"And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead."

In this Sunday's New York Times, Frank Rich writes a column entitled "Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?" that echoes the sentiments of my "column" below more clearly and poignantly than I could say them.

Alas, one must be a "Times Select" subscriber to get to the article online.

In a similarly political vein, the first movie I got out of my new Netflix subscription was a documentary called Why We Fight that is so fantastic it's hard to put into words. You need to see this movie.

Also, I did my civic duty this week and voted in the New York primary by absentee ballot, even though all the elections were total landslides. Jonathan Tasini, who ran against Hillary Clinton, claimed on Facebook that he was polling at 44% (extraordinarily high considering that most New Yorkers didn't even know Clinton was being contested in the primary at all; I suspect that number was substantially inflated). Yesterday at Urban Outfitters I saw the book version of Sorry Everybody -- the website that was quite possibly the only good thing to come out of the 2004 presidential election. My favorites were the commiserations from other countries ("On behalf of the Dutch people, me and my sister would like to thank you -- we too are sorry and wish you good luck for the next 4 years") and people with regional pride ("Northern Ohio is REALLY sorry!").