Tuesday, November 25, 2008

WINEHOUSE BEING WINEHOUSE

Singer Amy Winehouse has made it back to her natural habitat. As Reuters reports:
The 25-year-old Grammy winner was admitted to a clinic after falling ill on Sunday and has been kept there for tests. Winehouse was taken to hospital for a similar complaint in July.
Winehouse reportedly "reacted badly to medication." We like the sound of that.

Monday, November 03, 2008

AFTER THE DELUGE

Even the shouting is over, and for this we give thanks. The 527s focused a concentrated beatdown on Barack Obama in the final weekend before the election, but it all seemed forced, a rote throat ripping that did little more than nick the skin.

A couple weeks ago we said Obama would probably get 51 percent of the popular vote, and 338 electoral votes. Nothing has happened between now and then to change the perception.

There is always the chance that the expected Obama win will turn out to be the electoral version of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction -- all blow, no show. But "slim" would be a generous word to describe John McCain's chances of pulling off an upset. It could happen. It probably won't.

McCain supporters are especially fond of bringing up Dewey defeats Truman. Pollsters can indeed be wrong -- especially as they were in '48, when they stopped taking the public pulse a month before the election. No such luck this cycle.

Rational Republicans acted resigned on Monday (the irrational ones are fierce believers and can never be tugged from their convictions). A few voiced the expected fallback position -- economic doom if Obama is elected and taxes go up. It all sounded very familiar to late 1992 and early 1993, when Bill Clinton was a new Democratic president pushing for higher taxes for well-to-do Americans.

Back in those black-and-white days, not one Republican voted for Clinton's deficit-reduction bill. Not one. They said taxing the upper class would send this country into a depression. They were wrong then, a fact to consider when they try to tell us that the sky will soon fall.