I think we can all agree that Moore has told some whoppers in his day. He says whatever is expedient at the time, knowing that if you do remember later, you won't care...and so many have proven him exactly right. Look through the comments to any story about him. The theme from his supporters is generally "Well, maybe he lies a little, but he gets poeple talking" or "It's in service to a good cause!"

Is it?

I've been calling Mikey out since he put out a particular promise (via email and "Mike's Message") just after the 2006 elections. He wrote, and I quote:

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

Time and time again, Democrat scandals go by and Mike says nothing. Now we've got some pretty clear soft money trickery and millions of taxpayer dollars getting funneled to campaign contributors. John Murtha, Jim Moran, Peter Visclosky, Silvestre Reyes and Alan Mollohan are all tied up with PMA Group to the tune of a hundred million dollars.

Mikey, are you going to do something about this? Are you going to keep your promise or not?

If Mike doesn't keep his word about something so basic, how can you trust him to help you make decisions that have massive, long-term and potentially catastrophic effects on the nation and your personal health and welfare? Scandal is scandal, and a Democrat scandal should be just as abhorrent as a Republican one. Where's Moore leading the charge against Hillary for her part in taking money (for years!) from criminals like Hsu? Where was Mikey on Louisiana's William Jefferson? A search of Moore's website shows that he's never ever discussed PMA, and his only posts about Murtha were about Murtha supporting a pullout from Iraq. Nothing at all about Murtha's storied and scandalous history or his current troubles. Moore's only mentions of William Jefferson's scandal were to reprint an AP article from before Jefferson's re-election. Nothing about the $90,000 bribe in the freezer. His only posts on Norman Hsu are reprints of wire service articles. Not a single mention from Mike himself about Hillary's close, long-term financial ties with the wanted criminal. Or any of her other fund-raising scandals for that matter.

Will Moore ever keep his word? How can you - and I mean you, personally, the human being who is reading this post - ever believe he's telling you the truth?

If you feel like Moore is a voice to which you should listen, I urge you to watch the footage from Manufacturing Dissent available here at AOL, and buy the DVD when it is released. If TV has taught me one thing, it's something I learned from watching Mulder & Scully: Trust no one. My version of that sentiment is trust no one, question everything and don't make a decision until after you've researched it for yourself.

In this article in Variety, I ran across the following quote:

"When I saw 'Manufacturing Dissent' at the South by Southwest Film Festival," said Stephanie Sharis, director of creative development for AOL, "I felt it was saying some compelling things that would resonate with our audience."

One can only hope this is true. I hope that the audience that finds Manufacturing Dissent through these pages allows the point to resonate with them. Moore is a liar, and worse, he's a bad person. He's a smaller (in influence) version of the very men he rails against.

Go ahead. Watch the movie. I challenge anyone to defend half the crazy things that Moore says and does. Watch the part where he denies, on Donahue, that he knows the man who got him a job with Nader, and the labor leader that helped him in the early days of Roger & Me. That alone should make you want to avoid him forever. Watch how he treats Canadian journalists - a group he will proclaim to love - when he finds out they are looking at him through the lens.

Actually, to be fair, you can watch how he orders others to treat the Canadian journalists, as he doesn't have the courtesy or the courage to be filmed telling them to get out.

There is a lot of material in Manufacturing Dissent...I hope you'll take some time not only to watch it, but to let it resonate with you. If you can't trust the messenger, you can't trust that he's brought you the entire message.

JimK is a co-founder and one of a number of authors of Moorewatch.com

*UPDATED*

I'm having trouble adding a comment, but I wanted to respond to the lies of Bruce Colwell below. I have never been an employee or contractor for or a representative of any pharma or insurance company. Ever. I work for absolutely no one, and no one pays me for my opinion in any way. Bruce Colwell is a liar, and I defy him to offer one iota of evidence that any pharma or insurance company has ever paid me to shill anything, ever. I will take it a step further - no representative of any insurance or pharmaceutical company has ever paid me for an opinion or to write anything. I am not usiing any wiggle words here. I have never and WILL NEVER sell my opinion to anyone. Bruce Colwell is a liar.

As for his ridiculous use of the term "Swiftboating," if that means I am using Moore's own words and actions to demonstrate why he is unfit to offer advice and/or lead any kind of movement, then I gladly accept the accusation.

Lastly, it's usually the tactic of the lesser mind to associate disliking Moore and his lying ways with being a supporter of Bush. The two are NOT inclusive and never have been. It is entirely possible to dislike Moore's lies and tactics and also not be a fan of the current President. People like Bruce Colwell don't seem to be able to grasp that simple point.

...Jim Kenefick. You may know me from such films as Sicko and Manufacturing Dissent. Somehow I ended up in both of them. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I run Moorewatch, a site dedicated to cataloging and correcting the falsehoods and misrepresentations found in the work of Michael Moore.

If you know nothing about the fact that my wife and I ended up in Sicko, please visit this page and follow the links. Everything will be explained. In fact, I would ask that you read that before you make any personal comments about me, my wife or our sort-of appearance in Sicko this summer.

A brief background of the site; Lee and I both run our own blogs. One day in 2002, we were talking about how we had recently both posted a few things about Moore's Bowling For Columbine. A few of our favorite blogs were doing the same. "Wouldn't it be great of we had one place to collect all these posts? Sort of a clearinghouse for debunking information?" Two minutes later the domain was registered and Moorewatch was born.

And just to head off any potential flame wars, I am not a fan of Bush, a Cheney disciple, a Fox News watcher, nor do I listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Bill "I'm a clone of Moore" O'Reilly. Hell, I'm not even a registered Republican anymore. More about me here, if you care. Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that I'm after the truth, as you should be.

And that brings me to Debbie, Rick and Manufacturing Dissent. As you may know, Debbie and Rick set out to make a film complimenting Michael Moore. They are both kind, upstanding people, and their politics are certainly not opposed to what Moore claims are his. What they found, however, was that they could not make a film complimenting Moore as a human being. The truth led them elsewhere. That's the difference between good documentarians and bad polemecists.

A documentarian tells you the story they find. A polemecist finds the story they already wanted to tell.

We're neither of those things at Moorewatch, by the way. We're bloggers. We react. We research. We try to correct the lies, half-truths and cute editing tricks that fill Moore's films. We're thrilled to see a project like Manufacturing Dissent, and even happier that it came about because two filmmakers felt compelled to tell the truth as they found it.

In the next few weeks, I hope to be able to show you why Michael Moore can't be trusted. I hope to be able to convince you that if you've ever intentionally watched a Michael Moore film and felt like you learned anything, you need to see Manufacturing Dissent. Most of all, I hope to find the truth, wherever it takes me, and I hope you want that as well.