What did Klugman say the other day?....
something about the USA being a 'banana republic with nukes'?

Holy cow - As a tax professor you'l have your job in perpetuity. So this is what happens when you want to pass a bill you just keep tacking on more stuff for each vote.

They even bought Earl's vote with a 53 page addendum:

Page 181 - 234 — Transportation - bicycles

It's just garbage of the lowest order. This country needs a riot or two.

Well, now we have to find something worse than sausage-making to compare law-making with.

For a second I thought Jack linked us to The Onion "newspaper". Please tell me it's a spoof, PLEASE!? This is the lowest of the low, this is not the time for such distractions to a huge problem and a second rate "fix". The "bailout" is bad enough to mentally process. Tacking special interest issues on to THIS? Where is the revolt? Where are the protests? Are people not paying attention? Are we too busy watching Three Men and A Baby, or The Office, or do people just not care?

Anyone have a link of which idiots sponsored the addendums? We should not just have their jobs, we should have their heads.

It gets worse and worse by the minute. And I'm an optimist!

I would love to know what the Exxon Vladez has to do with this bill. But it's in there - even though that happened in 1989!

"This country needs a riot or two."

They're way ahead of you. As of today the front line troops, trained in Iraq, are being deployed in America to "help with civil unrest and crowd control."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/index.html

Watch the movie Seven Days In May. It's a good movie, especially today.

"what the Exxon Vladez has to do with this bill. "

Page 290 — Motorsports racing track facility
Page 295 — Wool modifications
Page 298 — Motion pictures
Page 300 — Children and wooden arrows

I can't even cmoe up with a stupid enough remark . . .

They're way ahead of you. As of today the front line troops, trained in Iraq, are being deployed in America to "help with civil unrest and crowd control."

FWIW, the Army Times article cited by the Salon article in JerryB's link, has this added footnote:

Correction:
A non-lethal crowd control package fielded to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, described in the original version of this story, is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S., as previously stated.

Well, I think the "bailout", or "rescue" or whatever you want to call it is medicine that we have to take. Down the road we can work for reform so this won't happen again, but in the short term we have to maintain liquidity in the financial markets.

Without credit, and access to money by borrowing, farmers will not be able to plant next year's crop, retailers will not be able to buy for the holiday season and restaurants will not be able to hire up for their peak times.

The end result will be a terrific loss of jobs, which we can ill afford.

This country needs a riot or two

.....can you get back to me after Dancing with the Stars is over. Maybe then I can schedule you in....But American Idol should be starting up, and, well, can you really riot while Idol is on......

This will not pass in the house.
But something eventually will.
And it won't be enough to fix much of anything.
IMO the feds are not telling the whole story.
Perhaps to avoid a worse outcome.
There is a mountain of bad credit card debt building, industries are shrinking for lack of consuming, big players such as GE and GM are on the brink of collapse and our energy and health care costs are soaring.
This current bailout with the magic number $700 billion has no magic at all and will never be doled out with any prudence what so ever.
Then poof it's gone and congress will pretend like they know what is going on as they ask for billions more.
NONE of this pork belongs in this "rescue", period.
Friends and enemies (every regular dem, rep & independent) should be outraged and demand it be blocked.

"The end result will be a terrific loss of jobs, which we can ill afford."

Just replace them with green jobs!

medicine that we have to take

We have to take medicine, all right. But is it this medicine? Handing out yet more money to Goldman Sachs is snake oil.

Legislators have recovered from the initial shock and are now seeing the bailout bill as an opportunity.

As Krugman says in the Times this evening, it's unreasonable to expect Congress "to originate complex financial rescues, so it's normally up to the executive to put things together. Unfortunately, Paulson came up with an awful plan." Congress tried to fix it, and the House said no. So in comes the pork. Krugman: "I think that Congressional leaders know that it's a bad bill, but feel compelled to defend it, because they’re (rightly) scared of the financial consequences of a second rejection. And to some extent economists like myself are in the same position.... So am I for the bill? Yuk, phooey, I guess so. And I’m very angry at Paulson for putting us in this position."

Congrats America, we just hit 10 trillion.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Doesn't it feel like America is acting like a college kid with their first credit card and no concept that the bill come due sooner or later.

I learned that hard lesson in my mid 20's. Took me 5 very hard years to pay off the cards. How long will it take taxpayers?

Does the average taxpayer even care?

I'm starting to thing that the average guy does not care. He/she believes they do not have a say, so they give up. That is so sad to have come to this point, knowing we are all the working schmucks, pawns in the system. I email and call and give my opinions to my "representatives" (I am being nice tonight), but I do not think that they care about me. They only care about their continued career and stature. A$$holes.

Vote every incumbent out, no matter what political party you are in or they are in. It's the only way. Sadly, people are so wrapped up in being a Dem or a Repub, they will not do it.

I'm hoping minimally that if this present bill passes that all the silly attachments are noticed by a majority of taxpayers.

For the first time in America we have commoners finally seeing how Washington functions, and it isn't pretty, but it's a good thing that our government is being called into question. Civil unrest could happen even if things don't totally collapse.

What will Americans think of this time in history 40 yrs. down the road? We are leaving following generations a boatload of pooo--no doubt about it.

I was feeling pretty depressed about the state of our federal government, which came to a head during this recent bailout fiasco. I started thinking we should vote out everyone and wipe the slate.

But today I caught DeFazio on some radio program (Ed Shultz, maybe?), and I was reminded there are some representatives that allow us to sleep better... the ones who actually understand issues as complex as the ones we're dealing with now. He went on and on, in detail and comprehension I haven't even heard from Paulson's mouth. Rather than grandstand or talk in platitudes, he was just ticking down his list of heady, pragmatic changes to the core of the financial system. Real change, with lessened impact to taxpayers, and not written by lobbyists.

I sound like a campaign ad, but everything about it left me feeling less cynical about our representation. Plus, his proposal sounds like the best thing out there right now... good on him.

What? No additional funding for the Ministry of Silly Walks?