WaPo Bullshit....Anger Over Firm Depletes Obama's Political Capital

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.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, peppered with questions about why the president had not done more to block the bonuses at a company that has received $170 billion in taxpayer funds, struggled for an answer yesterday afternoon. He explained that government lawyers are "looking through contracts to see what can be done to wrest these bonuses from their recipients."

Obama himself sought to channel the public's sense of disbelief yesterday. "How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?" he said, declaring the bonuses an "outrage" that violate "fundamental values."

White House aides grasped for actions that could soothe sentiment on Main Street and in the halls of Congress, where the fate of the new president's sweeping agendas on health care, climate change and education will be decided. They suggested that the government will use its latest pledged installment of $30 billion for the ailing company to recover the millions in bonuses paid Friday.

But the damage control did not seem to satisfy incredulous lawmakers in both parties, who said the image of financial executives taking huge bonuses from a taxpayer-funded rescue puts the president in a politically impossible position.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/16/AR2009031600640_pf.html

He can't break a contract, and he can't force the Washington Post to publish a coherent story. What the hell good is he?

:sarcasm:

They propogate bullshit.

the op ed page is without redemption.

"One idea we're kind of thinking about is a tax provision," the Connecticut Democrat said. "We have a right to tax. You could write a tax provision that's narrowly crafted only to the people receiving bonuses. That's a way maybe to deal with it."

Dodd said the notion is in the "earliest of thinking" and has not been settled on as a way to resolve the issue that has set off outrage in Washington and across the country.

In the House, Democrats are trying to shame AIG executives into forgoing the bonuses. They're also investigating possible legal avenues Congress can take to force the company to return money used for bonuses, a House Democratic leadership aide and a House Financial Services Committee aide said Monday.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/16/AIG.bonuses/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

that, it is hard to judge the amount of capital he may lose.

"President Obama's apparent inability . . . increasingly blowing back on Obama . . . struggled for an answer yesterday afternoon . . . White House aides grasped for actions . . . The Obama administration was already facing a skeptical public . . . AIG bonuses quickly undermined whatever political capital Obama has earned."

That's it! The WaPo has officially declared the Obama Administration over.

Reading the Post you'd think Obama had been the president for the past 8 years. This whole AIG problem and bailout plan was engineered by Hank Paulson & Co., wasn't it?

Too bad the Post wasn't as outraged by being lied to repeatedly and made fools of by BushCo when they were fabricating their robot planes dropping anthrax stories and mushroom clouds appearing over American cities via Saddam's fictional WMD.

Give me a break! Is this reporting or a hatchet job?

What is the WP smoking?

It seems WaPo and the weeping Boners believe the President already has unlimited power.

Than again, had President Obama made a stand, they'd be howling about his abuse of power and calling him a communist.