Yea, who cares if he had anything to do with the problems at AIG. I'm angry, so his contracts shouldn't be legally binding! I need someone to blame and it might as well be him.

I think the best way to ensure that AIG can repay all of the tax money they were loaned is to fire every employee there!

I think WP might have a point here. The AIG payments have clearly touched a nerve with alot of Americans so it's a big issue for them. The fact that Obama does have a well-oiled publicity machine means he should have been able to manage this better.

What I would love to see in the U.S system is the kind of slanging match you get in the English Parliament where the Prime Minister is made to work and think on his feet. This press conference felt stage-managed and maybe that's the accepted practice but he was hardly having to dodge missiles here. I think you can ask those sorts of questions without appearing disrespectful.

Brown does a press conference now (maybe not too recently though) and I recall him getting battered by some of the journalists. It keeps them honest

WP, you are really failing at being a troll. Try to come up with something a little better than comparing the deadly urgency of 9/11 and Katrina to the teakettle tempest of AIG's .2% bonuses.

Comparing Obama delaying remarks about AIG bonuses to Bush's reaction time for 9/11 and Katrina is 100% stupid.

They are not the same "kind" of events, but both of them were disasters the outrage the public and are wide-spread in the effect they have. The 'reaction time' accusation applies to the President for any major news story that impacts the country like that.

The POTUS doesn't live in a bubble. He's got advisors that instantly brief the guy on anything important within a minute of it hitting the news. The furor over AIG has been going on for two weeks. It is fair to criticize both Bush and Obama for taking too long to react to events that causing an uproar or destabilize things. You may not LIKE it if you are an Obama fanboi who dares not hear anything bad about him. Cowboy up and admit the man-child screwed up on this one. Admit that it is perfectly fair for the media to bring it up his mistakes. Admit that your boy also pretty much sucks big-green zombie ones at taking criticism. Bush ignored all criticism like a brick wall. Obama's reaction to criticism is to chew out everyone and whine like a little baby.

Comparing Obama delaying remarks about AIG bonuses to Bush's reaction time for 9/11 and Katrina is 100% stupid.

It was a legitimate question. Bush was justifiably harped on for not reacting 'fast enough' after 9/11... Not reacting 'fast enough' after Katrina... Now the news media harps on the man-child for not acting fast enough with AIG and you whine about it? Oh - I see... :eyeroll: When BUSH acts slow it is because he is out of touch and stupid. When OBAMA acts slow it is because "he wants to know what he's talking about first..."

It really is amazing just how much of this guy's Flavor-Aid some people will frantically guzzle to justify hypocrisy. They when they start keeling over and dying from Obama's poison they'll try to think of some way to blame someone else for it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Obama, cnn, ed henry, press conference, AIG' to 'Obama, cnn, ed henry, press conference, AIG, oh snap' - edited by sometimes

Oh, and just a quote from Dodd to let us know that he knew more than he let us know he knew:

“We wrote the language in the bill, the deal with bonuses, golden parachutes, excessive executive compensation that was adopted unanimously by the United States Senate in the stimulus bill,” Dodd told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon.

“But for that language, there would have been no language to deal with this at all.”

Update:

From AP - Dodd initially said he had nothing to do with watering down executive pay proposal and then acknowledged Wednesday night that he had agreed to do so. Now Dodd says he had meant to deny that he was knowingly creating a loophole for AIG bonus payments.

Uh huh.

http://www.videosift.com/video/AIG-Political-Donations-Chris-Dodd-Winner-Obama-Second

Phony outrage over AIG is a diversion from the 3-pronged truth:

1) "Moderate" Repubicans played a part, but primarily Democrats caused this economic crisis via Fannie and Freddie corruption. No fking Repubican woke up one day and said, "I'll buy votes by forcing banks to give mortgages to people who can't afford them!"

2) The scamulus is a massive theft and failure, and it's also a creation of Democrats plus 3 moron Repubicans.

3) The morons on both sides of the aisle who thought AIG was "vital" enough to save with taxpayer dollars are like rescuers at a sinking ship, disgusted that some of the rescuees are criminals obliged to be saved as well. In fact, Congress is so disgusted they hope no one notices they're the ones that sank the ship in the first place.

OK, but it's a lie.

I suggest people read more into this story before believing what's being fed to us.


from Glenn Greenwald:
"That is simply not what happened. What actually happened is the opposite. It was Dodd who did everything possible -- including writing and advocating for an amendment -- which would have applied the limitations on executive compensation to all bailout-receiving firms, including AIG, and applied it to all future bonus payments without regard to when those payments were promised. But it was Tim Geithner and Larry Summers who openly criticized Dodd's proposal at the time and insisted that those limitations should apply only to future compensation contracts, not ones that already existed. The exemption for already existing compensation agreements -- the exact provision that is now protecting the AIG bonus payments -- was inserted at the White House's insistence and over Dodd's objections"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd/index.html

wait a tic...

this segment of rachel's bashes on:

dana perino (bush admin press secretary)
rush limbaugh (republican gasbag)
sen. mitch mcconnell - kentucky (r)
sen. bob corker - tennessee (r)
sen. john mccain - arizona (r)

with absolutely no mention of *any* democrat, specifically this:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/18/aig.bonuses.congress/index.html

"Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN Wednesday that he was responsible for language added to the federal stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored.

"Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.

"Both Dodd and the official, who asked not to be named, said it was because administration officials were afraid the government would face numerous lawsuits without the new language.

"Dodd, a Democrat, told CNN's Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer that Obama administration officials pushed for the language to an amendment designed to limit bonuses and "golden parachutes" at those companies."

and then rachel throws in a somewhat disingenuous correlation between median household income growth from the '70s through to 2000, and then falling to negative growth over the last eight years, as she would have us believe, because of wall street deregulation?? isn't such a decline far more likely because of the tech bubble bursting at the end of the last decade, or a recession beginning in march 2001, or 9/11 and a subsequently ham-handed 'war on terror'?

i'm as outraged as the next american over this fiasco... but is what rachel's doing here really 'news'?

it seems dishonest, at least to me, so i guess the 'lies' tag is fitting

As a senator, Obama received $101,332 from AIG. Dodd got even more.

These donkeys passes the stimulus, it's their fault.

When Olbyloon or John Leibowitz or MS-LSD admits this, I'll upvote this bespectacled loser.

>> ^Psychologic:
I doubt they have much choice unless there was fraud involved. They can't just nullify any contract they don't agree with unless there is something illegal about it.


This whole nonsense about contractually obligated bonuses is ridiculous. Bonuses should be rewards for good work done, not for hanging around while the company fails. Contractually obligated or not, there's no reason for anyone in AIG to receive a bonus.

They should deny the bonuses and take the heat for it. They'll get sued and might have to pay them later, but the legal process will take a few years and by that point, they'll have either gone under or be back on their feet and the US taxpayers won't be footing the bill for it.

i honestly can't tell whether that was sarcastic. either way, fucking awesome comment.

>> ^imstellar28:
You "tell em" jon, just like you did when you supported giving them money in the first place.
Why shouldn't they get bonuses? They just increased their revenue from something negative to 100+ billion, and they didn't even do any real work; they just convinced some scared people to give them free money.
If you had increased your company's revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars, you probably would have received a multi-million dollar bonus as well.