What Congress needs to say to Bush is, prove to us that your very expensive bailout plan will actually accomplish something. Congress needs to tell him we citizens are tired of being left holding the bag after he's used his dirty tactics to get his way. He lied about the Iraq war and look what that brought us. Not flowers and a paid-for war, as promised. Not a democracy in Iraq that looks favorably on the great gift we gave them. No, all it got us was close to 4500 dead Americans, an unending occupation of another country, and an increase in anti-American sentiment worldwide by which al Queda fills its ranks.

Please tell us, Congress, that you have learned something from that war, from the Patriot Act, from the Social Security "emergency," from the Terri Schiavo farce, from the worst president this country has ever had the misfortune to have steal an election. When Bush screams "Emergency!" we should all head for the exits. Not to escape. Oh, no! But to lock the doors to keep him and his lunacy at bay.

Bush - or has advisors anyway - seem to know a little bit about two things: money and dirty politics. His tactics are so outrageous, we tend to accept his proclamations instead of recognizing exactly to what brazenly-corrupt lengths he will go to achieve his ends. Paulson and Bernanke sit up there with earnest expressions, and you don't want to believe that they are acting in a partisan manner, that they are playing games with the principles on which our country was founded. It's too scary to confront the possibility that people in the upper echelons of our government are running amuck with our freedom at stake. But that's where we are, people.

Interestingly, the stock market doesn't seem to give a damn about the bailout. Pundits are making much of minor fluctuations in the market today, but it's all part and parcel of the panic-the-people ploy: sound and fury... Not every depression begins with a major market purge. Anybody whose ever taken a course in economics could have seen this coming.

So we may be facing a severe recession - even a depression - but this giveaway of taxpayer money to Wall Street is not the solution. (I don't think anybody has been quite brazen enough to state unequivocally that it would.) And if we are facing the dire economic circumstances predicted by the Bushies, why would we give them more money? They caused this situation in the first place with their irresponsible tax policies and unpaid-for wars, their housing bubbles, their mergers and monopolies.

Just look how they are grandstanding now, blaming Democrats for not passing the bailout bill while refusing to participate themselves. They plan to capitalize on the situation either way. If the Democrats go it alone and pass a bill, then all the bottomless pit of (justified) taxpayer anger will fall directly on their shoulders and then the Republicans can claim to have been opposed. If the Democrats refuse to pass it without the Republicans, then they are charged with delaying this emergency bill and with putting politics before country. Bah!

Nope, it's time to call the chief bluffer's bluff. Let's not forget that we are days away from an election the Republicans will surely lose unless they cheat. Bet there's nothing to him but hot air and crooked politics.