As someone intimately connected with the flow of money through the US health care system, I speak with some authority and experience about this issue. While I agree completely with MM's premise, he'll accomplish little or nothing with his current approach, for these reasons:

1. The great majority of voting Americans either have good health coverage (because they or their employer can afford it), or have sub-par coverage and simply don't realize it, because they've luckily not needed it.

2. Most voting Americans, for various reasons, have little or no interest in helping those outside their immediate "sphere."

3. The insurance companies, hospitals, and health care provider organizations will throw every dirty punch at anyone who tries to cut back the torrential flow of money, as they did to Hillary in the 90's.

In my locale, the local hospital CEO has weekly golf/dining dates with each of our district's state senators and representatives. That's just on the local level. Imagine how much more "rewarding" the lobbying is up the line.

But no matter how damning a movie is made, none of these facts will change. And the so-called "new plans" touted by the current candidates might sound good, but will either never materialize, or change very little of the system in the end.

Why would the apathetic majority of Americans, who have already shown they don't care whether all Americans have food, safety, and shelter, suddenly decide to pay for health care for those same unfortunate folks? It's just not going to happen.

Great review by SZ. Her keen eyes see far beyond the movie screen.

...for the Progressive cause. She voted to give Bush carte blanche in his "War on Terror," which was either a gross misjudgement, or a purely political move, and it's hard to say which is worse. She has made no public condemnation of the scuttling of human rights under Bush, the suspension of habeus corpus, the existence of Guantanamo, the torture of prisoners, etc. She is reported to be the Democratic Party favorite of Rupert Murdoch, which by itself should send a chill down our spines.

It's fine to list her accomplishments, but they are tiny in comparison to her omissions and mis-steps. I'm willing to bet that if elected, she will make few changes in the Bush policies that matter to Progressives, that she will not pursue investigations into Bush/Cheney and their cronies, and that we merely see more of the same, couched in more savvy words. The Corporatocracy will continue, with a different political party name.

Not that Gore, Edwards, or Obama could do much more, but I think each of these three might be more willing to step on a few Corporate toes.

I have no doubt that a hundred years from now, high school children will study the year 2007 and be utterly mystified as to why Bush was allowed to get away with deceiving the public, invading another country on false pretense, ignoring the Constitution, and committing war crimes. Our entire population will look complicit, because we as individuals either supported Bush (the Repubs), or refused to even attempt to censure him (the Dems, obviously). Cindy Sheehan is, I believe, simply trying to drive this point home.

The Dems have an overwhelming arsenal at their fingertips to attack Bush and take him to task, all the way to impeachment, if necessary. It's an arsenal far beyond any ever held by an opposing party. Yet they pretend not see it. We can only assume that means that either they have no idea what to do (a so-called failure of imagination), or that in truth they serve the same masters as the Repubs do. Hard to say which is worse.

Though I usually agree with Joan Walsh word for word, I can't this time. I believe every true American, from ordinary citizen, to editors, to the Speaker of the House, has a duty to pursue the crimes committed in the past seven years. We owe that to all the people who worked to found this country and maintain its ideals, and to future generations, who will live in a different world for sure if Bush/Cheney skate free. I believe that's what is driving Ms. Sheehan to prod Nancy Pelosi.

Also, it's not as if working toward censure or impeachment will allow no other business to proceed. The Dems can still pursue a broad agenda in preparation for 2008. But keeping the word "impeachment" in the news can only help them come the next election.

A sad, sad failure of imagination.

How I long for the days when I could count on SZ to trash movies that deserved it. Apparently the cranks, who all these years have complained that she was too harsh, have succeeded in convincing either her or Salon that she is in fact too hard to please. This is a disaster.

Now she writes lukewarm reviews that neither cheer nor jeer. After rereading her review of the "TBU" I still can't tell if she really liked it. Reading between the lines of her review, we can draw the following conclusions:

a. The movie is all action and little or no plot.

b. It follows the exact same formula as it's two predecessors, though perhaps is done slightly better.

c. The entire premise is nonsense, but we're not supposed to notice.

In the old days, as I remember them, Steph Zach would have said this explicitly, then closed with a biting paragraph concerning Hollywood's wholesale waste of talent, film, and perfectly good automobiles. And I would have confidently ignored requests from friends and family to accompany them to see this movie because they had "heard it was good."

Alas for the old days.