Airlines got the bailout they asked for.

Well, I'm puking already. Here are some select quotes from an NYT article:

American blew most of its cash on a stock buyback spree. From 2014 to 2020, in an attempt to increase its earnings per share, American spent more than $15 billion buying back its own stock. It managed, despite the risk of the proverbial rainy day, to shrink its cash reserves.

At no time during its years of plenty did American improve how it treats its customers. Change fees went up to $200 for domestic flights and to $750 for international. Its widely despised baggage fees were hiked to $30 and $40 for first and second bags. These higher fees yielded billions of dollars, yet did not help the airline improve its on-time arrivals, reduce tarmac delays or prevent involuntary bumping. Instead, American’s main “innovations” were the removal of screens from its planes, the reduction of bathroom and seat sizes and the introduction of a “basic economy” class that initially included a ban on carry-on luggage.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that the airlines, including American, would be “on the top of the list” for federal loan relief.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/airlines-bailout.html?searchResultPosition=3

Furthermore, any bailout for the airlines will not go into the pockets of the gazillions of unemployed workers they've laid off in the past weeks. 

Stop the hemorrhage of public money into the pockets of rich private parties!

Vote Bernie, whether in the primaries or as a third-party candidate.

The 9/11 Mosque? Actually, It's Just a Community Center, but who cares? It's Private Property!

Well, it seemed for a short moment that BHO had actually displayed principles, not to mention balls, but it turned out to be a mistake on his part, a misunderstanding on ours.

Here's an idea. First of all, two blocks in Manhattan is a lifetime, setting up a community center a full two blocks from the still vacant WTC site really can't be interpreted as any kind of message, period. More to the point, we live in the USA, and we adhere to certain principles. One of those is respect for private property -- one can do with one's property what one wants within the bounds of the law. Blowhards such as Newt Gingrich are free to put their money where their mouth is, i.e., buy the property in question, the one they're blowing hard about, and build a 9/11 shrine on it or whatever else they feel is appropriate. One thing they can't do is complain about the current rightful owner's use of the property to put it to whatever lawful use he chooses to.

HRC's Assassination Gaffe

I am glad the hooplah concerning HRC's assassination gaffe has died down. My original reaction upon hearing of it pretty much mirrored the tabloid headlines, but I now think that her words were inartful rather than sinister.

Her explanation that the Kennedys were on her mind since Teddy Kennedy's recent diagnosis rang hollow, because it was well before that, back in early March, that she told Time's Richard Stengel that "[w]e all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A." Having watched her say that line to Stengel, however, I believe she genuinely felt the tragedy of that assassination. It then struck me that she wasn't trying to suggest that Obama might meet RFK's fate; if anything, I believe she instead sees herself as something of an RFK figure.

A number of commenters argued that her bringing up RFK's assassination was suggestively sinister by pointing out that, if she had just wanted to reference long primary races, she could have used Teddy's run in 1980. That argument, however, is not very well thought through - comparing yourself to someone who was seen as costing their party the election hardly justifies your staying in the race. Teddy Kennedy's insurgent run was blamed for Jimmy Carter's loss in 1980, just as Ronald Reagan's run was blamed for Ford's loss in 1976. The only suitable examples of drawn-out primaries are ones where the ultimate victor prevailed (or might have prevailed, had he lived) in the general election, e.g., Bill Clinton and RFK.

Furthermore, I think HRC feels a certain affinity for RFK and truly sees what happened as a tragedy. Both of them are/were hard-as-nails fighters. As did RFK, Hillary entered the election already famous and with the mixed blessing of carrying on a political legacy. Both had been the very visible right-hand person to charismatic presidents; both only found their political voice well after beginning their presidential campaigns. Both were portrayed as and seen by many to be calculating opportunists who subordinated principled positions to expediency. As HRC has in Obama, RFK had in Eugene McCarthy an effete liberal competitor who had taken an early stand against the war and whose surprising early primary victories were due to the grass roots campaigning of anti-war college students and other activists from around the country who traveled to early primary states in support their candidate's campaign. McCarthy had the support of the same demographic that now supports Obama, as RFK had HRC's.

I believe HRC had a blind spot when she made those comments; she may just not have seen that RFK's assassination would be taken as a veiled reference to Obama, and that's because she is so much more like RFK than is Obama. Of course, even if I'm right, she would have been pilloried even worse than she was if she had tried publicly to compare herself to RFK. In any case, I wish her better luck than he had.

Obama the Narcissist

As an early supporter of Obama, I'm surprised at how uncomfortable he has come to make me feel. Originally, I had heard of his rousing 2004 convention speech, and I was struck by the lucidity of his opposition to the Iraq war. The idea that foreigners don't appreciate being invaded for their own good, any more than we would, may not seem like rocket science, but try telling that to our elected officials. I initially thought of Obama as an undoctrinaire thinker, a progressive with a healthy conservative skepticism toward government's ability to change society. This impression was reinforced by such things as Obama's cautious embrace of nuclear energy - a sensible but daring position. Add a big dose of charisma to that and you'd think you have the perfect statesman.


That early enthusiasm has faded, though. Part of it is that Obama increasingly strikes me as a handsome version of Joe Lieberman - they share a certain sanctimoniousness, as well as a reflexive splitting the difference with the Republicans on every issue.


Aside from that, Obama's ever-increasing focus on himself frightens me. His stated goal of bringing the country together is something we can all support. His repeated and, increasingly, his only message, however, is that he alone has the ability to bring us together. This is presumptuous, to put it mildly. It also indicates that the focus of his attention is somewhere completely different from where I want my president's attention.


Listening to Obama campaigning is like listening to a historian describing a great man, only it's himself he's describing, and that's just creepy. It's as if Bill Clinton, for example, had campaigned in 1992 on the platform that he was a tireless negotiator, that he could argue an opponent's position even better than the opponent could, that he would combine personal charisma and a stunning command of policy details to negotiate great deals. Clinton never said these things about himself, of course; these and other qualities became clear to the electorate from watching him argue issues, not from listening to him extol his own virtues. The only thing becoming clear to me about Obama, however, is that he sees himself as America's only chance at coming together.


Particularly telling is Obama's attempt to don the Reagan mantle. Just as Reagan created a group called the "Reagan democrats," Obama tells us, he wants there to be a group that will become known as the "Obama republicans"! It's nice to be able to compare your own political gifts to Reagan's that way, with a straight face no less, but I don't recall Reagan ever using the phrase "Reagan democrats." As a matter of fact, I don't recall Reagan saying the word "Reagan," or ever talking about himself at all. His campaigning consisted of communicating a series of positions in a way that would appeal to the maximum number of voters from both parties. We subsequently learned that Reagan had personally crafted and endlessly reworked all of his speeches for decades, by hand. Think what you will of his positions, his focus was on what he believed and on communicating those positions effectively in order to convince the American public. He didn't talk about himself. Famously, Reagan told the Religious Roundtable's National Affairs Briefing in 1980, "I know you can't endorse me, but I endorse you." Reagan spoke of his own admiration for FDR; he explained his subsequent disenchantment with the democratic party on ideological grounds; but I don't recall that he ever compared himself to FDR, although plenty of others certainly did.


And that's really the crux. It's doubtful that anyone can legitimately speak of Obama in messianic terms at such an early stage in his career, but in any case he certainly shouldn't be doing it. Obama's comparison of himself with Reagan goes far beyond even what any of the Republican candidates dared. In general, his campaign message seems to be that he will be a historic figure, included in the pantheon of great leaders. Well, we'll let others be the judge of that, thank you. I get the feeling that the democratic party may be in the midst of an infatuation from which it will wake up only after it's too late.