LOL! Guilty as charged.
I was debating from a weak position, but let's be honest about Barger's objections - he's only arguing for divestiture so that Jetblue can snag a few more DCA slots.
True, our opinions mean nothing. I found Parker's defense of maintaining all slots to be a reasonable argument - they currently serve secondary cities from DCA. If they divest and Jetblue acquires slots, they will merely be used to fly to markets (ie NYC, BOS) that are already well served out of DCA.
I understand your perspective on this, but put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say that another airline complains about how Jetblue has too many slots in the NYC area and should have to give some of them up. What will your response be?
Edit: I just read that the only route overlap between AMR and LCC out of DCA are to BNA and RDU. I haven't verified it but if that's the case, this is shaping up to be much ado about nothing. I could see them being forced to divest slots from those two routes and have someone else fly the exact same routes. But we all know that's not what Barger wants.