I'm Back

Sorry I haven't been around but there is so much new Television on and this season is shaping up to be one of the best. I got hooked into this new show Fringe and that is just messing me up.

Any way, here we go.

Point Number One - McCain has OFFICIALLY LOST MY VOTE.

While I do not agree with everyhting he stands for (his views on abortion particularly bother me), I do believe that he is as honorable a person as a politician can be. I don't quite think he is the maverick that he declares he is but he has bucked his party's leadership and is enough of a pain in the ass that he gets my "Monkey In The Wrench" award.

Where he has lost my vote is in the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice President. To put it bluntly and in true Yoda style:

"She's Hot but Ready She's Not."

The selection at first was a masterstroke. McCain was tapping into (or trying to tap into) the disenfranchised 18 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton during the primary.

Initially, she was placed before large crowds and she engendered the rock star treatment that McCain so decried when Obama received same. But lime an Onion, when you peeled back the layers, you saw the real deal.

The most telling aspect of Sarah Palin's inadequacy was her inability to come across forcefully in an interview with Katie Couric.

Katie Couric!!!!!! The most unchallenging interviewer ever to host the National News. Non-Confrontational is the key to katie.

And yet Palin could not handle it.

Fareed Zakaria, the Newsweek commentator, a conservative by nature in a liberal magazine wrote an opinion piece entitled "Palin Is Ready? Please."

I won't quote at lenght but it is a must read piece and it ends with the line:

Obviously these are very serious challenges and constraints. In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

John, you are a hero.

But you've lost my vote.


Point Number 2 - AIG HAS TO NAME NAMES

While Rome was burning, Nero Fiddled.

While AIG was drowning, many executives went to a freaking Resort and spent $24,000 of the rescue money on the SPA.

The St. Regis, located on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, is "devoted to the pursuit of service and elegance," according to its Web site. A "health and wellness" package costs US$600 a night, with a two-night minimum.

Former CEO and Dunderhead Robert Willumstad said:

"I was totally unaware that there was any plan for any conference. Had I been aware of it I would have prevented it from happening."

Was this guy running AIG or Dunder Mifflin? Even the fictional Michael Scott would have known the trip was going on and recognized the impropriety (although one would think that he would have let it still occur).

Pathetic.

I did buy 100 shares of AIG stock at $2.62 a share.

Why, you ask?

So I can become the named plaintiff in a class action case when the time is right.