Video of the day (UPDATED)

The President on Saturday Night Live picking winners and losers





Not quite as funny as it should've been. Wonder why?

(UPDATE #1): Oh, that’s why:

Reporting from Washington -- With the White House positioned to reshape the future of the auto industry, Republican Sen. Bob Corker was so concerned about the prospects for his home state of Tennessee that he delivered a personal warning to the administration's point man on the issue.

Don't keep plants open in Ohio and Michigan, which voted for President Obama last year, at the expense of a plant in Tennessee, which is solidly Republican, he said.

"I wanted to know: Would they employ a blue-state, red-state strategy?" Corker said in an interview, recalling his phone conversation last week with Steven Rattner, the administration's top advisor on restructuring the domestic auto industry.

The question illustrates the new dynamic as Obama tries to balance the economic need to salvage a struggling industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people, and affects millions, against the needs of key constituencies and possibly his own reelection hopes.

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s give the President the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume he will act in a completely non-partisan manner and not inject the sort of strategy Corker is talking about and let’s assume that, for his part, the most damage he incurs is forcing GM and Chrysler to build cars that no one wants to buy.

And to illustrate just what a potential political Leviathan this and other industries may become because of this Administration’s actions and why it's so not funny, let’s assume all that and predict it won't amount to a hill of beans because... who’s going to control these guys?. Who’s going to control the pitchfork-wielding nightriders headquartered in that building? The President? We saw how well that worked out with Porkulus and the AIG bonuses.

Get back to us and let us know how that's working out for you.