You Gotta Love A Good Bailout, Until You Don't

Everyone still has their knickers in a twist about the $165 million paid in bonuses to the dicks at AIG, except for CNBC’s Rick Santelli and the guys who actually got them.

That whole idea that if these guys just understood the public outrage, they’d voluntarily give their bonuses up? Ain’t gonna happen. Even their big boss pronounced himself disappointed that he can’t rescind the payments because they are a contractually-obligated “retention payment,” though New York State Attorney General Andrew “Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Term” Cuomo found out that 11 of the dudes who got “retention payments” weren’t actually retained. Oh, and TPMMuckraker discovered that, once upon a time, AIG used to just fire assholes who demanded their contractually-obligated bonuses. [Crooks & Liars, The Hill, NY Times, LA Times, TPMMuckraker]

Dana Perino thinks everyone’s just being mean to hard-working, middle-class Americans when we crap on the AIG executives’ multi-million dollar bonuses. [ThinkProgress]

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wants to know who stripped out his provision from the original bailout bill that would have capped all bonuses at $100,000. I’m curious about that myself, given that everyone is swearing that no one really knew these massive, contractually-obligated, gonna-cost-the-taxpayers-$1-billion-to-forego bonuses were coming. [Huffington Post]

And although the new rage in Washington is taxing the shit out of any AIG exec stupid enough to take a bonus (Cuomo says we’ll know your names soon!), House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel is having none of that. He says that the tax code shouldn’t be used for political purposes. Now who is going to go out and investigate how much money AIG execs have donated to Charlie’s precious CUNY building honoring Charlie? Bueller? [Huffington Post]

George W. Bush is keeping it classy: he says that Obama deserves to not be criticized by him. That’s why he’s having Dick Cheney, Dana Perino, Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove do it for him. [MSNBC]

Obama, meanwhile, is about to sign off on the UN declaration that LGBT people shouldn’t be jailed and killed for their sexual orientation that Dubya wasn’t a fan of because he was worried it might keep us from discriminating against LGBT people here. Duh. It is sort of the point. [Huffington Post]

The new Washington rumor is that Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher may be headed to the State Department to become the Undersecretary for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. But how will she host awesome holiday parties? [Washington Post, Wonkette]

Arlen Specter may run as an Independent so that people in Pennsylvania forget he’s a Republican and vote for him anyway. Hey, it worked for Joe Lieberman. [The Hill]

Al Franken wants Norm Coleman to pay his legal bills when he becomes the second Democratic Senator from Minnesota. It’s funny to think that all the Republicans who donated cash money to Norm Coleman will see it end up in Al Franken‘s pockets. [Star-Tribune]

Kim Jong Il has decided he doesn’t need our stinkin’ food. His people, well, that’s another story, but when did he ever give a shit about them anyway? [Newser]