On my mind...

Like a lot of people, it's hard NOT to be po'ed these days. Here's just a few things that have me seeing red:

AIG & THEIR $%#&*@* BONUSES It's not like I'm against bailing out the big companies whose bankruptcy would cause the loss of even more jobs and such - but then for those greedy executives to take million dollar bonuses after accepting $170 billion dollars from the government - well, it is incredibly shameless!

Contract or not, these guys should be made to pay it back. Didn't we (the Government, and therefore the American Taxpayer) become a partial owner of the company when we lent the money to them? If I'm correct in this assumption, we should enforce our ownership rights and deny these "bonuses". After all, these same folks are the ones who made the decisions who drove AIG into the position of having to need a government bailout to survive.

THE POPE I was baptized as a Catholic sometime when I was under 6 months old. Confirmed at 13 years old, and am still (somewhat) a practicing Catholic. However, I disagree with many of the church's positions on issues. Yesterday, during a visit to Africa where AIDS runs rampant, Pope Benedict declared that the use of condoms is not the answer to stemming the spread of this dreaded disease. Further, he opined that abstinence is the only way to prevent it.

Good Grief! By invoking this pronouncement, Pope Benedict put himself on an intellectual par with Bristol Palin. The typical African he is speaking to is not going to abstain from having sex. Catholics wonder why they are losing the battle in Africa - and throughout the world - in conversions to the oldest Christian religion. This is only one of the reasons. Unrealistic comments like this do nothing to further the spread of Catholicism, let alone reduce infections and deaths from AIDS.

BERNIE MADOFF I know I've ranted about this greedy idiot before, but then I read an article in today's newspaper, by right-wing columnist Cal Thomas, who seemd to give Madoff a mea culpa for his greediness. In his column, Thomsa kinda, sorta blamed the investors for not investigating Madoff further about his boast of 10% annual return on investment. Poor, Poor Bernie, he seemed to say.

Are you kidding me? How can anyone defend this guy? He lied, cheated, bilked his investors out of $50 billion dollars - cooking the books and promising them riches they would never see, all the while living the lavish lifestyle, and socking away the money.

Of course, Thomas, the columnist, is one of those guys who never met a rich person he didn't like - and thinks the poor are the scourge of the world, not worthy of welfare, food stamps, or other "entitlement" programs. I suppose he has never had anyone in his family who has had to make use of these programs. That's what I usually find among people who bash them so much. They have never known anyone who, through no fault of their own, have fallen upon hard times and had to ask for help.

That's enough of my ranting for today.

Old Fart Mike