Obama and Geithner let AIG get away with paying the bonuses, and then they acted like they were enraged. They're playing us. This isn't cool.

maybe we need to be talking about how bad the reigning Democratic party is instead: top administration doesn't even know who's overseeing the AIG bailout, for starters...Obama's double-talk is starting to catch up with him regarding the bonuses for AIG; Americans aren't buying it, that he just heard

about it the past several days. And if that's true, then he's not doing his job. But.. guess its more important for Obama

to be on the Jay Leno show, so he can campaign even more for the next election.

This is what happens when government(politics) gets involved in business. Obama and Dodd accepted lots of money from Wall Street for their campaigns; Geithner was part of Wall Street. At the very least, its a conflict of interest for any of them to deal with AIG and the rest of Wall Street. They knew about

the bonuses, they're faking their outrage. The taxpayers are being played.

Obama will need to convince much of his own party. People are turned off by the flaky liberal spending. There's already 15 Democrats in Congress forming their own centrist coalition.

Any nation that is not economically stable IS vulnerable. Many people justify Obama's spending by comparing it to Bush's Iraq war spending, as if two wrongs make a right. McCain's first response to the financial crisis was to fire the head of the SEC. Although it seemed hasty at the time, now I'm starting to wonder whether he was on the right track. That's how a business would approach it, and then they'd file bankruptcy.

Wasn't Obama's major "constitutional law"? How do things like

a bonus tax get this far? This is a waste of time, and, I doubt very much whether our government even has the mechanism in place to consistently execute the tax. This is a dangerous precedent. After the bonus tax, what's next?

First of all, why are we comparing Obama to Bush? Just about anybody looks better than Bush at this point in history. Two wrongs don't make a right. And, the uncomfortable part of the interview was when Obama was laughing almost hysterically about the automotive industry, not once, but twice. The automotive industry's situation is disgusting---not even laughable. Obama's laughter was so inappropriate and unexpected that it occurred to me that maybe he was high, or something.

There's no doubt Democrats are responsible for pressuring

Fannie Mae to give loans to people who wouldn't normally qualify. Pelosi is just a flaky liberal who will do anything to attract voters to the Democratic party, whether it makes sense or not. Her recent statement about "protecting" illegal immigrants is beyond belief. All immigrants are not equal. The immigrants who follow immigration laws, learn English, become citizens, are the kind we need. The illegal immigrants are criminals, and they're a threat to all Americans. If they are not willing to follow the rules to get into the U.S., they are not going to be law abiding once they're here, either.

Pelosi is willing to endanger Americans in order to protect illegal immigrants.

Most of Obama's contributions came from lawyers and Wall Street, even though the media made it appear the small donations over the internet were responsible.

If our government had handled the bailout in an adult, businesslike process, something could have been negotiated early on, regarding the bonuses. However, they panicked and reacted instead, so now its a clusterfk. This is why we have to insist our government facilitates healthcare reform but keeps it in the private sector.

Here we go again, the flaky liberals are too idealistic to open

their eyes and realize what this financial crisis means --it doesn't matter what Obama inherited, and it doesn't matter what

he "wants" -- the focus should be on creating jobs, stabilizing our economy, (and reforming healthcare in a way that will not add to the deficit), before we all go bankrupt. Many Americans and government officials are being downright childish, "demanding" that we do everything they ever dreamed of, right now, as if you can keep piling it on, and ignore the current financial situation. I'm glad there are still some sane democrats (30?) who are willing to put their foot down on this budget.

Considering how government screws up everything it touches,

I imagine after a couple years of taxpayers watching their taxdollars wasted on bureaucracy, they'll think twice before voting for a tax and spend, flaky liberal again.

Legalizing marijuana will Save the government money, Free up our court system, along with other medicinal benefits ... but wait, Democratic brains don't think like that -- they're all about Spending money. They'd rather hire more police to arrest every teenager on the street and in every high school for having marijuana, instead. Yeah.

The town hall was a way for Obama to Avoid the Tough questions, like, "why aren't you concerned that your proposed budget will increase our deficit in coming years to 80% of the GDP"? And, "do you realize that with a deficit like that, the U.S. would not meet the criteria to even get into the EU!" (not that we want to, but it puts our deficit into perspective to know that Europe requires countries in the EU to have deficits no more than 30% of their GDP). Instead, he was asked "soft" questions from the public, who are not as on top of the numbers and details like someone from the WSJ or NYT, etc. Obama is going to pursue his agenda at the expense of everything else.

You can't bailout a company that's not competitive to begin with. GM was structurally a failure. That's where the difference is with the banks. The banks were OK before the financial disaster; GM has Not been ok for a long, long time;

bankruptcy is the best thing that could happen for GM.