In case you haven’t seen it yet, Crooks and Liars has the video of Michael Moore’s appearance on Leno from earlier this week, with some great interview and a clip from the film.
Meanwhile, Daily Kos had a diary a few days ago about the more than 15,000 nurses from across the country who have mobilized in support of Sicko and health care for everyone.
And earlier today, Michael Moore sent out a letter to his mailing list (surprise, surprise, I’m on it) saying:
Thank you so much to the hundreds of thousands of you who went to see my movie last night and this afternoon. The studio tells me that we are on track to have the second largest opening weekend for a documentary in the history of the movies! (“Fahrenheit 9/11” was first.) Many theaters have been selling out. The Bush administration’s investigation of this movie is certainly not keeping people away.
I myself won’t get a chance to see Sicko for a few days, but I’m pretty sure the theaters here in Chicago are packed this weekend. Moore goes on to say:
There’s a moment in “Sicko” when the former British MP, Tony Benn, says, “If we have the money to kill people (with war), we’ve got the money to help people.” That line always gets the loudest applause in the theater. It is estimated that, before Bush’s War is over, we will have spent two trillion dollars on it. Let me say this: I NEVER want to hear again from ANY politician that we “don’t have the money” to fix our schools, to take care of the poor, to provide health care for every American. Clearly, the money IS there when we want to illegally invade another country and then prolong a disastrous occupation. From now on, we have to demand that our tax dollars be there for the things we need, not the things that make us one of the most detested countries on earth.
Yeah, I agree. The idea that it’s somehow “too expensive” to take care of our own citizens needs to be taken off life support for good. One of the many lessons of the last few years is this: We can afford to do any damn thing we want to do, if we decide it’s a priority.
We can keep social security running without cutting benefits for anyone. We can give everyone in the country the basic healthcare they’re entitled to just for being born into the human race. We can even make sure our public schools have enough money so kids can have books and paper and play in a marching band, even if they live in a poor neighborhood.
And we can do all of those things for a tiny fraction of the money that we’ve poured down a pointless drain over the last five years.
All we have to do is put our mind to it. We have to decide, as a nation, that saving sick people’s lives is more important than giving ginormous tax cuts to billionaires. And we have to stop listening to the blowhards on Fox News who tell us we can’t do it, not because we actually can’t do it, but because they don’t want it done.
did you know that your site, if it were a film, would be rated “R”? yeah, it’s kinda stupid, but fun to play.
http://mingle2.com/blog-rating
Hi, Jim!
… Oh, for pete’s sake. They’re saying that the site should be rated R because of the presence of the word “Dick” — as in DICK CHENEY, OUR VICE PRESIDENT! These people are idiots! And of course they think the mere presence of the word “gay” is grounds for an R rating, so they’re homophobic in addition to being stupid.
Thanks for the link — it’s always interesting to know what’s out there — but I hope nobody is taking their “ratings” seriously.
Well, Dick Cheney IS an obscenity…
OK, now, to get your post-commenting back on track here, while I appreciate what MM has done here and while I will see his movie and while I think everyone should see it and I was supportive of Hillary’s plan way back when to make health care a right and not a privilege [i hear her pockets have been stuffed by the HMOs and insurance companies, though, according to this movie], I am not at all optimistic that anything will change, at least not for the better.
Even if something is done about healthcare, i fear the change will be akin to the same way welfare was ‘reformed,’ that social security, medicare and medicaid are being eyed to be ‘reformed,’ the same way that pensions are being killed in favor of 401(k)s and whatnot, etc. etc. Just look at the county of Cook here in Illinois…one guy runs for the office of president saying that his opponent is an evil republican who will close clinics and stop abortions and all and what does the victorious democrat do once he gets into office? He starts closing clinics, laying off doctors and nurses and puts friends and relatives into high-paying positions that they may or may not be qualified for, while people who need medical care, especially preventative care, are left to fend for themselves, or use the emergency rooms as their primary care doctors.
And, you know, there’s just so much money involved, and the insurance companies and their lobbyists and the legislators who may one day become lobbyists have such a stake in the financial health of the medical/insurance industry, that this will be their real concern, with only lip-service, if that, will be paid to actually helping people.
I’d love to be proven wrong, though, but I doubt I will be.
As a side note, I think it’s time to take Fox News off life support. Let it die. It already smells.