Life is a strange thing. That's all I can say. Strange. I started out today the way I always do: by hitting Rush Limbaugh's main page and skimming the highlights. I was "curious" to see if his opinion of Obama had changed in the wake of the recent stock market up-tick. Since the Republicans have been howling in outrage for the last month, using the stock market as the be all end all barometer for the president's success, now that it has started moving up, would they change their tune? (I already knew the answer, of course. But I wanted to find the words themselves. It's no fun if you don't let them hang themselves first.) The first article on Rush's site, top left, is titled "Outrage: Geithner and Congress Lied to You About the AIG Bonuses." I rolled my eyes, but clicked through to read it anyway. Rush asserts that Congress deliberately wrote protections for the AIG bonues into the stimulus package that they signed over. Horrifying, if true. Is it true? I checked CNN and found that… yes, it is true. Everyone has started pointing fingers like mad, of course, and no one is willing to say "I made it so that the AIG guys would get their bonuses." However, not only was language allowing the bonuses added - language which would have specifically disallowed the bonuses was REMOVED. According to their statements, no one had any idea what was in that little bill. None at all! They are shocked - shocked! - to hear about these bonus-related clauses. I'm sorry - doesn't anyone read these things first? At the time I write this, the story is being carried by: 1. CNN 2. Ten billion openly right-wing news sources. Sadly, this is the kind of thing that leads to accusations of liberal bias in the mainstream media. Regardless of whether this information casts a bad light on Obama and his administration, it is news, and should be reported as such. The AIG bonus debacle itself is big news, and AIG-related articles are on the front page of every major news outlet. However, none of these articles so much as mention Congress' role in the bonus pay-out. The Washington Post is covering it only in the sense that they have re-published an editorial article from the Associated Press with the vague title, "Cue the Washington outrage." (Terrible title. Could be about anything, really.) The LA Times comes closest, in an article titled "Geithner seeks new powers over financial companies." The first line of the article is, "Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke sought to file a lawsuit to prevent payment of bonuses to AIG executives, but he backed off after learning that a lawsuit could wind up doubling the bonuses." However, the article quickly turns to a discussion of bankruptcy laws, and what to do about AIG now. It never explicitly mentions that the bonuses were allowed in the stimulus bill language. So that's two points on which I agree completely with Rush Limbaugh. Does... does anyone have a cool, damp cloth I can drape over my eyes? I... I think I just need a moment.