This has been the year of nickel-and-diming airline passengers to death by charging for in-flight amenities that used to be free. Everything from luggage to snacks to beverages. Anything to keep those CEO compensation packages sky-high, eh fellas?

The latest announcement comes from JetBlue, which will start charging $7.00 for a pillow and a blanket. As that story says, the company is trying to put an eco-friendly spin on it by saying it will encourage people to bring their own pillows and blankets and will cut down on spreading germs from shared use, but a fee is a fee.

Also on tap for JetBlue: a surcharge for non-crash landings!

For the time being, the folks from the Gestapo haven’t found too many ways to wring a few extra bucks out of your wallet…except of course for the extortion money that they allow this company to squeeze out of business travelers in exchange for not being hassled by a TSA goon at the security checkpoint. However, they have discovered a potentially lucrative sideline in seizing laptops without reason or cause and then selling them off (they haven’t tried selling them yet, but they will take them if they feel like it).

There are a couple of little victories for the average airline passenger, though. Check this out:

It’s called “paper shampoo”. It’s dried shampoo formed into thin sheets that reconstitute when you get them wet. No more 3-ounce bottles in clear plastic bags to threaten our American freedoms!

Similarly, male travelers might want to invest in one of these:

It’s a belt that does not have a metal buckle or any other metal on it, so you no longer have to try to walk through the metal detector holding up your pants with one hand and carrying your shoes in the other. That web vendor says that this belt is the largest-selling item they carry, so it seems like word is getting out.

I realize that air travel is an unavoidable part of doing business for millions of people in this country, and I do not expect either McCain or Obama to change a single thing about the clusterfuck that our air transportation system has turned into, so you have to take the small gains where you can find them.

UPDATE This just in: Authorites at San Francisco’s airport report that a laptop was stolen from the TSA and that the laptop contains the entire unencrypted database of all the personal information of 33,000 people who signed up for the aforementioned “Clear” extortion service. Poetic irony, is it not?

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE Now the self-same agency charged with protecting Our Beloved Homeland says that they found the laptop…in the same office where it was supposed to be all along! To beef up their efforts in the wake of this embarrassing incident, the TSA will now require ALL airline passengers to strip naked at the security checkpoint. It’s the only way they can ensure our safety.