Because of inconvenient (and very time-consuming) personal business, I was nowhere near a computer I could use yesterday. Ironic, because I was surrounded by computers I could not use. (Like the old expression "water water everywhere and not a drop to drink"...) Returned home in the middle of the night, and dragged myself to bed without blogging.

"To bed without blogging" sounds like a punishment, and maybe it was. It sometimes bothers me that there are so many things I don't write about, but then, there's a fine line between thoughts I consider worth sharing and personal trivia not fit for publication. Blogging sometimes resembles a form of exhibitionism. Yet because of its self censoring nature, it's only as exhibitionistic as the individual exhibitionist. I'm kind of a prude, even though I don't like to hold back about things a lot of people would remain silent about.

Silence is a relative thing, and it is sometimes a dignified thing. George W. Bush said that Barack Obama "deserves my silence," and in that respect, he shows himself more dignified than his successor, who is blaming everything on Bush. The latter plans to write a book too:

Bush says he doesn't know what he'll do in the long term but says he'll write a book that will let people determine what they would have done if their most important job was to protect the country.

It's a lot easier for me to sound off about responsibilities I don't have than responsibilities I do have. In this regard, I'm of two minds about the huge AIG bonus payouts which are creating a storm of controversy. The Obama administration claims no one knew:

Sources in the Obama administration Tuesday said that despite previous media reports administration officials did not know until a couple weeks ago that the officials of the controversial AIG Financial Product Division were set to receive $165 million in bonuses on March 13.

It wasn't until Thursday, March 5, 2009, administration sources told ABC News, that officials of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York informed officials of the Treasury Department of the full extent of the $165 million in bonuses pending for the controversial Financial Products Subsidiary.

This was three days after the Obama administration had already announced a new commitment of an additional $30 billion for AIG.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was alerted last Tuesday, March 10; he phoned AIG CEO Edward Liddy on Wednesday evening, March 11, to protest the bonuses, sources told ABC News.

Naturally, the taxpayers are outraged, and AIG officials are getting hate mail and death threats:

Washington: A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group (AIG) on Monday. Hired guards stood watch outside the Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.

Politicians and the public spent Monday demanding that AIG rescind payouts that they said rewarded recklessness and greed at a company being bailed out with $170 billion in taxpayer funds. But company officials contend that the uproar is scaring away employees who understand AIG Financial Products' trades and are trying to dismantle the division before it further endangers the world's economy. "It's going to blow up," said a Financial Products manager.

Here's why I'm of two minds about this. The bonuses are obviously AIG's legal obligation, and if the company were simply allowed to fail (as it should have been), then they'd be treated like other corporate obligations according to normal legal process. But since the government stepped in, the bonuses have been transformed into taxpayer dollars.

That's a very bad idea. The lines have become hopelessly blurred between "public" and "private."

Doubtless the communitarians are delighted.

(How easy it is these days to be a libertarian!)

MORE: In a great PJM piece (titled "Contributions to Obama Campaign Track Bailout Money") Bob Owens explains how AIG is bailing out foreign banks with tax dollars, while the Obama hopes trhe railing against "evil" will distract people "from his own far more costly executive abuses":

And of course, the re-distributor-in-chief hopes you won't notice where much of the rest of the AIG bailout cash is being spent.

(I'd hate to think the free market is destroying itself for profit....)