Friday Night Compendium

First off, we have Senator Chris Dodd, who seems to be in hot water now that facts (stubborn things) have begun to crop up about his AIG connections (wife included).

Then we have the disclosure that Gov. Sebelius (Obama's HHS nominee) is also a tax cheat (seems to be a nasty pattern with his nominees now, isn't it).

Then we have Obama's first federal judicial nominee who says "no" to prayers to Jesus, but "sure, why not" for prayers to Allah.  The Republicans appear to finally be showing some sort of backbone, and plan to filibuster the nominee.

But this is to be expected from "The One".  You see, after dissing UK Prime Minister Brown by giving him such a low-rent and thoughtless gift as a boxed set of DVDs (in the wrong format, to boot), he then has the class to gift an iPod to the Queen of England... with his own speeches on it.  AND... he and Mrs. Obama show disrespect by not doing a bow or curtsey before her.  but, WHO does Obama actually decide to bow to???  How about the King of Saudi Arabia!

But, don't worry.  He's not the only one in the administration who acts completely clueless and classless in other countries.  Hillary made a first-class a** of herself just the other day in Mexico.

In case you want to keep track, The Blue Boar has a link to a website that's keeping a track of all "The One's" missteps.  Not a shabby list for such a short time in office.

A Second Look at that Achy Breaky AIG mess...

Per Gateway Pundit, The One knew about the bonuses for months:

Cue the outrage. 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.

Seems that The One also got his bonus from AIG last year, along with Senator Dodd (via Ace):

Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.

The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and "misjudged" the risk.

Seems also that Dodd's wife is a former Director of AIG's Bermuda-based control company:

From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an "outside" director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to a public offering of 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of stock to AIG - giving AIG a 20% stake in IPC. (AIG sold its 13.397 million shares in IPC in August, 2006.)

Of course, the Republicans got ripped apart for objecting to the bailout.  And Michelle Malkin wants us all to take a look behind the curtain to see that the outrage against the bonuses is manufactured.  Perhaps we should be asking why the bailout occurred in the first place.