Fundamentally convoluted

Here are the headlines on the economy from the last couple of days:

And this is what Sen. John McCain has to say:

“You know that there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street. People are frightened by these events,” McCain said. “Our economy — I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong — but these are very, very difficult times. And I promise you we will never put America in this position again.”

Um…. Huh? I’m having difficulty parsing this statement. The fundamentals are strong, but times are tough, which would seem to mean that the economy is not all that strong. So how can the fundamentals remain strong?

My head hurts.

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No we didn’t win

There was a story over the weekend in The New York Times about lottery sales being up around the country as Americans seek to get ahead in a bad economy by dropping some cash on a ticket.

We play periodically and, if we’re lucky, we make back what we spent. But let’s face it, the lottery is fool’s errand — especially when you’re stretched economically.

But that’s the game states use to get us in.

In any case, there is something odd about states using this sort of gimmick to fund their budgets, rather than asking people who can afford it (read that to mean the higher-income folks). There are those who call the lotter a “poor-people’s tax” and, given the demographics of the players, I can’t argue.

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A literary loss: David Foster Wallace

I’m not really sure how to address this, but it is certainly a huge loss for literature. I’ve not read David Foster Wallace (pictured from the unofficial Web site), aside from some short pieces in Harper’s, but I’d always meant to. That’s one of those sad phrases, hackneyed, and now he is gone — a suicide at age 46, barely older than me — and what? Two good “appreciations” from The New York Times and Chris Hayes at The Nation and a third from Salon.
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