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mysterious car business model
Tuesday, September 9 2008
setting: Super Eight Motel near the San Jose airport, California
After returning our rental Kia to Hertz (let's hear it for short brand names!), I was carrying two cups of Super 8 coffee to the shuttle bus, but the driver said that I couldn't carry drinks with me. So, following Gretchen's visual cue, I chugged one and put the other in her bag to smuggle to the airport. It's difficult not to resort to smuggling in the place where public transportation meets terrorist fears. Of course, I still had to drink all that coffee before getting through airport security.
San Jose is Silicon Valley's airport, and it's one of the few American airports where free WiFi is provided free at the gates. I sat there checking the latest on the presidential race, my stomach uncomfortable from the bump being measured for McCain in the aftermath of his selection of Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential candidate. The lefty websites do their best to cheer us liberals through times like these, but lately all they've been able to do is urge us to go out and become foot soldiers for Obama. At this point my only real hope is that more scandals will emerge about the poorly-vetted Palin. So you can imagine my joy when I saw a fresh new headline about Palin in the Washington Post: she'd been billing the State of Alaska for per-diem expenses without ever leaving home! The point size of the headline was enough that, for the rest of the day, I didn't find myself feeling ill every time my thoughts drifted to politics. Although I did feel a little unnerved when, somewhere over the Great Plains, I looked over at a tabloid someone was reading and saw a headline by Republican operative Peggy Noonan reading, A Clear and Present Danger To the American Left. This is the same Noonan who, caught on a live microphone unaware the other day, had characterized the race as "over" for McCain because of the foolishness of the Palin pick. But that was before Palin had delivered her well-received-though-nasal speech, the one that had begun, "Theenk you, theenk you," had claimed credit for turning down the bridge to nowhere, and had mocked Obama for being a community organizer. Now that Palin was polling well, Noonan was all down on her muffin and sure to be a'changin' her ways.
Our flight back east consisted of three legs (originally it had had two, but a flight had been canceled and we'd been rerouted through Atlanta). Scheduling was tight and the Atlanta airport is enormous, so after we got off the plane from Salt Lake City, we ran full throttle through the airport, passing people saying things like, "I've had to do that a few times."
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?080909 feedback
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