Jake DeSantis (AIG Quitter)

WAAAHHH, People are trying to make me feel bad about my million dollar bonus. Waaaaahhhh. My little feelings are hurt. waaaaahhhhh. . . . .I Quit! waaaaahhhhh. .

Hey Jake! No one feels sorry for you! First of all, you begin your pathetic resignation/op-ed by stating "I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G."Are you freakin serious? What the hell are you proud of? Even if, as you say, you were not involved in the shady credit-default swaps that brought the company down, what is it you did? The Commodity and Equities Division? You shuffled immaginary money around from one account to another so that your company could skim off a percentage. How is that anything of which to be proud?
Then you say: After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. No, Jake you haven't. You are still getting your obscene bonus in March 2009. What the hell do you consider a betrayal?

I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments

That's it? Ooohh, my boss didn't stand up for me when the mean men were calling me names!

Your fucking feelings are hurt? Really? Waahh, My bonus!

In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

OK, (A) I'll believe it when I see it, and (B) That's not a donation, that's restitution!

Then there's this, adressed to your boss:

I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

Um, Jake, you're quitting. No need to kiss your boss's ass anymore. And, no, he's not fucking blameless! He ran the Company! All the asses that ran these scams worked for him!

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid.

The only reason you have a job at any salary is because we the people are paying for it. And the ammount of your actual salary really isn't that important when you are guaranteed a fucking million dollar bonus regardless of your job performance. Do you really expect any of us to believe that you are actually working for $1? If you want us to fall for that, you shouldn't have included this line: On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes.
Just because your salary on paper was $1 doesn't change the fact that you were paid (by us!) more money than most of us make in a decade.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer.

Frankly, my dear, no one gives a damn!

I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

Enough with the "hard work" crap! Where the hell do you get the balls to talk about hard work? Spend a day on a construction site or at a steel mill or in goddamn Fallujah, then let's talk about hard work. You shuffle papers. You sit in a climate controlled office moving money around with clicks of a mouse. Hard work? Are you kidding me? Don't talk about how hard you work in the same paragraph in which you admit to being overpaid! (The first honest word in this whole pitiful screed)

Mr DeSantis, you are a preposterous buffoon with a completely undeserved sense of sel-importance and entitlement. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Mom! People are saying mean things about me in the blogosphere!

The Worst Song I Heard At Work This Week

The Muzak at my place of employment is a veritable cornucrapia of insipid lyrics set to wearisome tunes, but the all-time cake taker has to be the atrocious "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?" by the abominable Paula Cole. (seen here taking herself way too fucking seriously)

The tune, to begin with, is just an unimaginative mediocrity, and Ms. Cole is a passable vocalist at best. If these were the only complaints, this song would barely merit a mention. It would slide by un-noticed like most second-rate records. But, no! Apparently, the producers had a brilliant idea: "hey, Paula, what if, instead of singing the main verses, you recited the lyrics in a semi-rhythmic stage whisper?"
" Oh My God! Brilliant! Now people will know that I'm a serious artist!"

Then there's the lyrics themselves, which are basically a bizarre longing for a pre-feminist relationship in which "I will raise the children if you pay all the bills." and "I will wash the dishes, you go have a beer." (seriously: Link) And she can't even pronounce "beer" like a normal person. When Paula sings it, it comes out like "beeee-yurrrr." How hard is it to pronounce beer? It's one fucking syllable! BEER! There, see how easy that was?

And, hey, Ms Cole, women have spent the last 30-odd years trying to explain to men that we should be more sensitive, more in touch with our feelings, and God help us, we've been trying. We may not be that great at it, but we have been trying to be more Phil Donahuey and less Clint Eastwoodey. And now here you come along whining "where is my John Wayne?" John Wayne is dead. And if he was alive, he probably wouldn't be a lot of fun to be married to. Remember this famous quote from the Duke? “Women have the right to work wherever they want, as long as they have the dinner ready when you get home”
(Although, based on your lyrics, maybe he would be your ideal husband.)

Anyway, just when the song is winding down, just when it seems like the crapfest is over, Ms Cole launches into a ghastly caterwauling which Lyrics.com translates as "yipee yo, yipee yeah," but sounds for all the world like "Dah- ah - ahh, Duh-ha, Duh-ha!" Either way, I'm pretty sure it violates the Geneva Conventions.

And, ys, I know that this song is over 10 years old, but it hasn't gotten any less horrid in the interim.

Michelle Bachman & Glenn Beck

Michelle Bachman (R-Psychopathia)




Apparently, there was a lunatic convention on the radio yesterday. Here is the audio:



These two paranoid crackpots believe that there is some grand conspiracy to put the U.S. and other countries on a single global currency. Never mind that no one has suggested doing this. Never mind that Tim Geithner has, when asked by Ms Bachman, categorically denied that he would support such a plan. Never mind that the very idea is just prima facia absurd. In the deranged mind of the conspiracy theorist, all those things just add more proof of the conspiracy's existence. Bachman and Beck should really be institutionalized. They don't seem to have the slightest toe-hold on reality. Beck makes the absurd point that anyone who brings this up is "deemed a kook." Glenn, that's because anyone who believes this is A KOOK!
Michelle Bachman makes the hilarious assertion that "this is not just Michelle Bachman being a kook!" Um, yes it is.

Seriously, Minnesotans, what the hell? How is this nut your representative in Congress? She would be laughed out of a UFO convention. You really need to do something about this before you become the state that makes Mississippi feel good about itself.

Michael Steele

As if he hasn't embarrassed himself enough lately, Mr Steele had this to say on the subject of global climate change:

“We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long.”

The warming is part of the cooling process? I'm sorry, did you bring enough stupid for the rest of the class?
Oh, and yes, there is a reason why Greenland is called Greenland.

Norse legends written in the 12th century and later, it is told that Eric the Red explored the southeast and southwest coasts of Greenland in A.D. 983-986 and gave the country its name because people would be more likely to go there if it had an attractive name.
(from Answers.com)

Might want to do a quick Googling before making public statements.

But really, it's not just Mr Steele that's the problem here. For one thing, there's a pretty slim chance that he's actually this big a dullard. The thing is, he's so emblematic of the pernicious strain of anti-intellectualism that has infected our political process. It's this anti- knowledge, anti-science, anti-reason attitude that allows people to consider their "gut feeling" to be superior to actual expertise, that allows people to dismiss educated people as "elitist" or "out of touch." This pro-ignorance stance makes it easy for people to say things like "the jury's still out on global warming," assuming that the considered opinion of every legitimate climatologist in the world is no more authoritative than one's own observation that the last few days have been pretty cold.

That's how we end up with a fiasco like this:


Everyone knew that Al Gore was vastly more intelligent than George W. Bush, so why did so many people vote for W? For precisely that reason. Too many voters disliked Gore because he was smart. They liked Bush because he seemed like an ordinary, regular guy. Problem is, Bush actually is a regular guy. And a regular guy is not qualified to be the leader of the free world. An electorate with any sense would want to vote for an extraordinary person to be president. The previous 8 disastrous years should have served as an object lesson in "why being an amiable, slow-witted dunce is not sufficient qualification to be president," but no. Way too many of the same people have steadfastly refused to learn any lesson from the recent past, which is why we may end up, (God Forbid) with this:



or this:
or this:

in 2012.

Music Break!

The Upper Crust--the greatest Aristocratic Rock band in the world--present:

Let Them Eat Rock!