The certainly worser Bert Waisanen

A wire story reporting on the degrees of bankruptcy facing California and some rational states contains this:

"Numerous things look worse than some past recessions," said Bert Waisanen, a fiscal analyst with the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures. "The housing market is worse. Industrial production is worse. Wages are nearly worse."

No punishment is too great for a linguafelon who would construct "nearly worse," and I'm at a loss even to find a label for the assault against both language and logical thought processes. A subjective hypothetical comparison of a non-comparable eventuation resulting in anti-meaning?

To even begin to justify the impossible concept of "nearly worse," his data had to show wages either the same or slightly better, but to say so would have stalled the verbal cavalry charge.