Your Liberal Media In Action

Front page on the Washington Post: AIG's bonuses could very well sink the entire Obama administration!(emphasis mine)

President Obama's apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.

Politicians in both parties flocked to express outrage over $165 million in bonuses paid out to executives at the company, demanding answers from the president and swamping yesterday's rollout of his efforts to spark lending to small businesses.

The populist anger at the executives who ran their firms into the ground is increasingly blowing back on Obama, whom aides yesterday described as having little recourse in the face of legal contracts that guaranteed those bonuses.

Wow, not even the GOP could have written a better article. Obama is floundering! He's in over his head! Eight weeks into his failed failure of a failed term he's failing badly! Last Obama aide out of the White House, turn out the lights, please.

But the bonus issue, in particular, is hounding Obama as he pursues his larger goals, in part because of the president's own repeated declarations of outrage -- offered again yesterday -- aimed especially at the firms that are feeding at the public trough.

In February, Obama announced tough new restrictions on executive compensation that promised an end to massive salaries for executives of failing companies. Similar rules were eventually written into legislation and hailed as evidence that executive compensation would be checked.

But reports about the latest AIG bonuses quickly undermined whatever political capital Obama has earned with his past efforts.

Got that? OBAMA IS AN UNQUALIFIED FAILURE AFTER EIGHT WEEKS! Surely the American people have spoken!

President Barack Obama's job approval rating, at 61% in the latest three-day average of Gallup Poll Daily tracking, is slightly above where George W. Bush's and in particular Bill Clinton's were at this point in mid-March of the first years of their administrations.

Umm...what? That can't be! Surely the President's agenda is in deep trouble!

A new Gallup Poll finds just over half of Americans, 53%, favoring a new law that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers; 39% oppose it. This is a key issue at stake with the Employee Free Choice Act now being considered in Congress.

Ummm....OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST! (storms off)

All winguttian satire aside, there's not a whole lot Obama can do about AIG's bonus situation as I explained yesterday. In fact, a lot more bonus shenanigans and counterparty payoff three card monte is on the way for bailout recipients. However, the notion that AIG has already deep-sixed the President and his agenda is pretty ludicrous. Nobody's blaming Obama for this...except the Washington Post. Funny how that works. Even the wingnuts are blaming, well, AIG for this.

Let's blame AIG for getting themsleves into this mess, needing bailouts from Bush before Obama took office. Course, that hasn't occured to the Village. ITEISATDF. The article glosses over how Treasury has decided it doesn't need to give AIG that latest $30 billion in bailout cash if AIG insists on handing out millions in bonuses.

And while Treasury taking that money out of AIG's bailout is a great idea, there is another option: Plan N. Nationalize AIG and fire people. It really is that simple. If anything, AIG has just brilliantly made the case as to why Plan N needs to be executed now...and the people would certainly back taking over failed companies that required billions and billions of taxpayer money and firing the people responsible for losing all that money in the first place.

The Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo has more on why AIG may have just forced Obama's hand on Plan N. I'm all for THAT action.