Poll numbers down? The bulk of America despising your party? Two choices, Wag to Dog and bomb Eye-Ran or dole out some more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

President Bush and congressional Republicans agreed yesterday on a $70 billion package of tax-cut extensions that they hope will help halt the deterioration of their political fortunes.
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The package would extend the 2003 cuts to the tax rates on dividends and capital gains, continue tax breaks for small-business investment and the overseas operations of financial service companies, and slow the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system that was enacted to target the rich but is increasingly snaring the middle class.
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For the Republicans, the tax cuts may have to substitute for other measures proposed last week to help consumers cope with gasoline prices. ...
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White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday. "Particularly at a time when Americans are paying more at the pump, the president believes the last thing they need is for Washington to take more of their hard-earned dollars out of their pockets."

In 2003, Congress passed a measure to lower the tax rate on most dividends to 15 percent from as high as 38.6 percent and to lower rates on most capital gains from 20 percent to 15 percent. That measure is set to expire in 2008 but would be extended through 2010 under yesterday's agreement, at a cost to the Treasury of $21 billion over five years and an additional $30 billion between 2011 and 2015, according to aides familiar with the deal. The alternative-minimum-tax provision would restrict the reach of the tax for one year, at a cost of $34 billion.

The agreement would also allow small businesses to write off investments worth up to $100,000 for an additional two years, 2008 and 2009, while letting banking, securities and insurance companies defer income tax payments on overseas trading profits for one additional year.

I suspect that $3/gallon and beyond will cook these motherfuckers like gutted trout on a Snake River campfire in November. It's not going to be hard to pull the handle for change when you've just driven to the polls in your car that's running on gasoline sold by a company that makes record profits thanks, in part, to the subsidies you as a taxpayer are giving them courtesy of your soon-to-be-former bought-and-paid-for CongressCriminal.

Yeah baby, a new broom sweeps clean. They continue to mortgage my kid's future? Toss'em out.