...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.

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.

Everyone has their own taste in movies, of course, but to read these posts glorifying these sorts of movies makes me wince nearly as much as watching them does. I saw Reservir Dogs, then Pulp Fiction, then said I'd never waste another minute or another dollar on Quentin T. and his "new" genre. Now to see Stephanie Zacharek fawning over these movies, all I can do is groan. I'm sorry, but these movies are nothing more than silly and mindless violence peppered by oh-so-witty banter that's supposed to make the mindless characters look smart and admirable. After reading this review, I don't need to see "Grindhouse" to know it follows the same formula.

Why anyone would see more than one of these movies though, I can't say. I guess since the Romans closed the Coliseum, people have had to find other safe ways to see blood flow and limbs fly.

And they call it "genius."

Joan Walsh brings up some very important points in this article, which no doubt the majority of the blogosphere will happily ignore. It's unrealistic to think that most bloggers, on the left or the right, will keep to the narrow road once some extra money and greater fame are waved before their eyes. No doubt, many feel it's a "just reward," long overdue, for their hours and hours of typing and (hopefully) research. But in an instant, they convert from "vocal citizen" to "political hack," though naturally it's couched in other terms more palatable.

And Ms. Walsh's defense of Salon's recent actions satisfies me. I believe it would satisfy any objective reader.

Being an avid student of both Judo and Kickboxing for the past 12 years, I have to write in support of those questioning the validity of what the MMA and Pride are doing. To be very frank, these matches are about giving the public what most want to see, namely two-way brutality until one loses. People here can gush on and on about wanting to see "great athletes" in action, and skill, etc. but most of these same people weren't going to see skilled martial artists back before this brutal component was added by MMA and Pride. It was the brutality of boxing that made it such a spectator sport, and now is making MMAA and Pride a ton of money.

You can see great athletes and much better fighting skills at all sorts of competition matches across the USA, yet hardly any spectators appear, and the matches are never televised. Why? Because there's no blood flowing, and no one gets knocked-out.

So hopefully, people will drop this ridiculous pretense about what drives the public to see these events. Let's all just admit that a large percentage of the public are hard-wired to get a rush from brutality (from a safe distance, of course) and be done with it.