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I am the very model of a modern Kerry-Democrat, I'm an information animal, a medal-dripping technocrat, I know the Kennedys of Camelot, and hide my votes historical, While my Deaniac supporters consult the Usenet Oracle; I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters matrimonial, I understand rich heiresses, and lust for figures patrimonial, About Republican recessions I'm steaming up my views, With many bogus facts about the bad news in the better news.... American Digest: I Am the Very Model of A Modern Kerry Democrat

April 28, 2004 An interesting announcement appeared on The Daily Kos yesterday. It seems that, after many years and many bazillions of words by Kos and his Kosocrat Cohorts, a publisher has decided to publish a book of the best -- in bumper stickers. Ten to be precise. Yes, of all the screeds, analysis, commentary and fearless insight, the "ideas" that a publisher deems worthy of preserving from The Daily Kos are ten for a total of 45 words. Now that's a data compression algorithm that Stuffit's Aladdin Systems might want to emulate. More at: American Digest: By Their Bumper Stickers Shall Ye Know Them

November 03, 2003 Driving through a host of dying rural towns out west last September, one of constants were the community-based wall murals that decorated this or that building on vacant Main Streets. In a town in Nevada where the mines had died, there was an art gallery called, fittingly, "Desperation Arts." Next to Desperation Arts was a parking lot and on the wall was a 80 foot by 30 foot mural depicting the glory days of the town. Down the main drag there were about five other murals with the same sort of community spirit themes. My traveling companion, who had seen a lot more of small western towns than I had, gave a nod to the last one we passed heading out and said, "When the big murals show up, the town has pretty much had it.".... More at:American Digest: "Desperation Politics:" Revenge of DemNerds

January 27, 2004 Today, the Junior Varsity is at their never-ending rumble in the jungle in New Hampshire. The voters go in and the exit poles come out, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, to see which dreamboat will still float. It is our way and our ritual. But at this point, wake me when it's over and include me out.... More at: American Digest: And the Bleat Goes On

January 30, 2004 Candidate Cartoon Law I : Any hopeless Democratic candidate in the race will remain in suspended in the race until made aware of personal bankruptcy by his campaign finance manager. Howard the Duck steps off a cliff on the plains of Iowa, expecting to run along in front until the nomination. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to speak to his supporters. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.... More at: American Digest: The Democratic Candidate Cartoon Laws of Motion

One of the most distressing things about our retired pundits is that they fail to retire. Just when you'd hope that somebody who made millions blathering into a camera would just finally fade away to a robe, slippers and a hot, steaming cup of STFU, here they come again telling you to "leave your delusions at the door, sit down, open up wide for a big ole' slice of truth, with a side of wisdom." Today we have Walter Cronkite with his mind-numbing "Ten propositions for the Democrats...." More at: American Digest: Walter Cronkite's 10 Point Plan to Destroy the Democrats

December 31, 2003 Why all the guessing about the high RPM Lazy-Susan smorgasbord of Howard Dean’s positions these days? What’s up with the professed puzzlement of mainline Democrats about Dean’s need to commit public seppuku with his mouth over and over again? There’s no mystery about where Howard’s coming from. All you have to do is follow the money to find out what’s manipulating Howard Dean. Dean is a creature of the BlogBorg; a man thrown up by the Matrix; a Matrix Reloaded and a Matrix Revolution.... More at:American Digest: The BlogBorg Candidate

September 26, 2003 Our far flung correspondents have finished reviewing the set of tapes made by the Committee to ReElect the President, 2003 (aka Creep, the Return) and have supplied American Digest with the following transcript. We take no position on its credibility. August 15, 2003 Little Rock: Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark are knocking back a few while pouring over Clinton's collection of Oval Office Polaroids at the Clinton Library. Clinton: ...now this one's name was Amanda. They never even got a whiff of her. Worked in the kitchen. Man, she could put quite a froth on your latte. Clark: C. U. T. E. ! Bill. You old hush puppy.... More at: American Digest: Animal White House: How Clark Decided to Run

If you've ever lived in the country you know that there's only one result from years of flushing toxic wastes into your septic tank -- sooner or later it fills up, flows over and begins to percolate up to foul everything in and around the your house. Democratic spewfests like the one today at MLK's tomb underscore the bad maintenance the Democratic Party has been doing on its house for decades.... More at: American Digest: House of Sand and Fog and Septic Issues


We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -- Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock I. The Sleepwalkers "We haven't had a real-time nuclear demo since Japan, 1945, and that was with one of the prototypes. We've never had a real-time nuclear demo live on TV, but it is on their scheduling. What we can't face is that the next time, many more than 3,000 will die and a lot of the dead will be our children. Just what do you think our mood will be the morning after they slaughter not only thousands of adults at their desks like they did on the 11th, but thousands of our children as well?" -- In conversation, July, 2004 A foolish people grown fat in the long peace THE RUTHLESS DEDICATION OF OUR ENEMIES TO OUR DESTRUCTION was written across our sky with two pillars of flame and smoke in our largest city. We've seen that dedication continue, punctuated by car bombs, mortars, and random attacks against our soldiers. Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they would be pleased to extend this television series to 300 million beheadings in which each of us would have his "star" turn. Our enemy has not yet taken a woman or a child for a beheading, but both clearly on their programming schedule. All these things we know. We know the nature and goals of our enemy well. Our army is at the ready and in the field. And yet we hesitate. We hesitate because we are having an election in which we think the outcome will somehow determine what actions our enemy will pursue. We are a foolish people grown fat and fearful during the long peace. We stay our hand and hobble our warriors and walk on wrapped in our suburban slumber. Our President and the man who would be President cruise about the country on buses or play electric guitars surrounded by doting egoists whose own celebrity removes them from the sense of their doom. MORE AT: American Digest: The Sacrifice and the Reckoning: Part One

April 13, 2004 In a way, what the Democratic party is now is somewhat like a first wife thought about at a safe distance from the divorce. You know you loved her at some point but you can't really remember why. You know she was beautiful to you then, but now you can only see the ruins of that beauty, and you are glad you got the best years. You know that, yes, you must have been happy with her and had a lot of good times. But now you can't remember where or when. In fact, when you think about her now you can't really believe you wasted all those declining years with here just because you believed that somehow, some time, she would grow sane, beautiful, and young again.... More at: American Digest: The Degeneration of the Democratic Party

April 29, 2004 On the radio news at 3 AM this morning, the phrase "Camp Pendleton Marines today in Fallujah...." It's early and dark, but I'm awake and sitting down with coffee when I hear those words. I hear them often these days. News of a brutal firefight in and around that forsaken city on the far side of the world is always attached to that phrase. Less often, but more distressing, the phrase includes "...were killed in action." I always wonder if among those killed were any of the young marines I stood next to for a day last January.... More at: American Digest: Small Moves, the Spirit of America, and Doing What You Can

January 23, 2004 Organized chaos amidst organized clutter and the distinct sense that somewhere there was a war on. Driving from the main gate to the mustering area you glance in your side mirror and notice two Apache attack helicopters cruising just above you right down the center line. Very persuasive looking machines. You're glad they're on your side and you are on theirs. Just before you park you pass a road sign reading, "Drive Carefully. Tank Crossing".... More at: American Digest: Small Moves

April 11, 2004 We were two and a half years into the war and none of the kids of Orange County would fight in it unless they asked for it. All of the parents in Orange County knew their kids were crazy. After all, they were teenagers in high school. Few thought any of their kids were that crazy. Less than 20 miles south of where we sat last Friday, there was another kind of youth culture. I saw it for a day last January. You don't see it very often around here because it doesn't hang out at the malls. You can't see it from the freeways because its center is far back in the hills. It has its own malls and towns and sporting and educational complexes. It doesn't deal in "the culture of cool." It deals in the culture of carnage. It's the Camp Pendelton Marine Base.... More at: American Digest: AIN'T IT COOL?: A Tale of Two Cultures

February 10, 2004 Less is said about the weeks and months that spun out from that stunningly clear and bright September morning whose sky was slashed by a towering fist of flame and smoke. You forget the smoke that hung over the city like a widow's shawl as the fires burned on for months. You don't know about the daily commutes by subway wondering if some new horror was being swept towards you as the train came to a stop deep beneath the East River. You supress hearing over the loudspeaker, always unclearly, that the train was being "held for police activity at Penn Station." Was that a bomb, poison gas, a mass shooting, a strike on the Empire State building? You were never sure. You carried a flashlight in case you had to walk out of the tunnels that ran deep beneath the river. Terror was your quiet companion. After the first six weeks you barely knew it was there.... More at: American Digest: The Wound

December 11, 2003 American media personalities and American celebrities with nostalgie pour la défaite are derived from decades of beliefs in an America that is best as a "pitiful, helpless Giant." It is literally the only America they know and their entire professional and personal lives, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Hamptons to Beverly Hills are based on this grand assumption. They've had Presidents that, commuting to and from these locales, have confirmed it to them. Their coworkers in their jobs confirm it to them. Their significant others, drawn from the same ranks, confirm it to them. The parties they attend, the awards they give and receive, the places they vacation, the books they read and the films they make and see, all confirm it to them over and over again. It is not only the only America they know, it is the only America they can know. More at: American Digest: The Subconscious Yearning for American Defeat

April 26, 2004 Like most serious people in America today, I've had to struggle with my "views" on abortion. You are required, in this deadlocked and soul-locked society to have a view on this issue. "Don't know" just won't cut it. You've got to know. It says so right here in "America: The Instructions." But what *do* I know? Here's what I thought I knew then and what I think I know now. Why today? Because I read the news today. Oh boy. More at: American Digest: On Abortion in America

February 1, 2004 For quite a few years now, I've been a bit unpopular when I suggest that we need to consider the fact that we might, indeed, be all alone; that we might be a fluke or a seed or simply something of no purpose struggling to no avail and heading towards an ignominious ending in a backwater of a third-rate galaxy.... More at: American Digest: Mars: "Man, You Gotta Go"

October 1, 2003 In war, language is a strategic asset. Indeed, we see daily how language, here and abroad, is used to weaken the resolve of the United States. The central problem in calling The First Terrorist War the "war on terror" is that the phrase soothes us into accepting less than victory, and resolves the war to a new normality where terror is accepted as the status quo. This is the state in which Israel has existed for decades as terrorist violence becomes the scrimscreen against which life goes on. Although our present foreign policy may impose this on Israel, it may, over time, prove less popular at home. We are not yet the kind of country that easily accepts The Forever War. More at: American Digest: The First Terrorist War

September 21, 2003 Louis was a radical. Louis smoked a lot of weed. Louis dropped a lot of acid. Louis started, and had no little success with, a publishing company that printed up a lot of radical images that proved very popular. As a result, Louis was paranoid. He was paranoid about his politics. He was paranoid about his stash. He was paranoid about his money. He was paranoid that "they must bust in early May,/ Orders from the D.A."Louis was a history major, and Louis was an American Jew with communist parents. As Louis said, "I've got my reasons to be paranoid and they're not little ones...." More at: American Digest: Happy at Last in Israel

November 25, 2003 And yet who can blame this multitude of wafflerers among us. We've all been feeding on flesh of the opium honeydew for too many decades. Sweet and soft mush has been the mainstay of our cultural diet since the rise of the Monkees. Not only that, but a generation that has been drenched in the moist sop of the marijuana and psychedelic cultures, has schooled yet another two generations in the value of tofu over Toynbee and to admire Gurdjieff far above Gibbon. We've been, in essence, on a binge of soft-thinking, soft-hoping, and soft Tofutti covered philosophical slop for so long it is little wonder we haven't the patience of a June Bug in heat when it comes to having, holding and controlling this empire that has fallen to us.... More at: American Digest: Patience Please: An American Empire Takes Time

August 22, 2003 From time to time we have accepted your written word that, given adequate resources, you would be working to resolve "your issues." We note, for the record, that at no time has your word proven to be worth the paper which we both so ceremoniously signed. Indeed, it has been our bitter experience that the working out of "your issues" most often involves explosive episodes on the streets of our country. It has come to our attention, through a continuing rain of the body parts of our citizens onto our streets, that "your issues" do not seem to be resolvable through considered and mutually agreeable negotiations. The outcome of these 'negotiations' in the recent past seems to us to be one of we give and you take and then you kill us. We have decided that this is not a program that we wish to continue.... More at: American Digest: Memo from Israel to Palestine

October 20, 2003 One would think that with 3,000 dead and the nation's economy suffering a body blow from which it has taken two years recover, Americans of all political persuasions would still possess an adamantine unity. We all know this is not the case. Our politics of faction grows more bitter and divisive by the day and, absent another blow from terrorism, will continue in this wise through the 2004 elections and beyond.... More at: American Digest: On American Liberty and Destiny

November 23, 2003 Before he became a simpering dottard the once lucid Norman Mailer wrote a book entitled: "Why Are We in Vietnam?" The snide defeatism of that title and the content spewed after it are, for the moment, out of fashion with the majority of Americans. But should the apologists and appeasers among us have their way, this will not always be the case. Still, that will be then and this is the now. For now, were I to take the time to pen a short treatise in the Mailer vein, mine would be titled, "Why Are We Not Killing More of Our Enemies Wholesale?...." More at: American Digest: A Quiet Rage

October 15, 2003 Following the publication a couple of days ago of a particularly shocking attack on Hollywood Jews by Greg Easterbrook at the New Republic, Hollywood screenwriter Roger Simon has been particularly outspoken against Easterbrook%u2019s small chunk of anti-Semitism. Simon believes that small eruptions like Easterbrooks signal a larger breakout of anti-Semitism in the world at large. He's correct. But the metaphoric cause he ascribes it too is "something in the air (residual Cyclon-b)." I agree on the situation but not on the cause... More at: American Digest: On the Most Ancient Virus to Infect the Soul



Media types are, by heredity and training, unemployable in any other industry you can think of except, perhaps, sanitation and politics. It takes a special kind of team to design a program that requires the talking head to say: "In Iraq today, yet another innocent, much-loved American soldier was shot in the head by a member of the Resistance. Is this another step into the deepening quagmire of an administration with yellowcake on its face? We'll interview the soldier's weeping grandmother in just a few minutes. But right now, is fast food fat food?...." More at: American Digest: The Plague of Big Media's Increasing Attention Deficit Disorder

With rare exceptions, people in publishing, like, I suppose, many in academe, are not in it for the money, but for the status. I've been to Park Avenue dinner parties thrown by the likes of Bob Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, where never is heard a conservative word. Don't get me wrong, Bob's a fine fellow, but you'd no more find any other than carefully vetted liberals at his table than you'd find a magic mushroom in the soup course at the White House. And you have to reflect that for decades, Bob was the head of Random House. Much has changed during the years since he headed the house, but third generation hires directly descended from Bob's reign persist in bringing like-minded souls onto the payroll.... More at: American Digest: An Actual Majority Do Feel This Way

Alterman is a type you come across often in the New York Media World - the 'pleasing ideologue.' He doesn't please everyone, he doesn't have to. He merely has to locate a patron in some postion of power who has friends in other positions of power, and please that single person. If that person is pleased than so are the others, and that's how media careers are born. Indeed, that's how many different careers are born, but we just don't have to read about them or witness them on a semi-regular basis. More at: American Digest: The Myths of Eric Alterman

But perhaps this was Gore's plan all along. He's working the Salon.com Investment Method That's the method that says the only way to the only way to winkle seed money out of liberals with far too much of it is to assure them that: 1) It is for a "good cause", 2) It is a sure fire bet to lose money 3) It will, dare I say it?, SAVE THE PLANET! Only under these perverse circumstances, are certain folks willing to open their checkbooks.... More at: American Digest: Gore, "Liberal TV", and the Salon.com Investment Method

Let's face it. You've got better things to do with a summer Sunday than wade through this hulking block of over-thought, over-wrought, over-written, and over-weight newsprint. Take a quick look here and you'll know all you need to know about this Sunday's massive emission from 43rd street.... More at: American Digest: The Sunday New York Times Lite

One could go on at great length on the question of "Whatever happened to Salon?" Many have, more will. The real story on Salon can be given in just a few paragraphs.The decay of Salon parallels the decay of the Left, the liberal establishment, and the Democratic Party since 9/11. Once the shock wore off and time passed, the process of laughter and forgetting took hold and the old obsessions came swarming back. As Gary Snyder wrote, "Once a bear is hooked on garbage, there's no cure." More at: American Digest: The Salon Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Bitter Fruit

The decline of Dowd into dotage has been painful to watch. At first, many years ago, she could easily match such comic giants as Bill Maher quip for quip. And she had the added advantage, unlike Maher, of actually being an attractive person. But the years and the unrelenting stress of -- can you imagine? -- 1200 words a week for six figures a year has taken a toll even Botox cannot burnish. And while this toll can be hidden behind the flattering picture that has been consciously not updated for years, it cannot be hidden from those readers in search of something, anything, that signals Ms. Dowd is on the cutting edge of anything other than the shared spleen of the disenfranchised.... More at: American Digest: Maureen Dowd: The Jimmy Olson of the New York Times

It isn't news that Carville revels in his standing as Lizard King of DC. What is shocking is discovering that he is actually looking more and more like a lizard with every passing year. The camera isn't doing the shaved head look any favors, and of his on-screen persona the less said... well, suffice it to say that it is little wonder that his wife, Mary Matalin, spends a lot of time away from home. Even if that means she has to hang with career Republicans. More at: American Digest: Down the K-Hole of K-Street

The problem with being a bad comedian is that the more your jokes bomb, the more you start to think they are "serious ideas." Bill Maher, the man known for TV shows in which he proves again and again that he is not funny, has taken to writing "think pieces" in order to keep his hand from attacking him between bombs.... More at: American Digest: Bozo Speaks: Mouth. Foot. Maher.

[T]hose in the media that continue to wish for and work for the downfall of this country are the least likely to see themselves as others see them. They cannot. They exist in a bubble of mutual self-regard and congratulation that is, in the end, impervious to outside correction. They see themselves as 'patriots of the human race and citizens of the world.' They exist in the pampered realms of international ease and, being surrounded with others like themselves and their sycophants, they cannot perceive any other universe. East Side, West Side, Hamptons, Bel Air, Vail, the Colony. It is a rarified air they breathe and they depend on lesser mortals to keep them in oxygen and their friends and toadies to keep them in certainty.... More at: American Digest: Praise the New York Times but Pass the Ammunition

Of course, the fact that Disney "silenced" this "great sports writer" [and repentant Jew-baiter], quickly became a corporate attack on "free speech," an example of the crass vindictiveness of Michael Eisner, and a shining example of the continuing evil kingdom that is Disney. This is, of course, all complete and utter hogwash... More at: American Digest: Busting Greg Easterbrook

In today's wild, wild world of new age magazine design, it is always difficult to tell whether or not a known and trusted magazine is trying to become cutting edge, or is merely sinking into functional illiteracy... More at: American Digest: The Poets of Popular Science



SEVEN YEARS AND 2.2 BILLION MILES IN THE MAKING

Saturn's peaceful beauty invites the Cassini spacecraft for a closer look.... NASA TV/webcast coverage of Cassini's arrival at Saturn begins June 30, 6:30 pm Pacific time. Check this page frequently for mission updates.

My up-close and personal relationship with Saturn is brand new. Sure, I'd seen the pictures and the "artist's conceptions" all my life. I'd read the stories, both science and fiction, and I believed. I had faith. I had faith that Saturn existed and that it had the rings that made it the single most miraculous object in the solar system, save Earth -- which may also be, except for our belief and faith in numbers, the single most miraculous place in the universe. But my belief in Saturn and its rings was just that, "belief." After all, I had never actually seen Saturn -- only pictures and paintings. Saturn to me was only hearsay. That all changed a month ago thanks a friend with a passion for astronomy and actual possession of a serious telescope, coupled with a moonless night at the edge of the pacific here in Laguna Beach. MORE AT: American Digest: The Greatest Show Off Earth

CHAD EVERETT @ Don't Back Down: Rustle or Jingle is asking about the fact that the dollar coin has not replaced the dollar bill.

The long term cost [of the Sacagawea Dollar coin] is lower, the hassle factor is lower, the speed is faster. Yet dollar bills are still far more prevalent in the US than dollar coins. Why is that, exactly?

He's gathered a few interesting responses in his comments and yet they don't quite get to the real reason: People just don't like them. Case in point: While waiting in line at the Laguna Beach Post Office to speak to a clerk, a woman came in and rustled to the front to ask a question. She was clutching this bronze object that at first glance seemed to be a quarter, but was of course the dreaded dollar coin. She'd been purchasing stamps from the PO's vending machine with paper money and had been given several dollar coins in change from the machine. She then decided that she needed a few more stamps and had tried to use the dollar coins. But of course the machine that gave them to her wasn't configured to accept them. This, needless to say, peeved her. But since today the US Post Office exists only to drive customers away and put itself out of business by 2010, the clerks only shrugged and went back to their SOP of imitating every slo-mo work film you've ever seen. The hapless woman interrupted them again and asked if she could please have some dollar bills for the coins so she could use the stamp machine. The clerk said, "We're not supposed to give bills for the coins, but we can give coins for the bills." There were about 12 people waiting in the snake line for the clerk and I think I saw each and every one slump down and despair at this perfect government employee epiphany. The woman just shook her head and made for the exit. MORE AT: American Digest: Coin of the PC Realm

I remember the craggy, pitted face easily moved to laughter and a sensibility moved to kind despair when he was forced to experience a particularly bad line. I remember that the class was formed of about 12 students and that on any given day at least ten were baked to a crisp. But that didn%u2019t mean Gunn didn%u2019t get our attention. How could he not? He was not only an elegant poet, an inheritor of the Tennysonian tradition in English poetry, but he was an elegant man.... More at: American Digest: Thom Gunn 1929-2004

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, If so, the Hubble speaks volumes daily ... indeed, it speaks whole libraries. It is our eye turned to gaze, with all the power at our command, as far out into the deep and as far back towards the origins of the universe as we can look. It is not too much to say that the Hubble reads the face of God, and in small bits and bytes, shows it to us. Should we allow this eye to be put out, to be blinded?... More at: American Digest: The Hubble: Saving a National Spiritual Strategic Asset

But should you have a taste for tedium, should boredom be like mother's milk and daily bread (lots of it) to you, you will be surfeited by this otherwise antiquated mode of travel. Indeed, for sheer, mind obliterating tedium, for the kind of vacancy induced only by event horizons with no events and fewer horizons; for a feeling that arises in no experience other than incarceration, there is nothing that can beat the tedium induced by that modern masterpiece of torpor, stupor and pointlessness, the Cruise Ship. More at: American Digest: Cruising Off Baja

Small moments in long journeys, like small lights in a large darkness, often linger in the memory. They come unbidden, occur when you are not ready for them, and are gone before you understand them. You "have the experience, but miss the meaning." All you can do is hold them and hope that understanding will, in time, come to you.... More at: American Digest: The Creche By The Side of the Road

These days my wife Sheryl wakes before dawn. The sound of the automatic coffee grinder and the aroma of the dark brew is her alarm. Today, out on the deck overlooking the Pacific, she was gazing at the sea and saw, across the flat miles of ocean stretching out to Catalina, bright flashes come and go like wet fireworks exploding under the waves. Binoculars brought the flashes closer but didn't explain them. They were scattered all across the wide water except where the full moon sliding down the sky towards the western horizon lay a bright white band down on the dark sea. More at: American Digest: Small Fires on the Surface of the Deep

This morning before dawn I had drifted back for the third time to a series of disturbing dreams. Dreams always disturb when they take place in some distorted mindmap of Las Vegas -- even if you are winning, which I was not. More at: American Digest: Something to See

The truth is that, over the last 20 years that personal computers have been a part of our lives, we have been trained to expect computers to fail. We've accepted that they will screw around with our lives and our fortunes. We have slowly and without any organized protest, been suckered into being the Beta Testers for new software and hardware that not only screws up in predictable ways, but is known by the manufacturers to screw up in predictable ways ("The inability for the program to connect with the Internet? Oh yes, that's a known bug. We'll have a patch soon. Just connect to Internet and download it.").... More at: American Digest: Fear of Fritterware: The Nightmare Before Christmas

They will be snapshots of his personal celebrations; the birthdays, anniversaries, shared summer houses, days in the park and nights on the town. He'll be in some of them. Friends will proliferate in others. And the city will persist, implied, either in the background or intruding in the middle distance; like the air, unnoticed until absent. When you leave her, this is what you will carry away. It will fit in a medium-sized cardboard box. We've all packed this box. Mine was labeled, "New York...." More at: American Digest: New York Life: An Exhibition and Open Invitation



MY NAME, "GERARD VAN DER LEUN," IS AN UNUSUAL ONE. So unusual, I've never met anyone else with the same name. I do know of one other man with the name, but we've never met. I've seen his name in an unusual place. This is the story of how that happened. It was an August Sunday in New York City in 1975. I'd decided to bicycle from my apartment on East 86th and York to Battery Park at the southern tip of the island. I'd nothing else to do and, since I hadn't been to the park since moving to the city in 1974, it seemed like a destination that would be interesting. Just how interesting, I had no way of knowing when I left. August Sundays in New York can be the best times for the city. The psychotherapists are all on vacation -- as are their clients and most of the other professional classes. The city seems almost deserted, the traffic light and, as you move down into Wall Street and the surrounding areas, it becomes virtually non-existent. On a bicycle you own the streets that form the bottom of the narrow canyons of buildings where, even at mid-day, it is still cool with shade. Then you emerge from the streets into the bright open space at Battery Park. More at: American Digest: The Name in the Stone

We were young. And we were very, very stupid for college kids. Check that. We were stupid because we were college kids. Many of us, decades later, are still there and even dumber. We're professors now and our ability to be dumb has never been deeper. Others of us are well ensconced in the various parts of what passes for the media. We're there with a lot of others just like us and, even if we thought differently, we'd never say it for fear of losing regard, position, grants, or promotion. Besides, we've been around others who think like us for so long its no problem at all to top up the latte and nod in blind agreement. We never sold out. We bought in. But we kept the Che poster in our hearts.... More at: American Digest: Goodbye to the Way We Were

Ok, you've read it all. Roswell. Crop Circles. Close Encounters. Slashdot. All of the hubs of Alien Conspiracy. You've parsed it out, you know it all, and you've made your call. Well, you're wrong. The Aliens are here, and blending into your everyday life in ways so insidious you regard them as .... should I say it ... annoyances. Here is a brief guide to three of the many Alien races you meet every day and don't even know it.... More at: American Digest: The Aliens Among Us

We have in America, right now, what all other cultures and nations and empires have dreamed of since before the dawn of time. We have, finally, created a society that produces Way-Too-Much-Food (TM). After aeons of the nightmare of Never-Enough-Food we now awake into the brave new Bunless Whopper World. We are the kings and queens of the Global Food Court, and our national sport is double dipping at the salad bar as we supersize everything from soup to nuts. In fact, we are now so firmly established in the way-too-much-food universe that we are about to pass through a chronosynclasticinfandibulem into the alternate universe where a kid at the cash register says, "Would you like to downsize these fries?" More at: American Digest: The Age of Miracles and Wonders and Bunless Whoppers

In a valley hidden in the foothills of the La Sal mountains, my old friend and I sat on his stone porch in the fading light and watched the sun disappear behind the soaring red rock of the Maob Wall ten miles to the west. As always from this perch along the fault line between range and basin, the view revealed four different American landscapes: desert, farmland, rolling ranch land and high mountains.... More at: American Digest: Contrails

OREOS -- This was, without a doubt, America's greatest store bought cookie ever. And it dominated the market. But was that good enough for the sleazoid 90s "marketing" department? No. They wanted more and even more. As a result they have 'New-Coked' this cookie into oblivion with endless variations on the theme. The heresy began with "Double Stuffed" Oreos. This simple-minded d-oh moment came when somebody thought, hey, let's double the stuffing! It did not matter to them that the perfect proportion of white cream stuffing had already been achieved. Nope, this is the DoublePattyWhopper school of marketing drool: 'If one is good, two is twice as good.' Actually, if one is good, two in the same bun or cookie wafers is a bloody mess.... More at: American Digest: The Brand Extension Blight

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Iraq can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop terrorism, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride. We do not want your oil, or your houses, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have an end to terrorism. That we will have, and if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.... More at: American Digest: Sherman to Sunni Triangle: Leave Now

Was Frederick Turner the only one of our poets who felt a wave of revulsion sweep over him when the "herd of independent minds" that fancy themselves as 'important' American poets formed a viscous slab of drivel around opposition to the war?.... More at: American Digest: On the Field of Life, on the Battlefield of Truth.

What we have here is, absent terrorism, is a case of slow and "self-inflicted terrorism." It is what is bound to happen, on any summer day, when you run a power grid that has been strangled for years by the awful NO-MEN of our society.... More at: American Digest: Self-Inflicted Terrorism Evident in Blackout



They expose the unwanted infant On a hot, flat stone or throw it, By the feet, whirling into the ravine For the ravens' obscene brunch, And walk back down The barren brindle hill To the village of rocks, Hearing the mother moan, Noting the father's stern smile. All male, the state demands, And sound.

--for my father, Albert John Van der Leun 1. The empty rituals and dusty opulence of the nightmare's obvious ending dwindle, and the sounds of departing automobiles fade into the humm beyond the cul-de-sac. Inside the house my mother sits quietly, surrounded by the plates of finger food that everybody brought and no one ate, and wonders if she should begin to take clothes from the closet, call the Goodwill. Some blocks away, the Methodist minister hangs his vestments on a peg, and goes to lunch. Later, I drive the Skyway to the town named Paradise, park the car at the canyon's rim, and sit awhile in the hot silence of the afternoon looking out at the far mountains where, in June, the winter lingers. On the seat beside me, a well-taped cardboard cube contains what remains of my father. I climb out and, taking the cube under my arm, begin to climb down the canyon's lava wall to the stream below. The going is slow, but we get to the bottom by and by and sitting on some moss, we rest awhile, the cube and I, beside the snow-chilled stream. The place we have come to is where the pines lean out from the boulders at the edge of the stream, where what the stream carries builds up in the backwater, making in the mounds of matter an inventory of the year: rusted tins slumped under the fallen sighs of weeds, diminishing echoes of the blackbird's gliding wings, laughs buoyed in the hollow belly of stunted trees, gears, tires, the bones of birds, brilliant pebbles, the rasping windwish of leaf fall crushed to dust, the thunk of bone on bark, of earth on wood, the silence of ash on water. And in such silence, he fades forever. 2. The stream, its waters revolving round through river, ocean, clouds, and rain, bears away the hands and eyes, but still the memory remains, answering in pantomime the questions never asked: Are these reflections but the world without, carried on but never borne, onward, westward, towards sunlight glazed on sea's thigh? Or are such frail forms shaped upon this water all the things that are, and we, immersed above in air, the forms that fade, mere mirrors of the stream? Is this life all that is and, once lost, the end of all that was, with nothing left to be, with no pine wind to taste, nor sun to dapple mind with dream? Is all that is but ash dissolving, our lives but rain in circles falling? Or are we yet the center of such circles, our fall the final fall of night because we are contained within that single soul, held within that heart of stars, that place where sun and water meet, that golden hand whose wounded palm, once we have shimmered into sunlight, remains forever open in the coldest light of day? American Digest: The Interface

Beneath my sea, my tongue was tied by lies That said I loved you not when love lay still, And that false tongue denied your clearer eyes That saw that love will always conquer will. But now, as our first year in time has turned To moments honed from diamonds, now I find My love for you refracted and returned In samite nights beside you in that blind Dark within which only one light burns. Which is your love, and in such love I sleep The deeper sleep of one to whom Love turns When, gasping like some being from the deep, I first was flung upon your wave-smoothed strand, And shown beneath your present sea my future land. American Digest: Atlantis

Throughout the night, the cold loomed close, And wrapped the house in shawls of frost. Within, four candles gave us light, And returned to us all that was lost. Around us, all the village slept. It's children safe, their breathing slow. Four candles gleamed beside our tree, Their flames burned long, burned low. More at: American Digest: Hanukkah Candles on Christmas Eve



No, to be elected today a man (or a woman) must prepare at an early age to either leave no trace of a human existence, or determine never to have one in the first place. Like the pagan religions of antiquity or the cloistered Catholic orders that persist into our era, today%u2019s politicians must be -- according to our media -- the last surviving virgins over 18 in the United States of America.... More at: American Digest: Preparing for the American Political Priesthood

At your command Newspeak Central has spent some time reviewing the "old and in the way" Pledge of Allegiance. The result, below, is what we have -- after six months of multicultural diversity focus groups and self-criticism sessions -- come up with. It's just a start but we think it is in the right direction. We hope you give us hugs for it.... More at: American Digest: Improving the Pledge of Allegiance

Now the deficit's exploding The Democrats are beginning to hide The Letterman and Leno Shows Are working up their monologues inside. All except for Coleman and Gallagher And that aging porno dame Everybody is laying odds Or else expecting fame And the Terminator, he's dressing He's getting ready for the show He's orchestrating the Carnival On California Recall Row.... More at: American Digest: California Recall Row

Leftists and liberals and Democrats throughout the country suck down these lies because they are, by now, addicted to The World According to Michael Moore. Like heroin addicts, they constantly need Moore to feel 'normal.' Even more, they need Michael to up the dose by providing ever more outrageous lies for them to skin-pop or mainline. It's the only way they can get off.... More at: American Digest: Let Moore Be More Moore

There are a lot of people here in 21st century America who are fed up with a political structure built in 19th century America. Worse than that, much worse than that, they are bored with it. Bored, numb, disbelieving, untrusting, unenchanted and retroactively neither amused nor entertained. They know in their bones, and have known since September 11, 2001, that joke time is over. Up until now the popular way of expressing this deeply disgusted feeling with American politics was, whenever we have an election, to stay away in droves. And for the waning decades of the 20th century, this implicit "None-of-the-Above" vote grew larger.... More at:American Digest: There's Something Strange in the Neighborhood

When I was a boy I lived in a rural town in Northern California. Behind our house was a fallow field with a small stream cutting through it. In that stream, at certain times of the year, frogs mated and laid eggs which, in time, became pollywogs (aka "tadpoles"). Collecting a group of tadpoles was a simple matter of quick hands or a small net. Either way, my brother and I, in the manner of wanton boys, would collect a dozens in a jar on idle summer afternoons, and transfer them to a small pond we'd scooped out of the dirt a yard or so from the main stream and filled with water. Since there were a lot of pollywogs in the stream we always had a lot of pollywogs in our ponds. Once there, we'd sit down and watch what they did.... More at: American Digest: On Democrats and Pollywogs

Bush Hate, at the rate of festering intensity currently observable, is headed towards only one singular event: An attempt on the life of George W. Bush by an American citizen.... More at: American Digest: Where Bush Hate is Heading

It seems to me that I can, or you can, or any person can call another a traitor, or say that his or her behavior is treasonous, at any time and on any pretext. At most the speaker risks a suit for libel or slander from his target. Thus it would seem that it is the accuser that is much more at risk here than the accused. The accuser, in this case Anne Coulter, is not - at least as far as I am aware - a lawfully empowered agent of the Federal Government. She is as free to call any individual or group a traitor as, say, James Carville would be to call Coulter a "whacked out bimbo with the political morals of a ferret and an inexplicable attraction to unbald Republicans." Not that such a southern gentleman as Carville would ever utter such a sentiment.... More at: American Digest: Traitors' Grate

Quit Being a Chump and Start Being Effective: Here's How to Make Your Views Matter to the Mass Media

EDITORS LOVE IT when you write outraged letters to them, but not for the reasons you might think. Editors love your outraged letters because it tells they you're reading them. They love your letters, even when you scold them, because it shows you care. Editors love printing your letter that takes them to task because it shows they are pleased to balance a large chunk of airtime or copy with a few seconds or inches of dissent. But the dirty little secret beneath the editors' love for your outraged letter is that means, almost all of the time, that you didn't send that letter to one of the editors' advertisers. Editors hate it when people write to the advertisers. If enough people write, editors have to have a conversation with their advertising director. Not that anything will come of it, but they hate the casual watercooler conversation that begins, "We're getting some heat from Nike about that dingbat Robert Scheer, can't you get him to..." "Now, now, you know there's a wall between news and advertising." "Sure, but I just want you to know that Nike is..." If you don't think conversations like that happen, you just don't know the "media business." If enough letters get written not to editors but to advertisers, the editor then gets to have a conversation he really hates -- a conversation with the publisher.

"When the advertisers get nervous, the publisher gets nervous."

MORE AT: American Digest: No More Letters to the Editor

--Or -- "Everything I need to know I learn from my toolbar" AFTER THE NICHOLAS BERG BEHEADING was shelved (to make room for the new major media show called "All Abu Ghraib Apprentice/Survivor All the Time"), disgust with traditional media reached tsunamic proportions across the Internet, as well as in the population at large. On the Internet this revulsion was expressed by a plethora of commentary, fact-checking, and pointers. Still, it all has a "been there, done that, have the T-shirt" feeling to it. And it masks what the continuing failure of the major media are doing to themselves, every day in every way, as -- following their benighted blisss -- they become worse and worse. There's another quieter way, in which users are, day-by-day, having their say about the sealed fate of the moral and ethically compromised major media, the evolution of The Toolbar Times. To paraphrase John Gilmore, "Users are seeing the work of traditional news media as system damage and routing around it." Like Scoop Nisker, we'd don't like the news so we're going out and making some of our own. Somewhere someone is updating a graph. The graph has two lines. The first line depicts traditional media (a combination of audience numbers for television and radio news and the circulation of newspapers and magazines). It is a line in decline. The second line depicts the use of the Internet to gather information, news and opinion. This line is ascending. At some point, perhaps not too distant, the two lines will cross. At that point the angles of decline and ascent will steepen until, at some other point, the line for traditional media will drop off the significant part of the chart forever. MORE AT: American Digest: The Toolbar Times

1) No "advanced" technology required. Ability to manufacture present in all areas of the globe. 2 ) Crude but functioning units can be made by kindergartners with pencil, paper and glue.... More at: American Digest: WOODPULP, INK AND GLUE: A MATURE INFORMATION RETREIVAL SYSTEM

All around you are booksellers with full size shopping carts jamming every freebie they can get their hands on. Posters, buttons, stuffed animals.....Simon is publishing CATMOPOLITAN, a slavish bid for the cat market, a send up of some magazine, and booksellers can duck behind a large six foot blowup of a cover, stick their faces in a hole and get a free Polaroid of themselves as the cover cat of Catmopoliton. A thrill, a real thrill! There's a line.... More at: American Digest: THE HORROR, THE HORROR

American Digest has located a complete transcript deep within the cached pages of Google itself and presents it here without comment. We note that this is one of those rare documents in which you can actually hear the voice of Google by clicking on its links.... More at: American Digest: O'REILLY'S LAST .WAV: The Voice of Google

SALON'S PRECARIOUS FISCAL STATE has obviously become dire. The "premium" subscriptions which began at, I believe, $35 a year have now been discounted down to a dollar a year. Today, this email has been making the rounds.... More at: American Digest: DAVID TALBOT: SALON'S "DOLLAR DAVE"

Interesting also that Mr. Simon will continue to sell Wright's first book with the elimination of the Introduction. I suppose that means the log rolling boosts written for Wright by Howard Zinn and Kurt Vonnegut will stay. One might ask what they are doing there in the first place? Why would writers with the stature of Zinn and Vonnegut weigh in on a book that only displays political bile photoshopped onto public domain images? In turns out that the logs do not roll far from the tree. Zinn and Vonnegut both have books published by Simon's grisley little house.... More at: American Digest: Micah Wright's Second Book of Lies Canned. First Book of Lies Lives.

"Vision" books have a long history of being dogs from pub. date to remainder bin. This is somewhat confirmed by the fact that Kerry's book is 5,696 in the Amazon sales rankings as of this writing; a shabby showing for the standard bearer of a major party that is currently driving several tomes onto the bestseller lists. So, how much did Viking pay Kerry for this dog? It%u2019s not readily known, but I'd say the likely figure would be $250,000 to $300,000 as an advance. More at: American Digest: "Royalties? They Don't Got to Pay Him No Stinking Royalties"

What could go wrong is that this is a book that is being published with a list price of $50.00. And, like so many others of its ilk, it can run aground on the shoals of instant remainderism due to the single fact that the entire trade book publishing industry simply cannot and will not look at in the clear light of day: the price of books fare exceeds their perceived value. Perceived value is the key to the buying of books by ordinary people, and ordinary people not only think that books are overpriced, they are taught that they are overpriced by the publishing industry itself. More at: American Digest: Modern Book Doomed by Antique Industry



ACED:"We aced him out!" AX:"He blows a bad ax." BAAAD:"Hey, I checked out yer old lady today.She's baaad,man." BARF:"You barf after the peyote milkshakes, bro, but, hey, it's beautiful." BALLSY:"She is one ballsy chick." More at: American Digest: Psychedelic Slang

Liberalosis is a psychiatric classification for a mental state in which the perception of political reality is distorted. Persons experiencing a "Liberal episode" may experience hallucinations (often Clintonesque or Deantastic hallucinations), hold paranoid hate of the United States and/or its President or delusional beliefs in Utopia, and exhibit disorganized thinking such as "...it would be better to let America's enemies strike first", and "...a Democrat can be elected President by promising to raise taxes and pin a big "Kick Me" sign on America." This is often accompanied by a lack of insight into the unusual or bizarre nature of their behaviour and a compulsion to give money to any number of Democratic losers.... More at: American Digest: Liberalosis: A Disease Killing and Crippling Millions of Our Fellow Americans

I despaired over Microsoft Office. I wanted to end my years of servitude to Microsoft. When I married OS X I thought I had at last made a clean break with the past, but "Just when you think you're OUT, they pull you back in." Using Word from Classic required me to boot Classic on a daily basis and, just as it had in the past, Word would crash in Classic at least once a day for no reason at all other than Word's deep inner perversity. It was like getting a daily harassing phone call and hang up from an old girl friend in the midst of a happy second marriage -- you're not happy, your new OS is not happy, the only happy thing is some deeply antisocial nerd in the Microsoft basement who wrote the deepest code inside of Word that instructed it to leave you high and dry with no warning if you hadn't purchased any Microsoft products within the last 14 days.... More at: American Digest: The Last Word on Word

Much have I imagined the arcing vaults of space,     And many fiery launches and cold orbits seen;     Round the darksided moon have I been And raised a flag above Tranquility base. Oft on one Red Planet would I place     Dreams of deep-brow'd Bradbury's Morning Green     Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I saw Spirit gaze upon our brother's face: Then felt I like some sentinel in strange skies     When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like those at NASA, when the Spirit's eyes     Delivered them an image through the stars, Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--     "All green" upon the dusty plains of Mars.... More at: American Digest: On First Looking Out of NASA's Rover

The thing known as "The Daily Kos" continues his limp attempts at revisionism. Today he poses as the victim in his latest attempt to obscure the fact he revealed his soul to be a very ugly place last week. His latest report on the state of his existence is even weaker than his vapid pseudo-apology of yesterday. But not so weak that I can resist an idle afternoon's fisking of his "status report:" .... More at: American Digest: Father Forgive Me for I Must Fisk

"There is a time when the operation of the Democratic Party becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the phony baloney party online apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the idiots that are crashing this once great party into the center of the sun, to the morons who've manipulated this conventions, that unless you're free to be a real Democrat, the Party will be prevented from existing at all! ".... More at: American Digest: Mario Savio's Speech Before the 2004 Democratic Convention

You say you want a War of Civilizations Well, you know Everybody wants to rule the world You tell me to join Allah's Nation Well, you know Every god wants to rule the world.... More at: American Digest: Beatles Songbook, Revised

Everywhere you go you see "Frequently Asked Questions" scattered about to help you find out what everybody else apparently knows. Nobody, as far as we know, is helping you with the essential questions of life, the Frequently Answered Questions (tm).... More at: American Digest: Frequently Answered Questions: I



The Situation in the Middle East in 2004 - Click for larger view === Note: This is a repost from a February 2, 2004 item -- American Digest: The Facts on the Ground

FOR MANY YEARS I LABORED under the impression that being a columnist for the New York Times meant, at the very least, you were somewhere north of blood simple. But I was young and blood simple myself. Blood simple is, it would seem, part of the job description for many Times columnists. It may have something to do with the dyslexia of the Publisher or it may simply be post-mortem effects as the Times, having lost large chunks of circulation thanks to bias and bogus reporting that is woven deep into its corporate culture, strives to hang on to the true believers that are left it. In any case, one simply cannot take on all the blood simple pap that these scribblers spew. Life is too short and lunch is too long. Still, every so often, there's a real poser that creeps through the shields and lands on the retina with a resounding d'oh -- a hit, a palpable hit. Exhibit A from today is Bob Herbert's The Real Enemy Staring Us in the Face in which he is not referencing the mirror. MORE AT: American Digest: Sitting in the Same Room, Inhabiting Different Universes

Tue 11 Sep 01 08:07 Saw the first tower collapse from the Promeade across the river in Brooklyn. Fine white and pale yellow ash everywhere. Lower manhattan covered in smoke with ash still drifting down. Military jets overhead every five minutes or so. Lower span of Brooklyn Bridge jammed with people walking out of the city, many covered with white ash. Ghosts. The Living Dead. BQE empty except for convoys of emergency vehicles. Sirens in all directions. Ferry ships emerging from the smoke heading to the Brooklyn shore riding low in the water -- fully loaded. This is monstrous.... More at: American Digest: Notes Made on 11 September 2001

In the vein of trying to "become more cynical," I'd say that this country does not yet have it's game face on for what it really confronts. I'd say that this country is still happy to be having a busman's holiday of a "war on terror" that does not really involve 99.99% of the population in anything other than lip service, be it for or against. I'd say that we still have not, as a people, looked into the face of the monster that confronts us and taken the full measure of what defeating it may involve.... More at: American Digest: "I try to become more cynical every year, but lately I just can't keep up."

Try to imagine, if for only a moment, the insect mindset that gibbers and crawls behind the smiling and proud face above. He's getting ready to "live the dream," to 'Just Do It,' to launch himself on "a mission from God." His calling? To strap on a belt of explosives, kiss his two children on the forehead, bid his wife goodbye, and head downtown to kill Jews. Men, women, children, infants, babes in the womb .. it is all grist to the chittering insect soul of this man and his supporters and compatriots. Who is he? Why he is a "a man of God", an exponent of the religion of submission and peace. He is the father of two children, but that doesn't stop him from viewing other chidren as just so many vermin to be exterminated.... More at: American Digest: The Killing Father of Two

Instead of the hundreds of thousands of people pictured walking across the bridges, we would have seen more running across the bridges in fear of their lives. Traffic, wedged as it was, would have become immovable. The tunnels to New Jersey and Long Island would have been overwhelmed by people on foot struggling to leave the city; to find refuge at home or anywhere else that was not in Manhattan. The panic, like the power failure, would have cascaded to the boroughs and the bedroom communities. The overall situation would have been a riot as big as the city itself where the stronger would seek to get to the front of the "save your life" line at all costs. Assuming you could muster the National Guard, they would be days away from controlling the situation in terms of basic logistics alone.... More at: American Digest: Running Home: Plan? There Is No Plan.

If we have learned anything in the past century it is this: The longer genocidal tyrannies are allowed to exist the more lethal they become. When they can they expand their territory and export their virus of sadistic killing to any country that cannot stand against them. They feed on expanding populations. When they cannot expand, they turn inward and gnaw at the bones of their own people.... More at: American Digest: Killing Fields Without Borders

Through the violent attacks of a Radical Islam, two religions have been brought into conflict. The first is that of Islam, a faith that at its core requires absolute submission from its adherents, and looks towards the subjugation of the world as its ultimate apotheosis. As the youngest of the monotheistic religions, Islam is at a point in its development that Christianity passed through centuries ago. And it is not with Christianity that Islam is currently at war. Islam is saving that for the mopping up phase of its current campaign. The religion that Islam has engaged is a much younger one, the religion of Freedom.... More at: American Digest: The War of Two Religions

It is no longer a question of whether or not thousands or tens of thousands of Americans will die here upon our soil, it is a question of which Americans they shall be. If not this year, next year or the year after. It is a "when" not an "if." It will happen in a major city or a major suburb. Yours? Theirs? Near or elsewhere? No real sacrifice equal to that asked of our Armed Forces has yet been asked of American civilians. We have been left pretty much undisturbed in our urban stupor. But our day is approaching. The question of why our leaders have not "made America safe" from this day of reckoning is a fair one but the answer is a hard truth. They have not made America safe from the next catastrophic attack because we have not yet, as Americans, been ready for them to do so. Strange as it may seem, 3,000 of us slaughtered at their desks has not been enough to stir us. As a society we have become so sodden with peace and so frightened of history that we require more deaths among us before we can act. And so we shall have them.... More at: American Digest: Condition Orange Forever?

In the wake of the Spanish outrage, an email asks what it would take for the global terrorists to take the next step in the United States.It turns out that, as in Spain, it wouldn't take much at all. Here's what you'd need and how it could be done. But it is just one way. There are many.... More at: American Digest: What It Would Take -- A Simple Scenario

The stork brought me your memo on the Global War on Terrorism this morning. I don't know why but it seems that everyone in America received a copy of it -- either from the stork or cranked out on some illegal mimeograph machine and stuffed into the morning paper with a note attached that read "Courtesy of Bill and Hill, 2004. Smooches and Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow..." More at: American Digest: Dear Sec. Rumsfeld, Regarding Your Memo on The War

Over the years, the Process Queens who strut on the runway of the International Arena have made successful and comfortable careers out of "The Peace Process." As long as there is a "process" the vast establishment in the middle east and Europe and the United States that battens of the Neverending Peace Story has secure jobs and access to the fountain of funding from various sources. A Peace Settlement would close this showroom of Process Queens overnight and their next jobs would neither be as lucrative nor as fulfilling.... More at: American Digest: Autumn of the Mid-East Process Queens:

The terrorist mindset is no more to be admired or suffered to live than the flickering thought patterns that wink and die in the neural networks of a scorpion. Indeed, the scorpion may possess a higher kind of morality than a terrorist. The spider, at least, kills out of a need rather than a twisted compulsion. The spider, at least, does not know what death is.... More at: American Digest: When the War on Terror Goes Wholesale

"Nobody, but nobody, outside of about 50 Islam-addled whackjobs high on burning donkey dung, would have been able to believe on September 10, that a cadre of crazed fanatics were going to hijack four airliners and drive them into three buildings and a field. "Nobody stopped it because nobody could imagine it other than those that did it, and those that ordered it done. It was, and is, an act of sheer evil so large and so outside the ability of a rational and civilized mind to entertain that we just couldn't see it coming. I resent that both of us have to sit here strapped into these drool cups and pretend somebody should have...." More at: American Digest: These Clowns Set My Teeth On Fire

Try to imagine, for only a moment, what those actions entail. Try to put yourself, if for only a moment, on the ground and in the boots of Capt. Chontosh. Try to envision what it is to walk down a trench filled with people whose only mission is to kill you. They number more than 20. You are one. They are all armed. You have one rifle and one pistol. When you run out of ammunition, you have to take up the arms of the enemy. You don%u2019t know if they are loaded or to what extent. But you keep going. In time, after you have killed 20 soldiers and wounded others, the shooting finally stops. Somehow, you are still alive. Somehow, your comrades are still alive. For now.... More at: American Digest: Courage

The overarcing rules or policies of engagement are based on two long standing fantasies of the United States government, its military and its people. The first fantasy is that we can be victorious and still minimize casualties among our troops. The second fantasy is that we can be victorious and avoid any significant collateral damage. While either one of these fantasies alone might have some reality, both together add up to pure delusion. A delusion that flatters us and our vision of ourself as a kind and caring nation, but a delusion just the same. Our shared delusion is that, with enough planning and care, you can have a war where only the enemy dies; that you can have cake all around and on the house and the same cake tomorrow. A new American dream.... More at: American Digest: Wilsonian Dreams, Jacksonian Realities



MichaelYon-Online.com

When I post under an assumed name or funky handle, I can get in closer touch with my Inner Sociopath. I have the power to channel my perceptions of my enemies into ever-soaring levels of suspicion and paranoia. I assume full responsibility for my posts, especially the good ones that are just links to someone else's. I no longer need to punish, deceive, compromise or reveal either the extent of my blogging or the URL of my secret blog where I post the truth about my co-workers' bodily functions. Unless, of course, I want to stay employed. At either Indymedia or Little Green Footballs, most of what I post would be considered normal. I honor my grammatical flaws, for without them I would have no writing style at all. MORE AT: American Digest: DAILY AFFIRMATIONS FOR BLOGGERS

JOHN BATTELLE'S INSIGHTFUL ARTICLE Toward the Endemic: What's missing in PPC/Behavioral/Contextual Ad Nets has a lot to say about why advertisers and blogs just don't understand each other. More at: Why Blogs and Advertising Miss Each Other's Boat

We don't fill in a formula of departments and features every week, we're jamming. We just make up our content on the fly. No going back. No edits. Mainlining others thoughts. It's like an endless assortment of brain musicians high on brain jazz. If you can type and have something to say, you can sit in and jam. You can play. ANY NUMBER can play a number and that number is always an unknown number. But if you can play unknown numbers you can sit in on the session. If not, you can just login and kick back and watch the others go at it.... More at: American Digest: Brain Jazz Across the Decades

Going online and being online are not solitary experiences. If they were, few would bother with them.Quite the contrary, online is a state that evolves from the wish not to be solitary. It arises from the desire to be "connected" on a new level of abstraction to others -- to their knowledge, their businesses, their tastes as they choose to reveal them, to their personalities as they choose to construct them. That's the draw to people who are online -- other people.... More at: American Digest: The Solitary CyberCrowd

I appreciate the longing for a kinder, gentler nation; for simpler times. for a world like yesterday but with broadband connections on the house. I just don't see it happening until a few very large issues spelled, for starters, "Korea," "Africa," "AIDS," "Globalism," "Global Freemarket Capitalism," "Global Terrorism," and "Global Thermonuclear War" are put to bed with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. Like Gay Marriage in the near and far term, Big Government is a done deal for the duration. A lot of people don't like it, but a lot more accept it than pine for its demise. And in a Democracy, numbers count.... More at: American Digest: When You're A Blog Every Blogging Pol Looks Like a Winner

Joi Ito, a man who's been to lunch with everyone and everything online, and whose blog is becoming the society page for geeks, is on yet another mission to make the world safe for Technocracy. His cause this time out is the always widening, ever-threatening, yawning wider and seldom closing "digital divide..." More at: American Digest: Milking the Digital Divide

Years of online communication with jef gave me some insight into the kind of personality that is either drawn to Unix and to programming, or is shaped by Unix and programming. I've come to believe it is a symbiotic relationship, at best. So, even though I can't code, I was interested to see what lay at the core of Raymond's Unix epic.... More at: American Digest: Raymond's Rules of Cosmic Order

The Zero-Spam Tolerance cult is just another manifestation of the Nanny Culture where individuals want someone, somewhere (aka "The Government") to solve their quite stupidly simple and simply stupid problems by "passing a law," "making a regulation," and then "enforcing it" across the World Wide Wimpdom. This from a group of users who can actually go in and wade through the process of correcting the Windows Registry? Simps and weaklings the lot of them. Cowboy up, dudes and dudettes!.... More at: American Digest: Stop the Spaminsanity

SIDELINES

He professes ignorance about his taxes and refuses to discuss his finances.

“This had nothing to do with taxes,� he insisted. “I was born in Brazil, I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen.� -- A Facebook Cofounder Reflects on the Path Forward

Paul: "The only way Biden could become president would be to kill Barry. and he better do it before November." -- Breitbart TV [HT: Rodger]

A: "€œrandom"€�. -- Y.O.B. « Gucci

Prince Of Petworth -- €“ Another Disturbing Assault in Logan Circle, DC

It's hard not to notice that the vast majority of entertainment for today's generation consists of depicting misanthropes

accorded the luxury of acting like total A-holes by dint of their superior intellect. Since all children are above average nowadays, and are raised by entertainment, the world is full of people full of themselves for no particular reason. --Sippican Cottage: Underwater Mortgages

Here is what we know:

1. Their users don't trust them.

2. Advertisers like GM don't believe their advertising platform works.

3. They don't understand mobile.

4. Their crack design/engineering team is too feeble to design a simple photo APP like Instagram.

5. Their shareholders are dying to sell out in the IPO.

6. The valuation is hyperfrothy.

Via ZeroHedge

The "I'm an injun' " lie just keeps getting better: Fordham piece called Elizabeth Warren Harvard Law's 'first woman of color'"In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995."

UPDATE:Some parts worked harder than others: "Yeah, I've got a fancy job at Harvard and I've gotta tell you, I'm proud of that job. I worked lied hard to get there." -- Elizabeth Warren

Obama’s administration In one photo, posted by the Obama 2012 campaign on its official Facebook page as part of the “I’m In!� campaign, designed to get unwilling citizens to admit and own their voting preferences as though they were a communicable illness. It is everything you need to know about America’s future.

"Moments later, Deen, still massaging her breasts, tells us that she was “the only mother that taught my 14-year-old boys to rub their meat.� Sheraton pauses. “I don’t know how I feel about that.� -- Grub Street New York

"Making healthy choices. Taking care of me. Feeling good. Living good. Healthy and clean. I like that. For me. Because I matter. Loving myself because someone has to, right? Who? Oh right, me. Loving me for living good and eating good. Loving myself. Must. Or at least should. Possibly could if I eat salad. But only salad." -- | The Hairpin [HT: Morgan]

"That is just one of the many ways we are helping everyday homeowner in neighborhoods all across America. Take for example the Keelers here, Pearl and Van. Yes, I mean Paul and Vel. Val.

When they decided to reduce household clutter and free up extra cash to help create jobs in the community, we stood at the ready to invest through our innovative American Garage Sale Recovery Act. Through AGRA, the Kelmers were able to secure federal grants-in-aid to buy the yard signs, Craigslist ads, card tables and price tags they needed, along with expert advice from the Federal Bureau of Garage, Rummage & Yard Commerce." -- iowahawk: One Afternoon In a Garage in Reno, Nevada

From 3 Commencement Speakers, a Familiar Script

Wouldn’t things have been more interesting if Mr. Bloomberg or Mr. Obama had gone to Liberty to say his piece, and if Mr. Romney had expressed disapproval of same-sex marriage in a place like Chapel Hill or Barnard? But that would have required acts of daring that you will probably see the same day that restaurants in Saudi Arabia start serving beer and wine.

The cow shoe is a strip of metal to which is tacked a wooden block carved to resemble the hoof of a cow, which may be strapped to the human foot. A man shod with a pair of them would leave a trail resembling that of a cow. -- Kottke

Steve Sailer: How to help the Third World "The problem with advocating IQ-boosting environmental interventions in the Third World (such as Kiwanis International has been nobly doing for decades), of course, is that just mentioning the topic of IQ deficits in the Third World is a big no-no."

Photographic Proof: Mitt Romney Killed The Dinosaurs By Strapping Them To The Roof Of His Car | The Rumford Meteor

"Hollande is a 'Gauche Caviar', or 'Left-Wing Caviar' - the Gallic equivalent of a Champagne Socialist. -- | Mail Online

"The initial Pepsi logo is the best. They were obviously trying to rip off the Coke logo, but failed miserably. It's as if Sam the drunk tried scrawling the first Pepsi logo in between doing shots of bourbon out of butt-filled bottles, and injecting meth straight into his eye socket. 'We need more shaking, Sam, double up on the shaking!' " -- Mitchieville Tradition

"Can an errand, even an errand into the wilderness, be run indefinitely?...

Can a culture, which changes to embody itself in a nation, push itself into such remorseless exertion without ever learning whether it has been sent on its business at some incomprehensible behest, or is obligated to discover a meaning for its dynamism in the very act of running....What will America do--what can American do--with an implacable prophecy that there is a point in time beyond which the very concept of a future becomes meaningless? Protestant America, as well as Catholic, has an implicit commitment to this event. What then happens to the errand?" -- Perry Miller

I guess I get a semi-win from May 9th's Coming Out Spinning: Obama's Evolution Towards Gay Gutsycalls @ AMERICAN DIGEST

When has money not trumped spirituality in Obama's career? Short answer, never. Now it would seem that tomorrow we may at last see the latest "evolution" of this strange anti-American life form currently getting his free food-stamp card refilled daily at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Gee whiz. I wonder if Obama will come out or not. He could of course avoid taking a "position" simply giving Andrew Sullivan one hot evening in the Lincoln Bedroom and leaking the photographs to Blueboy.com, but some things are just too revolting to evolve into.

Poor Prez. Barry. First Biden cannot keep it in his pants and has to whip that "big stick" out, and now Sullivan cannot get it into his pants quickly enough. "This week I am predicting the biggest sales for Newsweek in years. Almost every gay bar in the country will buy a copy just to put that cover on their walls."-- FREEP

How many uncommitted votes does this get for Barry? Somewhere between "zip" and "it up." Not that's there's anything schlong with that.

Perhaps a "new look makeover" to go with the "new" image and policy.

Illo from Classical Values ï½» All work and no play makes Coco a dull bitch

CBS Cancels 'C.S.I. Miami'

“Actually, there is a short answer. All drugs should be legal,

high quality, priced to market conditions, and readily available. What happens when you give a junkie all the dope they want? Problem Solved. Damn, you think too much, Bruce.� -- Define “Drug� BRUCE HANIFY

For those of us who decipher codes, hatred of rich bankers feels like a sanitized version

of a much more ancient and visceral hatred. Consider that 93% of France’s Muslims voted for Hollande. I guess that they hate the rich too. -- Had Enough Therapy?: An Exodus From France

There is, I am ashamed to say, a certain eternal truth hidden within this paen to brotherly love. HT: Sippican the Sociopath

Next up for a Democrat bail-out? Everybody who's been to school on borrowed money:

“As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,� said Ms. Griffith, a marketing major. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.� -- Student Loans Weighing Down a Generation With Heavy Debt - NYTimes.com

“I readily admit it,� said E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State University,

who has also served as president of Vanderbilt and Brown, among others. “I didn’t think a lot about costs. I do not think we have given significant thought to the impact of college costs on families.� -- Update on the Higher Education Bubble | Power Line

Obama campaign video claiming 'it's on' in second term taken down.

[We're seeing more and more of this sort of agressive bravado sort of thing. In the final analysis, I don't think it would be very smart or safe to go around proclaiming "It's on!" That sort of thing could be misunderstood with very evil consequences from the bottom to the top of the slide.]

To call a group of people who worship themselves and their capacity for self-reverential “entertainment� “Christian�

is becoming increasingly difficult when the objective evidence points to these suburban blights as being neo-paganism in every regard. Where is the altar? There isn’t one. Where is there a Cross? There are no crosses. When is any reference made to Christ’s sacrifice in propitiation and perfect atonement for the sins of the world, including the sins of the latte-sipping dolts sitting in their reclining, triple-cushioned theater-style seats? Where are there any references to personal sin? Where are there any references to objective Truth? There are none – there is only “your truth and my truth�, “How I FEEEEL�, and then BRING ON THE ROCK BAND! -- Ann Barnhardt

All the people who have given up HOPE,

together with all the people whose unemployment gifts welfare benefits have expired (times 10cubed), are promptly and permanently removed from the labor force. This makes the denominator (that's the bottom number in a fraction for Rush's friends in Rio Linda) smaller relative to the numerator. And that results in a lower unemployment rate! Just like that. Shazam! -- Michelle Obama's Mirror

He's making more money, living in a bigger house and playing more golf.

And when his wife goes on a shopping spree with her girlfriends, it's to Spain on the taxpayer's dime. If you asked President Obama if he's better off today, he'd say, "Hell, yeah! And we don't want it to stop!" -- Only Obama is Better Off - Michael Reagan

- Maggie's Farm

President Obama's decision to support gay marriage this week is paying off

in a big way with the LGBT community in Hollywood. Obama is expected to attend an LGBT gala in Los Angeles on June 6, where ticket prices range from $1,250 to $25,000 apiece. As part of the same trip, Obama is also expected to attend a fundraiser hosted by Ryan Murphy, the co-creator of the show "Glee," and his fiance David Miller. -- The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

Earth to Obama:

That's not a hospital, its a high school in China, where students are cramming for the National College Entrance Exam. Those IV lines? They are administering an amino acid drip to help the students focus and stay awake (who knows what else is in the mix in at least some classrooms). There's a point you take dedication, discipline, and hard work to an extreme and Asians seem to find leave that point behind too often -- Word Around the Net

That describes the process which has overtaken peacekeeping, environmentalism and even the campaign for racial equality.

These causes, which are otherwise noble, will take decades to recover from the grifters who have made a fortune in their name. How on earth did peacekeeping get put in the care of Kofi Annan? Why was a guy like Al Sharpton allowed to assume the role of the racial conscience of America? How come Al Gore gets to pronounce on science? The Narrative, probably. Always the Narrative. -- Belmont Club How Many Blocks Away?

Valeria Lukyanova has big, glassy eyes, long blonde hair, an ample bosom and a tiny carved waist. Her Facebook page features tens of photos of her astonishing Barbie-like body and face. In her YouTube videos, she reveals that she uses opaque lenses to achieve that wide-eyed look of a doll.

Venus Angelic, whose real name is Venus Palermo, is a 15-year-old girl who is gaining enormous popularity on the Internet for her YouTube tutorials on how to look like a living doll. Venus Angelic has 78 videos, over 28,000 subscribers and over eight million video views on her official YouTube channel- ranging from makeup tutorials and nail art to dancing and cosplay. -- - International Business Times

but we are certainly living under its media apparatus." -- Daniel Greenfield

"Mitt Romney was not at Chappaquiddick. Mitt Romney has not been accused of rape.

Mitt Romney did not have an affair with a mob babe. He didn't have an affair with an actress who committed suicide later on. Mitt Romney did not father a child out of wedlock. Mitt Romney did not support the tapping of Martin Luther King's phone. Mitt Romney was never a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Mitt Romney did not lie about his law school grades." -- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

The great monopoly in the West has been government for quite some time.

This obvious fact is hidden from all small minds. Until 1933, America evolved on the anvil of business--ambition against ambition. When government becomes the great power the ambition is to become part of it. Business monopolies are then formed within sectors such as Big Pharma, who conduct a symbiotic relationship with the State. --James Wilson commenting on Side-Lines: "It is democracy that is causally responsible for the fatal conditions afflicting us now. "

My theory is that it dates from the 18th century and the silver mines in Mexico,

because in those mines the word “taco� referred to the little charges they would use to excavate the ore. These were pieces of paper that they would wrap around gunpowder and insert into the holes they carved in the rock face. When you think about it, a chicken taquito with a good hot sauce is really a lot like a stick of dynamite. -- Where Did the Taco Come From? Smithsonian Magazine

"Idaho society at that time at least seemed to lack the sense of social class which elsewhere makes culture a system of signs and passwords,

more or less entirely without meaning except as it identifies groups and subgroups.... I must say too how beautiful human society seems to me, especially in those attenuated forms so characteristic of the West—isolated towns and single houses which sometimes offer only the merest, barest amenities: light, warmth, supper, familiarity. We have colonized a hostile planet, and we must staunch every opening where cold and dark might pour through and destroy the false climates we make, the tiny simulations of forgotten seasons beside the Euphrates, or in Eden." -- Marilynne Robinson, "My Western Roots"

Here's what you get if you play the Kobayashi Maru test as programmed:

a $200,000 education and a $700/month job I've Got A $200,000 Education, A Great Resume And An Empty Inbox, or a PhD and a $700/month job The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps. Will an unconventional approach succeed? There are no guarantees that any approach will work; security is always contingent, and all we really have is opportunity. -- Guest Post: | ZeroHedge

This election is not just about jobs. It's about character, values, judgment, and integrity, too.

It's about the wholesale fraud that the Oba-messiah has perpetrated against the American people. Surrendering the likability issue is not only politically dumb, but also just plain lazy. Ignoring false memes is bad enough. Perpetuating them for civility's sake is a recipe for another defeat. -- Michelle Malkin

Even after decades of in-depth Holocaust research, excruciating details

are only now emerging about more than 1,100 German-run ghettos in Eastern Europe where the Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews.... For town after town, village after village, and even just spots in the countryside, Dean and his team assembled pieces of a grisly puzzle, which he said "shows that the Nazis made a concerted effort to find every last Jew in every last place" and eliminate each one. -- - Yahoo! News

18 Headless Bodies in Mexico Tourist Area - ABC News

Because the jaw, the haircut, the suit and the general look was not an effective enough disguise?Gawker

and then acted more authoritarian than Bush. He talked about an end to the abuses of the Bush years and an open and transparent government,

yet extended the Fourth-Amendment-shredding Patriot Act, empowered the TSA to produce naked body scans and engage in humiliatingly sexual pat-downs, signed indefinite detention of American citizens into law, claimed and exercised the power to assassinate American citizens without trial, and aggressively prosecuted whistleblowers. Under his watch the U.S. army even produced a document planning for the reeducation of political activists in internment camps. Reeducation camps? In America? And some on the left are still crowing that talking about being in favour of gay marriage makes him "pro civil liberties"€�? Is this a joke? --ZeroHedge

No its one of dozens of gigantic crushed concrete pads

being laid down in the Lowell Mountains of Vermont to set up bird mincing wind mills. Add in the power lines and that's a lot of damage to the environment in the name of "green" power that will generate barely enough juice to recharge your Leaf. -- Word Around the Net: PICTURE OF THE DAY

When Barack Obama shakes the Etch-a-Sketch, its not called flip-flopping; its called “evolving.�

And he must be a young Earth creationist because his actual definition of “evolution� seems pretty nuanced. As in, it basically means, I totally evolved back to the position I held in 2006 but didn’t tell anyone about in 2008 except people totally knew I hearted gay marriage.� -- David Brock gets $1M for new media ground war, does nothing for his dating profile :: Naked DC

"In the Middle Ages, mistakes/spelling errors made while writing were blamed on a “typo� demon named Titivillus." According to Facts and Chicks [Sigh. I take careful notes and I study and study but I just can't seem to retain the lessons.]

The number of productive people is constantly decreasing, and the number of parasitic people consuming

the income and wealth of this dwindling number of productive people is increasing steadily.... That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also can make us think about what economic wonders would have been possible, if we had left capitalism unimpeded and exempted it from such parasitism. -- Interview with Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe – Producers against parasites

Really? Most Americans thought they were fighting for the country, not on Barack Obama's behalf.

Slip of the tongue, to be sure, but can one think of another president who'€™d have made it? -- "On My Behalf"€™ | The Weekly Standard

And then there are those, such as this young lass,

whose foolishness has no label, other than perhaps €œshameless avarice.€� How did we reach a point in history when people could proudly hold up signs saying, essentially, "Give Me Your Money"€�? -- Zombie » May Day

☛ Thinking Right Archives ☚

• Across the Great [Partisan] Divide: Governor Christie and Mayor Booker -- Don't Worry, We've Got This
• Dieting: Just When You Think You're Beyond All Temptation.....
• Womanhood
• Books That Should Be: New Additions to the Invisible Library
• Energy Crisis Solved
• My Mother at 97
• Something Wonderful: Christina Perri -- A Thousand years
• Gay Marriage: Just Do It! (And Welcome to It)
• Coming Out Spinning: Obama's Evolution Towards Gay Gutsycalls
• The American Argument
• Bigger Tents: On Rebranding "CONSERVATIVE" and "REPUBLICAN" with "AMERICAN"
• UPDATED: Elizabeth Warren Campaign Announces New Song for Princess "Shits With Bull"
• Elizabeth Warren, "Undocumented Indian" aka "Princess SummerFallWinterScrunt"
• Something Wonderful: Maria and Derek Take a Bite Out of Prokofiev
• Diatom
• Obama's Courage? The Coward Hasn't Got a Gram of It
• The 80s: Big Babes with Big Hair, Big Shoulders, and Big Sounds. Guys in The Big Suit
• Under the Shadow of This Red Rock: Along the Colorado from Moab to Castle Valley | April 2011
• Welcome to My New Cardio Rehab Routine
• Pictures of the Gone World: McDonald's Original Prices