Well, Maybe If They READ The Damn Thing...

That would be the Economic Stimulus bill, the one shoved through in such a hurry, no one had time to read it. No, they could not be bothered to take one WEEK to comb through the more than one THOUSAND pages of this bill. Maybe, just maybe, if they had, they would have noticed that little passage in there about, well, bonuses, for starters. But no, that is asking too much of our elected officials.

And so now, we have finger pointing between senators and representatives, the Department of the Treasury, and the White House. Do I even need to tell you that the White House is COMPLETELY blameless in this?? Oh, you know Obama is taking ZERO responsibility for the tax payers, many of whom have lost their own jobs, not just paying to keep these companies afloat, but giving them BONUSES!!! Oh, yes - Obama is just railing away, despite his Chief of Staff actually working on the whole piece that had the bonuses in it. Oh, wait - that was two minutes ago. That story has already changed to make everything, absolutely everything, Chris Dodd's fault. Except - Oh Wait - now we find out that Tim Geithner, the man who can't even be bothered to download Freakin' TURBO TAX, has admitted that Dodd was ASKED to put in this little loophole. By the Treasury Department. Oops!

So, um, Chris - how happy are you now that you threw your support to Obama?!?! Hahahahahaha! I mean, karma's a bitch, ain't it??

Anywho - the whole issue is discussed fully in the video below (H/T to SusanUnPC for the heads up on the video, and Cheneywatch for the video). Pay special attention to Charles Krauthammer:



Well, I gotta say, I think he makes a pretty good point, and not just because he talks about my team, the New York Yankees! Anyway - yes, in the scheme of things, it is not that much money. But I think what bugs people about it all, besides it being OUR taxpaying dollars, is the hubris of it all.

More importantly, though, is the manner in which the Democrats went about this. They have forgotten that when they are solely in power, they will solely take the blame, too. Rightly so, in this case, I think we can agree. Pelosi crafted this pork-laden stimulus bill, any number of top Democrats, they rammed it through, claiming all kinds of horrors would befall us if they didn't, then Obama sat on it for a couple of days so he could finish up his SECOND vacation (he's now on his third - in two months), then jet off to Denver to sign it. Yes, I can see why it was so important for them to use fear mongering tactics, then sit back and relax. And apparently, even THEN, no one bothered to read the damn thing. So we get loopholes like the one Dodd, or Emanuel, or Pelosi, or Reid, or Geithner, or WHOEVER the hell it really was, to allow bonuses for people at AIG. That kind of thing just doesn't sit very well with a lot of people. Still, it is, as Krauthammer was implying, a smokescreen for the BIGGER issues at hand, at which we should be looking, and that is the proposed Budget, the Economy, and the billions in earmark projects for which we are paying.

Well, wait - let me ask you, in this completely scientific way: Are YOU mad that your money is going to pay these other people's bonuses, especially at a company that you have already given around $173 BILLION dollars? Yes? Well, David Axelrod doesn't think you are. I am not kidding. That is his latest message: that the American people don't give a crap about stuff like this. Greg Sargent had this at The Plum:

Come on, guys, can’t we get the message straight on this one?

Yesterday I noted that Rahm Emanuel had said that Obama saw the AIG fiasco as a “big distraction” from efforts to fix the economy. Later in the day, Obama walked that back, asserting that the public was right to be “angry” about the whole mess and right to find it “consuming.”

Today, another senior Obama adviser, David Axelrod, is throwing in his lot with Rahm and the AIG-isn’t-a-huge-deal camp:

“People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG,” Axelrod said. “They are thinking about their own jobs.”

So are people upset about this, or aren’t they? Actually, people are thinking about the AIG disaster. Yesterday’s Gallup poll found that a big majority is very upset about it. Only 11% said they are “not particularly bothered” by it.

Again, this just seems weird politically. Why pretend that folks aren’t pissed off about this at a time when Republicans are moving aggressively to paint Obama as too passive on the issue and position themselves as the outraged and heroic defenders of the taxpapers?

Update: David Kurtz says: “I honestly don’t get what up-side they see politically in taking this tack.” He suggests that it’s “tone deaf.” Agreed on both counts.

I agree on both counts, too, in case you are keeping score.

Has it really only been two months of this guy? Good grief. I wonder who's going to have to take the fall for Obama next? Hmmm, maybe that new pup the girls are getting (and so much for the whole shelter dog thing - I think we all knew that was just words, too)...

Honestly, I'm getting motion sickness from all of this...