Obama: I Will Courageously, Selflessly Take Responsibility for the AIG Bonus Firestorm, Even Though, Seriously, I'm Not Responsible At All

Hello, he lied.

This is great. As soon as I heard "Obama's taking responsibility for the AIG mess," I asked, "Is he really taking responsibility, or dodging it responsibility while he makes a spectacle of graciously accepting responsibility that isn't his?"

You be the judge:

President Barack Obama said he will take the blame for bonuses being paid at American International Group Inc. if it will settle an intense finger pointing under way over how such payments were possible at a company that has received tremendous taxpayer aid.

"Washington is all in a tizzy and everybody is pointing fingers at each other and saying it's their fault, the Democrats' fault, the Republicans' fault," he said at a town hall meeting Wednesday.

The Republican's fault? The only Republican in this mess is Olympia Snowe, whose contribution to the bill was language prohibiting the controversial bonuses.

It was a Democrat, Chris Dodd, who changed that language to permit the bonuses, at the behest of a Democrat, Tim Geithner, who was appointed by another Democrat, Barack Obama.

So who the fuck exactly is saying it's the Republicans' fault except for our graciously blame-accepting president?

"Listen, I'll take responsibility. I'm the President."

Note: He will take responsibility. Not that he is actually responsible. He'll just take responsibility, because he's a great guy.

And he's not taking responsibility because he's actually responsible -- just because he's president.

He also make clear that it isn't really his fault. "We didn't grant these contracts," he said.

Grant them? Um, I guess AIG itself "granted" them. But it was Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who demanded they be allowed, and Obama's Democrat ally Chris Dodd who slipped the language in.

Forgive me for repetition -- but these facts seem rather relevant and I don't want anyone to miss them.

But he added: "So for everybody in Washington who's busy scrambling, trying to figure out how to blame somebody else, just go ahead and talk to me, because it's my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don't make them."

Chris Matthews and Andrew Sullivan to squeal how noble and forthright Obama is about accepting responsibility in 3... 2... 1...

Thanks to gg.

I'm Going to Start Calling Obama "Shaggy:" Because he operates a lot like Shaggy in this (content warning) song, in which a guy gets caught red-handed cheating on his girlfriend -- she sees him banging the chick over the kitchen counter -- and he just decides to tough it out insisting "It wasn't me."

posted by Ace at 10:42 PM

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