Well, Kathryn, I would have posted something, but I was making my way back from the NR cruise and I packed all my heavy thoughts in my Delta luggage. Too heavy for Delta, apparently. Although I paid extra for the privilege of checking my bags, they removed them from the flight just before take-off for “weight-balancing data” reasons. I’m assured there’s a sporting chance I’ll get them back in the next week or so, and they’ve no plans to charge me any supplemental late-delivery fee. On the next cruise, remind me to leave my New Hampshire winter underwear and just bring my monogrammed thong.

Anyway, this routine airline whinge is merely prologue to my thought for the day as the “bailout” metastasizes: The most dysfunctional areas of American life are those that are most deformed from the normal market (ie, seller/buyer) relationship, airline travel being only one of the most conspicuous.I don’t see any good that can come of bailing out the “Big Three” auto makers. As in Britain in the Sixties and Seventies, the government will simply be subsidizing a regime that is institutionally incapable of making a car at a price anyone is prepared to pay for it.

The sclerosis afflicting more and more areas of endeavor is sad to me. When I first visited America as a child, the single dominant lasting impression was the way everything worked so much better here: It was brighter, newer, nimbler, more responsive, more inventive. No one will say that about Bailoutistan.