I Like Boiled Carrots
By Johnny Roosh
…but wouldn’t want to be compared to one, and certainly not by a woman (it sort of refers to one’s manhood, and not favorably, if you know what I mean).
Barack Obama even needs a teleprompter to get mad.
…but he always looks good doing it.
As he watches the fury of ordinary Americans bubble up at those who continue to plunder our economy, he should keep in mind one of my dad’s favorite Gaelic sayings: “Never bolt the door with a boiled carrot.”
At the White House on Monday, the president read reporters some tough talk from the teleprompter about the chuckleheads at A.I.G., accusing them of “recklessness and greed.”
But it was his own boiled carrots who acted shocked at bonuses that they should have known were coming, and should have dismantled before handing A.I.G. another $30 billion two weeks ago.
I don’t have a ton of time today to put my usual snark on this…but it’s a pretty good take on the veneer that is our President and his Cabinet, who have apparently been caught by this whole AIG debacle with their pants down (pun intended).
For the first time since last fall’s election, Democrats and the Obama administration are backpedaling furiously on an issue easily understood by financially strapped taxpayers: $165 million in bonuses paid out at bailed-out AIG.
Gone are the days when they could merely bludgeon the Bush administration and promise to seek bipartisan solutions to the nation’s economic problems.
Now, in control of the White House and Congress, they are struggling to come up with an explanation for what no one in either party seems moved to defend.
But is it all Obama’s fault? Of course not.
While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, [Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)] added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” — which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.
And of course no one knew AIG was going to pay out millions in bonuses until they paid out millions in bonuses, right?
For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn’t until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Boiled Carrots. Yum.
March 18th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Obama’s losing Dowd?
It won’t be long before we’re hearing clownie defend The Won in terms similar to Mitch defending W. At this rate that’ll be in weeks, not years, though.
March 18th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I’m with McConnell, Boehner, and of course Rush. Big Gubmint has no business telling business who to pay off.
Better yet, I’m with McCain, let AIG fail. All those banks, securities firms, and property owners who bought insurance from ’em need to learn their lesson.
Free market capitalism, love it or leave it.
/jc
March 18th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
It’s sad that slash is still blaming the poor state of the economy on GOP senators, congressmen, and radio talk show hosts when Pelosi & Reid have been running congress for over two years.
March 18th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Well, Slash, do you view AIG as too big to fail? If so, why do we keep the idiots who drove it to failure? The “retention” rhetoric is stupid — the idiots took unreasonable chances and drove the company into the ditch, and suggesting we need to keep them and reward them only makes Geithner and Dodd look like even bigger idiots.
March 18th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
If you ran a good, conservative banking business and stayed away from sub-prime loans, as FHB did in Hawaii & as I understand TCF did in Minnesota, your reward for avoiding risky investments is that the government will bail out your foolish competitors.
We will no longer allow the market to punish banks that invest foolishly.
Slash’s comments have been even more off-target than usual lately, but today he demonstrated both a failure to understand who runs the government _and_ first year economics. I look forward to seeing him flounder in inanity as he continues to back the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime. At this point he’s not far from incoherent babble.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
nerdman, actually, you may want to rethink your retention screed – here is the money quote from today’s hearing:
Liddy: What we asked them to do was to stay, do a specific amount of work, and if you do that, at the end of that period of time and you’ve done that work, we will give you a retention bonus. That’s what those payments were. So they did the work. They reduced the risk from that $2.7 trillion down to $1.6 trillion. And the American taxpayer is better off because we have less risk.
March 19th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I remember back when the bailout was first being requested by the Bush administration. I particularly remember THAT administration INSISTING there be no limits on compensation. From everything I have heard so far, the provision put in by both house and senate (by a dem AND a republican) was removed by Dodd at the request of the BUSH administration.
At the time the request was made, there had been no apparent mention of any of the bonus arrangements – not AIG’s, not the other recipients’.
I can accept the plausible deniability that Greitner did not know about them, having recused himself when he was tapped for the Obama administration.
But that still leaves Bernanke and Paulson who had to have known to act on behalf of the BUSH administration. It would seem to me that the next person to get roasted by congress (who I believe are now hastily covering their respective backsides) would be Bernanke, maybe with Paulson brought back in to do some ‘splainin… a WHOLE lot of explaining.
News coverage, particularly with the shrill screaching of partisan idealogies from both sides, strikes me as much the same thing as watching a magic act – exercises in deception and misdirection. What is really going on is there…. just not emphasized so that it is clearly visible.
Beyond that, I found Liddy’s explanation about fearing litigation ludicrous. Or the idea that he couldn’t dare to share the names of the bonus recipients for security reasons. Are we to believe the bonus recipients would be filing law suits to receive those bonuses, had they not been paid, as John Does? I think not. As IMplausible as the notion that these jerks were irreplacable – given the current job market.
Meanwhile NY AG Cuomo seems to be receiving the bonus recipient information he subpeonaed from some of the other tarp recipients. Without any conditions. Cuomo could come out of this as the new hero of the hour….
March 20th, 2009 at 3:31 am
Dog Gone:
“THAT administration” didn’t vote this into law. They could have been “INSISTING” all day long, and the Dem controlled congress could have told them to shove it. They didn’t.
When you say you doubt “these jerks were irreplacable”, do you base that on anything other than guesswork? Just asking. Turning justplainangry’s quote into a monster.com ad might be a funny read.
I don’t know if what Liddy said was true, but he is working for free, so I assume he didn’t take the job so he could practice his lying technique. Please present any evidence you have to the contrary, my mind is open on that topic.
The real magic act is this: instead of talking about the TRILLIONS of spending in the US budget, we are talking about MILLIONS of spending in some company’s budget. *poof* From talking about the substantial to the insubstantial. It’s Magic!