Month: May 2005

Buh-Bye, Pensions, Thanks for Flying With Us

I’ve flown United Airlines quite a lot – as much as five times a year – for the past seven years. When it comes to providing the nonstop NYC – SFO flights that I want, at the times that I want, for a price I consider reasonable, they’ve consistantly met my requirements. Occasionally I’ve flown American or JetBlue, but they generally are less convenient and/or more expensive. United has been my airline of choice.

And now, United has dumped their employee pension plan as part of bankruptcy recovery plan. That’s a six BILLION dollar committment to employees, dumped off onto an underfunded Federal bailout organization. So retired United employees are potentially screwed, and we the taxpayer get to pay the bill.

Well, United, you’ve gone from being my airline of choice to my airline of last resort. That’s my response.

Wow

The European Parliament voted Wednesday in favor of an obligatory 48-hour maximum work week

Yes another reason I wish I was about 15 years younger and spoke more than one language. I can’t imagine the US enacting something like this.

Dennis Prager is Clueless About The Jews

I’d go into a long list of reasons why this article is completely full of sh*t, but I have a paper to write today. However, I can’t resist this one appalling tidbit:

Were Jews true to their mission, they would stand alongside Christians who work to bring the Torah’s values to the world

In other words, not helping the people who think you’re doomed to hell because you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus is somehow against the mission of Judaism.

I call it self-preservation, thank you very much.

Slightly Belated But Noteworthy

A few days late, but Legal Fiction has a good, solid post showing how class and culture and economic all interrelated to produce the 2004 election results. It’s worth a read. Here’s a snippet:

I think national security is, unfortunately, increasingly thought of as a cultural issue (and like the others, it has class undertones). Whether it

Friday Cat Blogging

As the semester draws to a close, I have had to spend a bunch of time playing with the printer. So has Tommy. Here he is.

Time to go write another paper!

UPDATE: I keep forgetting to use forward slashes in my img tag. Sorry, Firefox viewers. It’s fixed now.

Kick Out The … Jams?

By way of a dKos diary, I found this lovely story today about a North Carolina church that told its Democrat members to repent or leave. Some were kicked out. More resigned in protest over the minister’s actions (and kudos to them for doing so).

Religion and Politics Clash
Religion and politics clash over a local church’s declaration that Democrats are not welcome.

East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn’t support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13.

On the one hand, it’s just a small Baptist congregation in the middle of the woods. On the other hand, the church’s actions have threatening implications. Memes have a tendency to spread, and the “kick out the democrats” theme has been floated in other forums as well — notably conservative columnist Larry Elder yesterday suggesting that it’s unhealthy for corporations to hire Democrats.

This Us versus Them stuff is getting stronger and stronger. I don’t like it.