Letters to the Editor
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"Useless Burocracy" Uttered Without a Trace of Irony
Tiberius' opinion of the healthcare systems of other countries is certainly shared by others, but he totally discredited his opinion by saying that other countries have useless bureaucracy.
We are not number one in many of the things we like to brag about. Not anymore. However, nobody, nowhere, nohow will ever surpass the U.S. in useless bureaucracy in the year 2007 for whatever the reason - and that includes governments on the state, federal and local level and private business - a slam dunk. Every endeavor in this country is a monument to bureaucracy, most of it useless.
However I am assuming that Tiberius lives in the U.S., but I am starting to believe that maybe he really doesn't.
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What a crowd that is.
Interview some people who have happily left France, Cuba, Canada and happily become American citizens.
France and Canada? How about rounding up some newly arrived Italians, Swiss, Swedes, English, Irish, Norwegians, Dutch, and Japanese while you're at it? Good luck finding them.
The vast majority of people who have "happily left" their countries behind for America in the last few decades have been from dirt poor nations.
You know, places even worse off than we are.
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Nice film. Pity we'll probably never see it.
I'm seeing reports that the Justice Department intend to arrest Moore the second he lands back on U.S. soil, and his film will be seized. If it ever gets released, it'll have the Cuban footage removed by governmnent order.
And right now, some people are talking "Why not release it to the Internet?" That would be fine...if Moore made a film for free. He has to make back his costs, which means a theatrical run, not an extravaganza on YouTube...which the government would probably block anyway.
So, just like so many foreign and independent movies mentioned on Salon and in magazines, it's a name to bandy around on a tongue to show your sophistication. But unless you go to illegal means to download those movies, you'll never see them. And in the case of something deliberately controversial like Sicko, you won't even be able to do that.
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Another Michael Moore polemic...
My health care advice for Mike is to lose about 60 lbs.
"If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it is free."
-- P.J. O'Rourke, 1993
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Building and creating?
Tiberius: "The gitmo example... is a perfect analogy for why we don't want socialized medicine. To get that you have to give something up. al queda gives up their freedom and the other countries give up their ability to build and create due to taxation and useless burocracy."
Ah, like we are building and creating in Iraq?
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Data from the Center for American Progress:
$100.8 bil.: Annual cost of the war in Iraq, according to current monthly spending of 8.4 bil. per month
$463 bil.: Cumulative estimated cost of the Iraq war as of 2007
$5.6 bil.: Estimated cost of the escalation, according to Bush administration
Up to $27 bil.: Estimated cost of the escalation, according to the CBO
$633 bil.: Projected cumulative cost of the Iraq war come 2008, figuring in the cost of the escalation
21: Percentage of the FY 2007 National Security Budget spent on Iraq
8: Percentage of the budget spent on homeland security
0.07: Percentage of the budget being spent on international broadcasting and educational cultural exchanges to win the war of ideas with terrorist groups
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So, we're not giving anything up? I suppose that $8.4 BILLION a month is earmarked for war, and that's all well and good, a sign of how high-functioning we are.
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Piece of misinformation
First, only a handful of prisoners who are held illegally (a human right violation) are deemed as "terrorists" even by their captors namely the American government. Some of the prisonsers are childre and others are sixty and seventy old men who were picked up by the troop and others for a bounty and shipped to Guantanamo. Second, they are not giving them good treatment--if Mr. Moore and Mr. O'Heir think that forcibly feeding tortured people who want to die in order to escape torture can be calld as good health care--because the military doctors want to patch them up so that they can be tortured more (read all the reports about military doctors and their treatment of tortued Iraqi civilians in Abu Ghraib and other places)! It is very troubling that both Mr. Moore and Mr. O'Heir continue to perpetuate the myth that American government and their torture technique-authors and supporters that the prisoners in Guantanamo love being imprisoned for over five years in an island within barbed wire fence under 24 hour watch becuase they have good food!
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No, Tom; here's the answer about your fear that you'll never be able to see this one...
Our friend Tom posted this:
Nice film. Pity we'll probably never see it.I'm seeing reports that the Justice Department intend to arrest Moore the second he lands back on U.S. soil, and his film will be seized. If it ever gets released, it'll have the Cuban footage removed by governmnent order.
And right now, some people are talking "Why not release it to the Internet?" That would be fine...if Moore made a film for free. He has to make back his costs, which means a theatrical run, not an extravaganza on YouTube...which the government would probably block anyway.
So, just like so many foreign and independent movies mentioned on Salon and in magazines, it's a name to bandy around on a tongue to show your sophistication. But unless you go to illegal means to download those movies, you'll never see them. And in the case of something deliberately controversial like Sicko, you won't even be able to do that.
No, Tom. Don't worry. This isn't the country that bans films, forces its citizens to get its information surreptitiously off the internet, and jails its documentarians. The country that does that is Cuba.
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Dear Elephantman:
P.J. O'Rourke is an asshole. With insurance. Tangerine, 2007
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Elephantman
That wasn't an answer.
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HOORAY FOR MICHAEL FOR TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT PAY or DIE USA
USA = Usual Selfish Attitudes here in the land of corpRAPE
America where we the people have been totaly BUSHwhacked in all aspects of our former democracy...
It is true... It is pay or die here in the financial Nazism of USA - where the weapons now are jobs, unafordable healthcare and money !
My 3 yrs in Denmark certainly opened my eyes for a social democracy... Here in the USA - the protestant ethic of greed and exclusion of all non believers in the God Money and the fundamentalist God of BUSH and cronies - rules expertly...
Very well done to you Michael Moore !