Gimme a "B". Gimme a "M"

I was talking to an old friend and happened to mention the three forbidden letters... A-I-G-! The friend began to rant... "Those bastards... Give them 175 billion in bailouts and they turn around and give 160 billion in bonuses!"

(Whoa!!! I couldn't let that go.)

"Wait a minute, they got 175 Billiion - with a "B" and gave bonuses of around 160 Million - with an "M"! Bonuses were less than one-tenth of one per cent of the bailout total!"

"Oh." said the friend.

There are two ways to look at this. Either that is the way it was planned... confuse 'em with Bs and Ms, to divert attention from the fact that they have given away our future; or else it is just the old game of class warfare... piss people off because someone is making a lot more money than they are. Either way, it does distract people and obscure what they have really done to us!

Personally, I lust over a few thousand - the price of a new camera and a couple of sexy new lenses so I can take a picture of the owl that landed on the roof of the nearby church.

The idea of a multi-million dollar cash windfall is beyond my dreams. But, it was my decision to drop out of school those many years ago so I do not resent the guy who hung in there and learned how to do things I can't even imagine and who today is paid big bucks as a result.

Unfortunately, that is not a widely shared view. A lot of people, as Ayn Rand once said, "hate the good for being good". So it is easy to start a fire with the mere mention that some guy was paid a huge bonus.

And starting fires to create smoke screens, seems to be what our government is all about these days.