MM, Thanks for devoting your incredible talents to the cause of universal health care. We are truly fortunate that you are our advocate. I'm an artist also and I purchase my own health insurance. The same week the new health legislation was passed in congress, Blue Cross of Iowa proposed a 21% rate increase. They got it. Three weeks ago I recieved a notice that they were seeking another 10% or more increase. This is strangling my family. We can no longer afford to live. I will be in Des Moines to protest the latest increase in the cost of health care. It will be an exercise in futility because the commission is 'owned' by the industry. But we intend to go down fighting. It would help so much if you would leave the democratic party and join those of us who struggle for a better life for all. President Obama represents corporate interests, not the people. He represents them EVERY SINGLE TIME. You're right Michael, it is the people that the insurance corporations fear. And if you would come over to our side, they would be quaking in their wing tips. Thanks and happy turkey day.

It has been estimated that as much as 90% of native population of the Americas died off between 1492 and the 1700's. Between 1500 and 1520 Europeans had come ashore on North America's shore line for just for water and reported back that all the good spots for settlements had been taken and were well occupied/populated. But just those brief encounters by the Euros with natives were enough to introduce illnesses that thinned out the good spots that later became St. Augustine, Jamestown and Plymouth , in less than 100 years. Had there not been disease and traditional rivalries between local tribes that the Europeans played on, the native Americans would have had a fighting chance with their illegal alien problem! As long as a majority of Americans continue to get their civic information from commercial cable TV programing and news outlets ("disease")...the corporate powers will have nothing to fear of the majority who still believe in the corporate controled two party system ("traditional rivalries").

If you have high speed internet access there are a lot of sites you can watch documentaries, moves, and tv shows for free. Google free TV or free movies, free documentaries etc. to find them. Then if you run across a some you really like you can buy it to support the makers of the video.

Hi Kay, i too sit on the floor of many a book store myself..... Great post! rita

This is one reason I am grateful for the internet. It's something that I might not have if my job didn't depend on it. Where else could I have learned about Rubin's Hamilton Project -- referenced in these comments -- among so many other writings? Team Obama might think twice about wanting everyone connected to the internet. But they could be 10 steps ahead of us in figuring out ways to censor before that happens.

If you have a community college nearby, you can become a community patron. I'm a library tech in an impoverished community, and we have lots of local, non-student borrowers. If we don't have the book you want, we'll send for it. You could also use our computers and read our newspapers and journals. If you have interent (well, I guess so or you couldn't post) google Free Books Online. Check out the guttenberg (sp) project. Amazon will let you download Kindle for your PC for free. Seriously. You can read at least the first chapter of some books for free. I much prefer a real book but honestly, kindle books are cheaper and no postage. You also can rent movies at Amazon.com for a lot less than the theater... Read on!

@ Kay Johnson November 25th, 2010 9:33 am. You wrote: "So, here's a question -- I think you, Michael Moore, have made some important films -- and there are other films, too, that I could list, i.e. An Inconvenient Truth. However, after a period of time, if the filmmakers are REALLY interested in educating the public, and I don't begrudge filmmakers a good living, why aren't some of these films shown on PBS so that everyone can watch them? Or, maybe another possibility is to show the films in libraries where people watch the films with other people. Afterwards, serious discussions could take place. I know that PBS, today, is a shadow of itself, but it's still a public network, available to people without charge. Here in NYC, the price of a ticket to the movies is $12 and $13, depending on the theatre. Sure -- a lot of people pay the price, but a lot of other people are on the outside looking in, and simply shrug their shoulders and tune out. They don't sit at the table because they can't, and they are left out of the conversation. These people don't exist. This is what's wrong with CAPITALISM. You can know something if you have the money, and if you don't have the money, you aren't allowed to know it." Like any filmmaker, Michael Moore has to make deals to get the money to produce and release his films. I read that Harvey Weinstein and Miramax own the distribution rights to his catalog and, in order to make their investment back, keep most of the money brought in at the box office and from other distribution deals. PBS and other potential outlets probably aren't ready to pay whatever Miramax is asking for TV rights to show the film. You can't blame MM for this one.

Good post about the value of observation, study, discussion, and communication. "...witness the paucity of Oilybomberbots left,and the supportors of the duopoly also seems to be rapidly diminishing." Those are but two "stations" on the line to political futility. Why cling to any of it? Let's trace the complete path that lead to Obama, and will always lead to similar outcomes. Here is the road we are on, the one way road to Hell: Capitalism > individualism > personal choice and personal belief > the myth of American freedom > the myth of American democracy > electoral politics > party politics > the duopoly > the Democrats > Obama At each step down that path, there are fewer and fewer options and more and more certainty about the outcome. If we accept one step, the next step becomes inevitable and inescapable. Each step rests on the step before it. If you try to get off the path somewhere in the middle, you go around in circles of frustration and futility, pressured by the previous step, and drawn inexorably toward the next step. The forces behind that are too powerful to stand against. Capitalism means that we all must compete, that the degree of freedom any of us have is dependent upon our wealth. This precludes cooperation, this forces us all to dominate others or to be dominated. "Dog eat dog." This then leads to denial of the social context, the social relationships - in other words, individualism. Since we are social beings, denying that we are social beings requires that we deny reality and this then leads us into the realm of mysticism - to personal beliefs replacing perception of reality in order to reconcile the conflict between individualism and our reality as social beings. In that context then, and only in that context we can believe in the myths about American freedom, and then in the illusions about American democracy. That requires a thorough rewriting of history, and denial of most of that history as well as a denial of current reality, the actual conditions in which we live. The conditions are never what they are, we think, they are always what they are going to become. We cling to that despite the fact that everything is going in the opposite direction from the one we hope for. We imagine that we are free and are making choices, and imagine that those choices determine our conditions. "Think and believe, and it will come true." This illusion about choices and freedom leads to an obsession with electoral politics - we think that this is where we are determining our future. What can we do at that point, other than deciding what we "are," based on what we "believe," and so identifying with a party? We are told that we choose our leaders, and that our leaders are actually in power, actually rule us. We believe this despite the fact that it is obvious that our leaders are chosen for us, and that those leaders answer to people vastly more powerful than they are, work for those people, obey those people. This is the point many people are stuck at, and they go around and around in circles. If the choices are based on beliefs, and the beliefs include myths about American freedom and democracy that contradict the actual history and current reality, and if those beliefs rest on denial of the social relationships, denial that we are social beings, and if that in turn rests on a brutal economic system that says that "he with the gold rules," that an individual's freedom and power is determined by how much wealth they can amass, then of course we only get two choices, both of which promote and defend the same social and political power structure - two parties representing the two poles in the contradictory and oppositional dynamic. That then leads to the "lesser of two evils" phenomenon. This process must be looked at in its entirety. You cannot pick a point on that continuum and try to change it - hoping for a different outcome - and then expect any change. Some people think that of they change people's beliefs that will change things. Others think that different personal choices will change things. Others are trying to "restore" or perfect American democracy (chase the illusion more vigorously) or introduce more individual "freedom" (which is really individualism, not freedom, and which, in this system, will always mean more freedom for some to exploit, dominate and control others, and will always contradict the social reality and tear the social fabric.) Others think that if we just had more choices on the ballot, that would change things. "In for an ounce, in for a pound." By the way, I am no trying to convert anyway one to a new belief system here. I am inviting people to observe reality and see for themselves if the pattern I am describing here is not in fact happening.

Oldcrow 10:28 Dark humor at it's best.

Thanks, Michael, for penning this followup to Sicko, your masterpiece on US health care. And good comment, non placet. The American people are not about to do much of anything about... anything, left-of-center, particularly on confronting our health care fiasco. Just as we aren't about to expect better mileage standards on our gas guzzling cars. On the latter, we'd rather blindly fight wars to steal others' oil. You're from Flint, you know that! Also Googled Robert Rubin's Hamilton Project and learned about this "pro-corporatist think group funded by Goldman Sachs and cleverly hidden in the (liberal) Brookings Institute."

I haven't had insurance for many, many years, although I could get a crappy Health New York policy at the lowest level for something like $160 a month. I could never afford to use it, though, because of the co-pays, which are something like $10 more than I pay on the sliding scale at the clinic -- I am eligible for the $15 rate. Real sickness is the problem. On the other hand, with the insurance, I would still be left with a deductible on that serious illness that would sink me in any case. You never win with an insurance company, period. It's all an illusion -- all that great coverage. Unfortunately unionized public employees often have the best insurance, at least from what I hear, and they'll do anything not to lose it. Now, if I were them I would tell them to bargain with the State to get rid of the "middleman" and make health care affordable. Unfortunately, many of these people are the very ones who espouse the line "I have mine, screw you if you don't have good health insurance." Of course, taxpayers like me, who can't get "good" health insurance, pay through the nose on so many things for their benefits and their attitude. How do you chance this crazy mindset?

Your personal impression of Moore notwithstanding his support for both Obama and the Democratic Party has lessened these last two years, remarkably so recently in fact. That you continue to criticize him for positions he took long ago and now alters seems at least a bit unfair, or perhaps puzzling is a more correct definition.