The Noose Only Tightens

Ok, fuel prices have fallen drastically. Crisis is over. So why are airlines still imposing luggage surcharges? 

In fact, last week American Airlines announced a tightening measure to add to their already grievously tightened frequent flier program: they'll no longer be awarding 500 miles minimum per flight. Short hops will accrue awards points based on actual distance.

It's one of the hallmarks of big business capitalism: as with labor concessions granted during hard times, anything given up by customers for temporary crises always winds up permanent. Whether as worker or as consumer, we the peons live within a massive, inescapable ratchet wrench.

"How To..."

Wired Magazine's "How-To Wiki,"a compendium of tutorials drawing from both the magazine's writers and editors and web site users, may not be phenomenally over-stocked with articles, but what's there is interesting. 

I particularly enjoyed "How to Do Donuts" (i.e. whirl tight circles with your - or, preferably, someone else's - car), and the brief but amusing "How to Crash a Party".

We've Gone Completely Jungian

When I was in grade school, I found it eerie to hear other kids parroting their parents' political views. During elections, children who didn't know a thing about government or politics would spout scathing invective about The Other Candidate. No actual ideas were beneath their revilement, of course. Just the deep subconscious influence of tribes on their young. It was like seeing a baby monkey aping its elders by pointing and shrieking at the group two trees over.

As an adult, I noticed how even adults seem to do no better than to mimic, poorly, the rhetoric of whichever team they're on. You had your bad versions of Rush Limbaugh and your bad versions of James Carville. Political positioning began to strike me as mostly a matter of lining up for one's personal style. Liberals look and act like liberals, and conservatives looked and acted like conservatives. One could just smell the Otherness on the other! And the visceral distaste for the opposition stems less from positions on issues than from a deeper, darker place: the archetype of The Other. 

The current side-taking seems no more grown-up (or even more conscious) than the baby monkeys. The political views one hears expressed by people in the street and on the Internet are childish echoes, scarcely different than any other memes or catchphrases inculcated via marketing. It's all empty symbols, stylistic nods and empty gossip. There's no there there!

I have a friend who is extremely kind and reasonable, the sort of person who gets along with lots of different types of people. Yet he keeps forwarding me seething screeds of anonymous origin explaining the sinister secrets of John McCain. I can't make him understand that he's acting as the mirror image of right-wingers who pass around Obama-is-a-Muslim-Terrorist agitprop. 

And liberals can't understand the concerns of Social Conservatives, wondering why they distrust them so, when liberals are all about "live and let live"! Just hand in your shotguns, please, and expect your kids to learn real science because your beliefs are stupid and we know better, and you can pick up your free condoms and clean hypodermic needles at City Hall (just please step respectfully around the flag-burning demonstraters, oh, and we've dismantled your inappropriate Christmas display). You will be tolerant, and we will show no tolerance whatsoever for those who express themselves in a way we deem intolerant. Buckle your safety belt (it's the law!), thank you for not smoking, eating trans fats, polluting, or engaging in what we deem hate speech - or other actions which offend our sense of morality! And, most of all, keep your damned moralism to yourselves!

Neither tribe seems to realize they're mirror images. We are a nation of mesmerized, tribalized children. Can't we go back to nerds hating jocks, or girls hating boys, or rich kids hating poor kids, unleashing our subconscious us-versus-them angst in the social realm, so we can make the important business of governance be about ideas rather than style and archetypes?

VIDEOS: If Obama Wins/If Obama Loses

A liberal friend sent me a link to this "If Obama Loses" video.

And a conservative friend sent me a link to this "If Obama Wins" video.

It's mind-bending to me that "hard-working Americans, white Americans," to borrow Hillary's euphemism, are passing the latter video around. I guess I'm finally starting to understand why Dave Chappelle had a nervous breakdown, bolted to South Africa, and has scarcely been heard from since.

Sarah Palin Redux, Re-Redux, and Re-Re-Redux

When Sarah Palin first appeared, my comment was:

"Whatever you think of Palin, she's likely to remain on our national scene for another three decades. That's a very long time. She'll fill in the experience gap. Her following, already fervid, will only grow. And she may one day be our Margaret Thatcher."

It would be naive to doubt that sometime soon Palin will be capable of delivering polished talking points on all the many issues about which she's currently gut ignorant. Sarah-Palin-as-ignoramus will be a distant memory. She'll never gain nuanced, supple faculties of comprehension, but she'll have a ready sound bite for just about everything. And that's all that's required of our national figureheads since GW Bush shattered the glass ceiling for smug yahoos.

So the question is: how viable a national politician would Palin be at that point?

The new conventional wisdom among the left, which even made it into next week's Newsweek, is that Palin is so reflexively divisive and extreme that she could never win broad support. No matter how much she energizes her "base", she'd never attract centrists - the undecided voters who call elections in our evenly polarized country.

But I'm old enough to remember when the same was said of Ronald Reagan. 

I Caused the Fiscal Meltdown

A couple of weeks ago, I experienced a visceral glimpse into the inner dynamics of an economic crisis.

When the crisis hit, and money market accounts were doing the unthinkable, dropping below $1/share (i.e. losing money, which money markets are not supposed to ever do), I immediately surfed over to the web site for Vanguard, where I keep my money market account. There I was reassured by a statement from CEO Bill McNabb, which included this comforting note:

"I'm very proud to say that the portfolio managers of our money market and bond funds have weathered this storm very well. In our money market funds, for example, our managers began in the summer of 2007 to emphasize the most liquid and high-quality securities."

Ah, good old conservative Vanguard! I can trust them to be cautious and not take chances with my savings! Thank goodness they were prudent enough to pull back and only invest in sure things, so I needn't worry about my money market account. I am reassured and well-pacified. I am prudent. I am good.

But wait. Isn't the collapse due to a credit crisis brought about by scared money managers who tightened the free-flowing credit which fueled the nation's engine of commerce? In other words, retreating to the "most liquid and high-quality securities" was the very problem! Yet my feeling of relief and reassurance remains! This, of course, speaks to the very nucleus of the kernel of the heart of the matter.

My parents were among the first to build a house in their area of Suffolk County, Long Island, and they ruefully complained about the hordes who soon followed, increasing traffic and pollution and utterly spoiling what had been bucolic countryside. They never once realized that they, themselves, were the spoilers.

Stock Market Silver Lining Reminder

Just a reminder that if you have any capital gains this year (e.g. you sold stock earlier in the year for a gain), you ought to sell something for a loss before year's end in order to offset any taxes on the gain.

Muslims for McCain

I love this video of McCain supporters lashing back against an anti-Muslim bigot.

I'm quite seriously thinking of starting a "Jews for Obama for Muslims for McCain" group.

"Bag of Hurt" Watch: Part 4

Oh, awesome. "Bag of hurt" is up to 151,000 results!

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?"

Here's part of Powell's endorsement speech that was little covered by the mainstream media:

"I'm also troubled by...what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well the correct answer is 'He is not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian.' But the really right answer is 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is 'No. That's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

"I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his counrty and he gave his life."