Where Am I?

So many things to write about, with so little time to write. To quell the rumor mill; I have not succumb to Swine Flu, nor have I gone underground with the Witness Protection Program. I'm just busy. Really, really busy.

Passover

Max Fischer is observing the Passover holiday and will not be writing this week.

Taken At Facebook Value

Twitter me this; what compels a person that I didn't know that well in high school, or ever particularly cared for, to ping me with friend requests on Facebook?

Although I've been on Facebook for a couple of years, I hadn't been an active social networker until a friend of mine from my youth invited me to join a group that's dedicated to our upcoming 25-year high school reunion. I've now dusted off my wall and posted some fresh pictures of myself and collective vast spawning.

It's been fun reconnecting with friends and classmates, some of whom I haven't seen or talked to in over twenty years. There are a few, however, curious friend requests that still fester in my inbox.

If I don't accept your friend request, it just means that I never liked you and I have no desire to exchange a few "dude, what's ups" with you. As much as I'd like to say it's nothing personal, it's all, well, just personal.

Facebook feels a lot like high school.

Just Guilty Pleasures

I love the CW Network. There simply can't be a better panacea for placing worries aside and vicariously dismissing ones moral platitudes than settling into the guilty pleasures of CW prime-time.

I'm entirely enamored with Gossip Girl. Such a steady barrage of upper east side adolescent narcissistic scheming and backstabbing, heavily accented with tartan plaids, dramatic rhetorical inflections and good old fashioned passive-aggressiveness. Chuck Bass is a balls out man bitch, always at the ready to laser all adversaries with his piercing glare and sharp, succinct tongue. Santa, please add Gossip Girl seasons one to forever at the top of my Christmas list. I've been a good boy. Really. When compared to Gossip Girl, at least. Gossip Girl is a bit like Las Vegas. When you're finished with the experience, you need to shower twice to get the filth off of you. Then you can't wait to go back.

One Tree Hill is another hook of mine, although it defies both logic and odds that an entire gaggle of a high school clique could all graduate from high school, head off to college, and then all move back to tiny Tree Hill, North Carolina to enjoy life with such immense professional acclaim. Let's take a roll call. Lucas is a best selling author, Brooke carries her own clothing label, Payton founded and manages a record label (after a failed internship in LA), Nathan still chases the dream of playing pro hoops (in his Range Rover) and milking his seemingly endless shoe contract endorsement money, all earned before his brush with death two seasons ago. Hayley, Nathan's wife, apparently used to be a pop star bigger than Brittany Spears, yet managed to do it all from the comfort of Tree Hill.

Despite its complete lack of believability on a most basic level, I'm a One Tree Hill disciple of the highest order. I just want to know where this magical land of opportunity, scandal and hot girls is on the map. We need to move there.

Tree Hill may be the answer to our great recession.

The Notorious A.I.G.

The media has been running hard to keep up with the American public lately, to remind us that we're enduring a collective "public outrage" at A.I.G. for awarding a gaggle of failed company executives millions of dollars in contractually agreed bonuses. Bonus money that was paid by the federal government, an interest bearing debt now neatly saddled on the backs of American taxpayers.

Several news reports emerged over the weekend that A.I.G. employees in an affluent suburb of Connecticut were receiving death threats, on the heels of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo releasing the names of those that were awarded large payments.

Sifting through the sensational and unsavory headlines though, I'm beginning to feel that our anger is entirely misplaced.

Congress hastily pushed through a measure, supported by President Obama, that will enforce a 90% tax liability to those A.I.G. employees that received bonus payments.

For the love of yo-yo-ma, this is all so ridiculous.

This is all nothing more than an egregious and glaring example of politicians, once again, failing to supplicate at a most basic human level.

The government chose to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to A.I.G., without a most basic clause set in place to avoid this type of fiasco. In fact, President Obama had requested such safeguards be placed in the contractual language of the governments agreement to bail out A.I.G., only to have such common sense wisdom be ignored by Connecticut Senator, and Finance Committee Chairman, Christopher Dodd.

Dodd would make a helluva efficient gastrointestinal doctor. He managed to stick it to 300-million-people in one stroke of the pen.

We often hear of politicians brushing poor policy decisions off as a simple "mistake". It's time that ultimate accountability be taken by the Congressional majority and our President. A mistake is a direct result of a bad decision. They need to take accountability for not only the decision to hand over such a heady amount of scratch to A.I.G. with no strings attached, but also take accountability for the politically mucky outcome of their decision.

Simply blaming A.I.G. for what the President calls their "unconscionable" choice to award these bonus payments and then taxing them at 90% (90-percent!) is reducing themselves (Democrats) to the low level of morality legislators that our electorate rejected at the polls from the Republican party in 2006 and 2008.

A.I.G. has done nothing legally wrong. The government, however, has set a very dangerous precedent.

I'm beginning to lose hope. I don't see change.

No matter how hard I look for it.