>>It seems that, of all fruit, I'll only have a lot of cherries this year. And I'll probably engage some economists to pick them. They seem to be rather good at it.

In the army they say to treat co-incidence as enemy action. Co-incidence that one uncharacteristically bad year in 1951 in a country with fewer people than many cities decided the whole result? Maybe.

Except for one thing: partisan behavior seems to be acceptable these days. Last night I saw footage of a Senator "from the other team" whose sarcasm was presented as idiocy as he rhapsodized over helium balloons and asked an Admiral whether Guam would capsize if too many people came. Plus all sorts of other mischaracterizations- I hesitate to say misrepresentations, but a rose by any other name etc.

People guffaw over this stuff without realizing how dangerous it can be, or shrug over negligent errors that would cost lives if a physician did it. Except that this did cost lives and the luminaries shrug off the incompetence by claiming the result is the same... a bizarre counter to "the operation was a success but the patient died" thinking. ;-)