Apparently, Tim Geithner is about to go on CNN and admit he was the one who put through the bonus loophole in the stimulus bill. But he’s still telling the “afraid of lawsuit” story that Larry Summers already spun.Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNN Thursday his department asked Sen. Chris Dodd to include a loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed bailed-out insurance giant American International Group to keep its bonuses.

It’s no surprise Rush Limbaugh opposes the Employee Free Choice Act with the same old “sky is falling” rhetoric that amasses him millions of dollars and helps pay for all those, um, medications he inhales takes. After all, why would scrum like him be on the side of hard-working employees getting better treatment at work, not to mention pensions and affordable health care?

But the hyperbole spewing forth against the Employee Free Choice Act from more straight-laced representatives of the Big Business elite is a sure sign the Corporate Gods are afraid, reaaaaalllly afraid, that with the Employee Free Choice Act, America’s workers would have a fair playing field to get a voice on the job by joining unions.

Just double checking: this is still 2009, right? Because this is beyond ludicrous and insulting:Although Ms. Johnsen is a well-regarded scholar and spent five years in leadership roles at the OLC under the Clinton administration — one and a half of those years as head — Republicans were quick to dismiss her qualifications.

In December of last year, CBS News interviewed Nicholas Ashooh, AIG’s senior vice president of communication, about AIG’s retention program (video):

Ashooh said the retention program does not include anyone in the firm’s financial products business, the tiny arm of the company that torpedoed AIG with its high-risk, bad loans.

We now know that AIG’s retention program included $450 million in bonus payments to Financial Products Division executives to be paid out in 2009.

C’mon, people. It’s only $165 million! What’s the big deal?

This is a trifling amount of money when our economy is on fire and when AIG is hemorrhaging billions.

Santelli:

“Now think about it this way – maybe I’m missing something, but the outrage seems to be about ‘M’s – millions of dollars, right?

I’m trying to figure out the politics behind the bill moving swiftly through the House to tax bonuses paid to employees by TARP recipients. Obviously it’s an attempt to get in front of a tsunami of public rage that “nobody could have anticipated”:

I interpreted this bill to mean that Congress doesn’t want to deal with forcing AIG to break the contracts that call for $1 billion more in bonus

Shepard Fairey has donated his Love Unites art work to FAIR (Freedom, Action, Inclusion, Rights) a Southern California-based grassroots organization fighting for marriage equality and the repeal of California’s Proposition 8.

All the oil companies got Iraq for its birthday was a 25 percent stake in its own oil.

I chatted with Elijah Cummings briefly yesterday in the hallway at the AIG hearings. He had been the first member in the hearing room, and as others drifted in and out, he was there almost the entire time. I followed him out shortly after Kanjorski dropped the bomb about having known about the AIG bonuses over a month ago, and Liddy confirmed that Ben Bernanke both knew about the

Well, thank you masters of the universe.

That was quite a display.  But I’m not certain we got anything more out of yesterday’s “don’t show, don’t tell” other than certainty that what we are doing now sure as hell isn’t working.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t quite buy the “look at the shiny object while we hide things under the rug” technique…