In Iraq, we were allowed to catch the alleged "bad guy" (Saddam) and ultimately execute him.

In the bailout, it is politically impossible to do anything to punish the culprits.

... that both parties would us any outcome as the basis of political attacks on the other side. It's hard to get anything done when everything is viewed through the distorting lens of partisan politics.

Should it turn out that more GOP members killed the bill...

That's exactly what did happen. Dems were about 60% ayes, but Repubs only got about 33% of their members to support it.

How about maybe it failed because it was too obvious a gift to Wall Street right before an election? Congress put it in a calico dress, slapped on some lipstick and called it "Florence", but when it came time to vote it was still a pig.

P.S.

You can take the "party leadership" crap and shove it. A representative is supposed to vote in a manner that best reflects the interests of his/her constituents. Doing otherwise because "party leadership" said so is how we got into this pickle in the first place.

And yikes(!), I'm listening to the Republicans in a press conference touting their victory and blaiming the Democrats for pushing for this bailout.

Meanwhile, other Republicans are trying to blame Obama for the bailout's failure to pass. Talk about not having their act together...

so tell me again why we needed bush's bill?

Because Bush is running out of time and is in a hurry to give his "base" one more good bonanza at taxpayer expense?

Today we lost ONE POINT FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS in market cap, twice what the bill calls for ...

I call bullshit. Sure, the market went down, but so what? Did somebody point a gun at the entire market and force everyone to liquidate their holdings today? I don't think so.

You are yelling about temporary theoretical losses as if they were permanent real losses.

The troubled financial institutions call give the toxic waste to their own CEO's as payment of salary and bonus. The CEO's can then pretend the stuff is worth whatever they want.

We're still in Iraq because Bush is too proud, arrogant and stubborn to admit he made a mistake. Admitting error is impossible to the alpha male / commander guy / decider persona he's so found of projecting.

McCain is doing the same with Palin, except he hasn't gotten himself elected yet.

... then Dems should write a bill that appeals to their own voters. Too bad if Wall Street's life preserver doesn't come with reclining chairs, a 60-inch TV and a fully-stocked bar, but if the Republicans won't support a compromise then that's what Wall Street should get.

If even a flawed bailout rescue plan buys us enough time to ward off a drastic intensification of the crisis, then I'm inclined to bless a massive market intervention...

I have doubts that the bailout plan is good enough to be called merely "flawed". There isn't a damn thing in the plan that actually tries to make sure it produces the desired result. Taxpayers pony up $700 billion (for starters), and all we get in return is hope that it might help. Anyone get get a better grade of hope at their local church, and it wouldn't cost $700 billion.

What's even worse is that nobody in Washington is talking much about how our system got broken and how to prevent a repeat of this situation. McCain is saying that right now we have to fix the problem, not the blame. If we get past this, he'll be saying that we have to put it behind us and move forward, conveniently skipping the part where we do failure analysis and implement recurrence prevention.

Worst of all is that we are committing precious resources to propping up a system that has repeatedly failed in similar manners for similar reasons. We should be trying to bury this monster, rather than trying to revive it.

What is this? The omnibus federal budget?

That's just more lipstick for the pig. Unfortunately, it takes a LOT of lipstick to conceal a $700 billion pig.

The bottom line is that taxpayers will still pony up $700 billion and will get nothing in return but a vague hope that this will somehow make things better.

Somebody please explain to me how this is different from making a sacrifice to try to appease the gods.

... another $26.00 for costume jewelry and see if they can buy all of Manhattan for the finance industry?

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we’ve proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

Rudyard Kipling

Congresscritters are saying that public opinion of the bailout changed drastically after Monday's stock market dive, but nobody I have spoken to has changed their opinion one bit.

Now might be a good time for Obama to tell the Keating Five story and explain how it reflects on McCain's attitude about fiscal responsibility.

My web browser (Firefox) says your certificate expired.

So the bailout helps how?

I think most of the money will be used to pay back foreign countries that buy U.S. government paper. The U.S. government will be insolvent if they get really annoyed.

But they are greedy and now their scared as well.

I'll bet they're scared. They're just starting to realize that the entire planet is really pissed off at them, so they have no place to hide.

It's gonna go bye-bye even FASTER, so thank goodness we're out of it. Man, y'all are MORONS."

Good point. I had hoped that the mortgage crisis might get Wall Street to rethink the wisdom of sending jobs overseas. Houses might be worth more if more people could afford them. However, now that Wall Street is unloading the mess on Uncle Sucker, that probably won't happen.

... because the image of yourself that you've been peddling won't stand up to close scrutiny.