You forgot to do the same for McCain:

Merrill Lynch $371,295
Citigroup Inc $320,251
Morgan Stanley $271,152
Goldman Sachs $230,095
JPMorgan Chase & Co $225,557
UBS AG $182,079
Credit Suisse Group $179,053
Wachovia Corp $169,057
PricewaterhouseCoopers $167,900
Bank of America $155,251
Lehman Brothers $125,357
Bear Stearns $117,498

That's about $2.51 million given by individuals in the banking trade to McCain. Given that Obama had roughly 3 times as much cash donated to his campaign from individuals as McCain (about $650 mil to $230 mil), the $1 million difference means McCain actually got a higher percentage of his cash from bankers.

Guess they bought McCain as well.

Way to completely miss the story, Jim.

It's utterly irrelevant that McCain and other candidates took money from bankers. What matters is that Obama ran interference on behalf of his donors, inflating the importance of an annoying but otherwise minor story to cover up a far more significant abuse of taxpayer money.

Yes I read your spin of why Obama, like the rest of the country is upset about the bonuses to "losers".

The only motive you have for your tale was that Obama had been "bought" because some people who work for some banks donated money to his campaign. Which is why it's completely relevant that similar people working for similar banks "bought" McCain.

It really doesn't take a vast conspiracy to see why Obama would "run interference" by expressing outrage about outrageous bonuses. I mean you're upset by them right? Were you bought?

Just to be clear, why are you surprised and angry to find out that money given to a bank to help it clear it's debts ended up being paid to some of it's creditors (other banks)? That's what was supposed to happen, minus the insane bonuses of course.

CY: You have to understand Jim: all he can do is scream "TU QUOQUE!!" as loudly as possible.

It's really his only hope.

No Patrick, what I did was ask why anyone is shocked to learn AIG, which owes hundreds of billions of dollars to banks all over the world, has been paying off it's debts with the money we gave them to...pay off debts. I'm not shouting you too, I'm asking what in the world CY thinks Obama needs to cover up? It's not the contributions, as he agrees, it must be AIG doing international business. But then it makes no sense to be upset about that now does it?

Hey CY, normally I agree with a lot of the stuff you post, but in this case I do not. AIG insures against loss- their clients are banks and financial institutions- I think I would be far more pissed off if we bailed them out, and then they turned around and defaulted on their obligations as an insurer. So it happens that many of their clients are foreign- It's not my idea of a good time, but since we chose to bail them out no questions asked, we can't turn around and get mad at who they pay claims to. If we had put stipulations in place before giving the money such as "no bonus money", or "no payouts to foreign banks" then we could get mad, but as it is, we didnt. You can't give someone money with no strings attached and then after the fact ask for their computer or something. It's the same for private and public companies. We should have let them go into bankruptcy court and then broken their contracts if we didn't want them to get bonus'. But the fact of the matter is we did not. We also did not stipulate that they couldn't pay out to foreign clients.

Decisions like this have to be made BEFORE giving out money, not AFTER.

Thanks for the usually spot on posts though!

Have you forgotten that the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac people got their bonuses. The only difference in respect to AIG was that the officers in these companies were the buddies of the politicians.