(1)
It’s funny, isn’t it, how everyone who on Tuesday morning was explaining how Hillary Clinton would be hard-pressed to win either Ohio or Texas (because of poor strategy, and how messed up her campaign was, and how demoralized her campaign staff was) was there yesterday (on TV or in print) to smoothly explain how Clinton managed to win both Ohio and Texas (due to superior strategy and execution).

(2)
Why isn’t it possible for journalists to write about the economy in plain-speaking terms? Why does everyone use the same standardized language (which also happens to be the vocabulary the White House loves to use, since it has the effect of bowdlerizing painful political facts)?

My text today: this AP story by Jeannine Aversa. Here’s the offending sentence; her very first paragraph, naturally.

The economy has weakened since the start of this year as shoppers turned even more cautious given the severe housing slump and painful credit crunch. Manufacturers and other businesses, meanwhile, had to cope with skyrocketing prices for energy and other raw materials.

That language would be appropriate if shoppers were sitting on tidy little bundles of disposable income, and telling themselves: “You know, I have a bad feeling about the future of the economy, and/or my future financial condition, so instead of spending this money, let me just save it for the rainy day that I very much fear lies ahead.” That’s shoppers turning cautious — choosing not to spend money they have and could spend if they felt differently.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what’s happening in the economy today. Call it a hunch, one of my most inspired Swami Sarabeth moments.

And somehow, I don’t think that’s what Jeannine Aversa thinks is happening in the economy today, either. (I have this persistent delusion that anyone who was so out of touch with reality would probably not be paid a regular salary by AP to propagate their delusions.)

So why on earth would Jeannine Aversa write like that? You’d think she didn’t know any better.

(I do, of course, once again offer my editorial services to AP to help them keep it real.)

(3)
Funny how we keep finding honest men high up in the Bush hierarchy who are willing to plainly state that waterboarding is torture, or that torture is unnecessary.

(4)
Those folks in Vermont sure do things a little differently:

Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for “crimes against our Constitution”, local media reported.

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to “extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them”.
[...]
Bush has never visited the state as president, though he has spent vacations at his family compound in nearby Maine.