AIG BONUSES: OBAMA'S BOGUS "SCANDAL"

"Where there's smoke there's fire." (Anonymous) "But sometimes where there's smoke there's a smoke machine." Never, never underestimate the Obama Machine's ability to blow smoke -- or to pluck scapegoats out of a hat (remember Rush Limbaugh?)

My political buddy, Laureen, a nurse/manager from the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area of PA says that the national uproar over the AIG bonuses is mainly a trick by the Obama Administration.

Her point is that the bonuses at issue (which were specifically developed and approved by Chris Dodd) are being used to deflect attention from a small detail: that Obama's lurch toward socialism is wrecking the country.

See, if they can make everyone angry at some minor players at AIG, we won't be nearly as angry at Barack and friends. Laureen's additional point might be that said bonuses represent less than 0.1% (one-tenth-of-one-percent) of the $170 billion that has gone to AIG. They want us fighting over nickels and dimes and ignorning the huge bags of cash changing hands.

Guess what? My friend Laureen is dead-solid-perfect in her assessment (which follows in boldfaced itaclics).

Sadly, Obama/Axelrod/Emmanuel set many traps, and we often fall into them. Forget AIG, please! It's the political equivalent of what Boy Scouts used to call a "snipe hunt."

Laureen pleads:

PLEASE stay focused. Don't let them [Obama and the media] DISTRACT YOU! You need to know that these were RETENTION BONUSES that were given because these people were being FIRED. And it was already WELL KNOWN that they were being given by Obama and Congress last YEAR!

This is just a DISTRACTION by obama because his popularity is diminishing and the tea parties are gaining strength. PLEASE don't fall for their tactics. You know as well as I do how they play the game.

These [bonus recipients] people are EMPLOYEES that are getting FIRED and in order to keep them on for an additional few months so they wouldn't quit, they were offered retention bonuses to help with the re-organization of their company...otherwise they would have just quit [and many of them are anyway].

Obama also has his e-mails going out to his supporters to try to get them to go door-to-door to promote his socialist agenda and he is trying to distract Americans from this fact , as well as his plans to spend another trillion dollars in stimulus. PLEASE stay focused on his agenda rather than his distraction techniques.

Please don't be offended by my email. I just want to make sure we remain on the same side. This is how they DIVIDE people.

Also, Look what they are doing to AIG [people]! I mean they are threatening to tax EMPLOYEE's money at 90%!!!!!!!!! That is what you call COMMUNISM in my opinion. They are THREATENING to create NEW LAWS to be able to TAX EMPLOYEES PAYCHECKS AT WHATEVER RATE THEY CHOOSE!!!!!

Welcome to Obamaland!


Let me add this to Laureen's points: Confiscating anyone's income -- whether it is 100 people or a million -- is obviously unconstitutional. The AIG bonus arrangement was approved by Congress at the behest of Chairman Dodd.

I've been getting some very minor blowback from people who buy the MSM spin on AIG. The simplest point remains that it's not constitutional (we still have one, don't we?) to seize people's income, especially when that income is authorized in a federal statute (and one buffed up by Chris Dodd!).

If somebody else's income can be confiscated, then why can't mine . . . or yours?

I'm still waiting to see even one of the thousands of Wall Streeters who contributed so much money to Obama being punished (Citigroup especially). I'm waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting.

Is it becoming clear why Wall Street contributed so much dough to Obama? Maybe they knew something we didn't about their upcoming "needs"? You betcha!