repeat of the 2000 voting debacle. And though Fahrenheit 9/11 is the odds-on favorite for a Best Documentary Oscar, Moore is seriously considering not submitting the film for nomination so he could instead broadcast it on PBS, cable or even a network on November 1st. (Academy rules regulate as to when a nominated film can be shown on television.) Critics would certainly call the above gesture a publicity stunt. Not that Moore would disagree. He has been publicizing the film nonstop since its release, hoping to sway as many potential voters as possible.

Here's Mike's first USA Today column from the GOP convention:

I've often found that if I go down the list of "liberal" issues with people who say they're Republican, they are quite liberal and not in sync with the Republicans who run the country. Most don't want America to be the world's police officer and prefer peace to war. They applaud civil rights, believe all Americans should have health insurance and think assault weapons should be banned. Though they may personally oppose abortion, they usually don't think the government has the right to tell a women what to do with her body.

There's a name for these Republicans: RINOs or Republican In Name Only. They possess a liberal, open mind and don't believe in creating a worse life for anyone else.

So why do they use the same label as those who back a status quo of women earning 75 cents to every dollar a man earns, 45 million people without health coverage and a president who has two more countries left on his axis-of-evil-regime-change list?

I asked my friend on the street. He said what I hear from all RINOs: "I don't want the government taking my hard-earned money and taxing me to death. That's what the Democrats do."

Money. That's what it comes down to for the RINOs. They do work hard and have been squeezed even harder to make ends meet. They blame Democrats for wanting to take their money. Never mind that it's Republican tax cuts for the rich and billions spent on the Iraq war that have created the largest deficits in history and will put all of us in hock for years to come.

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