anybody tired? on iraq, if you didn't already know:

Tuesday, October 1st, 2002
"YOU ARE EITHER WITH US, OR YOU ARE FIRED!"

Dear Friends,

I was going to write you a letter about what a pathetic liar George W, Bush is -- but then I figured, hey, why waste your time telling you something you already know!

You already know that his planned invasion of Iraq is a ruse meant to distract the public from the real issues, those issues being the following:

1. The number of people unemployed since he "took" office has risen by 35%.

2. We had a federal SURPLUS of $281 billion when he was inaugurated; today we have a DEFICIT of $157 billion.

3. TWO MILLION jobs have been eliminated since Bush began his occupation of the Oval Office.

4. The stock market is down 34% since January of 2001.

5. Another 1.4 million people now have NO health insurance, making it a total of over 41 million Americans who can't afford to get sick.

6. Only 13 corporate crooks out of HUNDREDS have been indicted, and none of them have been the close personal friends of Mr. Bush.

THOSE are the real issues facing us, not some phony excuse for a war.

But, like I said, you already know that. You know that Bush is lying through his smirk when he says Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction." He has not offered one shred of evidence to prove this. Not one! You know he is lying when he says that there is a "connection" between Saddam and bin Laden. Even members of his own administration have admitted that is not true. It's just one lie after another, and I applaud those three congressmen who went to Iraq this week and told it like it is -- and demanded that the sanctions which have already killed a half-million Iraqi children be ended. Sen. Trent Lott said "they should come home and keep their mouths shut." I say, we need more damn Democrats with that kind of courage and with mouths like that!

Which brings me to the real point of this letter. The Democrats.

I have never seen a more lame bunch of cowards and appeasers in my life. They are ready to bow down before Bush and give him what he wants to wage war against Iraq. This pathetic excuse of a party is an embarrassment to us all. The fact that they let Robert Torricelli run for re-election in New Jersey, knowing how dirty he was, shows just how capable they are of handing the Senate over to Bush and the Republicans come November. They have blown it over and over again, and lots of good people I know who keep putting their faith in the Democrats are just giving up -- and that is the worst thing to happen in a free society.

What are we going to do? Left to their own devices, the Democrats will not only hand both the House and the Senate to the Republicans in November, they will guarantee that Bush gets his second undeserved term in 2004. We must not let that happen. This year's election was theirs for the taking. Just look at the state of the union Bush gave us: Bush cronies caught stealing from the corporate till, Bush and Cheney caught breaking the law in the '90s, the economy in the toilet, and Bush failing to do the only real job he had to do since 9/11: Get bin Laden! What a disgrace! Yet the Democrats could not even find enough candidates to offer a REAL challenge to the Republicans in nearly 200 House districts for the November 5th elections. What an appalling excuse of a party.

OK, I know, there is not much we can do about this now. But we all need to get busy and ensure that this whole rotten system is rocked by the disgruntled millions come election day 2004. Otherwise, we have no right to complain.

In the meantime, we must stop the Bush attack on Iraq. We must find out now, as W says, "who is wid us and who is agin us." I am asking each of you to please sign the petition I have posted here and on my website informing the Democrats that whoever amongst them votes for this war, we pledge NEVER to vote for them again. I will personally see that your on-line signatures are delivered to every member of Congress. I guarantee your voice will be heard loud and clear.

Go to http://www.michaelmoore.com/petitions/peacepledge/index.php and sign the petition to the Democrats: "You're Either With Us Or You're Fired."

Then let's figure out together what we can do to turn things around by 2004.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. We have no other choice.

Yours,

Michael Moore

P.S. The wonderful, heartfelt letters sent to me regarding my mom's passing continue to fill my mailbox from so many of you. Thank you very much -- you don't know what it has meant to me. I am sorry I have not been able to be very active or public in the past couple of months, so please accept my apologies and my thanks for your understanding. Next week, I have to get back to work -- it is time for my film to bust its way into theaters across America. I will tell you all about it next Monday...


the film is called Bowling For Columbine, about guns and their devastating effect on this country.. and you should all go see it when it comes to florida sometime in a month or so. it's very important. here's roger ebert's early thoughts:


Taking a shot at firearms

September 2, 2002

BY ROGER EBERT

TELLURIDE, Colo.--At some point early in his life, Michael Moore must have found himself wearing a baseball cap, a windbreaker, and a shirt hanging outside his jeans, and decided he liked the look. That's what he was wearing when I met him at the Telluride Film Festival in 1989, and that's what he was wearing here Saturday. It is also what he wears in "Bowling for Columbine," his new documentary film, when he goes calling on K-Mart executives and Charlton Heston, the spokesman for the National Rifle Association. He is not necessarily wearing the same shirt and jeans, you understand. His closet must look a lot like Archie's and Jughead's, with rows of identical uniforms. The clothes send a message: Here is a man of the people, working-class. He may be on television but he is not of television. In his films, he is a huge hulking presence at the edge of the screen, doggedly firing questions at people who desperately wish they were elsewhere. His face is usually in shadow because of the baseball cap.

"Bowling for Columbine," which had its U.S. premiere here over the weekend, as funny and abrasive as his hit "Roger & Me," and much more sorrowful, is about the American love affair with guns. And not just with guns, but with shooting: A higher percentage of Canadians than Americans own guns, we learn, but they hardly ever shoot anyone with them. Gunshot deaths in the United States are 10 to 20 times higher than in other developed nations.

For once Moore does not seem to have the answers to all the questions he asks, and there is a certain humility at moments in this film.

He talks to gun owners who say they feel safer with guns in the house, and then he meditates on whether media coverage of violence may be making them feel threatened. One of his many eye-opening statistics is that in recent years violent death has been down 20 percent, but coverage of it on TV has been up 600 percent.

In the most astonishing sequence in the film, he takes two survivors of the Columbine massacre on a trip to K-Mart corporate headquarters. Both teens still have bullets in their bodies that were purchased at K-Mart, and in a Moore brainstorm they want to see if they can return them for a refund. One of the boys actually shows a K-Mart spokesperson the bullet scars on his back. K-Mart sends the usual series of P.R.-types to deal with Moore's delegation, and we're reminded of the General Motors spokesmen in "Roger & Me."

But then a totally unexpected thing happens. K-Mart tells Moore and the boys it will stop selling ammunition in its stores. Moore is stunned: No one has ever agreed with one of his demands before. He has the K-Mart spokesperson repeat her promise. It's true. K-Mart won't sell bullets.

That may help a little, but comedian Chris Rock may be on to something in the film when he observes how cheap bullets are (the Columbine bullets were 17 cents apiece). Why not price them at $5,000, he suggests:

"And then you wouldn't have any innocent bystanders."

I'll review the movie at length when it opens, including Moore's interview with Charlton Heston and the way he links Michigan's "work for welfare" laws to the death of a 6-year-old. After the Telluride screening, Ian Waldron-Mantgani, a teenage film critic from Liverpool, England, was shaking, literally shaking, as he left the theater. He was not alone.