On Sunday I watched a bunch of guys wearing Cowboys uniforms get beaten every which way including up by the Philadelphia Eagles.
The game was not even close. I mentally wrote "game over" in my notebook by midway through the third quarter.
If the guys on the field were Cowboys impersonators, they should have been replaced at half time, on the grounds that they failed the audition. Sadly, we are pretty certain that these guys were the Dallas Cowboys. In which case, God Help Us going forward from here.
The last time I saw a team this comprehensively stuffed in a regular season game was 2 weekends ago, when the New England Patriots steamrollered the Arizona Cardinals. The pattern was the same. The losing team looked out-coached, out-played and out-fought from the initial kick-off.
The biggest issue was that half time did not result in any change in the attitude or the approach of the Cowboys. They continued to look as bad through the second half. In fact, they actually looked worse, as they started turning the ball over with monotonous regularity to a gleeful Philadelphia Eagles team that had no trouble in running up the score against a demoralized defense. Whatever other weaknesses the team had, the major issue was an inability to dig deep and be determined to fight. This team looked like they were mentally and physically elsewhere.
When a team is beaten this badly, we get to find out who the real competitors are, and who the loudmouths are. To his credit, Wade Phillips offered no excuses in his press conference. Tony Romo, who had to be helped out of the shower after the game, seemingly due to rib damage, tried to put the loss in perspective, but his choice of words ("if this is the worst thing that happens to me I'll have been lucky") has only infuriated fans and commentators, who seem to think that Dying For The Team is the only acceptable attitude with the playoffs on the line. T.O., to his credit, did not attempt to sugar-coat the loss, neither did Jason Witten. Zach Thomas, who probably fancied his chances of a Superbowl ring with the Cowboys instead of more futility with the Dolphins, sounded like you would expect him to - a resigned veteran who picked the wrong horse. He will most likely not be back.
Bradie James, seemingly being a bit of a fool, tried to pick a fight with a heckling fan at Valley Ranch today, and is probably going to be lucky to avoid being fined or suspended by the NFL or the team.
(Note to Bradie James - picking a fight with a fan is about as dumb as it gets. If the NFL doesn't fine you, the Cowboys ought to fine you for being an unprofessional dickwad. The reason you are paid all of that money is because you perform in public, the public pays money to see you, so they get to critique you. If you don't like that concept, find another way to make a living.)
The bigger question, after all of the foaming at the mouth about the ineptitude of the Cowboys is..where does the team go from here? Jerry Jones can proclaim all he likes about his intention to keep the coaching staff, but there are major problems with the team and team leadership.
We need to start at the top, with ownership.
Jerry Jones has a habit of being unable to get out of the way of his coaches. After parting company with Jimmy Johnson, he worked through a succession of progressively more inept coaches who were paid poorly, and expected to do his bidding. During that period, the Cowboys became progressively poorer on the field, and some of the players' off-field behaviour also became dangerously unprofessional.
Only after it became clear that playoff football had risen beyond the reach of the team did Jones hire Bill Parcells, who he could not push around. The team improved, but two egos of that size were always going to have trouble co-existing, and Parcells eventually left by way of yet another "retirement". Jones is now back to hiring compliant head coaches. His inability to get out of the way is now haunting the franchise once again. Just as seriously, his gambler's instinct has seen him hand over money and draft picks for Tank Johnson, Adam Jones and Roy Williams. Johnson and Jones have been mediocre; perhaps a life of sobriety and early nights does not sit well with some players. Williams cost the Cowboys a first round and third round pick, yet has been The Invisible Man on offense for most of the season. The Cowboys are essentially back to squandering draft picks on players with major performance and attitude issues. The Roy Williams trade cost them their first round pick for next year, a far cry from the time several years ago when they had two first-round picks, thanks to some nifty trades worked under Parcells.
Wade Phillips showed his lack of leadership steel in Buffalo, where he was unable to resolve a quarterback controversy between the talented but utterly un-smart Rob Johnson and the short, but fiery and competitive Doug Flutie. The controversy split the team, and the Buffalo Bills wallowed around for several years before Phillips was fired. Phillips, a defensive co-ordinator by trade, has bounced through several head coaching positions in the NFL, with mostly poor results. He is not a head coach, lacking the will to impose himself on a team. In the past few weeks he has seemed like a passenger, as team members have whined on and off-record to the media. Whatever else you might think about Bill Parcells, he would never tolerate that kind of behaviour.
The core defensive unit actually looked very impressive for much of the year, with DeMarcus Ware turning into a sack monster, and the unit being very capable at shutting down the run and harrassing opposing quarterbacks. However, the lack of a shut-down cornerback continues to be an issue, and for the last 6 weeks, the defense was carrying the team. With the offense stuttering, the defense was eventually worn down.
The offense is looking like a major overhaul is required. The ability to score at will, much evident in 2007, appeared to vanish in 2008, and the offense did not seem to be capable of grinding out victories behind the running game, due to the issues at running back.
Jason Garrett, who 12 months ago was being hailed as an offensive genius, suddenly finds himself being blamed for most of the offensive woes of the Cowboys. Hero to goat in one calendar year. It is doubtful that the problems with the offense are entirely his fault. The team lost its 1-2 running punch early on with the injury to Felix Jones, and Marion Barber was a pale shadow of his normal self for the last third of the season. Being forced to throw the football too much exposes a team's receivers and pass protection schemes, and Roy Williams, acquired after the start of the season, never seemed to find a role in the offense. However, the Cowboys have looked out-coached on offense in several recent games, and it begs the question of whether the current Cowboys offensive schemes have passed their sell-by date. Garrett suddenly does not look like a head coach-in-waiting.
Tony Romo appears to have regressed. He seemed more and more to revert to the "gunslinger" mentality that Bill Parcells tried very hard to restrain him from. It does not help that both Jason Garrett and quarterbacks coach Wade Wilson are ex-quarterbacks. They can empathise with Romo's issues, but what is needed from time to time is a booming Parcells-type voice to remind him that he can lose a game as much as win one if he heaves the ball in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Romo needs to be challenged to mature to the next level.
The Cowboys have to either zip Terrell Owens or fire him. He quite clearly cannot keep his mouth shut when things do not go his way. The "give me the damn ball" routine has become tedious. He will be 35 this year, and has a limited number of years left at top level. Perhaps he might like to enjoy them somewhere else.
The Cowboys need at least one more durable running back. Marion Barber will wear out rapidly if he is forced to operate as an every-down back. Tashard Choice looks to be a good backup, but the fact that the Denver Broncos have gone through seven running backs this season shows that you can never have too much depth at this position.
Cornerback continues to be a problem; the team does not have a shutdown corner, and without one, they are going to continue to be exposed to any offense with speed receivers that likes to stretch the field.
However, the Cowboys have the biggest issue at quarterback. This season, when Tony Romo was out with a broken finger, the backup tandem of Brad Johnson and Brooks Bollinger looked utterly inept. Why the Cowboys traded for Brooks Bollinger at the start of the season when they could have picked up Chris Simms will always be a mystery to me. Simms, for all of the criticism levelled at him, did start for a team consistently, and damn near died for it.
Without a significant upgrade at the backup quarterback position, the Cowboys will be in dire straits if they lose Tony Romo for any significant period of time in the future. They might look to the East Coast. The New York Giants took a chance this season on David Carr, another quarterback who had been traumatized on the field of play. Carr basically spent the first 5 years of his NFL career running for his life every other play in Houston, and has taken a couple of years to recover from that experience. However, he came on in relief of Eli Manning on Sunday and looked like he was ready again to be a starter in the NFL. His contract is up after this season, and the Cowboys would be wise to look seriously at him.

Attu is the furthest West that you can go in the Aleutians before you find yourself in Russia...
Attu was one of the 2 Aleutian Islands invaded by the Japanese in World War II, and was the only island where US Forces engaged the Japanese in combat when they re-captured the island in 1943. Attu Island is therefore the site of the only instance of military action against Japan in the USA. (A good Trivial Pursuit question there...).
Today, the only inhabitants of Attu are a small crew of US Coast Guard personnel manning a LORAN station. The LORAN system is on borrowed time, since it has largely been superseded by GPS. It is likely that in the next few years Attu will cease to have any human residents.
The Japanese also invaded the island of Kiska, but withdrew without detection from that island several weeks before the US landed on the island in August 1943. The re-capture of Kiska was notable for a number of tragic "friendly fire" incidents, as combat forces confused by poor weather conditions started shooting at each other. Other casualties also resulted due to booby-traps laid by the Japanese, and there were a number of other fatalities caused by the extreme conditions. The final total of fatalities was close to 200 - a rather embarrassing outcome from invading an unoccupied island.
Here is a sailing blog containing many pictures of Attu and Kiska.
And here is a beautiful picture of the Aleutians from a bird-watching tour boat.
Apart from occasional parties of war veterans from both Japan and the USA, the main visitors to Attu since the end of World War II have been bird-watchers. The position of Attu, located between East Asia and the Americas, results in numerous birds being blown to the island, where they fly around as strangers before finding their way elsewhere.
For many years a company named Attours operated birdwatching expeditions to Attu. Here is a web site that includes this report of a bird-watcher's visit to Attu. Attours took over the abandoned Loran-A station formerly managed by the U.S. Coast Guard, and ran trips every Summer to the island. Accomodations were rudimentary, but the visitors ate like kings, thanks partly to the provision of fine food by a gourmet chef. Sadly, the Attours trips ended in 2000 when the infrastructure became too worn out to support any more visits. This is an account of the last trip to Attu in the Fall of 2000.
The climate in Attu is very hard on any man-made item - a constant diet of wind, rain and moisture eventually wears out most building and fitting components. Here is another more detailed account of a birdwatching trip to Attu.
Now the only visitors to Attu are occasional Alaskan cruise ships that drop anchor for a few hours at a time, and the odd yacht that anchors for a day or two in Casco Cove. And...the interestng birds.

Link: http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/12/auto-bailout-dead-end-cars-on-credit.html?welcome=true

While most commentary concerning the US Auto Industry Bailout has been focussed on the manufacturing and employment implications of bailing out (or not bailing out, depending on your point of view) the manufacturing base of the industry, this article makes it clear that, like the housing industry, the auto industry built a house of cards based on unsustainable lending practices. The article summarizes the issue succinctly:

Back in 2003, Forbes magazine observed that GM was better described as a bank that happens to make cars than as an automaker. At the time, as much as 90 percent of the company's profits came from its lending arm (which also had a mortgage branch), not from car sales. For the past decade, much of Detroit's output has been little more than a vehicle for selling credit, and the dealers have done the dirty work for them the way local mortgage brokers generated large volumes of questionable loans for big banks and finance firms.

This fits neatly into the narrative from a talk that I attended at the Dallas chapter of the PMI back in 2003, which was given by a project management consultant who had worked at GM, mostly on the OnStar offering. In a general discussion afterwards, he opined that GM was moving towards a new business model, whether everybody in the corporation realized it or not - in the long-term they would quite cheerfully sell cars at a loss, since the financing of the vehicles and the provision of post-sale subscription services such as OnStar would be where they would make their money. Effectively the car would be a finance and services platform.
One point in the article that I find flawed is the harping on about consumers being "upside down" on their loans. Pretty much all auto loans result in the consumer being upside-down, since for new vehicles, simply driving the car off the lot reduces its value by 15-20% immediately. Even if you have a 20% down-payment, that puts you almost in "upside down" territory in 5 minutes. Add on a couple of years of depreciation, and you will probably be holding a loan balance that comfortably exceeds the value of the car. This is more likely to be true in an era where loan terms have extended from 48 to 60 months and beyond. The monthly repayment drops slightly, but the consumer ends up paying a lot more over the life of the loan, and the length of the loan pushes the owner's ownership of the vehicle into that 4-6 year zone where middle-age depreciation tends to steepen.
Another point that I would take issue with is the title of the article ("Why The Auto Bailout's a dead end"). A strategy based on handing over money at intervals to the Big Three may not be a wise medium-term strategy, but it may be a valid short-term tactic, especially in the current recession. What the article does show is that without addressing some of the dubious lending practices of the auto makers and dealers, simply subsidizing the manufacturing side of these corporations is even less likely to give the desired results. We already know that the property price crash was made worse by bizarre, duplicitous (and in some cases illegal) lending practices by builders, mortgage brokers, realtors and other intermediaries. If we have the same issue in auto finance, those issues need to be addressed also.

Our candidate for this new award? Step forward Elizabeth Shelton, the daughter of Texas juvenile court judge Pat Shelton:

...Shelton, the daughter of juvenile judge Pat Shelton, is accusing truck driver Lance Bennett of negligence in the Oct. 23, 2007, wreck that killed her boyfriend Matthew McNiece.
Shelton had a blood alcohol concentration more than three times the legal limit, two tests showed. She was sentenced to eight years' probation and had to serve four months in jail.
Shelton, her family and the family of the boyfriend who was killed are suing for $20,000 for the destruction of the Lexus SUV she was driving and an undetermined amount for mental anguish, pain and suffering.
Bennett was driving the box truck that Shelton rear-ended on the Southwest Freeway near Kirby around 2 a.m.
Bennett's attorney, John Havins, said the lawsuit, filed in October, was the last chance to make a claim before the statute of limitations ran out.
He noted that Shelton named 16 defendants, including insurance companies and banks. "They're just throwing everything against the wall to see if anything sticks," Havins said.

So far, this is the most batshit egregious legal try-on I have heard about this year. Either this woman is an out-of-touch entitlement-riddled idiot, or her family is.

I have written before about some ways in which the United States resembles a Third World country.
From South Carolina, I can now pass on the strange, dysfunctional and frightening story of State Representative Wallace Scarborough (R-Charleston). As the article explains, Scarborough was defeated in the election on November 4th by his Democratic opponent Anne Peterson Hutto by a margin of 211 votes. The outcome was not changed despite Scarborough's frantic legal attempts to get voters disqualified after the event.
However, there is now a more serious and ominous development in the case. Although his term of office has officially expired, Scarborough is still acting as though he is the elected representative for the district:

...last weekend, Scarborough participated in the Folly Beach (a small beach town in the district) Christmas parade. He rode in an open convertible with a banner on his car claiming to be the official state representative for the town, even though his term had expired. Hutto wasn’t invited to participate in the parade.

The background to this seemingly flagrant flipping off of the election result is contained in the article:

South Carolina has some pretty strange laws on the books reminiscent of a third world nation. One would think that any further appeal from Scarborough would go to the courts, right? Wrong. In South Carolina, any further appeal goes to the South Carolina House of Representatives. The SC state constitution provides the SC House with the ultimate responsibility of seating their members. The SC House is controlled by a bunch of very partisan Republicans who, in my opinion, don’t always care much for the rule of law.
A week and a day after his protest was rejected, Wallace Scarborough filed an official appeal with the SC House. He is now asking his former GOP colleagues to ignore the election results on November 4th. He’s asking them to put aside the decision made by the voters and void the election results. This is no longer about the law; this is about partisan politics at its worst.

So...we may yet get to watch a Republican-dominated House in a State ignore the verdict of an election and vote to seat one of their own. If that is the outcome, it will not be the first time that a State House of Representatives has thumbed its nose at electors. As a commenter points out, the Wisconsin House twice refused to seat the winner of a state-level election because he was a Socialist...

When I was coming of age in the UK, I grew wearily used to highly predictable talking points in the political process. One totally predictable one was the tendency of defeated politicians and political parties to whine about "media bias" after they lost elections.
I have been watching the same phenomenon unfolding in this recently-concluded election cycle, with numerous folks writing complaints about perceived media bias. Phrases like "the media is in the tank for Obama" have been dropping into cyberspace like so much wedding confetti.
Yesterday I had a lengthy exchange of views (not always polite) with a work colleague who is convinced that the media is biased in favour of what he termed "the left". He also believes that the media is biased against Christianity (but that is another issue to be explored another time). He produced cites to support his contention of bias, and was unmoved by my response that I can produce one competing cite for every one of his cites.
What I was attempting to do (unsuccessfully) was to shift the debate from "you say I say" mutually annihilating accusations of bias towards a more sober reflection about the underlying issue.
When I got home and debriefed my own personal frustration with the exchange, I came to realize that I have a fundamental underlying disconnect from people who would whine about "bias", which explains why I regard arguments about bias as mostly a waste of time.
The underlying reason why I pay relatively little attention to the bias issue is that I do not watch TV, listen to the radio or read books, websites etc. to have my own opinions reflected back at me. In fact, if I realize that this is what is happening, I rapidly lose interest. I go to sources of information for ideas, and challenges to my current mode of thinking. Most of my favorite books are books that forced me to look at issues in a different way.
If you watch TV to have your opinions and emotions reflected back at you, and you decide that is not happening, what is your reaction going to be? Most likely you are going to become frustrated and start wondering why you're getting information that you do not agree with.
One of the more important lesson take-aways from George Lakoff's studies on cognitive framing (summarized in his 1997 book "Moral Politics" and in other related books since) is that, when confronted by information that disputes their worldview, most people will seek to discount or discard the information, rather than attempt to process it. Accusing an information or opinion source of "bias" is one of the most convenient ways of discounting conflicting information. (Another one that I have heard recently is the dismissal of facts with the exclamation of "that's just your opinion...").
I'm not expecting information sources to always provide me with information or opinions that totally agree with (in fact, if I find that happening, it bores and worries me), because I am going to process the contrary information and attempt to make sense of it. I may end up discounting or dismissing it, but I am going to try to process it first.
My key careabouts for information sources are therefore very different from a lot of people's. I am looking above all for completeness and accuracy in information provisioning. I am going to be frustrated by incomplete or misleading information, poor presentation, poor argument construction, fallacious reasoning more than I am frustrated by any perceived "bias".
I regard the topic of "bias" as a sterile and largely pointless discussion topic, since it usually degenerates within a few seconds into a "I think they say therefore they are biased" type of discussion, where the arguers retreat to familiar cliches like "liberal media", "corporate media" etc. and hurl competing cites at each other before sitting there in "see, I'm right" poses. The main issue is the endemic, institutionalized acceptance of poor research, reporting and follow-up on media stories. Egregious examples of all of these abound.
The bottom line is that the mainstream media is simply pervasively and egregiously incompetent. We can argue for days about the root causes, and possible remedies. In the meantime I have basically stopped watching network television and listening to the radio. I get my information almost entirely from the internet, books, and magazines. The "bias" debate can continue until Hell freezes over for all I care. Until the fundamental shortcomings of the media are addressed, I am a bemused spectator for most of the bias shouting matches.
UPDATE - A blogger on the Rocky Mountain News website has written an article which appears to be (at least partly) blaming services like CraigsList for the current poor outlook for newspapers in the USA. (The Rocky Mountain News is suffering from circulation and revenue drops, like many local and regional newspapers).
The article has ignited the usual cries of "media bias" from commenters on both sides of the political spectrum, but it takes me right back to my comments above - cancelling a publication subscription just because you don't agree with the articles, and blaming "bias", is really just an indirect way of saying that mostly you just want newspapers to reflect your opinions back at you.
I stand by my argument that the underlying issue with the established media is lack of competence, not bias.

Interviews with Wilson are available here.

One of the ongoing sagas of the 2008 Presidential campaign consisted of periodic allegations that both Barack Obama and John McCain were technically ineligible to run for the Presidency.
In McCain's case, the claims were based on the fact that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. In the case of Barack Obama, the claims appeared to center on the disputed facts around his birth in Hawaii, with the underlying allegation being that his ancestry did not make him a natural-born citizen.
In both cases it is interesting to note that the authorities with whom both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain filed their Presidential candidacy papers clearly did not consider either man to be ineligible. In McCain's case, since he ran for the Presidency in 2000, he had 2 clearances as eligible to run for the Presidency.
Now, with Barack Obama elected to the Presidency, the allegations that he was ineligible have been renewed. Several issue groups have bought newspaper advertising to claim that Obama is hiding his ineligibility. The groups claim that it is up to Obama to prove his eligibility.
Wrong.
The basis of the Anglo-Saxon justice system is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate without having his eligibility for that body questioned. He filed to run for President and his application was not rejected or questioned at that point. Right now, legally, he is a properly elected President and is being treated as the President-Elect. If people believe that he was not eligible to run for the office of President, let them prove that he is not eligible. It is not up to Barack Obama to prove that he was eligible, especially since his eligibility was accepted at every step of the filing process. It is up to the people making these claims to prove them.
This means that they need to produce compelling evidence. Crying out "Obama hasn't proved he is eligible" is either proof of pervasive stupidity, or proof that they have a different agenda, namely the de-legitimization of Barack Obama as President-Elect. My own personal opinion inclines towards the latter belief.

UPDATE - the Supreme Court has declined to hear one of the petitions about Barack Obama's eligibility. As the Chicago Tribune notes, at least one other lawsuit is still awaiting a hearing ruling by the Supreme Court:

Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg's lawsuit.

With the news now official that Honda is withdrawing from Formula 1 with immediate effect, my worst fear about a manufacturer-dominated F1 is being realized.
Manufacturers can always walk away from the sport when they feel the need to do so. Honda has left F1 at least twice before (in the 1960's and in 1992). The deteriorating economic climate in automobile manufacture, plus the reality that they were going to have to spend a lot of money in 2009 (especially on their engine program...the 2008 Honda power unit was reckoned to be the worst in F1) probably left the F1 program as an easy cost-saving option.
I was surprised that Honda were the first manufacturer to leave, since they at least have a winning record, unlike Toyota, which has yet to win a race. However, Toyota is a much bigger corporation than Honda, and can realistically more easily carry the cost of its F1 program.
A more significant question, which has been discussed recently by Dieter Rencken in Autosport, is why Honda was in Formula 1 as a constructor in the first place. When they were in F1 as an engine supplier in the 1980's and 1990's, they won championships and races galore. Their win record since they returned to F1 in 1999 with BAR is - 1 race (a lucky victory at the 2006 Hungarian GP). Worse still, since they bought out the ownership of BAR, Honda has had no significant outside corporate or business partner sponsorship in the team, so they have essentially been funding the entire cost of running the team themselves, in addition to the cost of the engine program. Their costs were also inflated in 2006/2007 by the cost of supplying engines, technical support and other funding to Super Aguri before that team was forced out due to accumulated debts. When you think more about the cumulative costs, it is easy to see why Honda have decided to walk away. They were paying megabucks for mediocre results.
The principals of the Honda team now have a challenge to find a buyer who can properly fund the team next year. Engine supply should not be an issue since Ferrari has spare supply capacity after the decision of Force India to sign a powertrain deal with McLaren-Mercedes. Money and committment will be the issues.
On a broader front, the decision by Honda vindicates Max Mosley's decision to force the cost-cutting issue by putting out a tender for a standard powertrain in 2010 and beyond. This tender, which has apparently been won by a consortium headed by Cosworth, would provide a standard engine, gearbox and drivetrain at a fixed (presumably low) cost for any team. Whether the remaining manufacturers will embrace it is another question. However, with the world economy in a deepening recession, their hands may be forced by boards of directors unwilling to keep committing up to $100m a season in Formula 1. The reality that many people lost sight of is that a lower-cost F1 would most likely not look any different to spectators. Spectators want to watch racing, not count the cost of the latest specification of unobtanium wheel nut.
UPDATE - This article in Pitpass.com eloquently asks some of the questions I already surfaced, such as why the manufacturers own teams instead of merely being engine suppliers, and the awkward question as to why established country Grands Prix (France, Germany, British, US) are either being dumped or threatened with removal in favour of Grands Prix in "new" countries which have next to no motorsports tradition. The only rationale that makes any sense is the servicing of the massive debt that CVC has incurred by owning FOM and its rights to hold and promote F1 races. This latter debt management issue may yet be the death of F1 as we currently know it...

The big problem with modern satire as captured by The Onion is that sometimes it has a lot more than a kernel of truth. As is the case this week with their evisceration of the nickel-and-dime chiselling mindset of most of the US airline industry:

Cash-strapped American Airlines announced a new series of fees this week that will apply to all customers not currently flying, scheduled to fly, or even thinking about flying aboard the commercial carrier.
American Airlines has promised never to raise its fees for not printing a boarding pass.
The fees, the latest introduced by American Airlines in a continuing effort to combat its financial woes, will take effect on Monday. According to company officials, these charges will include a $25 tax on citizens traveling with any other airline, as well as a mandatory $30 surcharge for passengers who decide to just stay home for the holidays instead.

It gets better the further you read...

...some additional charges would also apply, including a $15 fee for every piece of luggage customers have inside their bedroom closet, and a one-time payment of $40 for any American whose name is Greg.

After this point I doubled up laughing...but, seriously, this is just a continuation from SouthWest Airlines' latest advertising campaign where they also eviscerate the "charge for everything" mindset. (The adverts are, as usual, both funny and seriously punchy at the same time).
The real issue here which is such fertile ground for satire is that charging for checking a bag (which now appears to be SOP for several major airlines) is deeply counter-productive for at least two reasons. For a start, most passengers take baggage with them when they travel. By charging money for checking bags, you are going to (a) piss them off, and (b) incent them to start abusing the carry-on luggage rules. I see the effects emerging with customers bringing more and larger carry-ons to the gate, struggling to get them into overhead bins or under seats and then having mini-meltdowns when the horrible truth emerges that the bag has to go into the cargo hold.
The sort of pricing practices being adopted by AA are further evidence of a profound customer service and imagination failure in the US airline industry. If it were not for the recent decline in fuel prices, these airlines would probably be approaching Chapter 11. Frankly, if they approach chapter 11, a lot of the reasons will lie with their own chiselling, nickel-and-dime behaviour towards their customers.