Distractions

Here’s your WTF moment of the day:  House passes bill taxing AIG and other bonuses.

Acting with lightning speed, the Democratic-led House has approved a bill to slap punishing taxes on big employee bonuses from firms bailed out by taxpayers.

The vote was 328-93.

OK, so let’s recap.  AIG was contractually obligated, by employment contract with certain of their employees, to pay these bonuses.  Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) slipped a provision into the Porkulus bill specifically allowing the bonuses…or maybe it was the Obama Treasury Department that wanted him to do it.

The bonuses come to light, and suddenly, every Democrat (and some Republicans) between Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue is screaming for blood–including the very people who knew the bonus provision was in the bill.  This, of course, after it comes to light that the two biggest receipients of AIG campaign cash were…wait for it…Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama.

So as a result, the House, spineless lemmings that they are, has now passed a bill that basically targets about four hundred bonus-receiving households with a 90% punitive tax rate–and in noted tax-cheat Charlie Rangel’s words, “we were figuring the state and local would get the other 10%.”  These people who received the bonuses have not been convicted of a crime.  They have not gone through any legal due process.  They’re simply going to have the government yank 90% of these contractually-obligated bonuses away from them–legally it may not be a bill of attainder, but it sure looks damn close, doesn’t it?.  While Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and the people who did as much as any “fat cat” at AIG to fuck up the housing market get away scot free, and the people at AIG have to live with death threats.

Meanwhile, we’re flushing hundreds of billions of dollars down the toilet of a useless pork-laden “stimulus package,”  crushing our children with debt, and talking about loading even more taxes for “carbon neutrality” on top of that, and nobody cares.  But you let AIG give out $165 million in bonuses, and Uncle Teleprompter is on the case, man.

One thing you never want to hear…

…the grinding sound of a car that’ll turn over, but not start, when you don’t have enough money to pay the bills you’ve already got.

Yep, the Divine Teabag has hit us in the face again.  Wife Unit’s car won’t start and is quite possibly an ex-parrot, leaving us with my rusted, dodgy, 162,000-mile-veteran truck as our sole means of transport for the forseeable future.  Apparently every piece of good news–Wife Unit getting beadwork up on Etsy, and getting in a local Ren Faire at the end of this month–has to be balanced by a much larger piece of bad news, in this case, a broken car with what sounds like serious-to-terminal engine problems.

All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.  I just wish the wall wasn’t made out of poo.

Blackout for New Zealand

There isn’t a whole hell of a lot that Marty and I agree on politically.  On this particular travesty from New Zealand, however, I think we’re at the barricades shoulder to shoulder:

A “copyright holder” can get you kicked off an ISP without having to provide any evidence of an actual infringement. Having to [provide evidence] is apparently “impractical” and “ridiculous” in the words of RIANZ chief executive Campbell Smith. What happens when the “you” above is a public library, or a school? Or if the “copyright holder” makes a mistake or a malicious accusation?

This is the kind of Draconian ready-fire-aim stuff that powerful organizations like the MPAA and RIAA would love to shove down our throats here in the United States if they could.  So it’s important not to let it get a toehold, even halfway around the world.  Because I don’t care if it’s the USA or New Zealand or bloody Rwanda, I get the heebie-jeebies when I read a former member of the government say:

It is easier for ISPs, Internet Service Providers, to cut off anyone who might be breaking the law.

So.  Moose Droppings is as blacked out as I can get it (considering I don’t actually have any graphics to black out, I did all that I could by changing the theme color).  Stand up for “Guilt Upon Accusation” for New Zealand.

The world’s greatest complaint letter

Richard Branson’s got some work to do to mollify this frequent Virgin Airlines flier:

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

The whole thing is available at the Daily Telegraph, misspellings and all, including Virgin Atlantic’s response, and pictures of the lovely food that this gentleman was served on a Mumbai-Heathrow flight in December.

Maybe those tiny AirTran bags of peanuts and warm flat Cokes aren’t so bad after all.

So here I sit…

…at 1 o’clock in the morning, looking at my brand-new copy of Wrath of the Lich King, shiny little DVD poking out of its paper sleeve, account properly upgraded, patches pre-downloaded and ready to go.

Meanwhile, my computer is downloading the 1.9 GB content of the Lich King expansion from Blizzard, which even on a good cable connection like mine, will probably take another hour.

Why?

Because my freaking DVD-RW drive door won’t eject so I can’t put the DVD in.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD.

PS:  The download just stopped at 432 MB out of 1.9 GB.  Go me.

Drinking the Haterade

Audience participation time!

Ready, fire, aim

Let the Republican circular firing squad begin.

Political types are very good at eating their own after a defeat.  As soon as the race gets called for the other guy, it’s screw the women and children, every man for himself getting to the lifeboats.  I’d say it’s like being in a shark tank at feeding time, except sharks are cool and actually serve a useful purpose in the greater scheme of things…unlike political consultants.  Circle of Life and all that, y’know.

So now we have “unnamed sources” giving Sarah Palin both barrels of 93-octane bullshit.  Saying she’s too stupid to know that Africa’s a continent, not a country.  That she didn’t know the countries involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement (Canada, the US, Mexico).  That she “paraded around” in front of two male staffers wearing a towel.  That she and her family were, in the sniffy words of a McCain staffer taken from a Newsweek dirt dump, “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.” Chief McCain aide Steve Schmidt didn’t even let Palin speak at McCain’s concession speech Tuesday night.  And of course, the pro-Palin side of things has some grudges of their own to work on.

Memo to Steve Schmidt, John McCain, et al.  If you had not had Sarah Palin on your ticket to energize the conservative base, you would’ve lost a hell of a lot worse than you did.  Know what?  Those 15,000 or 20,000 people weren’t coming to the rallies to see you.  They were coming to see her.  Palin was our Obama.  She was our celebrity, our energizer.  Before Palin, most of us on the right side of things were about as excited for John McCain as we would be for, say, a yeast infection.  If we were going to hold our nose and vote for him, it was because he Wasn’t Obama.  Nothing more.

Before you “unnamed staffers” go backstabbing the hottest thing to hit conservative politics in thirty years (in multiple senses of the word), just remember something.  The base is pissed off right now.  We watched the RNC continue with the stupidity of open primaries that let Democrats and independents help pick OUR alleged candidate, and helped give us McCain, a guy who’s made it his life’s work to smack conservatives in the face over and over.  We watched you run a shitty campaign that took key issues off the table, wobbled from crisis to crisis, never established a clear message, and got steamrolled by an avalanche of Hope and Change.  And now you’re going to kneecap the one good thing that we saw out of your entire trainwreck of a Presidential campaign?

Sarah Palin isn’t the problem, you twatwaffles.  You are. She’s not expendable.  You are.

PS:  Even the most liberal of my liberal blogfriends think you’re full of shit.

His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition

Well.  After taking a morning to settle down from the total ass-kicking that John McCain absorbed last night, and the resultant gloating from a few Obama supporters (not you, Marty or Lauren) that rubbed me the wrong way, I’ve queued up a few blog posts over the next several days about the election and related stuff.  And then, I’ll be too busy at work to do much else with it, and will move on with my so-called life.

My first thought is about how a bitter, clingy conservative guy like me should act now that the country has gone all Hopey and Changy on me.  There’s several different ways I can handle this setback to conservatism, but after thinking, I’ve decided to reach back to our brethren in the UK for my inspiration.

In the United Kingdom as well as most Commonwealth countries, the predominant party that’s out of power in the government actually has the cool-sounding official title of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, otherwise known as the “Official Opposition.”  They get to drive debate every now and again, and even set up their own Shadow Cabinet of MPs who are cocked and locked to move into their opposite number’s office after the next election.  Of course, we don’t have anything like that here; the party in control of each house of Congress gets all the committee chairmanships and stacks the committees in proportion to their majority, and generally, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader rule the calendars of their respective houses with an iron fist.

So I have, therefore, decided that it’s time for your humble Moose to be His Messiahship’s Loyal Opposition…or at least part of it.  And I mean both of those words to have equal weight.

Loyal:  This does not mean I agree with Barack Obama’s policies.  It means that I accept the fact that he’s the 44th President of the United States.  None of this “he’s not my President” stuff–he is.  He’s just not the one I wanted.  It means I’m not going to throw a four- or (God forbid) eight-year temper tantrum like the nuttier parts of the Left have done with George W. Bush.  I’m not going to walk around comparing him to Hitler, or making movies about him getting assassinated, or screaming that he should be hanged for war crimes.  He’s the President.  I will accord him the respect that the office deserves, and I will not stamp my feet and scream and cry like Nublet does when it’s 7:30 and she doesn’t want to go to bed…unlike what so many others have done to our current President.

Opposition:  Just because I respect Obama and the office he will soon hold, doesn’t mean that I’m not the opposition.  If he does something I agree with, good.  If he doesn’t, I’m going to oppose it with what tools I have at my disposal as a citizen of the United States.  I’ll vote against him come 2012, more than likely.  I’ll contribute money to, and vote for, those who share my beliefs in local, state, and Federal races between now and then, in an effort to contain whatever damage he may cause.  I’ll use my First Amendment rights to the fullest to express my political opinion.

Basically, my aim for the next four years is to act like the middle-aged adult I am, and handle the Obama Presidency with maturity and grace…while still doing everything in my power to fight it.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  A mature, principled opposition, regardless of which side is in power, is a good thing.

A look into our world

If this little incident isn’t a total microcosm of the utter crap sandwich of the past two years–and counting–then I don’t know what is…

Wheeeee

Dow’s down over 550 as of 1:00 this afternoon, and still dropping.

So how’s that $700 billion bailout plan workin’ for ya, there, W?  Pelosi?  Reid?  Anybody?  Bueller?  Bueller?