feminist blogs

Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama and John Edwards are big winners in Iowa tonight, and there's a reason for that - all three represent change from the status quo. Hillary Clinton came in a close third for the Democrats, specifically because she's too beholden to the DLC's Republican-lite corporation-loving party machine. Edward's took second place with far less money than either Barack or Hillary - he's only using public campaign financing. He won't owe anything to corporate interests when his campaign is over, and he got there without a huge war chest.

Huckabee is a nice guy - he's easy to like. The problem is that beneath that personable image lie some very fucked up ideas that would have us living in a Christo-fascist theocracy and women would be breeding slaves of the state. That, my children, must not happen. The Democrats have to win next year, no matter what. Whoever gets the Democratic nomination, make no mistake, we all have to get behind him or her. Right now, I say the money is evenly split between Barack and John.

The turnout in Iowas was unprecedented - young people were an astonishing 56% of new voters. If you watched the caucus, you saw that Kucinich, Dodd, Biden and Richardson all failed to generate enough support to be considered viable. The vast majority of those people who started out supporting one of those four candidates (or should that be 5? Is Gravel still in this race? I haven't heard from him in a while, but there's been a virtual media blackout on anyone but the top 3 Dems) went to Obama. Young people overwhelmingly went for Barack. Not my first choice, but it made me proud. I never thought I'd live to see a viable non-white presidential candidate. Maybe there is hope for us as a nation.

My heart still belongs to Kucinich. While he's still in the race, I can't in good conscience vote for a lesser candidate. He's the only one with all the goods, and I'm praying that all the weeks he has spent in New Hampshire pay off in a big way. I want to see Dennis surprise everybody the same way all those new people who turned out tonight in Iowa surprised the media. Dennis represents the clearest and best form of change we can hope for - but I'm realistic as well as optimistic.

John Edwards speech after the race was called tonight gave me chills. He was damn near channeling John Kennedy and it brought tears to my eyes. Barack is giving his speech as I write this, and he's an inspirational speaker, too, though I'm not feeling it the way I did with Edwards. I could get behind an Edwards/Obama ticket with great enthusiasm thought neither is my first choice. Barack has a huge banner behind him that says "CHANGE" and if there was one resounding winner in tonight's caucuses, that winner was Change. There will be a new America in one year - let's hope it's a better, free-er, kinder and more prosperous one.

One final note to all the Progressive men who will be crowing about the upset accomplished by Libertarian spoiler Ron Paul - about one quarter of Paul's positions are radical and wonderful, but the other three-quarters are frightening and exactly the wrong direction for this country. One of those very wrong positions is that he is radically anti-choice. Some of you are far too eager to trade my sovereignty over my own uterus away for the idea of smaller government. The friend of my enemy is my enemy, too.

Naturally, the news had to bring in a lyin' ass Republican to counter the Edwards Tour on Poverty. This time around we have RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, your basic evil, entitled white guy speaking from Washington. The first thing he mentions is the haircut. *sigh... Then he says Edwards is out of touch with poverty in America - as statement dripping with such irony it makes my eyes hurt - and starts talking about how big Edwards house is and blaming him for the health care crisis in North Carolina because he used to sue doctors for medical mistakes.

Then, wouldn't you know, he mentions the bible. The Republicans' favorite line in the whole thing is "the poor will always be with us" and he trots it out, implying that we have no obligation to help the poor because Jesus says they can't be helped, and there's the implicit understanding amongst the Republican rich that anyone who wants a job has one, and if you were a good, "god"-fearing Xtian you wouldn't be poor anyway. I'm glad this guy isn't here in KY, because I might have to hunt him down and scream at him. Edwards even used the Gordon Gekko line in saying that the view in Washington has been "greed is good" and he resoundly rejects that. The Repubs don't have a leg to stand on here, put they keep throwing labels at Edwards that more accurately apply to themselves. When you haven't got a conscience, it's easy to lie like that, especially when you have no respect at all for your intended audience. Edwards does have the distinction of having used the "L" word in the debates for 2004. He said of Bush and Cheney "they will absolutely lie about anything." The person who will stand up and call shrub out for being the Liar that he is gets my vote, hands down.

Duncan next hammers the sore spot for this area - liquid coal plants. A lot of people in this area think liquid coal is going to save Eastern Kentucky, but they're only going to do what the coal industry has always done here - make the mine owners rich, get a bunch of miners killed, and destroy our environment. It won't do shit for poor people, even if they're directly employed by such a plant.

This area is still struggling to get plumbing and potable water to our poorest residents. (The coal industry has destroyed our ground water. You should see the sludge that comes out of the faucets in some places - or wells, if they don't have faucets.) The average income in the area Edwards visited today is $12,000 dollars a year. The drop-out rate is the highest in the state and therefore in the country. 1 in 4 people in Kentucky is disabled, and a large part of the population is simply unemployable, even for the most menial jobs because they are illiterate. Yet Floyd county has more millionaires per square mile than any other county in the country, because there are a few VERY wealthy mine owners who maintain residences here. Nowhere in America is the "2 Americas" analogy more accurate.

It's not a visible difference, though. That table full of guys in trucker hats and overalls at the local Dennys might have a combined worth that would make Donald Trump drool. Rich people here don't necessarily look rich, and their houses are hidden up in the hills behind gates and stone walls. The money isn't visible here.

Now here's where I get in trouble with my middle-class family...

The poverty in Eastern Kentucky is in. your. face. I can't begin to describe to you the conditions some people live in here. My best analogy is that Eastern KY is like an Indian reservation, without the sovereignty or government aid. We're isolated geographically and we have no infrastructure, so nobody gives a shit about us. They're trying to create tourism in this area with native arts and crafts, golf ranges, skate parks, ATV trails, horse trails and our new elk population, but tourists need things like hotels and restaurants. Except for fast food and an occasional Chinese smorgasboard or Mexican place, there's no such thing. The best meal in the area is supposedly the catfish at the Lodge at Jenny Wiley State Park. There is some higher culture in Kentucky, including fine restaurants, hotels and art galleries, but it's in Lexington and Louisville on the other side of the state.

Let me tell you about the hotels. There's a former Holiday Inn that one of my many, many cousins redecorated with a gun during a party. He was away for a few years. There's a motel that used to be the home of a satanic vampire cult that made the national news when it's "leader" - who was something like 17, and whose mom was a part of it and having sex with his friends - murdered his girlfriend's parents in Florida. There's one other place that Hillary Clinton got to stay in, which I understand is passable, but not great. So if you're coming to visit, bring a tent. We've got an abundance of open mountain land, as long as you don't mind copperheads, rattlesnakes (like the huge one my dad killed in the front yard last week) mountain lions (like the one my cousins down in hollow saw up on our side of the mountain the other night, so we can't let the dogs out after dark) bears, deer, tics and the aforementioned giant elk. No bees, though, so it's getting hard to grow anything. Don't get me started on the foreign insects and flora that have been brought into the area which all caused greater problems than they might have solved.

A friends husband once said that I lived in the middle of nowhere, but my reply was that I have to drive 3 hours to get to the middle of nowhere. That's why my family had to camp at the hospital in Lexington when my mom had two brain surgeries and couldn't be left alone. There are fabulous hospitals even in this area, though, because everyone is sick. Diabetes, heart disease and lung ailments (from exposure to coal) abound. Then there are the accidents, like the toddler who was burned this week when he dropped his sippy cup on some black powder some boys had been playing with, and the car that went driving down the state highway in front of my place shooting randomly the other night. Did I mention that we are the reason oxycontin is called "hillbilly heroin?" It's the number one form of recreation for our young people. We have the same pervasive problems with domestic violence and rape that are found on reservations, too.

Most people are older, poorly educated even if they finished school, and they're deeply indoctrinated in the local religion which is reactionary far beyond anything justified by the actual text of the bible, but they don't know that because the preachers they listen to are illiterate, too. Not just unschooled in theology, I mean can't read a word at all.

The middle class here is tiny, and even a county employee can be the biggest fish in this pond. The bigger fish get angry that this area is portrayed as impoverished. These are proud people, but frankly, they're in denial. You should see what passes for a newspaper here. It's more like a church newsletter, with columns by paperboys and adults who can't write, or even conjugate a verb. They won't touch anything controversial and there's no "investigative reporting" though we sorely need some for reasons I'll get into later on. I don't usually read it because it makes me want to hurt somebody.

Finally, the government recently decided not to put a bio-weapons lab in London, KY because they wouldn't be able to get anyone to work in it that would actually consider living here. The kicker for me is that people here were upset that they weren't going to get a lab full of anthrax and ebola in their back yards because it would have created jobs. Get that? They'd rather have a job doing scutt work around bio-weapons than live.

Is there really anything left to say after that? More power to you, John. Even if you don't succeed, at least you've got people thinking about the poor.

CNN Throws in Towel, Admits to Two Errors,
and States That All 'Sicko' Facts Are True to Their Source (or something like that)
... Moore Realizes All This is Huge Distraction and Then Spends More Precious Time Thanking Paris Hilton for Seeing 'Sicko'
... Meanwhile, More than 300 Americans Die Because They Had No Health Insurance
During the 8-Day Gupta-Moore War...

July 17th, 2007

Friends,

The mighty CNN, in a lengthy and sad online defense of their woe-begotten 'Sicko' story of last Monday, has admitted that they did indeed fudge at least two of the facts in their coverage of my film and have apologized for it:

1. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN: "To be clear, I got a number wrong in my original report, substituting the number 25, instead of 251." -- My Conversation with Michael Moore, July 11th, 2007; and

2. CNN: "Moore is correct. Paul Keckley left Vanderbilt in late 2006." -- CNN's Response to Michael Moore, July 15th, 2007.

Furthermore, CNN confirmed that all of our statistics in "Sicko" are the correct numbers from the sources we cited. Although CNN still prefers to use older World Health Organization statistics, we will stick to using this year's Bush administration stats and more recent U.N. data. (In "Sicko," we consistently use only U.N. Human Development Statistics unless it's for studies they don't do or have recent numbers for.) CNN did apologize for these two factual errors, but no apology seems to be coming for the rest of their errors. These days, to get the mainstream media to admit they were wrong is rare; to get them to admit it twice, as they have with "Sicko," I guess should be considered a whopping victory. Will they eventually apologize for the rest, or for their reporting on the war? Will the Cubs win the World Series this year?

So the truce has been signed, the peace pipe has been smoked. And the public is left with a much more cautious and wary eye when it comes to CNN. To be fair, this is what happens when you have to grind out "news" 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a staff you have shrunk through layoffs over the years (like all the broadcast networks have done). You end up rushed and having interns do your research. You have robots replace live camera operators. And, if you're CNN, you are constantly dodging the accusation that you are "too liberal." So when you do a piece on someone like me, you have to make sure you add superfluous and standard ad hominems attacking me simply to prove that you are NOT too liberal. I get it.

Until the last month or so, I have not appeared on a single national TV show for nearly 2 and 1/2 years. After the attacks I had to endure three years ago, from a media intent on questioning my patriotism because I dared to speak out against the war when none in the media would, I decided I had had enough and would simply concentrate on making my next film. I had no desire to participate in networks that were complicit in the war because of their refusal the challenge the commander in chief.

I have to admit, though, I do feel kinda bad taking it all out on Wolf Blitzer. It's not like he's the official representative of the mainstream media. I mean, he's from Buffalo, for crying out loud! He said to me at the end of the show last week to please come back on "anytime you want." I will take him up on that offer and appear again with him tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm not expecting a dozen roses or make-up sex -- I only want a promise that there will be no more distorted distractions so we can have a decent discussion about the REAL issues like why 18,000 Americans die every year because they don't have a health insurance card. More than 300 of them died this week. As Ehrlichman said to Nixon in "Sicko": "The less care they give 'em, the more money they (the insurance companies) make."

THAT'S the only thing we should be talking about. How profit and greed are killing our fellow Americans. How profit and private insurance have to be removed from our health care system. CNN should join me in asking why our 9/11 rescue workers aren't receiving medical care. Somebody should send a crew to Canada to find out why they live longer than we do, and why no Canadian has ever gone bankrupt because of medical bills. And all of the media should start saying how much it costs to go to a doctor in these other top industrialized countries: Nothing. Zip. It's FREE. Don't patronize Americans by saying, "Well, it's not free -- they pay for it with taxes!" Yes, we know that. Just like we know that we drive down a city street for FREE -- even though we paid for that street with our taxes. The street is FREE, the book at the library is FREE, if your house catches on fire, the fire department will come and put it out for FREE, and if someone snatches your purse, the police officer will chase down the culprit and bring your purse back to you -- AND HE WON'T CHARGE YOU A DIME FROM THAT PURSE!

These are all free services, collectively socialized and paid for with our tax dollars. To argue that health care -- a life and death issue for many -- should not be considered in the same league is ludicrous and archaic. And trust me, once you add up what you pay for out-of-pocket in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, overpriced medicines, and treatments that aren't covered (not to mention all the other things we pay for like college education, day care and other services that many countries provide for at little or no cost), we, as Americans, are paying far more than the Canadians or Brits or French are paying in taxes. We just don't call these things taxes, but that's exactly what they are.

See you all when I'm back on CNN tomorrow -- where the discussion will be not be about whose statistics are right, but rather about the guy without insurance who died while I was writing this letter.

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. Oh... I forgot to tell you about Paris Hilton. Apparently cooped up for too long at home since getting out of jail, she decided to head out for a night on the town. But where does she go? Clubbing? Cruising down the Strip? No! She and her sister decide to go see "Sicko." Now THAT'S news! So, no more bad words about Paris Hilton!

He's right - this was a distraction. That's a big old Republican trick - get you talking about something that isn't what you came to talk about. By misdirecting the issue, no one had to address why we have three "9/11"s every year - meaning that 18,000 Americans die for NO OTHER REASON than they didn't have a health insurance card. Corporations are making money while good people are dying.

Case in point - my aunt knows a woman who was a nurse. She recently lost her job because the hospital fired everyone instead of settling a strike like human beings. After she became unemployed, she found out she has 3rd stage ovarian cancer. Her treatments will bankrupt her family, who are good hard-working people. That's shameful, and America needs to step up and do better for its people.

TomPaine.com - The Case Of The Poison Popcorn

Doesn't that just about say it all? Follow that link and you will find an article about people getting "popcorn lung" from the chemical that makes Orville taste buttery, and about a nation full of communities where sewage taints the water. Do you think I'm talking about a third world country? NOPE, it's right here in the good old USofA.

The people in charge of your government hate government and they don't give a shit about you. All they care about is money. They import food from the most venal and autocratic regimes in the world, then don't inspect it. They let you work in factories full of chemicals they know will eventually kill you. They let you drink dirty water because they'd rather give Bill Gates a tax cut than invest in keeping our infrastructure standing - like those buildings in NYC that occasionally just fall down, or the broken pipes in your sewers or the crumbling highways you need to get to work.

We absolutely have to wrest power away from these greedy bastards and keep them so regulated, inspected and audited that they never manage to do put us in this position again.

The Reagan Era of greed and deregulation is as dead as he is. Demand better.

via David Swanson.
(Goddess bless him, he has been a tireless warrior in the fight against this criminal administration.)

The impeachment movement is uniting and expanding. We're joining with many other organizations to launch Impeach07, a coordinated series of actions aimed at impeaching Bush and Cheney through widespread public protest, creative dissent, media activism, education, and lobbying:
http://www.impeach07.org

Bush and Cheney have misled this nation into an aggressive war, spied in open violation of the law, and sanctioned the use of torture -- among numerous other offenses. Newsweek reported in October that a majority of Americans favor impeachment, and in January that 58% said they wished the Bush administration were over. "Only a great popular upheaval," Howard Zinn said recently, "can push both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will."

We need to end one war and prevent another, and impeachment is the way we will do it.

On March 17, the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, Impeach07 will mobilize for a
March on the Pentagon to demand peace and impeachment. Go here to get involved:
http://www.marchonpentagon.org

On March 18-20, Impeach07 will organize local events for peace and impeachment around the country:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event

Impeach07 is also planning:

A "Make Hip Hop, Not War" bus tour promoting peace and impeachment on March 19 - April 21:
http://www.hiphopcaucus.org

A boycott of major corporations that are profiting from the Bush administration's policies, making a killing off of killing, on April 15- 22:
http://www.wearenotbuyingit.org

And a nationwide day of protest:
Impeachment Day, April 28, 2007:http://www.a28.org

Initial participating organizations represent hundreds of thousands of antiwar, military family, peace, youth and women activists and lawyers. They include: After Downing Street, Backbone Campaign, Center for Constitutional Rights, Citizens Impeachment Commission, CODE PINK Women for Peace, Constitution Summer, Consumers for Peace, Democrats.com, Democracy Rising, Gold Star Families for Peace, Green Party of the United States, Hip Hop Caucus, Impeach the President, ImpeachBush.org, Military Free Zone, National Lawyers Guild, Patriotic Response to Renegade Government, Progressive Democrats of America, Independent Progressive Politics Network, Velvet Revolution, and World Can't Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime.

Organizations that want to join should write to jacob@a28.org

Sorry I haven't posted much in the past few days. I've been lost on Flickr. If you aren't familiar with the site, it's a place where you upload all of your pictures and get to know other people by the pictures they post. It has another, "underground" use, though and that's what I've been doing. There's a collection of artists there showing their work and networking in different ways. I'm particularly drawn to the areas where people post pages from their sketchbooks, and I posted a few drawings from mine. I want to make the most of the service before someone fucks it up the way Google did YouTube.

YouTube gained popularity because it was a place to post snippets of stuff like the Daily show and the Colbert Report. Then Google bought it and unsubbed all the people that uploaded the content that brought people there in the first place. It went from a great underground form of communication to being a commercial enterprise concerned with Digital Media Rights and advertising. Ugh. In much the same way, Flickr has become a place for certain artists to communicate with each other. There are other sites for that purpose, just as you can get Daily Show clips at Comedy Central, but it isn't the same. The sharing aspect isn't there, or it doesn't flow as naturally.

Anyway, Flickr is not fond of the artists. They want strictly photographers. They aren't kicking people off the site, but they are leaving people out of the search engines somehow. Before my usual critics start yelling that it IS a commercial enterprise and they can do anything they want, stop and listen for a minute. This isn't about what they can do and it isn't about rights. It's about the Commons springing up organically in unusual places and how companies would garner more support if they'd ease up and go with the flow. There's more than one way to be in a band - you can be a whiny bitch like Metallica that pisses and moans over every penny, or you can be a laid-back cultural icon like the Grateful Dead and nurture your fan base. Money is only one measure of value. There's something to be said for generosity and caché.

Anyway, I'm having fun cruising people's sketch books and related sites about pens and pencils and Moleskines, and I'm learning a lot about art, about people, about what I like and don't like. I learn from looking at the way others do their art, and maybe somebody will gain something from seeing mine, meager though it might be. It's fun to how differently people can use something as simple as black ink or a box of paint.

I also spent the day watching the HEX marathon on BBC America - damn! Ancient curses, lesbian ghosts, Witches, fallen angels and cute guys... it's everything Buffy should have been but never was. I just hope they don't screw it up - they may have killed one of the main characters already and I'm having flashbacks of the way VANISHED killed my beloved and committed suicide in one swift act of stupidity.

What are you all doing this week end?