Bullshit. Part Infinity.

The White House said today that Michelle Obama would be planting a garden on the White House grounds. Great timing! The bullshit has never been thicker or smeared more people.

The best thing a social commentator can do is cry bullshit when he sees bullshit. It shouldn’t matter whose bullshit it is, Republican bullshit or Democrat bullshit. The point is bullshit is bullshit, red or blue.

Fact: Democrats were fully aware of the $165 Million dollars in bonus pay that went to the company that almost single handedly destroyed the economy. We know this because while everyone was tossing blame around like a beach ball at a Phish concert, officials at the Treasury, the Fed and Federal Reserve Bank of New York exchanged e-mails about the bonus program in late February. AIG revealed the bonus plan in filings last September. In November, Treasury and Fed officials negotiated the terms of these retention payments; and in December, Democrats called for a hearing on the bonuses.

This is what makes people jaded about politicians. These guys weren’t outraged. They were acting outraged when the public found out about bonuses they had already decided to pay.

And that my friend is bullshit.

Here is where the fun starts because both sides seem to have come up with solutions that are crazy. As mellow-dramatic as they possibly could be, the Democrats held a special session of Congress and passed a tax law. 90% of the AIG bonuses would be taxed!

That’s a pretty awesome thing right?

It’s unconstitutional.

If this comes to any court, and it will, it will be found to be unconstitutional for one reason. The U.S. Constitution states very clearly that the Government cannot make a law after the fact to punish or single out a person or group.

Singling out only the executives at AIG who got multi-million bonuses and slapping them with a 90% tax rate seems like we are indeed singling out and punishing one group. Yes they deserve it but if Democrats spent the last eight years pointing out when Bush didn’t follow the constitution then turn about is fair play.

So of course the Republicans tripped all over themselves when they had the first legit criticism of the whole bail out mess. They must have been tripping on something because now a lot of them are OK with AIG keeping those bonuses. You read correctly-they are in favor of letting the morons that almost bankrupted the world economy keep that money.

That is exactly what Rush Limbaugh and other high profile conservative leaders have been saying now. Why would they defend this gluttonous act of greed with Wall Street in its death throws?

Because they believe in capitalism!

Bullshit indeed.

It’s hard to tell who is crazier on this subject now. One side knew about the insane amount of money these losers were getting and pretended to be outraged when the rest of us found out and the other side says capitalism is all about people getting the most they can and so what that 50% of all mortgages held in the country are behind.

Then there is us. The American public. We are truly a strange crowd. What we decide in mass to get upset about often times isn’t that big of a deal. So I say, who gives a shit about $165 million bucks? It represents less than one percent of one percent of the $170 BILLION DOLLARS that AIG owes us so far. Whats the plan for getting that back? I haven’t heard it yet either. Have you?

Bullshit=)

Let Them Keep Their Million Dollar Bonuses!

BUT...

Mosquitoes, Condoms & Bonuses

Turns out AIG took millions of dollars of the bail out money the Government gave them and paid executive bonuses. One guy received six million dollars. Several others got more than a million. All right, it is an outrage. But wouldn’t you want to work at a company that rewards failure on a historic level with million dollar bonuses? I don’t know about you but I have never fucked something up on a job to the point where we had to go beg the Government for finical help three times and then the boss sat down with me to write a giant check.
I wonder what you get for doing your job really well over at AIG?

Think of the balls you would have to have to see your company branded public enemy number one in the middle of the greatest economic disaster of our lifetimes and still walk into your bosses office and go, “So when am I getting that bonus check?”
The things I could accomplish with a set like those!

The obvious question is, bonuses for what? The bonus money came from the third Government bail out. You morons! If it weren’t for that money you wouldn’t even have a job right now. Someone needs to explain exactly what these people did to deserve these huge bonuses after they bankrupted the world economy.
The first story was it was a retention bonus. They couldn’t have bright minds leaving so they paid these bonuses to keep the best and the brightest. I know. When I read that the first time I practically fell out of my chair.
The best and the brightest?
The best and the brightest on Wall Street seem to be the people that got us into this mess. You would do better in the public eye if you just said you paid them to leave and stop fucking everything up. One problem with the retention story. After getting their million dollar plus bonus checks, eleven employee’s left the company. So much for that.
The next story was, it was written into the contracts and the Government knew this when handing over our money to failed giant, AIG.
Well, sort of.
This is the kind of political fight that Washington enjoys playing as sport. The blame goes around. It’s either the Republicans or the Democrats fault depending on who you talk to. Here is a crucial little piece of fact that people might want to hold onto during all this. This deal was signed by Bush. Not Obama. Now, I don’t tell you this to wade into the argument, I just want to see this fact acknowledged. Also, someone did think about this situation and did put an amendment in the original bail out bill that stated very clearly that this money could not be used for any type of bonus pay. It got taken out of the bill at the last minuet. Why? Because this is America damn it! The Government shouldn’t and doesn’t decide what the limit is for executive pay!
Maybe it should now.
Also, they kept telling the unions to renegotiate their contracts, why can’t we tell AIG and anyone else getting our money to do the same thing?

Its interesting to note that when the big three automakers came to Washington looking for bail out money several Republicans insisted that the Unions agree to lower their wages to what foreign auto workers make. Yeah, that’s the solution! In the middle of a crisis that largely affects low and middle class workers, lets lower their rate of pay.
Funny how its evil socialism when people making less than $60,000 a year need health care, jobs and a financially sound future but it’s helping out a company that’s too big to fail when it comes to forking over billions of dollars to the exact same people who got us here.
How the hell does that work?

Are we living in a bizzaro world now and no one told me? We must be. The Pope said yesterday that condoms not only wouldn’t help stop the spread of AID’s in Africa but that it would also make it worse? Ok. I’ve had enough of primitive belief in fairy tales and misinterpreted script written two thousand years ago playing any role in what I like to call reality. You know reality. Everyone does. Even though I might want to run from it occasionally, I know I live there and I know what is real and what is not. It is a fact that condoms do indeed prevent the spread of AID’s. After eight years of living with the Bush idea of abstinence only programs you know what the department in charge of administrating those programs found out?
It doesn’t work.
Kids who got abstinence only instruction had more sex sooner than kids who got the truth from that scary scary place called reality. Not only did they start having sex earlier but also they had it without any protection leading to pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease in larger proportion than those kids educated about their bodies in reality.
That only took eight years and tens of millions of dollars to find out. I wonder when these guys are going to get their bonus checks. I mean, they failed hugely and that is when we hand out big money these days, right?
Dear Pope, if you can wear a giant foreskin looking hat on your tiny-minded head then anyone should be free to wear a little hat on their tiny head to prevent disease and more tiny mouths that will go hungry and suffer. This seems like a no brainer to me but again, I live in reality. The Pope preaches to the poor and offers prayers to help them escape their crushing poverty while he lives in a Castle. Hey, more condoms means less suffering. Less suffering means less people turning to fairy tales out of desperation. Condoms means less clients for the Church.

Give the church time to catch up I guess. It was only last year that they did away with limbo. It was the place babies went to wait for getting into heaven because they weren’t baptized. It only took about fifteen hundred years before someone in the Vatican thought, “Holy shit! Do we really believe in this still?”
Apparently not.
So give them time. It took eight hundred years for them to admit that Galileo was right and the Earth did go around the Sun. They also apologized for keeping him under house arrest the last years of his life for pointing out this fact. The Church is just a little slow.

But all this stuff is nothing compared with a news story that has somehow managed to fly beneath the radar.
That might be a poor choice of words. Sorry.
Russia is in talks with Cuba and Argentina to station Bombers in those countries. The Russian president announced they were going to rebuild their nuclear stockpile in response to what they see as America gaining footholds in countries bordering Russia. All this only a week after Hilary Clinton visited.
Don’t know what she did but perhaps she is not invited back.

I don’t know what there worried about. Its not like we just march into places that didn’t do anything to us.
Oh wait! Never mind.

Lets welcome back the cold war folks. A good war might be just what the doctor ordered to get this economy back on track, eh? We can all go to work for defense contractors building bombs to keep the peace. Hey, if the Pope can publicly state that condoms don't prevent AID's, then I can say, building bombs for peace, with a straight face!
In an odd little twist, remember the Star Wars project under Regan? They wanted to develop a way of shooting Russian ICBM’s out of the sky. Billions of dollars and decades latter we are not that much closer to being able to do that. But what about all the technology and all the bright minds that got poured into this idea? Did anything useful come from it like the way Tang and Velcro came from the space program in the 60”s?
Of course it did!
Lasers that were developed to shoot missiles down have now been put into the service of reducing deaths from malaria. Wrap your head around this- they have made a Laser capable of vaporizing clouds of mosquitoes in Africa thus preventing any disease those annoying little bugs might carry. Thirty years and hundreds of Billions of dollars latter we can’t knock nuclear tipped rockets coming our way out of the sky but we can kill Mosquitoes with the biggest back yard zapper ever!
Good luck out there and remember, as Rome burns we will at least stay warm=)