From Huff Post & Air America, "Young Turk" Cenk Uygur:

Time after time, the Bush administration, the Obama administration and Congress had an opportunity to attach limits on executive pay to legislation authorizing bailout money. And time after time, they refused. So, please spare me the bullshit outrage. If you didn't see this coming, then you are an absolute moron.

Here's the part that drives lefties batshit: Obama is giving people a chance to do the right thing. He's giving that chance to people no one else is willing to trust. Is he a moron? Or is this part of a bigger endeavor, his overarching promise to change America's political culture?

When seeking to get people's cooperation, you have two choices. One, you can tell them "Do this". Few people react well to that sort of dictate, especially when it comes from government. Even people who have lousy track records, like the greedheads who caused much of the financial meltdown, are likely to react badly to being told they have no choice but to do things as they are told. The President & Congress could have passed laws that put these people under the screws, but the long-term consequence would have been to create a division of enmity that would have undermined much of the President's program.

The other option is to get people to opt-in to the program. To give them the chance to do the right thing — and then trust they will do so. Even when their track record indicates they deserve zero trust. Often, people will respond to this approach with a fresh sense of purpose and a willingness to step beyond their own selfishness.

Sometimes, too, people will try to take advantage. That's what we're seeing with AIG and others. They could have found a way to dump the bonuses, to put the money to work for the nation. They chose to act for themselves instead. This is one of the dangers of both trust and democracy: The "higher" goals may not be embraced by all.

But one accusation that cannot be thrown at President Obama is that he did not give these people a chance. He did. He demonstrated his own character by providing these people the opportunity to step up and be part of the change, to act for the greater good. What some will take for gullibility, or decreptitude, is, in fact, the winnowing out of the chaff. Now that these actors have proven themselves to be bad, to have chosen the path of selfishness and bad faith, they can be removed from the process. And they won't be able to say the President or Congress did them wrong; everyone now knows they brought about their own fate.

So, yes, Obama could approach his program by giving everyone their marching orders and taking away the option to disagree with him; many on the left, after all these years of the right wing doing exactly that, hunger for payback. Or, to be more charitable, to undo decades of damage as quickly and efficiently as possible. But that's not the Obama approach. He knows that to make changes that will last, changes that will not merely undo old programs and practices but create new, positive and beneficial ways of doing politics, this will require that he do things many supporters simply will not recognize, comprehend or favor.

Like giving the bad guys a chance to do good before giving them the boot.