the airlines at all, Tim. With the price of jet fuel soaring, the airlines are burning through cash so fast, they might not make it past New Year's. The reason why they're nickel-and-diming passengers with all those extra surcharges is because, if they priced their tickets according to actual cost, customers would get scared off, leaving empty seats, requiring further hikes, leading to fewer passengers. In other words, the airlines are in a death spiral right now and they're looking for governments to bail them out. If oil hits $200/barrel, the airlines are history.

Oh, and the Enron loophole... that was the deregulation of the futures market brought to us courtesy of Phil Gramm, who until yesterday was McCain's primo economics adviser.

Plan on taking Amtrack next time to head up to Boston.