While visiting San Francisco for a couple of fundraisers on Thursday, President Barack Obama stopped off at Chinatown's Great Eastern Restaurant to grab some dim sum. Many of us have done this before, right? Right. They have some of the best dim sum in town. However, did you know that Great Eastern still sells shark fin, which was banned at the start of 2012? That's right, Obama buys dim sum at restaurants that aid in the destruction and depletion of the shark population. Classic socialist behavior.

New York Times breathlessly reports:

Mr. Obama was in town on a fund-raising romp, hitting up big wallets in Nob Hill and other affluent neighborhoods. His one attempt to rub shoulders with the little people, in the form of his stop in Chinatown at the Great Eastern restaurant, went sour, though, when the local press perused the menu of the restaurant for clues about what the president ordered.

There it was: braised shark fin soup, $48. The delicacy has been outlawed in California thanks to animal welfare supporters who say the capture of the sharks is horrific. But Great Eastern still had the soup on its menu thanks to a loophole in the law.

Even the San Francisco Chronicle got in on the feigned shock and awe, noting on today's front page," President Obama, who signed the Shark Conservation Act into law last month, greets employees of the Great Eastern restaurant in Chinatown, which still serves shark fin soup." As the Chron goes on to point out, Great Eastern is one of only nine reported restaurants in Chinatown that still serve the soup. Why? Because Chinatown can do whatever it wants regardless of state laws or countless health violations of a federal law loophole that allows suppliers to still sell shark fins if the product was obtained legally, which requires keeping the carcass intact.

Photo: President Barack Obama gets Chinese food from Great Eastern Restaurant in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)