Michael Moore @ MindSay 
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Ok, so some people will accuse me of being a liberal-lefty-commie-pinko-immoral-nut bag for posting this, but so you know, Moore wrote something a little closer to the center this time (shock! awe!). I implore you to read this.
Why? Maybe an explanation of this photo:
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My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore
April 21st, 2008
Friends,
I don't get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn't get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.
So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote -- and yours -- on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?
I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.
Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.
Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!
This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!
Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry "Uncle (Tom)" and give it all to you.
But that can't happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.
How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come -- but it won't be you. We'll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).
There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.
That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.
I know some of you will say, 'Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?' That's a damn good question. In November of '06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?
I'll tell you why. Because I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me.
I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That's why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters -- that big "D" on the ballot.
Don't get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.
It's foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country.[Hey! That's sounds familiar!] Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day we will have a party that'll represent the people first, and laws that allow that party an equal voice.
Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, "Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for 'spiritual counseling?' THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!"
But no, Obama won't throw that at her. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be decent. She's been through enough hurt. And so he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.
That's why the crowds who come to see him are so large. That's why he'll take us down a more decent path. That's why I would vote for him if Michigan were allowed to have an election.
But the question I keep hearing is... 'can he win? Can he win in November?' In the distance we hear the siren of the death train called the Straight Talk Express. We know it's possible to hear the words "President McCain" on January 20th. We know there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black man. Hillary knows it, too. She's counting on it.
Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or woman was only "three fifths" human. On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.
Yours,
Michael Moore
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Can someone tell me why this picture hasn't made headlines on the news? Or at least Fox?
Some fun facts that I learned about the US health care system:
- People in insurance companies get bonuses for denying claims. The more people you deny, the more you get.
- Hospitals dump patients out on the road if they can't pay their bills
- Hillary Clinton was the herald of universal health care, but is now paid by health insurance lobbists (she's the second highest in bought-off politicians). I guess everyone has their price.
- Lobbyist have bought off many politicians, including PRESIDENT BUSH (more than $800,000)
- People who are insured by a certain health insurance company can be turned away by hospitals, even if they need immediate care.
Now here are some fun facts about foreign countries, that have universal health care:
Cuba/ "Those Dirty Commies"
- Has a pharmacy close to each block and has a nearby hospital.
- Some drugs that cost $125 in the US can cost as little as 3.25 pesos (about $.05).
France/ "Those Dirty Frenchies"
- You have unlimited sick days; their productivity rates are higher than those of Americans.
- Doctors make house calls frequently, and the assistance is within the hour.
The United Kindom / Great Britian / "Those Dirty Englishmen"
- You don't pay for prescriptions if you are under 16 or retired; Those in between pay about 6-7 pounds for any medication. That's about $10-14 in the US.
- Doctors in the UK live fairly well off (one such doctor in the UK lives in a half a million dollar home, and drives a very nice Audi)
- Doctors are paid more for curing their patients, as well as getting them to quit smoking, lowering their blood pressure, and lowering their cholesterol.
- National Health Insurance (NHS) was started in 1948, while they were still recovering from WWII. If you studied history, that's comparable to 9/11 happening 50 times over.
Canada/ "Those Canadians" ("dirty" is obviously implied for us Americans)
- Many Americans are going to our northern neighbor to receive free health care . This is illegal however, because you need to be a Canadian citizen to do this.
With the exclusion of Cuba, all these countries just mentioned have a higher monetary value than the dollar. In other words, their pound/Euro/dollar is worth more than our dollar.
Also, all of these countries, INCLUDING CUBA, have higher life expectancy rates than Americans.
So, what does that say about our health "care" system? It's that we're 37th in health care, just beating some Slavic country.
To those of you who say this "socialistic" idea is bad, what about our firemen? our policemen? our mailmen? our teachers? If we all have the right to have someone to protect us, to deliver things to us, and to teach us, why can we have someone to heal us?
A culture of corruption exists in America that is both extensive and profoundly pervasive. It afflicts all of America’s institutions and is responsible for both the low esteem in which those institutions are held by the American people and this nation’s inability to solve its social and political problems. This culture is so entrenched that it considers itself invulnerable to criticism. When corruption is discovered and publicized, rarely is a mea culpa issued; the publication is usually ignored by the guilty who continue to act as though the discovery were never made. Oddly enough, the low esteem in which the institutions’ are held is rarely transferred to the individuals who manage those institutions; thus, although only 14 percent of the people approve of the Congress as a whole, the same individual Congressmen get elected over and over again and are still addressed and considered as honorable. While the members of a criminal institution are considered criminals, the members of corrupt public institutions are not generally considered to be corrupt even though an institution of any kind can only be corrupted by corrupting its individual members. That fact, perhaps, explains why corrupt public institutions endure and cannot be reformed, and perhaps the only way to reform such institutions is to begin calling the spades that comprise these institutions black.
There is one corrupt institution in America that has so far avoided this disapproval–America’s institutions of higher education, especially their post graduate, their Ph.D. granting, departments. The corruption of these departments is subtle; it is exposed only by the actions of their graduates who are rarely linked to the institutions that granted their degrees. Many of these graduates engage in careers that consist of publishing propaganda in the name of research, and even when their “research” is subjected to devastating critiques, these critiques are completely disregarded as though they never existed. Such disregard displays an almost total degree of intellectual dishonesty and a complete antipathy to truth, and academic institutions that do not instill a devotion to both intellectual honesty and truth in their post-graduate are corrupt to the core, for the traditional purpose of the Ph.D. degree is to educate people for the advancement of knowledge. Without a devotion to intellectual honesty and truth, such advancement is impossible.
I have been a devout critic of such people for some time, and I have not only posted my critiques for public examination, I have always sent courtesy copies to the individuals involved. All of these posts can be read in this blog (http://johnkozy.mindsay.com), but what recently provoked this reaction is an piece written by John C. Goodman (what a misnomer!) that was published in the Dallas Morning News on July 16, 2007 under the headline, “Film buffs may praise Moore’s ‘Sicko,’ but policy buffs can see all its defects.”
Now I am not a defender of Moore or his movie. I have not seen it, and since I’m not much of a movie-goer, I am not likely to see it. But one doesn’t need to see or even know anything about the movie to understand how nonsensical Mr. Goodman piece is. Right from the start, in the second paragraph to be exact, he locks himself into a contradiction. He writes, “Sicko isn’t a movie about health care and how to fix it. It is a one-sided attempt to drive a very specific agenda–single-payer, government-run health care.” But John, single-payer, government-run health care is proposed as a way of fixing our broken health care system. So if the movie is about single-payer, government-run health care, it is about health care and how to fix it; it can’t be any other way.
But it’s Mr. Goodman’s arrogance that is grating. He writes, “A majority of movie reviewers and columnists have praised Mr. Moore’s filmmaking and lauded him for “raising the important questions. The problem is, few of them can speak to the policy issues. . . .” And then, “Why . . . is national health insurance in other countries as popular as Mr. Moore says it is? One reason is that people do not realize how much they pay for it in taxes.” Now how could Mr. Goodman know that either of these statements is true? What evidence could he ever bring to bear to support them? Has he tested people on their knowledge of policy issues? Has he objectively surveyed the citizens of other countries to determine what their knowledge of where their tax contributions go? Of course not. Mr. Goodman’s claims are the claims of a scoundrel. He also writes, “If you have never tried to see a doctor in Britain or Canada, you might even believe it.” Well, how many times has Mr. Goodman tried to see a doctor in these countries? Is his knowledge of the national healthcare systems of these countries based on personal experience or hearsay? These statements and others are not only unsubstantiated claims, many of them are unsubstantiatable.
But what’s even worse, the criticisms he levels at the healthcare systems of these countries apply even more so to the American system.
He says that in Britain, about 1,000,000 are on waiting lists, in Canada, more than 876,000, and in New Zealand, more than 90,000. But he neglects to point out that in America more than 47,000,000 can’t even put their names on a waiting list. Put these numbers in a list and compare them:
1,000,000
876,000
90,000
47,000,000
So even if his numbers are true, the criticism is absurd. And then he writes, “In fact, people in other countries often have to pay out of pocket for care that has been denied them by the government.” This claim may very well be true, but in America, the insured have to pay out of pocket even for insured procedures. Hasn’t Mr. Goodman ever heard of co-pays and partially covered procedures. An American with health insurance goes into a hospital for even a minor procedure and comes out owing thousands of dollars on top of what his insurance has paid. That never happens to a Canadian or Britain or a New Zealander.
The real “in fact” is that Mr. Goodman is a shill for a corrupt, inefficient, and mediocre healthcare system. Within the past year, the New England Journal of Medicine published a piece showing that Americans of all income levels are being subjected to sub-par medical care and we’re paying more for it, as much as one and a half times more, than the people in any of the countries whose healthcare systems Mr. Goodman criticizes.
And there is example in Mr. Goodman’s piece that utterly baffles me. , “Why . . . is national health insurance in other countries as popular as Mr. Moore says it is? . . . A third reason is that most people are healthy.” Why so, I wonder? Is it because they have better healthcare?
Finally, the worst thing about Mr. Goodman’s piece is that not an iota of it is original. Robert Weissman has a piece on the web at http://www.counterpunch.org/weissman07182007.html titled “More Humane and More Efficient National Health Insurance” which contains the following paragraphs:
“The health insurance industry and its allies have worked hard to respond to SiCKO by promulgating a series of deceptions. It's awfully hard to defend the current U.S. system, so their emphasis is on criticizing other countries' healthcare systems.
They have a lot of practice at this stuff. Get on a call with people like Sarah Berk of Health Care America and Sally Pipes and John Graham of the Pacific Research Institute, and they will compellingly recite three key misleading arguments:
* People in other countries have to suffer through long waiting periods before seeing a doctor or getting treatment.
* National health plans ration care.
"Government-controlled healthcare" or "government monopoly healthcare" is inherently of inferior quality.”
Mr. Goodman not only lacks a devotion to intellectual honesty and truth, he even has to copy other people’s stuff. He is a spade that surely should be called black.
© 2007 John Kozy, Jr.
Unfortunately, I was able to decipher the interview in the end, which is about the time I almost was injured by my own laughter:
Meanwhile, Moore's "man of the people" persona has become so ingrained in our psyches that we forget he is the brand name behind hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales. As much as he fights it on screen, with his baseball caps, down-home patter and Wal-Mart attire, Michael Moore is very big business.With radical left-wingers, he may seem like a regular man of the people. Outside of that exalted bunch, though, that description seem a little contrived.
The comedy continues with lines from Moore himself (I inserted the source tags because the original had NONE, which is terribly sloppy, so they could be wrong.):
[G&M] I'm man enough to admit that parts of Sicko made me cry.It's tough making millions off the suffering of others as a socialist propagandist, but thank goodness someone's willing to do it.
[Moore] It's okay, it's okay to cry. I cried for a whole year making this film. I cried when we were editing it. When we filmed the section with the woman whose daughter died going from hospital to hospital because her insurer wouldn't cover emergency care, I cried for a week.
[G&M] Is your fame becoming a liability in your films - does it, paradoxically, make it difficult for your subjects to speak with candour?
[Moore] I've been slowly trying to take myself out of my films, but what happens when I try to do that is people look for me. I've realized that people appreciate my presence. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be cheered on by the crowds. But I made a decision with Sicko that the people in the film would make the film with me, that it would be a kind of group effort, because we're all in some way a part of the problem. There's something systemically wrong with the way we treat each other in the United States.
Shirley Douglas, the daughter of Tommy Douglas, was at the screening in London, your London, and she said she felt an immense sadness coming from the film, the sadness of someone, me, who realizes that his country has lost his way. But I still think it's possible to get the American soul back.
[G&M] And you don't want to mess with Kiefer Sutherland's mother.
[Moore] I know, I know! And did you know that Christopher Guest's grandfather helped create the British health-care system?
[G&M] It's all become clear to me now - to fix the U.S. health-care system, we just need to ask Lindsay Lohan's grandfather!
I do not know what Michael Moore said to get this kind of response from my current Republican hero and I don’t care. I am certain it was some Left wing delusional comment. Whatever it was Fred, way to YOUTUBE spank Michael Moore.
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