Dave's Fiction Warehouse

W as invading Iraq a good idea? If somebody takes more than two seconds to answer with a simple uppercase "NO," you have to wonder about their grasp of reality. You really have to wonder if that person should run for president. But there's Jeb Bush, parsing and equivocating and trying to make it sound like supporting one's troubled brother matters more than correctly identifying the nation's biggest foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.  I don't get this. Jeb Bush seemed to be the only GOP presidential candidate who had not arrived by clown car, the only one even remotely electable, and yet he refuses to acknowledge the obvious: We screwed up big time. (Well, not "we," per se, but it does involve a W.) It's a mistake that keeps on corroding the country in myriad ways.  I don't know; maybe it just hasn't hurt the Bush family personally. Jeb says the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. Maybe so, if some Jeffersonian figure had ...

I hate flying. I hate the airline industry. I specifically hate USAirways.  I don't hate the employees of USAirways, just the company itself. It is the epitome of all that has gone wrong with American capitalism. It is a company that systematically degrades the quality of its product while constantly increasing the cost for it. It is a company that treats customers the same way it treats their luggage.  The company is posting record profits -- up about 90 percent after merging with American Airlines in 2013. That's a function of two things: reduced competition on more than 1,600 routes, and dramatically lower fuel costs. The guy who runs USAirways/American makes about $20 million a year. You'd think windfall profits might allow slight improvements in customer service. If you do think that, you should get your head out of your ass.  On a recent flight out to Vegas, and then back a week later, I experienced what has become the depressing standard in U.S. air travel: every ...