AMERICAN DIGEST: PunditInstants Archives

PunditInstants

Call Me Shallow But This Just Makes. My. Day.

This week's Medal of Freedom Award goes to Vulgar Morality for Death of news -- readership dies laughing edition

The NYT stands at the pinnacle of the global news business. Yet it too has suffered a terrible decline over recent years. But if the photo and caption below are any indication, they have just hit on a brilliant new approach to journalism -- call it info-comedy. The heck with validation. Who needs editors? Go for funny -- nobody edits funny.

Posted by Vanderleun at Mar 7, 2010 8:21 PM | Comments (2) | QuickLink:

“It’s a Brown-out”: Mass Poll Has Brown Up by 4 Points

Poll shocker: Scott Brown surges ahead in Senate race - BostonHerald.com

Riding a wave of opposition to Democratic health-care reform, GOP upstart Scott Brown is leading in the U.S. Senate race, raising the odds of a historic upset that would reverberate all the way to the White House, a new poll shows. Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.

Posted by Vanderleun at Jan 14, 2010 7:30 PM | Comments (4) | QuickLink:

Brietbart NEA "Explosive New Audio": A Long Fuse on a Wet Firecracker

First impression of this new roll-out of corruption from Big Government? Compared to the shattering revelations of the ACORN tapes, this one is small beer on short legs.

Now I detest the NEA for a lot of reasons and have for a long time, but a story on Big Government » Blog Archive » How to Corrupt Artists in One Quick and Easy Telecon strikes me as one that only the elites on both sides give a tinker's damn about. The lead virtually says it with,

If you've ever wondered -- and worried -- about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10 telecon between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and a group of "independent artists from around the country."

Well, okay, I have "wondered and worried" about the NEA, but I also know that most people in the country don't spend more than a minute a year at most wondering or worrying about the relationship of the NEA and "independent artists from around the country." The only thing they think about if they think about our current crop of "independent artists" is why there are so many of these parasites around and why most of what they "produce" is either disgusting, depressing, ugly or the usual combination of all three.

Add to that the fact that the evidence behind the story, damning as it is, is not exactly compelling. Not only that it's radio, not television. While nothing says "corruption" more clearly than a video of ACORN employees revealing their real agenda by abetting the establishment child sex salons, nothing numbs you more than having to listen to recorded phone calls from White House arts dweebs begging for another HOPE poster.

I salute what Breitbart did last week, but in the game that Obama's playing, last week is last year. It would have been better to release the NEA tapes last week as a warm-up and the ACORN videos this week. As it stands, this is a weak Act II.

Posted by Vanderleun at Sep 21, 2009 11:37 AM | Comments (12) | QuickLink:

Blogger's Head Explodes

Aftermath: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

From AMERICAN DIGEST NEWS, ~~October 26, 2004~~ September 7, 2009

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON ~~LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA~~ -- Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a blogger whose head literally exploded in the final week of the ~~election~~ "health care" summer!

No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but a small room at the blogger's residence was sprayed with blood and brain matter when Gerard Van der Leun's head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Blogosis or HCB .

"He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the screen and his fingers frozen over the keyboard," said early responder, Miguel Wilsonista. "He seems to have hit 'Post' for what had to be the 3,456,856th item of inept political photoshopping this year when the blast occurred.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun at Sep 7, 2009 12:05 PM | Comments (31) | QuickLink:

Tea-ed Off? Remember the Rage

Coincidence? Why would you think that? Are you some kind of extremist?

An extreme proposal: Pay taxes on October 15. Vote the first Tuesday in November.

"Unfortunately, taxpayer outrage about Big Government usually coincides closely with Tax Day in April, which is way far away from Voting Day in November. As the graphic above shows, it's been 162 days since we last voted in November 2008, and it will be 202 days before the next election, so Tax Day and Voting Day are almost as far apart as two recurring annual dates can be.

"Here's an idea: Move Tax Day and Voting Day much closer together, like perhaps in the same month or same week, instead of being about 6 months apart. " -- CARPE DIEM: Taxpayers Are Really Tea-ed Off

Posted by Vanderleun at Apr 15, 2009 8:54 AM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

As they say, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

If that's true, this pooch is going to be the hardest working woofer in town. I wonder if he can be trained as a seeing-eye dog.

"Portuguese water dog Bo made his official debut at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Tuesday. This is the first dog’s fourth home in his six months of life."

Now some cynics will wonder how long it might be before Bo is sniffing the butt of this dog on the White House lawn....

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun at Apr 14, 2009 3:17 PM | Comments (4) | QuickLink:

"The Country Will Go Bankrupt" Obama in the cockpit will crash the plane

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun at Mar 22, 2009 12:31 PM | Comments (3) | QuickLink:

Department of Smart Questions -- Neoneocon Edition

In sharp contrast to the stupid questions of Peggy Noonan (see below), the always astute Neoneocon asks and answers What's behind Obama's Teleprompter addiction?

Obama is addicted to his Teleprompter not only because he knows he sounds better --smoother and smarter-- with it than without. The deeper reason for his reliance on it may just be that he differs so profoundly from the persona he wishes to convey that he quite literally cannot trust himself to speak without it. Shorn of the Teleprompter, he not only runs the risk of revealing a disfluency that could rival (or even exceed?) that of his reviled predecessor George Bush -- he may reveal who he truly is, an angry man with a profoundly radical agenda for America.

Why papers and media outlets are paying pundits like Noonan to write tripe, while writers like Neoneocon go begging, is beyond me.

Until this sort of fundamental disconnect is reversed, the MSM will continue to die.

Posted by Vanderleun at Mar 20, 2009 2:30 PM | Comments (12) | QuickLink:

It seems to me that the looming deficit....

.... currently projected to be in excess of $1.75 trillion has only one possible solution.

That is to replace this bit of current currency --

-- with this new, improved and highly changed bill:

Of course, being a realist, I'm also going long on wheelbarrows:

Posted by Vanderleun at Mar 13, 2009 3:26 PM | Comments (3) | QuickLink:

Why I Write and Publish Here

Gerard Van der Leun, 1942

FROM MY EMAILl this morning:

Because my age and view of the world are similar to yours, I was especially moved by the essay you wrote a couple of years ago on your uncle Gerard Vanderleun and the family fuss about your name.
[ The Name in the Stone ]

I sent it then to my two sons (26 and 28) with a comment to the effect that that was how young men like me in the 1960's looked at our parents' world in our oblivious way.

I was on a business trip with one of my sons to New York last Tuesday. While we were passing time in Battery Park before a meeting, my son remembered the essay and wanted to look for your uncle's name on the monument.

Still there, too tall to touch.

Thank you for the essay and the moment with my son.

Gerard Van der Leun, 2002 (second from bottom)

Posted by Vanderleun at Feb 25, 2006 9:27 AM | Comments (5) | QuickLink:

CBS Announces Dan Rather's Replacement

IN A SUDDEN TURNABOUT THAT SHATTERED MANY DREAMS AT CBS NEWS, LES MOONVES, HEAD OF CBS, today announced that the network has decided to replace veteran anchorman Dan Rather " with the only man in news broadcasting today that can repair and restore our credibility and ratings, Jon Stewart."

Mr. Stewart, host of The Daily Show on the Comedy Channel, brings, Moonves continued, "youth, truthfulness, and what we seem to lack most -- viewers and viewers who are young as well."

Asked if Dan Rather had any say in the selection of his replacement, Mooves commented "Dan reviewed Stewart's resume which was faxed over to his office and pronounced that document genuine. Beyond that Dan's made his last comment about anything. We want to move this story off of Dan Rather and onto the new line-up for CBS. Now, with the addition of Jon Stewart and CSI: Teaneck, New Jersey we've become the one to beat."

Outside analysts were unanimous in approving the move. William Safire of the New York Times remarked, "Jon Stewart who? Well, a baboon could do better. That Stewart show is past my bed time." Frank Rich, also of the New York Times said, "He's cute. Real cute. A Cary Grant for our time, but with firmer buttocks." Bill Moyers of PBS noted "Stewart has the uncanny ability to hold two different positions at the same time and John Kerry wasn't available so he'll have to do." Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, contacted by email replied, "Indeed."

Although veteran television news analysts at CBS were dumbfounded at being taken out of the running for Rather's slot, they failed to notice that this is the position the clever Mr. Stewart has been angling for throughout his career. One member of Mr. Rather's staff commenting on background said, "We should have seen it coming when Jon took that supporting role in Death to Smoochie, about the backstabbing that goes on at a children's television show. 60 Minutes has been a lot like that lately."

Reached by phone in Baghdad where The Daily Show is preparing to cover the upcoming Iraqi elections, Mr. Stewart would only say "Dan Rather is like a God to me. I am not worthy. Gotta go, we've got incoming..... "

Mr. Rather was unavailable for comment, but his office promised a statement from him "just as soon as Andrew can talk him down from the edge of the roof here at Black Rock."

==
UPDATE: Less than three hours after this announcement was made, an outraged Bill O'Reilly had to be escorted from the lobby of Black Rock by no less than three security men. Ask for comment, O'Reilly would only say, "Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine...."

[Originally published September 27, 2004]

Posted by Vanderleun at Dec 2, 2004 11:20 AM | Comments (4) | QuickLink:

If it's not close, they can't litigate.

The alert bookworm bassist Cameron at the stylish Way Off Bass has directed my attention to Mark Steyn's latest, a 3 page declaration of the coming Bush Tsunami, If Bush goes, I go.

Needless to say, Steyn's not going anywhere, but if he does I'm renting the next condo over. Here are three picks from each of three masterful pages.

PAGE ONE: IF IT IS NOT CLOSE, NOT ONLY CAN'T THEY CHEAT, THEY CAN'T EVEN LITIGATE.

So my hunch that that first Harris poll is the correct one is only that -- a hunch that Bush is ahead outside the margin of error. Unfortunately, on election day, he also has to be ahead outside the margin of lawyer, which is a tougher call. The Democrats already have thousands of chad-chasers circling the courthouses in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and even New Hampshire, alas. It's important for Bush to win big enough both to compensate for Democrat fraud and to deter litigation.

PAGE TWO: ANGRY WHITE MEN VS. RETIRED JEWS IN NEW MEXICO

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun at Oct 28, 2004 11:44 PM | Comments (3) | QuickLink:

"You've got questions. We've got answers."

In the course of joining the "Lesbian Daughter" slugfest du jour, William Kristol asks, in passing, "How stupid does John Kerry think the American people are?" -- "Fair Game"

Mr. Kristol, while it is clear Kerry does not know the American people all that well, he does have a long and deep understanding of the Democrats among us.

Posted by Vanderleun at Oct 16, 2004 12:43 PM | Comments (1) | QuickLink:

Post-Mortem Effects: The Kerry Campaign is Over

"Say goodnight, Gracie."
"Goodnight Gracie."

"Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me

I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
I was looking kind of dumb
With my finger and my thumb
In the shape of an "L" on my forehead "
-- SmashMouth, All Star

In the last few days there have been a lot of cycles wasted by people on the left, right, and center noting how badly the Kerry campaign is doing. To my mind, this is like suddenly discovering gravity.

The Kerry Campaign is doing badly because it has always done badly. Snagging the nomination from eight or nine less-electable clowns doesn't mean you're doing well, it just means you're not doing as poorly as the rest of the pack.

Still, I will admit that the campaign itself has, over the last fortnight, begun to do poorly in a more visible fashion than the performance of the previous year. Usually, they were able to keep the lid on somehow keep the right face on things, but of late this mask has begun to slip and that's a sign of deep existential distress on the inside.

The big question that keeps the keyboards humming at this point is : "Why?" This meditation is usually answered by some pundit or another hauling out the quick fix, the sure tactic, and the smooth move that will set things right and put John Kerry back on the path to the big chair in the oval office. Some have even gone so far as to propose Joe Trippi be brought in from the fields of clover he is currently cavorting in to right the good ship Kerry and send it smoothly into the harbor.

All these answers and suggestions are rank nonsense.

The single and only internal reason that things are now seen to be going badly inside the Kerry campaign is that deep inside the Kerry campaign, in the very core of the candidate himself, the have seen the fiery finger of fate write in glowing and deeply etched letters the single word: LOSER.

That's right -- down in the center where the Kerryites are sifting their statistics and spreadsheets and seeding their spin they already know what most of us are just beginning to sense-- THEY'VE LOST AND THERE IS NOTHING, BUT NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun at Sep 2, 2004 5:29 PM | Comments (5) | QuickLink:

"Yeah.... Sure.... Whatever.... "

Posted by Vanderleun at Jul 24, 2004 3:53 PM | QuickLink: