I just saw the frightenly great movie, "The Good Shepherd"

[Aviation Pro]

One particular scene stands out and may be the key to the apparent malfeasance that infects this fetid pile of an administration. Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) has a sit down with a Sam Giancanna type played by Joe Pesci. Wilson asks the Pesci character for help for the pending invasion of Cuba. (First question, isn't the Pesci character supposed to be in New Orleans - wait wrong movie). Pesci, who is very wary of his visitor because Wilson is the "kind who starts the big wars," sizes the latter up and proceeds to start this dialogue:

Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the chuch; the Irish they have the homeland, jews their tradition; even the n****s, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America, and the rest of you are just visiting.

This pretty much encapsulates what the blue blood, power elite (the WASP syndicate led by the Bush clan) feel about the rest of us, and they keep the doors tightly closed from any breech.

[Aviation Pro]

1. One other comment....

...like the heredity kingdoms of old, with each succeeding generation the bloodline gets weaker and weaker through a misplaced sense of entitlement (I'm going to discount inbreeding for now). Think this Bush is bad? Wait for the next generation.

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

3. Well, we have already seen that sense of entitlement from

Barbara and Jenna Bush, Noelle and George P. Bush and let's not forget Pierce Bush...

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

2. I watched "The Good Shepherd" last night and that particular

scene struck me the exact same way.

This movie is going to be on my recommend list to everyone I know.

[CTyankee]

4. It was a very disturbing film and I thought it was intelligently done.

Two drawbacks: it was overly long and Angelina Jolie's character wasn't well written and she didn't do very well in it. But it sure was an indictment of the CIA.

The image of the girl's wedding dress descending from the plane was almost poetic in its tragedy...

[Aviation Pro]

5. It would be exceedingly difficult to make a short movie....

...about the genesis of the CIA. From its roots in the OSS (Sullivan in the movie was Wild Bill Donovan for real) to the Truman directive that established the organization through the grand game of the mid to late 50s and then to the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs (Cochina) and its aftermath takes a minimum of the length of the movie. I think DeNiro did an excellent job keeping it as tight as he did.

[CTyankee]

6. It's strange. When I think of movies I REALLY loved I had no idea of the time

I loved "Chariots of Fire," "Godfather I," "Lawrence of Arabia," "Out of Africa" and "Sixth Sense" for instance. I was pretty much glued to them. "Shepherd" didn't have that effect on me and I lived through that Cold War period and remember a lot of it (well, Bay of Pigs onward). I wanted to care more for what was going on because the intellectual content was so interesting but I couldn't get started with it in that way.