…sky-high fuel prices are bad for the airlines (and hence for Boeing, and hence for the PNW economy) now, what if they stay high or go higher for the foreseeable future?

…some more smokin’-gun evidence of John McCain, erstwhile reformist, taking big bux from Airbus after helping the company get that tanker deal instead of Boeing.

…another 7 daze since I last posted. Excuses: Got none. (Except that a startup entrepreneurial venture I’d been involved with this past year seems to have gone “on hold.”)

In the nooze recently:

• That novelty Hillary Clinton nutcracker I told you about late last year? Somebody used one as the focus of a bomb scare at the Olympia state capitol. Unfunny.
• As you may have heard, the Clinton campaign’s “3 a.m.” TV commercial was assembled from purchased stock footage. The little girl in the footage is now grown up, she lives here in WashState, and, yep, she’s an Obama supporter.
• That most recent, well-funded save-the-Sonics drive heads toward a not-really-that-drastic deadline. While the plan for minimal KeyArena improvements (mostly a food court and new concourses; not that many new seats) would rely on private funding for half its cost, the would-be new owners want the state to chip in $75 million. It’d take some pushing n’ cajoling to get that request thru the Legislature’s current regular session, scheduled to wrap up darn soon. Some Legislative leaders, such as House Speaker Frank Chopp, have built their public images around the idea that they don’t cave in to such big-money demands, at least not right away. But Gov. Gregoire can still call a one-day special session to pass the funding (in my opinion, a reasonable investment for a reasonable reward). The hard part’s still persuading Clay Bennett to sell and persuading league boss David Stern to stop being Bennett’s toady.
• It’s a big night for all lovers of classic Tacoma power pop, as the Ventures get into the R n’ R Hall o’ Fame.
• The Sunday Times/P-I cut its total opinion pages (which, by contract, are alloted 50/50 to each paper) from six pages to four. When the joint Sunday edition launched, 24 and a half years ago, each paper got six pages to express its “editorial voice.”
• Boeing boosters blame McCain for that big Air Force tanker contract going to Airbus. So much for a GOP revival in this state this year.

…a few days since we last met. But here are some recent events in the nooze:

• A plan’s been announced to keep the Sonics, or move in some other NBA team to replace ’em. Yeah, it involves public arena subsidies. But the arena in question would still be our good ol’ KeyArena/Coliseum. And private interests would pick up a huger share of the tab than in any previous scheme. Of course, there’s the li’l matter of convincing current owner Clay Bennett and NBA commissioner David Stern (who hates Seattle even more than the Seattle Times editorial board does).
• No matter how much money the UW raises in its many assorted fundraising/begging programs, it just keeps on making tuition ever-less affordable. Congress doesn’t like it.
• Some self-styled radical environmentalists want to preserve exurban forest lands from sprawl. Their solution: Set fire to an unoccupied cul-de-sac, a fire which, if set at some other time of the year, could conceivably spread and burn said forest land.
• The first televised Mariners game of the pre-season is on local cable at noon today (Monday). I know it’s a game that doesn’t “count,” but hey, neither did the Ms’ last 20 or so games last season.
• Once you start looking into Port o’ Seattle corruption, it can truly become a bottomless pit.
• How to get high school kids interestedin reading newspapers: Run sensational surveys of students’ oral-sex experiences. (Hey, it’s the taste sensation that’s sweeping the nation!)
• Airbus, with a domestic company fronting for it, got the Air Force tanker plane contract Boeing really really wanted. Next stop: litigation.
• Here’s what to do the next time you see a bus with an unconscious driver heading your way.
• Since certain right-wing radio guys have no qualms about using or misusing people’s names in order to make character-assassination implications, let’s compare Vladmir Putin’s handpicked successor/flunky Dimitry Medvedev with the locally based GOP-talk spewer Michael Medved: One is a sniveling, butt-kissing toady to a ruthless, anti-democratic despot with delusions of godhood. And one is the new President of Russia.

• “Skitch”: Once, it was the name of Johnny Carson’s first bandleader. Now, it’s a dangerous X-treme sports stunt.
• The historic building that houses HistoryLink is getting upscaled, beyond the fiscal reach of many of its current tenants.
• One group’s plan to help solve the debate over a new 520 bridge: Put an on-ramp where the Museum of History and Industry is now.
• The NY Times discovers one small slice of Boeing’s employee-club culture. Wait ’til they discover the Boeing employees’ psychic fair…
• Now available to the future-conscious who’ll become part of the past: “Eco-friendly burial options.”

…we remain snowless yet another day (and for the whole season?).

In other nooze:

• The city’s program of forcibly clearing homeless camps is inhumane, according to community advocates who spoke at a public hearing.
• The bureaucratic process of investigating the Seattle Police Dept.’s internal investigations might have conclusions soon.
• Rumors say Boeing just might shift some 787 assembly to San Antonio.
• And that Bush guy apparently said something Monday night, but nobody seems to remember what it was.

…GOP presidential frontrunners as of this morning, and none of them are Fred Thompson. In other news:

• Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner may face still more delays. How smart does globally-outsourced component construction sound now?
• Raw milk— its proponents claim it’s really good for you. Except when it isn’t.
• An appeals court ordered the Belltown-based Mars Hill Graduate School (not connected with Mars Hill Church) to pay $300,000 to its first female faculty member, in a long-standing discrimination suit.
• REI’s building an eco-friendly store in Texas. Now the weekend warriors who drive 75 miles or more to their wide-open spaces can feel a little less guilty.
• A state legislator would like to ban plastic grocery bags. Yeah, but then how will our children learn the pleasures of self-asphyxiation?
• There was a cable TV outage in Kent Tuesday, due to pranksters shooting at utility lines.
• Richard McIver’s charges were dropped, one day before his domestic-abuse trial was to have started.
• Tully’s Coffee underwent another executive purge. Make your own “grounds for concern” joke here.

• Clearcuts, landslides. Could there possibly be a cause-n’-effect thang goin’ on?
• The Church of Mary Magdalene, a vital ministry to downtown’s homeless women, needs a short-term home.
• Did a Boeing subsidiary operate charter flights to CIA secret prisons/torture chambers? That’s what an ex-employee alleges.

A legendary storehouse of fabulous cheap wonders, the Boeing Surplus store in glorious Kent, is closing in December.

Boeing will still sell off stuff it no longer wants (hardware, upholstery, office furnishings, computers, power tools, obscure measuring instruments), but it’ll sell it all online. Where’s the adventure in that?

As you might expect for a place with so many engineering nerds among its regular customers, a “Save Boeing Surplus” web site is already up n’ running.

…that three years ago, the International Association of Machinists tried to buy Boeing Commercial Airplane and move the unit’s HQ back to Seattle. I can’t think of a better set of hens who could’ve run their own henhouse. Of course, someone among them would’ve had the unenviable task of choosing which others among them would get laid off…

…to talk about it, but its air-cuarter subsidiary services the CIA’s secret prison system.

…Boeing exec still based in Seattle has now been picked to try to keep Ford Motor solvent. Expect few ringing endorsements from this corner.

…to read about Boeing scandals that don’t quite make the local papers.

…of the current Wash. Post Boeing expose story: “Jeannine Prewitt knew there was a problem when the holes wouldn’t line up.” I thought they’d gotten rid of that particular problem when Harry Stonecipher quit.

…comes up with a different explanation why America’s political/corporate bosses wanted an Iraq war. Essentially, Pitt digs out the early-’70s era allegation that the US is under the thumb of a “permanent war economy,” that certain powerful interests have a lot to maintain by starting and prolonging wars, and a lot to lose with peace.

Do I believe it? Only partly. From my perspective here in Jet City, it’s easy to see many BigCorps with heavy investments in the infrastructure of making and selling military stuff. (Who’d you rather buy stock in–a Boeing heavily exposed to the commercial airline piz, or a Lockheed that sells almost exclusively to the world’s air forces and armies?)

But there are also many sectors of the US economy that can get hurt in times of long, dragged-out military misadvantures. As the Pentagon sops up huger portions of both federal spending and federal borrowing, other industries that rely directly or indirectly on civilian government support (domestic transportation, construction, education) wither.

Of course, the current DC regime isn’t a generally pro-business, pro-economic-growth group. It’s a gang of grafters responsive only to those specific interest groups that have bought and paid for it. Thus, we have a health care system that makes the pill companies rich while ignoring the needs of employers (let alone citizens). GM, if you believe some sources, pays some $200 more per US-built car than per Canadian-built car just because Canada’s got a saner health care system.