Whenever I tell Japanese players that I live in California, they always ask if I live in Hollywood, or San Francisco. I just tell them that I live “where there are more cows than people.” Well, here’s my proof!

The US Mint raided Liberty Dollar back in 2007 and I was curious to see what became of the case, so I looked it up on Google. I discovered that a federal grand jury only recently indicted LD (May 2009), but was more surprised by the amount of articles written by Liberty Dollar proponents that call the raid and indictment “unconstitutional.” One of these was Walt Thiessen, Libertarian, of NolanChart.com. Below is a quoted excerpt from his popular (among LD supporters) front page article, which makes the bold assertion that the Mint/Congress do not have an exclusive power to coin money, and that they acted outside the scope of their Powers under the Constitution by shutting down Liberty Dollar’s tax evasion minting operation.

If Thiessen had read the beginning of Section 8, rather than Clause 5 by itself, he would have seen that this is in fact a Power granted by the Constitution. If a Power is granted by the Constitution, then it is not delegated:

The first clause of Article I, Section 8 begins with “the Congress shall have Power” and ends with a semicolon. Semicolons are used to separate and connect clauses. The language of the wording requires that we keep reading beyond the semicolon, and what follows are Powers:

Political “blogs” remind me of the game Telephone that I used to play at slumber parties growing up. One girl starts a dialogue, but by the time it reaches the last girl, it barely resembles what it once was.

I bought this delicious lipgloss quartet from Urban Outfitters ages ago, but I still wanted to post them on my diary, because the cupcake containers are just too cute! Their designs mirror their flavors (raspberry cream tart, chocolate cream puff, etc.). I’ve used up one of them so far (strawberry cream tart) and still have no idea what I’m going to do with the empty containers. They’re just too adorable to throw away! *L* Maybe I could re-use them if I found a hard perfume to put inside? Anyone out there with some ideas?

I always look forward to reading the graffiti in new Left4Dead Campaigns. Reading the graffiti in Crash Course felt a bit too much like reading the Steampowered Forums, though. QQ

BTW, I really want to pre-order the new Poupee Girl DS game. ArGh!!

I’ve been decorating my knitting needles using sculpty clay. How do they look? They’re supposed to be flowers if you couldn’t tell. ^^; I also made a new hat like my Mad Hatter one, except that this time I used 100% silk yarn so that it wouldn’t be too hot to wear in the summer. I know, I’m so uncreative, it is the third hat that I’ve made like this! I can’t really think of anything I want to make though now that spring is here.

These days you can’t turn on the news without hearing about the AIG bonus scandal. To provide a little back story: AIG, which is the biggest insurance company in the world, received $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money this month to prevent bankruptcy. The concern was that AIG was too big to fail and that its bankruptcy would kick an already crippled American economy into depression. When news broke last week that AIG had awarded $165 million in bonuses to its financial services division, politicians and media alike seized upon the opportunity to grandstand on the issue; expressing outrage over what they perceived to be an example of the greed and excess that had gotten AIG and the American economy into this mess. There is no rationale to who the mob targets for blame. One of my state’s congressman, Darrell Issha, even called for the resignation of Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury (something which would lead to a depression if it happened).

Recently there has been a great deal of finger-pointing in the direction of AIG’s CEO Edward Liddy (who is himself earning only $1 in pay). The American public has demanded that Liddy rescind on the bonus payments, while politicians have threatened to impose a special tax on the bonuses if Liddy doesn’t follow through. Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution however states that no ex post facto law shall be enacted. Money paid on a valid debt is not recoverable or taxable after the fact, except of course in a bankruptcy, which is what bailing out AIG was supposed to prevent. Repayment of bonus money can be required as part of a new contract with an employee, but the government can’t get payments back under the existing contract. These bonuses were written into the employee’s contracts years before AIG’s bailout.

As a Californian and Republican I find the outrage over this whole affair to be ridiculous. Hollywood movie stars are paid around $10 million per movie. $165 million spread across AIG’s entire financial services division amounts to about $1m per person, when they are doing highly skilled work. To the average American making around $60,000 a year, it might seem excessive for someone to be making $1m a year at AIG. But the people in AIG’s financial services division are handling $1.6 trillion in credit default swaps and billions of dollars in cash and assets every day. As an American I would rather see AIG succeed than fail. If that means a fraction of 1% in bailout money going towards their financial services division, keeping those people on, I could care less.