Go Home Congress

So Congress has a new bill in front of them for the proposed taxpayer funded bailout. Originally three pages long, after shooting up on government steroids for a few days, this $700 billion bill has mutated into a gargantuan money-eating 451 pages, filled with earmarks for everything from NASCAR tracks to a package for research on wool. Either way, if it passes and we have to eat it, it'll probably taste like a dog-poo taco with a side of dirt sandwich.

Now it turns out that banks don't want to lend money for auto-loans or mortgages right now. Really? No way. Your kidding right? You mean that legislation is pending that will dramatically alter the way banks do business in this country and banks don't want to lend money right now? In the words of Monty Python, "Well I never!"

Every time government gets involved in business, something gets screwed up. Hell, government provided the geniuses that got us into this mess in the first place. Why on earth a bunch of elected, half-wit hacks are running fiscal policy for the world's largest economy is beyond me in the first place. Why isn't someone like Warren Buffet running the economy? Here's a guy who has actually made money in the real world. Where's Ross Perot when you need him? Shouldn't we hire a professional to run our economy? You don't see GE holding an open election for their board of directors. If they did, no one would invest in them.

And why the hell aren't we hearing about the Republicans who pushed for more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2004 but were shot down by Barney Franks and crew and accused of trying to push poor people out of home ownership? Why are the Republicans so damn bad at getting facts out? Are they slow? Were they all dropped on their head as children? Is there something about being a House or Senate Republican that requires that you stand around with your thumb in your ass while Barney Franks and Nancy Peolsi appear day after day on television and blame Republicans for this mess? Yes, the Republicans are to blame. I'm not exonerating them for this flying mongolian cluster you-know-what that we've landed in. No way. The Republicans have squandered their advantage in the House and Senate for the last six years of Bush the Younger's disastrous reign. They squandered their political capitol on defending the dumbest war ever fought in the history of mankind against what was an utterly defeated nearly third world status nation. The squandered it defending the gutting of civil liberties in the name of safety. I suppose they thought we were stupid and couldn't read what good old Ben Franklin said a couple of hundred years ago - something about freedom and trading it and for security and deserving neither.

So yeah the Republicans screwed the pooch. And now they're doing it again by standing around and allowing the old crone, Nancy Pelosi, racking up political capitol with the misinformed masses by blaming one singular party for this absurd mess. And just because the Republicans are to blame for this doesn't mean that Democrats don't deserve just as much of that blame pie.

So if Nancy Pelosi, the great leader of a Congress with a comfy 25% approval rating really want to help solve the current crisis we're in, she'll approach the podium, and just before she builds herself a large fire and jumps into it for us, she'll announce that Congress is not going to set a precedent of bailouts for bad decisions made by private enterprise and investors, and that the bailout bill is hereby scrapped.

But we all know that would be way to good to be true. So, instead, we'll end up dining on dog-poo tacos and dirt sandwiches. The bill in some form will pass, and the market will get flooded with fake cash. Oil will go back up, the Dollar will fall against the Euro again, the DOW will climb back up another five hundred points and all will be right with the world again. The bill will go through reeking of pork.

As I sit here writing this, I'm told the bill has just passed in the Senate.