I'll tell you what's "shameful"

What's "shameful" is the President leaving us to wonder whether he's lying or stupid... especially when we're pretty sure he's not stupid.

President Obama was outraged by a story in the Wall Street Journal this morning that Wall Street employees collected $18.4 billion in bonuses for 2008, the sixth-largest total on record. So when he met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the Oval Office this afternoon, he called in reporters to let the Street now what he thought of that behavior.

"When I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses -- the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 -- at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don't provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads -- that is the height of irresponsibility," he said. "It is shameful."

"When I saw an article today"? Oh that's rich. It's as if we're to believe the President is the last person on earth to learn that the bankers have been stealing our money since the day the TARP was created.

But it gets worse.

Warning that he and Geithner will be hammering the point further with "folks on Wall Street," Obama said they need to "start acting in a more responsible fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses -- now is not that time. "

There should never again be an appropriate time for the people who have made their fortunes cheating and lying to make profits and bonuses doing more of the same. The President still doesn't get this. And that's what is shameful.