The AIG Bonuses Scandal has the potential to strengthen the Obama Administration.

Criticism was starting to mount over the policies the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama Administration had been pursuing; reducing the proportion of populist anger at the corporate elite and big business. Then the story about the bonuses being given to AIG and, specifically, those in the AIG Financial Products division who caused so much of AIG and the overall financial system's problems broke in the national media. Populist outrage -- exemplified apparently by pitchforks? -- has been the big buzz; outrage at AIG, at corporate executive compensation, at Treasury Secretary Geithner, at President Obama. If handled and channeled properly, however, the Obama Administration might come out of the AIG Bonuses Scandal with less antipathy directed at them and more momentum for their policies.

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Former Vice President War Criminal Dick Cheney did an interview with CNN. If you listen carefully, especially in the later parts of the interview, he takes breaths between statements and... well... he sounds like Darth Vader. Seriously. And by seriously, I don't mean the right-wingers, they are by no means serious, at all.


http://newsblogging.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/darth-vader/

Do we call it a Twitterview?

ABC's George Stephanopoulos interviewed Senator John McCain via the microblogging website Twitter today, in another cross-over between mainstream media and developing internet technology. Stephanopoulos asked about AIG bonuses and his vote for the TARP funds. McCain blasted AIG's foreign counterparties, the identities of which were released over the weekend as the story about bonuses broke. Former Vice President Cheney's warning that President Obama was putting the US at risk of a new terrorist attack was also brought up and McCain "Tweeted" that it was "too early to draw that conclusion."

The exchange was slow and required a few tries to get some questions and answers through. Twitter restricts each statement to 140 typed characters each and in order to get a response one must reload their Twitter list. Despite this clumsiness, the interview was enhanced by commentary from others in the Twittersphere. When pressed about his vote for the TARP bailout and AIG McCain refuted "i voted for first tarp but that doesn't mean i voted to bail out AIG." Within five minutes a Tweet was sent out from "mcorley" -- who is also known as Matt Corley of the blog Think Progress -- that "on Sep 17, McCain said he 'didn't want to' bailout AIG, 'But' millions of people's livelihoods 'were at risk here,'" and that George Stephanopoulos's own ABC had "reported at the time that McCain's words 'sound[ed] somewhat accepting of the Fed's action on AIG.'" The exchange was also supplemented by a whole crowd of Tweeters' questions, comments, and follow-ups.

As new online technologies continue to be adopted by mainstream journalists and politicians, exchanges like this will provide interesting opportunities to pursue answers from leaders under the watch of millions of users.