Purgatory

You know, I had planned a serious, high-intensity, foaming-at-the-mouth rant for this evening. I was raging mad at AIG executives, raging mad at the murder of three Oakland police officers, raging mad the former vice president blathering on unchallenged and unintelligently in a CNN interview, raging mad at the fact that in a country that sells a spreadable blend of bacon and mayonnaise in a squeeze bottle, I can’t get a Cadbury creme-filled chocolate bar for Easter. But then the time came to commit all this rage to the ether and the desire just... fizzled. I think I’m suffering from rage fatigue. Being angry, all the time, and every single little thing to come across my metaphorical desk, is difficult. Takes too much work. The muscle-twitching, shallow-breathing, eyebrow-furrowing, fist-clenching, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week - it’s just not worth it. It’s a lot to put up with just to get another day older and high blood pressure. So, tonight, I’m going to make it (almost) all the way through this post rage free. This will probably be pretty short.

After seven days of hysterical “populist outrage” at all things AIG, it seems cooler heads will prevail in figuring out how to recoup unwarranted bonus money from employees of the company’s financial services division. Upon discovering early last week that AIG was using taxpayer bailout money to pay over $100 million bonuses to the very same geniuses who ran the company into the ground, both Congress and the media went into overdrive, each trying to prove they were more outraged than the other. At one point certain senators indicated executives should apologize to the public and either resign or commit suicide. The public roast of AIG made the automotive CEOs flying to Washington on private jets to beg for money look like girl scouts selling cookies. To hear the cable news talking heads tell the story one might be forgiven for thinking the Republic was about to grind to a halt. However, like most things in the nation’s capital, there was much more smoke here than fire. So, let’s get a few things straight.

First, there is a culture of excess on Wall Street that is difficult for most other people with jobs to understand. The very idea that someone should receive a multi-million dollar bonus for complete and utter failure is absolutely absurd. Unimaginable - everywhere but Wall Street. These jokers have an unlimited sense of entitlement. They believe it’s their world, and their money, and the rest of us just get in the way. And if you think a little hiccup like losing a trillion dollars on a bad gamble is going to change that attitude, you simply aren’t living in the real world.

Second, this idea being perpetrated by certain pundits that contracts are sacred and must be honored come hell or high water is ridiculous. Ask any United Auto Worker how untouchable a contract is. I’m sure they’ll be able to offer some enlightenment. The fact is that a contract is only a contract until the party with the most leverage decides that it isn't. When you receive a Citibank credit card, you agree to a contract that stipulated you will be granted the use of Citibank’s credit on the condition that you agree to repay the money you borrow on their schedule and on their terms. Citibank can - at any time - alter the terms of that contract, increasing the late payment fee, or adjusting the interest rate or changing the payment schedule. Once they do this, you have two choices. Sign the agreement accepting the new terms, or close the account and try to get credit somewhere else. Thanks to the incompetence of the very employees receiving bonuses for non-performance, the federal government now owns a controlling 80% interest in AIG. They hold all the leverage. The government is perfectly within its right to say to these idiots, we are not going to allow you to send the global economy into free-fall while you laugh all the way to whatever’s left of the bank.

Finally, we spent an entire week raging over $100 million in bonus money, when we should have been focusing on the hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars these vampires sucked out of the retirement savings of millions of people! I know that as Americans we love to pick out insignificant details and beat them to death in the news cycle while ignoring the big picture, but a little perspective on this matter wouldn’t hurt. Instead of wasting time trying to figure out how to recapture breadcrumbs, let’s figure out how to prevent people from stealing the loaf in the first place.

Four Oakland police officers were shot and killed as a result of a traffic stop gone horribly wrong over the weekend. Two motorcycle officers pulled over some jackass for what the police chief termed a “routine traffic stop.” The suspect shot both officers and fled the scene. He was later found hiding at a local apartment complex where he killed two more officers before being killed in a shootout with the SWAT team. It’s another in a long line of fatally violent incidents to rock Oakland in the past couple months. Turns out the shooter had an extensive criminal history and was in violation of of his parole for assault with a deadly weapon. Obviously this guy should never have been on the street. I know there’s a budget crisis in California, but maybe the state needs to concentrate a little harder on keeping actual menaces to society away from the public.

Mount Redoubt in Alaska erupted six times on Monday, sending plumes of ash 9 miles into the sky. Note to Governor Jindal; this is why we monitor volcanoes.

The University of Notre Dame extended an invitation to President Obama to give the commencement speech at graduation this coming year. Apparently, that upsets some Catholics. Seems they don’t like the fact that the President is pro-choice. They are so upset that several bishops have promised to boycott the ceremony while others have founded a website (when did the ultimate expression of outrage become starting a website?) demanding the invitation be rescinded. I like Notre Dame. My wife is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School, several of my friends either work there or obtained graduate degrees from various departments, and 75% of the office I work at is comprised of ND grads. But I won’t pretend to get it. Several years back, the school extended the commencement invitation to then President Bush, architect of two wars in which tens - if not hundreds of thousands of real lives have been extinguished. The aforementioned groups did not protest that invitation. Why are the lives of the born less valuable than the lives of the unborn?

Finally, in a tragically bizarre story, FAA officials are investigating the crash of a single engine aircraft that crashed into a cemetery 500 ft. short of the airport runway in Butte, Montana, killing all 14 people on board. This is just creepy. Who builds an airport right next to a cemetery.

Scott Tennerman Must Die

I guess no slow week goes unpunished.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Remember, tomorrow is a work day.

AIG is in the news again, spending more federal bailout money to pay out bonuses to their “best and brightest” employees. You know, the same geniuses who lost the company hundreds of billions of dollars over the past six months. Let’s send some of these quality employees over to work for the Iranians and the North Koreans. We’ll have those SOBs begging for American occupation in six weeks.

In a related story;

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

The Money Honey Bee

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Late last week some yahoo in Alabama decided life simply wasn’t worth living anymore. So, he proceeded to shoot and kill nine other people who probably enjoyed their own lives very much, before finally offing himself. At around the same time a 17-year-old German high school student tried to recreate Columbine and shot up his former high school, claiming the lives of 16 pupils, teachers and random people on the street, before committing suicide by cop. What the hell is wrong with these people? If you absolutely must murder someone, kill your own damn self first! Then move on to other people.

By the way, where are all the people who claim every time there’s a random act of violence that if only the State permitted ordinary citizens to carry concealed firearms, maybe one of them could have stopped the maniac? Oh, that’s right, everyone in Alabama does carry a weapon. Hmm. What went wrong there?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford requested a waiver from the White House to use $700 million of the federal stimulus money allocated for education and job creation in his state to instead pay down state debt. Kicking off his 2012 campaign, Sanford likened the new administration’s policies to the hyper-inflationary policies of Zimbabwe, claiming that spending money on stupid little things like job creation, unemployment insurance and school infrastructure would only serve to run the country into the ground. Two things. Recent estimates (as it is impossible to pin down an actual figure) put Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate at 89.7 SEXTILLION PERCENT! Prices there double every 24.7 hours. The annual inflation rate in the United States is about 0%. In fact, last quarter, prices actually decreased almost across the board. For Sanford to compare Obama’s policies to Mugabe’s policies means one of two things. Either Sanford is an idiot, or he is an idiot. Second, Mark Sanford, a hawkish conservative, has been Governor of South Carolina since 2002. If conservatism, with its panaceas of tax cuts and “fiscal responsibility” is so obvious a remedy for all that ails this country, why does the State of South Carolina face a 430 million dollar budget deficit, an even larger budget debt, the second largest unemployment rate in the nation at 10.4%, and one of the worst public school systems in America? That sound you hear? Crickets. Plenty of those in South Carolina.

Last Thursday night the running “feud” between Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and cable financial network CNBC reached a crescendo when CNBC anchor and host of “Mad Money” Jim Cramer took a seat across the table from Stewart in what was billed as an “intercontinental ballistic missive.” It all started a couple weeks ago with CNBC reporter Rick Santinelli’s on-air meltdown regarding the administration’s plan to stem the tide of home foreclosures. While unfazed by the staggering size and scope of government bailouts for financial firms, the comparatively small foreclosure prevention plan was too much for said reporter to take. Stewart booked Santinelli on his program later that week, only to have the appearance cancelled. That night on his show, Stewart reacted to Santinelli’s hypocritical hyperbole and cowardice by airing a montage of terrible CNBC financial advise broadcast over the past six months. Noticing he was featured in several of the clips, Cramer took exception to Stewart’s take and called him out in an interview on another network. Some back and forth followed, the rest of the media picked up on it and turned it into much more than it actually was - partially because Stewart was doing the job so many of them were either unable or unwilling to do. So, for 20 minutes on Thursday, Stewart grilled Cramer as to why he and his network allowed the financial industry to play Russian roulette with Americans’ retirement savings, turn the gun on all of us and walk away with the money. Cramer smiled, nodded and appeared contrite, never really challenging Stewart’s assertions. He couldn’t. There was nothing to say.

Some pundits - mostly morons - spent a lot of time defending CNBC and attacking Stewart, labeling him a liberal ideologue, suggesting perhaps he would start giving financial advice. Of course they failed to see the inherent fallacy in their criticism. Jon Stewart isn’t paid to give advice. He’s paid to tell jokes and write satire. One can debate how well he accomplishes that, but the most at stake if Stewart bombs a joke is a laugh. Jim Cramer is a financial professional. CNBC is a financial news network. They claim to be experts in their fields. Thousands - if not millions - of people make critical financial decisions based upon their research and “expert” advice. There’s a reason I don’t pull my own teeth, or remove my own appendix, or (if I made enough money) do my own taxes. I don’t know anything about dentistry, or surgery or taxes. So instead, I pay good money to have professionals (experts in their fields) take care of those things for me. Jim Cramer and CNBC are no different. They have set themselves up as experts, and should man up and take responsibility for the bad calls they made. The fact is, they knew (and if they didn’t, they should have) that Wall Street was gambling with our money and our future, and instead of making sure we all knew about it, they all went along for the ride, cheerleading our descent into the abyss we find ourselves today. The satirist got it right. CNBC deserves every expletive thrown at it.

RNC chairman Michael Steele stepped in it again last week as an interview he did for GQ Magazine hit news stands. The ever-eloquent Steele made some reference to what may be his personal belief that abortion should be a “personal choice.” In addition to his erroneous idea that he could speak openly and honestly about the de-facto leader of his party, and that he can spread conservatism to urban and suburban hip hop precincts, Steele has also deluded himself into believing he can also voice an independent thought every now and then. Well, Mike Huckabee and Tony Perkins and other more traditional Republican voices put that thought to bed pretty quickly. If Steele has any affinity for his job whatsoever, he’ll figure out how to the tow the line and he’ll figure it out fast.

Well, the wedding’s off. Bristol Palin and her fiance Levi have called off their engagement. She is now officially an unwed mother. Gotta admit, I called that one wrong. Thought for sure they’d be together forever. Two teenagers in love, with a baby on the way, how could that possibly not work out? Sorry. This probably amuses me more than it should. For additional detail on why this is funny, see the following.

http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-bristol-palin-is-different.html

Bernard Madoff plead guilty last Thursday to bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. How nice of him to spare the taxpayer the expense of a trial only to reach the same conclusion. Madoff will spend the next few weeks in jail awaiting sentencing and memorizing the number of the Cayman Island bank account he stashed his money in so he can still access it when he finally gets out of prison. Not content to wait for that day, the IRS has announced it will launch an effort to recover money Madoff failed to pay in taxes. They’ll need that money to repay all the people who payed taxes to the IRS on capital gains they never actually... gained.

Astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to evacuate to the escape capsule when they were threatened by a thumb-sized piece of space junk. Yes, a thumb-sized piece of junk. This orbiting laboratory cost nearly 100 billion dollars, and it was almost destroyed by a piece of metal the size of somebody’s thumb? Anybody else see the problem with that?

The Justice Department has officially discontinued the use of the “enemy combatant” designation. Former Vice President Cheney claims this is the latest in a string of administration decisions designed to make America “less safe.” If only there was something we could give Cheney to make him less paranoid. Less delusional. Or maybe just less.

Chuck Norris -yes, that Chuck Norris - has decided he might be interested in being president of Texas. Now I know what you’re thinking. Texas is a state, right? So it has a governor, not a president. Ah, but Walker Texas Ranger has a different vision of the future. In Chuck’s own words, “(The need for me to run for president of Texas) may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.” He continues this blather for 17 paragraphs in a commentary for World Net Daily, regurgitating quotes from the Founding Fathers and using them to rationalize his irrational fear of and anger with an America that is no longer as white, as male, as Christian and as militaristic as he would like it to be. Sigh. At best, Chuck Norris seems to be openly advocating secession, and at worst, rebellion against the Union. We used to have a word for that.

By the way, I think we tired the whole secession/president of the confederacy thing already. How’d that work out for Texas?

I don’t know anything about Rhianna, and I have no idea who Chris Brown is. But after reading the police report detailing what this clown Chris Brown did to this woman in his car on the way to the Grammys, I don’t understand why he hasn’t been locked away with the key stitched into the back of his skull. Such a big man that Chris Brown, being a 90lb woman to a pulp in a moving vehicle. Way to keep it real Chris.

Somebody please get Glenn Beck a Xanax. Better yet, get him a prescription.

Finally, Miley Cyrus is upset with Radiohead. Apparently she asked her manager to get her backstage with the band at the Grammys. Disappointed that they turned down her request, Cyrus spent six minutes of a radio interview the following day conveying her disbelief that Radiohead “wouldn’t want to meet Hannah Montana!” She ended the session by saying she was going to “ruin them”, presumably by telling everyone how mean they were to her and her alter ego. The band released a statement saying that hopefully when she grows up she’ll outgrow the sense of entitlement. Miley obviously knows nothing about Radiohead or their fans. I can virtually guarantee fans would rather have lead singer Thom Yorke grind up Hannah Montana in a bowl of spicy chili and feed her to Disney network executives than spend time chatting with her backstage at an awards show.