*   Ed. Note: The ring of that phrase is so “deliciously” Thurberesque, as Mr. Olbermann undoubtedly relishes . . . even as Thurber did. Thurber’s preface to My Life and Hard Times ends, “It is unfortunate, however, that even a well-ordered life cannot lead anybody safely around the inevitable doom that waits in the skies. As F. Hopkinson Smith long ago pointed out, the claw of the sea-puss gets us all in the end.” (The phrase is a chapter title from Smith’s romance, The Tides of Barnegat, published when Thurber was twelve, in 1906. As for “sea-puss”? Derived from the native Algonquian languages, it refers to a strong undertow or riptide rushing seaward.)