[NEohioPAL] So much for thoughtful opinions.

Thu Sep 18 08:27:43 PDT 2008

Well, I won't get into the inaccuracy of saying the Wall Street meltdown is in any meaningful way bipartisan, offering instead something more relevant to this group: Obama's stand on the arts!

Obama promises strong arts policy
By Michael Lithgow, February 1, 2008 

Not usually a hot-button topic in American presidential politics, Barack Obama has issued a comprehensive statement in support of arts and arts education in the United States. 

His campaign position focuses on nine points: Reinvesting in arts education, expanding public grants for arts education, publicly championing arts education, creating an artist corps, increasing funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, promoting cultural diplomacy, providing health care for artists and ensuring tax fairness for artists. 

Sure, its only words and promises at this stage. And, a quick check of Obama's website reveals that arts and culture do not appear in his master list of campaign issues, a drop-down list from the website's navigation bar. Still, it's good to see that the arts and cultural policy are at least on the agenda, and also to see a front-running candidate campaigning for increased funding and support for arts education and artists. This should definitely be part of the national debate. 

Tell your friends. Demand answers from the candidates and their campaign offices about arts funding. Put support for the arts, artists and arts education an the political agenda. Tell Obama to add Arts & Culture to his drop-down list of issues20on his website. >>>

Obama has the plan on his web site. You can go to www.barackobama.com/issues and click on "arts". His full plan is there.

I can't find any statements or policies or proposals from John McCain on the arts, pro or con. If anyone else can, let us know!

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Fortunato <learnedhand at live.com>
To: ensemble-theatre at sbcglobal.net; neohiopal at listserve.com
Sent: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:27 am
Subject: Re: [NEohioPAL] So much for thoughtful opinions.

The Wall Street catastrophes were defininitely bi partisan.  

We need change we can believe in, not change at any price.

Just remember, when you discuss public policy, you have to go more than with just one's gut, or with some kind of Method exercise feeling or impression.  We're talking about deductive reasoning rather than "What if.......?" or trying to think of one's self as an ice cream cone (remember Chorus Line?)

Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:10:51 -0700
From: ensemble-theatre at sbcglobal.net
To: neohiopal at listserve.com; bwillis at rightupmedia.com
Subject: [NEohioPAL] So much for thoughtful opinions.

It does not need to be repeated as often, but the slogan, "Change we can believe"

has captivated everyone who has a brain left in their head. After the catastrophes that have engulfed Wall Street and soon the rest of us, the mandate to the American electorate is crystal clear - this country needs one Democrat in the White House, and a majority of them in the US
 Congress. Only then will the pendulum be able to swing to the other side of the

case, and we can set our watches again, to tell what time the food stores open, and feed ourselves. 

If the article quoted in the NYT is a thoughtful opinion, then someone should wash

Mr. Brooks mouth out with soap. Not that I would abridge his First Amendment 

prerogatives, but just point his segue in the right direction so he can keep his balance. 

That piece of writing is a blatant passive-aggressive attempt at sheer support for the

governor of Alaska cloaked in an adolescent attempt to discredit 'that community organizer." from Illinois.  

Get over it, elephant riders, the jackass is going down Pennsylania Avenue straight

to 1600, and nothing any of you THINK, SAY, or DO can change it. Now get yourself

off to your moose stew cooking class before the chef devours the lesson.  

--- On Wed, 9/17/08, Brooke Willis <bwillis at rightupmedia.com> wrote:

From: Brooke Willis <bwillis at rightupmedia.com>
Subject: Re: [NEohioPAL] A thoughtful opinion written by a Republican pundit, NY TIMES Op-Ed 9/15/08
To: neohiopal at listserve.com
Date: Wednesday, September 17, 2008, 4:47 PM

Please please please let's not start this....
e get plenty of political opinions in our regular e-mail these days.
hank you.

n Sep 17, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Matthew Wright wrote:
By DAVID BROOKS
ublished: September 15, 2008
Philosophical debates arise at the oddest times, and in 
the heat of 
his election season, one is now rising in Republican ranks. The narrow 
uestion is this: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice president? Most 
onservatives say yes, on the grounds that something that feels so good 
ould not possibly be wrong. But a few commentators, like George Will, 
harles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat demur, suggesting in 
ifferent ways that she is unready.
he issue starts with an evaluation of Palin, but does not end there. 
his argument also is over what qualities the country needs in a leader 
nd what are the ultimate sources of wisdom.There was a time when 
onservatives did not argue about this. Conservatism was once a frankly 
litist movement. Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism 
nd the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical 
ducation, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was 
cquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.
But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, 
train. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but 
ractical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the 
niversities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.
The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor 
implicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor 
nstinct.
This populist tendency produced the term-limits movement based on the 
elief that time in government destroys character but contact with 
rass-roots America gives one groun
ding in real life. And now it has 
roduced Sarah Palin.
Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to 
o battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in 
he way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the 
iberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman 
ecause she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never 
een in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never 
ummered in Tuscany.
Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her 
ackers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks 
n the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular 
eople need to take control.
And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard, 
teven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified 
itizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe 
n a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and 
ooted people like Palin.
I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through 
he last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it 
as the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.
And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first 
erm, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, 
he creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired 
kills. Most of all, it requir
es prudence.
What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a 
pecific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of 
nformation and still discern the essential current of events — the 
hings that go together and the things that will never go together. It 
s the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which 
rguments have the most weight.
How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader 
ossesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the 
tudy of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances 
o judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and 
ho can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.
Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have 
igidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without 
ong experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, 
he founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist 
apers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It 
s average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.
Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a 
orrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of 
overnance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national 
ssues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like 
resident Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with 
rashness and excessive decis
iveness.
The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the establishment”
is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the 
ight. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to 
hrow away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders 
ho have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so 
arked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.
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