Political Punch

Don't worry about it Mamet. The drift to the right comes with the hardening of the arteries.

Welcome to the dark side of the Force.

So Mamet has gone from being a 'we, we, we' American to a 'me, me, me' American.

The only difference is that 'me me me Americans' usually vote incompetent powermongers into the White House.

What's new?

Mamet should stick to playwriting: a snapshot in time. The US isn't the same now as it was in the day his grandmother could send her sons to college. Do the math.

However, his basic error is in assuming the question is whether the government or 'the people' should be in control. (We'll skip the anarchist assumption there.)

That's NOT the question. The government (along with 'society') is only responsible for providing the infrastructure (or the regulation of infrastructure provided privately) to allow individuals and families to achieve the most they can, both for themselves and the so-called greater good.

Get rid of this 'unnecessary' infrastructure, as Mamet recommends, and we'll have circled back to tribalism. This is an improvement?

Lots of people complain about their families - it doesn't mean the concept of families is bad and should be destroyed. Same with government. Review the alternatives.

Those who want to get rid of government actually want to get rid of society. (You can substitute 'reduce' for 'get rid of' if it makes you feel better.) Go ahead and listen to them, but sometimes it's just another mid-life crisis. (And never, EVER vote for a presidential candidate who's in the middle of one.)

Mamet is a beautiful writer and my favorite line came at the end:

"The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season."

But his piece made me wonder what world Mamet lives in. It seems to be a world where the Iraq war is not taking place, where our Justice Department is not writing memos which attempt to legalize maiming, where real women and men and children do not die because they can't afford to go to the doctor, and where those constitutional rights he seems to love as much as I do have not been threatened. I would like to live in that world too. But I don't, and most of America doesn't either. We need both faith and change.

Too bad, the vast majority of knee-jerk journalists haven't figured it out.

He saw the light...welcome to the club mate. This is where intellect resides.

It's good you read it. What do I think?

1. Vast conspiracies are usually half-vast.

2. We are all hopeful. It is better to be helpful.

3. When news became a cost-center, it became costly. The direct coupling to the money spent on campaigns to pay the media is something even a liberal notices.

4. Being liberal and being brain-dead aren't the same thing. Being brain-dead and voting against your own self-interests are.

5. It isn't that taxes are too high; it is that people spending them are too low.

6. The electorate blames everyone in Washington for the mess we are in but they elected President G.W. Bush twice. Either the mess wasn't that bad or the alternatives were. OR...

7. Pushing Hillary Clinton out early is the only way the brain-dead extremists on either side can win again.

For eight years we had prosperity and a balanced budget. Then we decided it was time for another Reagan era.

You may not get the government you deserve but you get the one you vote for as long as all the votes are counted. Otherwise, you get what we have now.

Count Florida and Michigan EXACTLY as they voted.

Mamet is a bit late; this kind of reflections were very trendy in the nineties. A lot of liberals came under the influence of Allan Bloom. After Wolfowitz (a Bloom pupil), Cheney and Bush, most liberals are happy to be on the right track again.

Thank God some people are finally "getting it."

Congrats to you Mr. Mamet. What took so dang long?

Reading Mamet helped remind me that the goal for all of us is that notion to get ahead and get along. Maybe I should start reading again the stories of Mark Twain and other down home lore. I guess I've looked to long that everything is wrong and never good enough.

First Obama said he wasn't in the church when Wright gave his hate-filled sermon. Later, in his famous speech he said he was there. He must have known that there are things that would place him in the pews during on of those sermons.
Then, he threw his ‘typical white grandmother’ under the bus, to distract us from his radical mentor.

Now he says he would have left the church had Wright not retired. CAN HE MAKE UP HIS MIND?

What else is he hiding from the American people? He has run his entire campaign on “lies”.

Obama is not responsible for what his pastor/mentor said, but he is responsible for lying about it, and many other things. He simply has lost credibility.

Hillary is the better candidate.

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has stopped telling a story of a pregnant woman's medical tragedy after an Ohio hospital challenged its accuracy last weekend.

But recent accounts of the episode have omitted key details that suggest there was more truth in the essence of Clinton's tale than her critics, and even her presidential campaign, have acknowledged.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080407/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_hospital_fact_check

"Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view."

Yes, he does. No, they aren't. While Mamet offers anecdotal evidence of class mobility, many studies have shown that economic class in the U.S. is becoming increasingly less mobile, the gap continues to widen, and those who find themselves on the upper end of the spectrum, like Mamet, suddenly decide that the redistribution of wealth may not be such a great idea after all and, with total and complete "objectivity", suddenly renounce liberalism. Typical, boring bourgeoisie claptrap.

He should stick to playwriting.

Obama 2008 -- Yes, WE CAN!!!

Intriguing!

My favorite readings from this election season have been Shelby Stelle on Obama; Pat Buchanon on the savaging of Geraldine Ferraro and Newt Gingrich on Obama's race speech.

I never would have imagined finding kindred spirits among them and yet I did, at least on these topics.

What an eyeopener this season has been in that I have turned to conservative commentators to find objectivity.

I loved the comparison between GW and JFK. The writer is dead on!!

Best comment in my opinion:
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

This is such a comment for the current election and state of affairs in the United States. It needs to become a bumper sticker but is probably too long given the need for small 2 seater cars!

It was the 'brain-dead' liberal FDR who rescued the country from the Great Depression. It was the 'brain-dead' liberal Bill Clinton who rescued the economy in the 1990s. It was the 'conservative' George W. Bush and the rubberstamp GOP Congress that got us where we are today.

Why don't you put Ed Shultz (the guy who called McCain a "warmonger" who is no longer a 'brain-dead' conservative) or Democratic Senator Jim Webb (who served as Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, who fought in Vietnam, and who has a son who'se in the Marines now in Iraq). He's not a brain-dead conservative either. Instead, because you have nothing to report, you report something that has no relevance. It was the 'brain-dead' liberal FDR who rescued the country from the Great Depression. It was the 'brain-dead' liberal Bill Clinton who rescued the economy in the 1990s. It was the 'conservative' George W. Bush and the rubberstamp GOP Congress that got us where we are today.

I think he respects his intellect too much to be a liberal. Some people got it alot earlier, but an awakening is always a good thing. If one stops and thinks, one's thinking never stops.