Somewhat of a movie review

I saw this movie last night on DVD. During this film I laughed, I got pissed off at our health care system, at Congress, and at all the corporations who profit off our health care system. At various points I decided I was going to move to Canada, then the UK, then France, then Norway because all those countries treat their citizens better than we do. Most of all I was deeply and profoundly ashamed of our country and by all the people who refuse to stand up for universal single payer not for profit health insurance for all and who fall for the lies and smoke screens of the corporations who benefit from our current system.

I urge every one of you to see this film and to tell others to see it. I urge you all to watch the extras on the DVD and to do something, anything, to get universal not for profit single payer health care for all of us in this country.

I was going to write about how I lost my health insurance right before I had my heart attack, and then how I got tossed off Tenn Care, which was the state of TN's version of Medicaid, and all about my hassles getting my SSDI benefits, but then it hit me as I was writing it, what happened to me was nothing compared to the people who've died as a result of the actions of the insurance companies and for profit hospitals, so I erased it. I'm still alive and some of those poor folks lost husbands, wives, children, and other loved ones.

It's a god damned shame that we allow corporations to dictate medical decisions. And it's an even bigger god damned shame that we don't rise up and do something about it. I'm going to go to Michael Moore's website later and I'm going to help out in whatever small way I can and if you do a small part too then all of us together can change this country for the better.

I'd like to ask my Canadian readers and UK readers to leave a comment about the health care systems in your countries. Do you think your health care systems suck like they Reich wingers in this country say they do? Or are they decent systems? Do you have any nightmare stories to tell? Or are the pundits on FOX and the corporate media lying when they say health care in your countries is a huge mess?

A Dr. Monkey Movie Review

I watched Roger & Me again last night. I'd seen it when it first came out and seeing it lo these many years later I was struck by a number of things.It's the story of Michael Moore's quest to get then GM CEO Roger Smith to come back to Flint, Michigan to see the devastation caused by the closing of all the GM plants. The film follows Moore as he meets several Flint residents who are down on their luck after being laid off from GM and it shows the comical lengths that the city of Flint went through to make their dying city attractive once again. As Moore tries to track down Smith he takes us deeper and deeper into the depths of Flint's despair and depression. But as he does so he also make us laugh, in retrospect though most of the laughs are now rueful whistlin' past the graveyard laughs of recognition because after what NAFTA, Bush the elder, and Bush the Idiot have done, the rest of the USA is catching up to where Flint was many years ago.

What struck me hardest as I watched this film again was all the money the city of Flint wasted on trying to bring Flint back when they could have spent that money on retraining laid off workers and luring businesses back. Instead of doing those things they spent boatloads of cash on flying in Robert Schuller, the snake oil minister who loves money more than a fat kid loves cake, for a city wide pep talk. They also flew in Pat Boone and Anita Bryant who cheerily told the downtrodden citizens of Flint to cheer up because they lived in a great free country and to look on the positive side of being laid off with no prospects on the horizon. Of course all three, Schuller, Boone, and Bryant, flew out soon after with their pockets filled with appearance fee money. The city also wasted money on building an indoor theme park, a luxury downtown hotel, and a huge shopping/restaurant plaza, all three went bankrupt and closed within months of their opening. Which shouldn't have come as a shock to anyone since most of Flint's residents were out of work and had no money to spend at any of their brand new local attractions.

Another thing that struck me was a horrible racist "joke" Flint native Bob Eubanks told. He cheerfully looked into a camera lens and told an anti Semitic joke about Jewish women not being gay because they marry assholes instead of having sex with them. My jaw hit the floor and I looked over at Sparky and hers was doing the same.

Finally what hit me as I watched this film was how what happened to Flint seemed like a dry run for the rest of us in this multi national corporation gone mad country of ours. In a heart beat they will cite high manufacturing costs and ship all the jobs over to China and then we're, the ones not caught in the military/prison industrial complex anyway, going to convert all the old factories to shopping centers that will house Starbucks, antique stores, and maybe a Walgreens or two.

The film marked, for me anyway, the end of Reagan/Bush and the end of their shitty handling of the economy. Under those two, and just like under Bush the Idiot today, the economy grew for a tiny few while the rest of us got trickled down on. They pissed all over us and told us it was money that was pouring down on us and not their scalding urine. For the record I've got my beefs with the way Bill Clinton handled some things but at least under Clinton a huge amount of people benefited from the expanding economy.

Even though this film is over 15 years old it still stands up today. I highly recommend it.

Hey! Get off your ass and go see this!

Or wait till it comes out on DVD but please do something to help bring universal health care to this country. Let's dump big pharma, the blood sucking insurance companies, and the dicks in the White House, they say we can't have universal health care because it's too expensive, let's tell them where they can stick their profits. People first, blood sucking corporations last.

From the Department of Ungrateful Bastards

Check this post out over at The Largest Minority, it's incredible. No shit, really, it is. If someone did that for me, I'd offer to have his children, and since I'm a male monkey that's one hell of an offer.