VALERIE JARRETT:  No, sir.  His family . . .  release them?

OBAMA:  Not yet.  Give it another day or two.  Let Mrs. Ryan have formula for the baby, though.

BILL DALEY:  What about Kucinich?  He’ll block the House from doing anything that passes muster with Senate Democrats.

OBAMA:  Get him on the horn.

[Daley dials, hands phone to President]

Hey Dennis, how ya doin’?  Look, if the Boehner plan blows up in the House, we think we can get the Senate to swallow the Reid Plan.  But first we have to get it through your chamber, and as long as you don’t . . . .  Well, yes, I remember our discussion.  [sighs] Yes, I agree to your terms.  [hangs up]

DAVID PLOUFFE:  What did you just promise him, sir?

OBAMA:  On my next overseas trip, we’ll install a booster seat in Air Force One’s co-pilot chair, and he’ll pretend to fly the plane.

JARRETT:  Well, that’s not too bad.

JOE BIDEN: I hate to bring it up, Boss, but I busted my butt with the Gang of Six, and uh, you said . . . .

OBAMA: A promise is a promise, Joe.  I’ll notify the Secret Service that tomorrow morning, between 4:30 a.m. and 4:45 a.m., I’ll be temporarily unable to function as President because I’ll be unconscious, sleeping.  You’ll have the helm, as promised.  Try not to start a war.

DALEY:  The Reid plan, sir?  We need to get some Republican Senators on board.

OBAMA:  Hmm . . . on board.  Bill, reach out to Lugar, Snowe, Collins, Murkowski, and Brown.  Tell them I respectfully demand their appearance at 8:00 p.m. aboard my Presidential Yacht, Alinsky, docked at the Gangplank Marina, 600 Water St SW.

DALEY:  Um, there is no Presidential yacht any more, sir.

OBAMA:  Yes, there is.  I slipped it into a shipbuilding procurement bill last year.   Just came in from the shipyard.  Was supposed to be a surprise gift to Michelle for our anniversary.  David, tell Research and Destroy I want updated folders on those Senators by 5:00.  Tonight, I’m going on a shakedown cruise.

BIDEN:  Schumer will try to sabotage the Majority Leader, Chief.  Reid might lose votes in his caucus.

OBAMA:  Order all Senate Democrats to appear for a private briefing tomorrow afternoon in the East Room.

JARRETT:  Uh, sir.  They’re really tired of listening to you tell them . . . .

OBAMA:  Not me.  I’ll ask Max Baucus in for lunch and drinks beforehand; he’ll speak for the Reid plan at the meeting.

DALEY:  Sir, at the best of times, he goes on and on.  How does that . . . .

OBAMA:  When they’re assembled, the Chief Usher locks the doors.  Only those who agree to vote “yea” for Reid may leave.  Call it, “Baucus the Caucus.”

BIDEN:  Good thinkin’, Boss.  But how do we get Reid’s plan through Boehner’s House.

PLOUFFE:  Here’s an idea:  Pelosi demands a vote on Reid.  Boehner agrees because he thinks he has the “nays,” which he does.  Pelosi then submits the tally to the CBO to score, using the party breakdown from 2007 as a baseline.  The numbers now favor us.  Nancy runs the bill over to the Senate.  It’s approved.  Harry rushes it to the White House.  You sign, sir.  Done.

OBAMA:  Hmm.  “Tote the Vote.”  Works for me.

DALEY:  Uh, oh.  Just got a text from Kucinich, sir.  He’s upped the ante.  Wants an August timeshare in the Residence while you and the family are vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard.

OBAMA:  That . . . Munchkin.  Say yes, but he brings his own sheets.  John, how bad are my latest numbers?

ZOGBY:  A majority thinks you’re to blame for the debt crisis, sir.  And you’re now down 20 to Gingrich.

OBAMA:  Must be because I’m not getting my message out.  Jay, starting tomorrow, schedule press briefings for me on the hour, around the clock, until August 2^nd.   Right now, I need a break.   Everybody wait here.

[enter First Lady ten minutes later]

BIDEN:  Uh, Ma’m.  Have you seen the Big O?

MICHELLE:  In the Rose Garden, chain-smoking and crushing ants.

DALEY:  Ants?

MICHELLE:  He watches them, then crushes the ones heading either left or right.  Those meandering aimlessly, he leaves alone.  Some kind of simpatico thing.  I’m worried about him.

BIDEN:  Problem is, Ma’m, the debt ceilin’ brouhaha has him paralyzed.  He strategeries pretty good, but at crunch time, he can’t bite the bullet and make a decision.  Can you help?

MICHELLE:  Maybe.  [opens window, hollers] Hey.  Get back in here right now.  The dinnerware people just arrived.  I want you to choose a pattern.  You hear me, Barack?

So. With yesterday’s farcical Senate theater, the brain-trust begs a very basic question:

“Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who presided over the hearing [said] ‘Businesses should make a profit. That’s what drives our economy. But do these profitable companies need taxpayer subsidies?’”

Huh. Sen. Baucus, you come out in the black, and every year, too. And it’s fair to say, you are somewhat subsidized by the taxpayer, non? The salary, of course. The car. The driver. Retirement lucre. The trips to and from the office and your home. Often, that’s ‘homes’.

Biiiiig taxpayer-subsidized (actually, provided) budget to underwrite  your work, which of course does nothing so harmful as produce a product driving our economy. More like slowing it down, if fiddling here and there in hope of engineering outcomes desired by your political class along the way.

Then there are the junkets, and for those you may bring with you. The per diems. The mail costs to promote yourself. Then there’s that health insurance. Yep. Really something when someone, who could pay for these things without the taxpayer propping it up, has hard-working people foot the bill for doing his business.

And as a result you’re now worth …ok, well, there’s a little confusion here, with you having reported a negative net worth, while buying a $900,000 home.

Somewhat unlikely, what with lawmakers only having “to reveal information about assets including investment accounts or rental properties, the disclosure process protects Members from divulging other economic indicators, such as the value of homes as well as antiques, vehicles and other valuables. The exclusion of homes — Senators are not required to report properties that do not generate income, including vacation homes or part-time residences — can potentially skew the public perception of a lawmaker’s true wealth.”

What should we, and especially your colleagues, make of this approach you have announced: if you’re profitable, that is, you take in more than you spend — I’m just reiterating what you said — and, on occasion, quite profitable, if it’s true not as profitable as some others, as you (like oil companies) would rightly point out in your defense, well, do you really need taxpayer subsidies?

This is the question you have tabled.

Did I mention that “One of the harshest critics on the Democratic side of the dais was Jay Rockefeller, a great-grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller.” Mmm. The guy’s annual accumulation of interest and dividends surely dwarfs what most might consider a wonderful year.

Sen. Charles Schumer weighed in, in typical style. A guy who has been in taxpayer-underwritten elected office his entire professional life, and yet somehow has squirreled away more than a third of a million dollars just of what’s reportable.

Your colleague Jeff Bingaman also distinguishes himself for scrutiny, I see. Surely this miracle of turning the water of a cool million into $50 million has nothing to do with taking advantage of his taxpayer-underwritten job. Naw.

Never happens. History’s spate of elected officials getting spectacularly wealthy while making (now) $174 grand a year is a series of coincidences. Still, no paupers in this crowd, with most worth a fortune 90% of Americans only aspire to, and making all sorts of money off of that fortune each year! But of course it’s their subsidies that are the issue here. Do these profitable lawmakers need taxpayer subsidies?

And, now that we have determined that, e.g., oil companies taking advantage of a tax credit applicable to pretty much anyone who manufactures in the country — to compensate in part for the developed world’s second-highest corporate income tax rate — is reaping a “subsidy”…well, it seems all of us are in your sights.

After all, I am in the black in terms of my inflows over outflows, as are scores of millions of Americans. Yet we are all subsidized (read: we’re ‘next’), at least if you look at our tax returns. These are filed under a code thousands of pages longer than it need be, thanks to special interest lobbying of you, and completed with the objective of navigating the various exemptions we are supposed to find to justify the tax rate you have assigned us.

Instead of being directly financed by the taxpayer — like you — I like the oil companies write things off. Home mortgage interest deduction. My business expenses, among other items.

Yet, I take in more than I spend. I produce, I contribute to the economy. And this seems to make me your enemy. At minimum, according to your standard, it makes me your target.

But it doesn’t make me nearly as big an enemy and target as you and your colleagues. Chairman Baucus, will you please affirm the test you and your colleagues are now laying out in this ritual demagoguery of an industry that commits the unpardonable sin of allowing us to make decisions for ourselves, “subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends” as George Will has put matters, plus all of the plastics, chemical, agricultural, medical and other advances they enable?

Because if you do, for once, it looks like maybe Washington, DC, has started a productive discussion.

From Politico:

Senate Democrats are looking to bring to the floor next week a plan to strike billions of dollars in annual tax incentives for the five biggest oil companies.

“That’s what we’re thinking,” a Senate Democratic leadership aide told POLITICO Thursday evening, adding there won’t likely be a vote on the measure next week.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will also hold a hearing next Thursday on gas prices and oil tax incentives for the biggest oil companies — including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips.

One major question for the Senate leaders: how any money saved from reducing the tax incentives would ultimately be used. Many Democrats are pushing for the money to go toward deficit reduction, the leadership aide said.

Now this all might sound well and good, using money that we pour into domestic industry to pay down the deficit…but that’s merely a sound bite being used by Democrats to sway a public they think will respond to lip service and key words, and won’t dig deeper into their nefarious plans. The truth is, oil companies, like other companies, rely on tax breaks to be competitive in the world market and to spur on a thriving American industry in times of economic recession, like now.

Instead of cutting spending where spending cuts are desperately needed – say, in the realm of earmarks, or in the billions in entitlement spending we dole out each year to useless, bloated government programs – the Dems are simply using the prevailing sentiment against government spending to launch an attack at an American industry already beaten bloody by administration policies against domestic drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration’s rabid environmentalists, and years of toiling uphill against Dem’s radical daydreams of windmill farms and solar panels, which cloud the realistic possibility of American energy independence. It wouldn’t be beyond speculation to guess that Baucus sees a perfect opening to launch an attack against the very worst thing Dems can imagine: a money-making American industry.

Instead, Baucus would direct the “saved” tax dollars to programs designed to promote “alternative energy sources” and programs that would help to wean America off oil. That’s right: they’re pulling tax breaks for oil companies, imposing a greater burden on them, calling it a “savings” for the taxpayer, and then taking the nonexistent savings and sending it directly into the coffers of yet another bloated, useless government program. It doesn’t sound particularly like a plan most taxpayers would get behind, but yet, Baucus and the rest of the finance committee will be discussing it in closed door meetings this week.

Not to mention, Barack Obama recently embarked on a tour of South American, promising that Americans would gladly purchase oil drilled in the Gulf of Mexico…so long as it was drilled by Brazilian companies. Baucus’s proposed rules would actually impose an additional tax on oil companies looking to drill off our Gulf shores, disguised as an “excise fee.” This fee would apply to any company looking to increase domestic oil production by drilling off Gulf shores into the stockpile of oil at the base of the Gulf of Mexico. In a twisted way, however, Baucus might be delivering a spate of good news to companies looking to restart drilling in the Gulf. The administration has been incredibly stingy when it comes to issuing permits for anyone to drill there – so stingy that House Republicans had to pass a bill jump-starting the permit process just this week. The Obama Administration’s de facto moratorium on drilling has, by some accounts, forced Americans even further into reliance on foreign oil. Nearly 100,000 barrels of oil per day are imported just to make up for the decline in domestic oil production.

It’s no wonder that Americans have seen their own spending on gasoline skyrocket over the past year.  And the administration and it’s friends in Congress seem determined to make certain that Americans never pay less for a gallon of gas. Just as prices are falling, they’re looking to introduce an entirely new scheme of taxes and punishments that could drive prices through the roof, limit any hope of domestic oil production that would save Americans from being forced to beg for mercy at the hands of Arab oil producers or reduce our dependence on foreign oil production. Instead, Dems are preying off the American attitude against spending to punish perhaps one of the only thriving industries left.

I’ve criticized the death tax on many occasions, including one column in USA Today explaining the economic damage caused by this perverse form of double taxation, and I highlighted a few of the nations around the world that have eliminated this odious tax in another column for the same paper.

Politicians don’t seem persuaded by these arguments, in part because they feel class warfare is a winning political formula. President Obama, House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus have been successful in thwarting efforts to permanently kill the death tax. But I wonder what they’ll say if their obstinate approach results in death?

Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming is getting a bit of attention (including a link on the Drudge Report) for her recent comments that some people may choose to die in the next two months in order to protect family assets from the death tax. For successful entrepreneurs, investors, and small business owners who might already be old (especially if they have a serious illness), there is a perverse incentive to die quickly.

U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis says some of her Wyoming constituents are so worried about the reinstatement of federal estate taxes that they plan to discontinue dialysis and other life-extending medical treatments so they can die before Dec. 31. Lummis…said many ranchers and farmers in the state would rather pass along their businesses — “their life’s work” — to their children and grandchildren than see the federal government take a large chunk. “If you have spent your whole life building a ranch, and you wanted to pass your estate on to your children, and you were 88 years old and on dialysis, and the only thing that was keeping you alive was that dialysis, you might make that same decision,” Lummis told reporters.

The class-warfare crowd doubtlessly will dismiss these concerns, but they should set aside their ideology and do some research. Four years ago, two Australian scholars published an article on this issue in Topics in Economic Analysis & Policy, which is published by the Berkeley Electronic Press. Entitled “Did the Death of Australian Inheritance Taxes Affect Deaths?”, their paper looked at the roles of tax, incentives, and death rates. The abstract has an excellent summary.

In 1979, Australia abolished federal inheritance taxes. Using daily deaths data, we show that approximately 50 deaths were shifted from the week before the abolition to the week after. This amounts to over half of those who would have been eligible to pay the tax. …our results imply that over the very short run, the death rate may be highly elastic with respect to the inheritance tax rate.

And here’s a graph from the article, which shows how many affected taxpayers managed to delay death until the tax went away.

Obama and other class-warfare politicians now want to run this experiment in reverse. I already noted in another blog post that there are Americans who are acutely aware of the hugely beneficial tax implications if they die in 2010. In other words, Congresswoman Lummis almost certainly is right.

I don’t actually think that Obama, Rangel, Baucus and the rest of the big-government crowd should be blamed for any premature deaths that occur. But I definitely think that they should be asked if they feel any sense of guilt, remorse, and/or indirect responsibility.

Sebelius claims senior citizens need the re-education the most, because they “have been a target of a lot of the misinformation.” Of course, what’s really happened is that Americans have learned more about Obama’s law, and what they’ve learned, they don’t like. The facts are now inescapable, for Sebelius and for the politicians who advocated for this measure — facts that detail the false nature of the case advanced by the president and his allies, and the true ramifications of this wrongheaded reform package foisted upon the American people. They’ve learned that they can’t keep their plan, even if they like it; they can’t count on lower costs; they can’t count on lower deficits; and they can count on more bureaucracy, more rationing, and more IRS involvement in your daily life.

Today, fewer than one-in-three Americans believe their family will be better off under ObamaCare. The same survey Nancy Pelosi touted last month as showing some positive views on the measure illustrates the movement. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that “support for health reform fell over the course of August, dipping from a 50 percent favorability rating in July to 43 percent, while 45 percent of the public reported unfavorable views.”

Americans have these views because of the litany of broken promises within Obamacare, detailed across thousands of websites, hundreds of reports and dozens of research papers released since its passage. They have these views not because they need to be taught a lesson by Kathleen Sebelius, but because they’ve noticed how the politicians and activists with all those big promises are awfully quiet now. They can’t even make the claim that the legislation will reduce costs or lower the deficit any more without getting laughed out of the room.

Maybe these politicians would’ve been better off if they’d read the bill in the first place. But not even Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), one of the leaders in the push for passage, had time to do that.

So who is it that needs a re-education? Not the American people, but the political leadership itself — a lesson that will likely come at the ballot box.

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Known as Section 199 relief, the deduction in question has been available to companies engaged in energy production, as well as manufacturing, for several years as an incentive to encourage operations and employment.

However, under an amendment introduced by Baucus, which could be voted on in the Senate next month, that deduction would be eliminated for certain players in the energy industry.

According to a memo obtained by Capitol Confidential and written by Senate Finance Committee staffers Scott Mulhauser and Erin Shields, the Baucus amendment is intended as a substitute to another introduced by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.).  The Johanns amendment is itself intended to modify the Small Business Jobs Act.

The memo states that “the Democratic alternative… would repeal Section 199 of the tax code, which currently allows these corporations to deduct six percent of their income from oil and gas production from their tax liability, effective December 31, 2010.”

While the amendment is aimed at the biggest energy producers, opponents say that the amendment is still dangerous.

LSU business professor Joseph R. Mason, who has been studying the effects of the Obama administration’s moratorium on drilling on the Gulf Coast community, recently wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that according to some research, “this repeal would cause the U.S. to increase its reliance on imported oil from politically unstable nations, cost the economy 637,000 jobs, and reduce household earnings by nearly $35 billion over the next decade.”  Dr. Mason further noted that according to the Congressional Research Service, repeal would “adversely affect domestic production and increase imports.”

The Institute for Liberty, known to comment on misperceptions of energy industry profitability and subsidization similarly noted in earlier in July— when tax hikes including this one were first being mooted— that such changes would “increase taxes on energy companies and consumers.”

The Mulhauser-Shields Baucus Finance Committee memo does not address this point, focusing instead on the claimed benefit to small businesses of other provisions in the amendment.

However, opponents of the measure say they intend to raise the profile of the Baucus amendment, and all its content, ahead of any forthcoming vote.

“They can’t claim to be pro-job while being anti-business,” said one energy industry representative quoted above, “and November is just around the corner.”

The most breathtaking flight of fancy from Washington this past week was the full- court press by the President, Vice President, Chairperson of the White House Council of Economic Advisors and a whole host of Obama acolytes to proclaim that the Stimulus is working, that we’re “ahead of schedule” on job creation and that we’ve created  (or saved) millions of jobs.  The job saving claim is, in a strange way, irrefutable…sort of like a witch doctor saying if he hadn’t done his rain dance, the drought would have been worse.  As Democratic Senator Max Baucus complained to the White House “you created a situation where you cannot be wrong.  If 2,500,000 jobs are lost, you claim that without your stimulus program, 3,500,000 jobs would have been lost.  Taken to its logical conclusion, if everyone except one person were laid off, the Administration could claim that without its stimulus program, that person would have lost his job.”

There is, of course, a reason for this disciplined chorus of downright silly spin.  The Administration knew that data were about to be released from a variety of reliable sources revealing a further decline in manufacturing and retail activity, a further pull back in private sector hiring plans and industry investment plans, unemployment stubbornly stuck at just under ten percent and a further sinking of consumer confidence.  What’s a “fella” to do with elections coming and millions of jobs lost?  Dance the old dos-a-do and around you go, and claim the stimulus saved jobs.

This further sinking of consumer confidence is particularly significant and vexing to the Administration.  Consumer confidence is a consequence of the consumers’ sensitivity to what they see, hear and feel all around them.  It is reality. It can’t be manufactured, successfully manipulated (for very long), divined from the White House or spoon fed from a teleprompter.

The big problem the White House faces is its dogged determination to transform America into a left leaning, statist nation consistent with the President’s vision of what’s good for America, when Americans don’t want to be transformed into that vision.  Americans understand the difference between needed reforming and radical transforming.

Dos-a-Do and Around You Go has been like an anthem within this White House. Remember the Obama healthcare reform bill that wasn’t going to add “one dime to the deficit” and the president’s mantra that he wouldn’t sign a bill that added one dime to the deficit “ now or in the future.” We now know, because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has told us, and, as the president surely knew when he made that promise, that his healthcare reform bill would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit.

And when George Stephanopoulos suggested that the fine for not purchasing insurance under the Obama healthcare plan was clearly a tax on the middle class, the President replied that it wasn’t a tax at all. This rather astounding presidential response quickly had Stephanopoulos reaching for the nearest dictionary (which, conveniently, was resting at his elbow). After reading aloud the definition of a tax, which fit the fine or penalty in Obamacare like a glove, the President, with a straight face, lectured that the fact that Stephanopoulos had to use the dictionary proved he (the president) was right all along.  Dos-a-Do and Around You Go.

To add insult to injury, the Justice Department in responding to lawsuits brought by several state attorneys general who claim the Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority in the health care legislation by mandating fines on individuals who do not purchase health insurance, is now making the argument that the fine is really just . . . you guessed it . . . a tax which is, of course, within the power of Congress.  Quite amazing isn’t it?  It isn’t a tax, it’s a fine except when it’s a tax.  Mr. Obama has created a new dance step:  the double dos-a-do.  Then there was the White House assurance that the Administration’s spending (they call it investment) was going to decrease the deficit.  The CBO, ever so belatedly, blew the whistle on that outlandish claim with the warning that the mounting deficits were now deemed to be unsustainable.

Another refrain of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go was the Administration’s attempt to harmonize the American Latino community with the President’s promise of comprehensive immigration reform legislation during his first year in office.  Eighteen months later, and counting, and there hasn’t been a scintilla of effort to propose or advance such reform.  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the state’s legislature called the President’s hand on this one when they passed Senate bill 1070 which goes into effect this week unless derailed by an injunction asked for in the recent suit filed by the federal government against the state (that is, the people) of Arizona. SB 1070 does nothing more than require the state’s law enforcement officers to assist the federal government in enforcing its own laws. The President’s claim that SB 1070 would result in police “confronting a mom and her kids at an ice-cream parlor” with demands they show proof of citizenship was pure demagoguery.  It was Dos-a-Do and Around You Go writ large and sung off key.

And just this month, the president, employing his power to make recess appointments, named Donald Berwick to head the Office of Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Mr. Obama, citing Republican obstructionism, said speed was needed to fill a position that has been vacant for a number of years.  If that is so, why did it take him eighteen months to make the appointment?  Amazing isn’t it coming from a man who as a senator was outraged over President Bush’s recess appointment of John Bolton to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Then there was the effort from day one of this Administration to convince the American public that there was no such thing as a war on terror, that terrorism didn’t exist and we could change the reality of terror with a mere change in vocabulary.  Administration officials were forbidden to use the words Islamic and terror in the same sentence.  The Obama cabinet began dissembling with new ways to describe what every American recognizes as the paramount existential threat of the 21^st century. Suddenly, the President’s cabinet members were, with straight faces, trying to convince the people that “man caused disasters,” and not terrorism, caused the first and second World Trade Center attacks, and the attack on the USS Cole, and the bombing of the Embassies in Africa, and the London subway and bus bombings and the Christmas-day near mid-air disaster and the Fort Hood massacre and the Time’s Square attempted car bomb attack, and the carnage at Mumbai.  We are not fighting Islamic terrorism on a global scale they tell us.  We’re, instead, engaging in “overseas contingency operations.” This is well beyond the typical Dos a Do and Around You Go that routinely emanates from every misstep of this Administration. It is even beyond implausible. The President simply shouldn’t tolerate this sort of semantic gobbledygook, much less be responsible for it. This is our national security with which these political neophytes are toying.  It boggles the mind.

And to prove there was no war on terror the Attorney General of the United States declared that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks would be tried in civilian courts rather than by the military tribunal to which Khalid Sheik Mohammad had already announced his intention to plead guilty.  Almost comically, Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying at a recent Senate hearing, displayed breathtaking linguistic gymnastics by resisting every effort by the panel to coax him into acknowledging that there was even the remotest connection between Islamic extremism and attacks on innocent civilians.

Then, of course, there is also the new 2300-hundred-page financial reform law that calls for 243 new regulations to protect Main Street from Wall Street.  America got a lot of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go by the President about how the people were going to be protected with this new law even though there isn’t a word in the Act dealing with the malfeasances of those government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were, perhaps, among the most responsible culprits in the entire financial meltdown.  So far, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are untouched, unmentioned and unregulated by Obama’s financial regulatory reform.  We doubt, however, that they will remain unscathed once the public begins to focus on the fact that Representative Barney Frank, Senator Chris Dodd and (former Senator) Barrack Obama were the largest recipients of Fannie Mae’s political slush fund.

We could go on, as the Presidential encores of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go seem endless.  But things do have a way of changing and, perhaps, the President will soon learn that, just like the original Virginia Reel, fewer and fewer people are dancing to this tune.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter