I noticed that most of the political cartoons that I liked were done by Ramirez--and I have a book of them. One of the memorable ones is a stone marked Couric drowning CBS news.

I am in Las Vegas at the Vdara, which is so empty that I fear for its financial survival. You can tell the cheeseparing that's going on.

Tonight I had supper with a friend from high school and his family. His wife P. works with a company which trains people to work in the service industry--everything from barkeep to barback to waitress. Or waitron as some PC idiot once said. And waitron isn't even marked as being a bad spelling.

Las Vegas has, as I recall, the seven highest foreclosure zipcodes in America, and Nevada leads the nation in foreclosures. P. was hoping that Las Vegas wouldn't follow the path of Detroit; I, entirely too rapidly, pooh-poohed that saying that the unions had destroyed Detroit. That was precisely her point. Evidently people who pick up empty glasses in a bar get $14 an hour and various union perks.

There's no question that there was a time and place for unions; mining is one of them, or was. And the mine owners who instituted the company store ought to have been dragged behind a truck until dead. But these days unions are the kiss of death, for they value people not by their productivity but by their length of service and their membership in a group.

I'm sure that in the last 30 years there are instances of unions performing actions which were good for all its members, not just the ones at the top, but I'm at a loss to name any. Can anyone?

UPDATE: Obama is down 18% in strongly disapprove over strongly approve--the lowest I've seen. Republicans are up 8% in the generic ballot--always a weak Republican point--even though about 3% more people call themselves Democrats than Republicans. The independents are watching the water reach the top deck of Obama ship of state and are jumping off. Too bad they got on in the first place.