A captive audience at 30,000 feet

After my last disastrous trip on US Air, I vowed that it would be a cold day in hell before I flew with them again.

Unfortunately, I had few alternatives on the final leg of a two city jaunt during which I flew on Northwest, American, and finally US Air.

An innovation on the godforsaken airline is to make a sales pitch for credit cards midway through the flight. Since my flight had two legs, I heard the pitch twice - I was awakened both times by the shrill sound of a flight attendent pushing a very special offer with a credit card company. Worse still, on the second leg of the flight, the monitors on the plane played a repeated loop for a cable travel network - it was a 70 minute commercial (actually a three minute commercial repeated again and again).

I paid plenty for my ticket and I resent a sales pitch which is impossible to escape.

Falling on your sword

It's an old Japanese tradition to apologize deeply and sincerely when you, as a leader, have failed. In the old days, they would literally fall on their sword in an act of hara-kiri.

It's scary out there. I woke to find the world markets in free fall. I don't expect the US market to do anything that differs. GM is crumbling ("as GM goes, so goes America" eh?). We're in for some tough times, and in some ways we are all responsible. In other ways, we have been let down by feckless leaders influenced by an insiders' club of influential powers, and financial leaders who have lined their pockets as they have picked ours. Our lust for growth, growth, growth and our abandonment of local institutions in favor of international corporations (you know who's doing well - local banks who stuck to the time-honored practice of making loans only to those who they figured could pay them back - that was in the day when there was no such thing as a national bank, and that seems like a good idea now), has come back to bite us.

Yesterday in Japan, an insurance company failed, and at the very least the leaders of that company apologized for their foolish decisions and bowed, literally bowed, deeply in shame and humility. That doesn't make anything better, but I'd like to see one of our leaders take responsibility for something, anything.

George Bush is going to do the "deer-in-the-headlights" routine today. He and Cheney ought to be handing in their resignations and falling on their swords. They have bankrupted this country in more than a financial sense, and we will live with the shame.

Political comedy in Minnesota

I'm in the land of Garrison Keillor and Al Franken (where Franken is now leading in the Senatorial race), and the political theater is getting heated up as Norm Coleman, the incumbent, is being charged with ethics violations.

No, this is not a Saturday Night Live skit.

We have nothing to fear but Creepy Joe™

Joe Lieberman is the type to scream "fire" in a movie theater (or maybe, as Woody Allen once said, "He's the kind to scream 'movie' in a firehouse.")

At a time when the world is despairing over a nasty financial crisis, one would look to our leaders for words of calming, wisdom and confidence.

But Creepy Joe™ Lieberman is taking a tactic from the George Bush/Dick Cheney/Karl Rove playbook when he predicts that along with tough financial times, we'll be facing a terrorist attack next year.

What does Lieberman know that nobody else does?

Of course, he uses the threat to indicate that his buddy John "the man of character" McCain is better suited to handling such an attack.

In playing the fear card, Lieberman becomes the terrorist.

Is Obama man enough to bomb Iran?

Creepy Joe™ Lieberman has his doubts as to whether Barack Obama has the nerve to bomb Iran, if it came to that.

We wonder if Lieberman has the strength to put aside his most base and bloodthirsty instincts.

Barbara Ann after all, was a harmony song, so when McCain sings "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," Creepy Joe™ can sing along.

Who was it that endorsed Bush?

George Bush is as lame as he always has been. The Hartford Courant's editorial board is just figuring that out - they endorsed him twice as a presidential candidate (to be fair, I've been told the board voted unanimously against the endorsement but they were "outvoted" by the single vote of the publisher).

Now, when are we going to get the editorial about the remarkable loss of integrity exhibited by Creepy Joe™ Lieberman?

The great dictator?

An under-reported bit of news that may have explained why Congresspeople were so ashen when they emerged from the first meeting on the financial bailout - they were threatened by a country under martial law.

Since the financial bailout hasn't gotten any traction, and the market is in freefall, does that mean the threat of martial law hangs like a threat in the Autumn air?

Bush-in-skirts Palin check brain at the door

At her redneck hate rallies, Sarah Palin has been pushing crowds to the edge of violence with her litany of terrorism and hatred.

She recites the same Rovian points over and over, even when they have no basis in truth and logic.

Sarah who?

Strange, strange, strange that Cranky Old John McCain made it through an entire debate without referencing his young counterpart who has been poison the well of American politics.

For my money, McCain stumbled, bumbled and rambled his way out of the presidency tonight.

To be honest, Obama didn't mention Biden, but he hasn't sent Biden on the road to stir up mob hatred of McCain.

BTW, McCain did mention Creepy Joe™ Lieberman three times. Who is he really pining for?

From the NYTimes letters to the editor yesterday

H/T to Jim Condren.

To the Editor:

You quote John McCain, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?” He was referring to Barack Obama’s acquaintance with the former Weatherman Bill Ayers, but the same question might be put to his own supporters.

A Vietnamese friend once described to me the scene of carnage he witnessed as a child after a United States bombing in Hanoi. He and his family fled through a landscape strewn with the body parts of innocents.

An argument could be made that the pilot who flew 23 bombing sorties over Vietnam and the former radical were both doing what they believed right — one in support of a war and the other in protest of it — and that both were wrong.

Kevin Lathrop
Brooklyn, Oct. 4, 2008