Dinhternet

So next ques­tion in my Form­Spring queue is,

“If you were stranded on a desert island, which one per­son would you bring with you?”

Peo­ple seem to take the “desert island” ques­tion dif­fer­ent ways. Some peo­ple resign them­selves to dying on the island and try to get the most enjoy­ment as pos­si­ble out of their time left. (Their person/items usu­ally geared towards one or more of the seven sins.) Some try to sur­vive as long as pos­si­ble on the island and hope for res­cue. (Their person/items usu­ally geared towards sur­vival.) And some peo­ple (like me) try to get off the damn island. (Their person/items usu­ally geared towards trans­porta­tion.) Along these lines, I’ll need a lit­tle more infor­ma­tion before I answer this one.

First, is the desert island also deserted? Tech­ni­cally, parts of Dubai can be con­sid­ered desert islands, but I don’t think I’ll need any­one to help me bust into the near­est super­car or mega-yacht and ride off into the sunset.

Assum­ing the island is deserted, though, I would next need to know if my com­pan­ion could have super­pow­ers. Any sort of flight, tele­por­ta­tion, or super-speed will do nicely. In a pinch, I’d even take Aquaman -

If, sadly, no super­heroes are allowed, I guess my next ques­tion would be if fic­tional char­ac­ters of any sort are OK. Mac­Gyver would be my num­ber one choice there. He even saved those suck­ers on LOST!

If only real peo­ple, could I choose a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure? (And not their corpse?) I would def­i­nitely pick Alexan­der Selkirk, the inspi­ra­tion for Robin­son Cru­soe and the ulti­mate manly man.

And finally, if I had to pick a real and liv­ing per­son, I would drag along Pres­i­dent Obama. Not sure how much of a sur­vival­ist he is, but I’m sure we’ll be found before I need to worry about that.

Plus, any of these peo­ple would be cool to talk with and learn from dur­ing the down­time before we are back in civilization.

So there’s been a lot of anger about the AIG bonuses lately. Some­one I know recently Tweeted “AIG = Arro­gance, Incom­pe­tence, and Greed.” The Huff­in­g­ton Post put up this satir­i­cal post about why these bonuses were well-deserved. If you didn’t know, AIG used bailout money to pay “reten­tion bonuses” to mem­bers of its Finan­cial Prod­ucts Divi­sion, which got them into their cur­rent dire circumstances.

AIG has stated that they must pay the bonuses for two rea­sons. First, because they are con­trac­tu­ally oblig­ated to pay. Sec­ond, because the peo­ple who got them into this sit­u­a­tion are the only ones who can get them out again, by unwind­ing their own mess. Yes­ter­day, NPR tore both of these argu­ments apart. First, the con­tract to pay bonuses was shady from the start. Deals to assure bonuses to an entire divi­sion are unheard of. Also, the lan­guage sug­gests that it was signed know­ing that the FP Divi­sion was in trou­ble and they were needed to unwind the prob­lems. As for the sec­ond argu­ment, indi­vid­u­als who have left the com­pany were still paid the bonuses, which seems to negate that defense.

Now, dif­fer­ent parts of the gov­ern­ment are falling over each other to be the ones to fix the prob­lem for the Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers. Obama told his staff to use every legal means to get the money back. AIG CEO Liddy asked his employ­ees to return “at least half” of the bonuses. The New York Attor­ney Gen­eral and the Con­necti­cut Gov­er­nor are both pur­su­ing cases to get the money back. And now, Con­gress is vot­ing to put a 90% tax on all bonuses paid by com­pa­nies sup­ported by bailout money as well as sub­tract­ing the bonuses from AIG’s next install­ment of bailout money.

Wouldn’t this have been a lot eas­ier if we hadn’t bailed out the banks in the first place? If only we had taken more bold action instead of try­ing to put a band-aid on the trauma.

Today, I tuned in to Pres­i­dent Obama’s coro­na­tion inau­gu­ra­tion. (From Nate Beeler polit­i­cal car­toons.) And speak­ing of tight­ened secu­rity, not every ticket-holder got to see the cer­e­mony today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not try­ing to soil the day or any­thing. It was a beau­ti­ful day, and despite the fum­ble on the oath of office -

which is to me the most impor­tant part of the day, his inau­gural address was mov­ing, and I, like many oth­ers, have high hopes that he can take our coun­try for­ward in the right direc­tion. (And a lit­tle word­ing prob­lem isn’t even close to what has gone wrong in the past.)

But are our hopes and expec­ta­tions too high? Obama is a man, not a super­hero (from Sin­fest), a saint, or a mes­siah. He received a man­date of the peo­ple to become Pres­i­dent, not a man­date of heaven to be King. The Found­ing Fathers wanted us to have a sim­ple cer­e­mony to remind us of that fact, but with every new pres­i­dent, it gets cra­zier and cra­zier.

And of course, there’s the grow­ing cov­er­age. Mov­ing way beyond the old-school tele­vi­sion and radio, we have online stream­ing footage, a crowd-sourced pho­to­synth, and even satel­lite cov­er­age by Google. (Which was claimed by CNN.)

I guess this is all a round­about way of say­ing, we all want the coun­try to move for­ward, but don’t expect Pres­i­dent Obama’s 100th day in office to end with the Rap­ture. (I don’t agree with Lim­baugh, I just think pun­dits will always have a place.)