John’s Blog

John A. Griswold, though I don’t think I ever heard anybody call him anything but “Jack” or “Dad”, would have been 82 years old today.

I, like most of the American public, am pissed off about the bonus fiasco at AIG. But it’s $165 million out of what, $170 billion that has been pushed into that quagmire of financial incompetence. One tenth of one percent! That’s equivalent to the cost of a newspaper in the weekly budget of a upper-middle-class home! (Oh, Harriet! Don’t tell me you bought another newspaper this week! Do you think I’m made out of money?)

Our illustrious elected officials in Washington have spent a week flailing their arms and tongues blathering about the outrageously inept actions of Tim Geithner in mismanaging this “scandal”, when, by all reports the $165 million in bonuses was in the bailout plan for AIG before it was approved by Congress. For those keeping score at home, this deal was approved by the same lot now excoriating Geithner. Why, then, is everybody, including President Obama, “shocked” to find out about it? Don’t they read the bills they are voting on? Don’t they at least have lackies to do their reading for them? They’re all standing there at the plate, watching the guy behind the left field dugout waving the big foam finger.

Meanwhile, what’s been happening with the other $164,835,000,000 that was pushed into AIG? Who knows? They’ve been watching the bonuses!

This comes a couple of weeks after writing “earmarks” into a $400 billion “stimulus” package until it became a $700 billion spending bill – that’s $700,000,000,000 – 4242 times the amount of the bonuses.

Change? Doesn’t sound like change to me.

The company I work for has an active “spam” filter on the incoming e-mail stream, and these e-mails are pushed off into a special bucket that can be reviewed – just in case one of the e-mails turns out to be legitimate. I don’t ordinarily bother to look, but here are some of the recent subjects that are supposed to lure me into opening the virus-infested crap:
We will have bicycle-tour!
Go downstairs now
Your IP saw on illegal sites
Admin asked you to add him
Let’s listen to this specialist
Is that your dog on a street
About our common friend Jack
Found your card in lift, it’s Mark
Please read
Fire near your house!
Jennifer, that girl, wants your number
I’m headhunter, let’s meet
Our lections scanned
Sandy will sue you
We meet stars tomorrow
I scanned all info..
E-version of documents
Your car is scratched
Hold party photos
We go to bowling
Inquiry form for mail service holders
Forgot my cell phone at home
Come to our room
Saw your wife today
Open it 1 hour later, ok?

And that was just today, though a lot of them are repeats from earlier in the week.