He isn't being paid so he's quitting. Fine.

Many American workers are being punished not for their own personal conduct, but for the misconduct of their employers. By rights every person at AIG should lose their job. The company has failed and if wasn't for the largesse of the American government the company would be in ruins.

I feel more sorry for the factory workers whose factories sit idle while their jobs are moved overseas. I feel more sorry for the renter who has been rendered homeless since their landlord was not paying their mortgage. I feel more sorry for the family without health insurance who has to go bankrupt to pay for the medical needs of their children.

Jake DeSantis was well paid for his work at AIG until the company failed. He received good benefits. It appears that he is in the top 1% of American households in terms of income. At least he goes home to a nice house and family and a personal fortune which he can use to ponder his next move.

According to their site 27% of MIT graduates work in the Financial Sector. That's higher than I expected, but nowhere near 75%.

http://web.mit.edu/facts/graduation.html

I watched both The Exterminating Angel and the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie recently and I found the latter considerably more enjoyable. The Exterminating Angel felt a little plodding. Yes, it had its surreal elements, but some of them seemed a little too off-the-wall for my tastes. Discreet Charm on the other hand has this gleeful quality. The movie starts off rather dull, but by the time it finishes you have no idea whether you are in dream sequence or reality any longer. The success of the absurd twists and random violence in this film are what modern directors like the Coen Brothers and Wes Andersen aspire to.

I also don't agree in a high/low dichotomy in films. Buñuel isn't going to be for everybody simply because the movies are subtitled or dubbed and definitely of a different era. I don't believe in closing off genres. Sometimes you find unexpectedly good films in genres or eras that you don't usually watch. In the last week or so I've watched The Wrestler, Funny Games, The Exterminating Angel, King of Comedy (with Stephen Chow), The Big Sleep, Ishtar, The Maltese Falcon, Spy Hard, and Meatballs 4. I will go on the record as saying Meatballs 4 is terrible.

I am rather struck by the way Dick Cheney is now explicitly excoriating our Command in Chief directly at a time when our nation is still at war. I do not believe the hypocrisy is something the American people care about or have the attention span to notice, but, the extreme lack of decorum shown by the former Vice President is breathtaking nonetheless.

What I find interesting about the Republican's strategy in opposition of Sotomayor is that it basically precludes the possibility of a serious debate about her confirmation. I think most Americans would give the President some benefit of the doubt that he has selected a good candidate for the nomination. When the Republicans start questioning the nominee's intelligence and qualifications, lobbing accusations of racism, and cherry picking a couple quotes that seem damaging it makes the debate about those things.

Rather than having a serious debate about what kind of justice we'd like to see on the Supreme Court we suddenly are debating whether you can graduate Summa Cum Laude from Princeton and still not be considered "intelligent", whether you can have more years on the bench and in law than previous nominees and still not be qualified for the job, whether a single quote from a speech can justify accusations of racism, and the arcane details of cases which Sotomayor hardly played a role in. In short, we aren't debating anything interesting.

The Republicans hope they can throw enough mud that their supports will be whipped into a grass roots frenzy, but I really wonder how many times they can flog their base. Do they have any outrage left? As the threats of socialism, gun control, and all the rest are shown to be baseless fear mongering will they lose even what's left of their base?

Most people I've met who had difficult to pronounce names were understanding of the way most Americans would mangle them. But, they certainly wouldn't dumb down the pronunciation of their own name to match the way other people said it.

Ralph Nader is a political opportunist who will say whatever he thinks will get him in the newspapers.

Set aside Sotomayor's race and gender for a moment and look at her qualifications. She is eminently qualified for the job as Supreme Court justice.

Obama can choose whoever he wants to nominate to be a Supreme Court Justice. It is now the Senate's job to decide whether to confirm that nomination.

Honestly, I'm not thrilled about her record from the bench. She is no liberal or progressive dream. Rather than discussing her judicial philosophy the right wing has mired us in these stupid debates about her education and background.

One should not expect intellectual honesty from Krauthammer. He is not interested in making a cogent argument, but in providing red meat for the right wing noise machine.

One good exercise is to set aside a candidates race and gender and look at their qualifications. By any standard Sotomayor is well qualified to be nominated as a Supreme Court Justice. I'm sure anyone who has ever been in court will recognize in descriptions of Sotomayors demeanor from the bench attributes shared by judges of all stripes.

I just want to reiterate how much I disagree with the reviewer's take on the movies. She seems to give everything Pixar a negative review just because it gives her street cred or something. Honestly, I don't think she really enjoys going to movies. If you take the opposite of her advice, or better yet just ignore her altogether you will be a happier moviegoer.