Can’t pass a bill the first time? No problem. Nothing makes congressmen forget their principles like riders. Add an unrelated solar energy subsidy here (Sounds like something we should do in an energy bill.) a unrelated tax break there (I’m all for lower taxes, but doesn’t that belong in a tax bill?) and viola, most congress men and woman are completely blinded by the unrelated treats to notice that the bill they are passing tramples many if not all of their core beliefs (or at least what they claim are their core beliefs while campaigning).

Two examples, the republican senators from Texas, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison. Both claimed early in this process to be adamantly opposed to the bill due to the fact that it was the largest single step towards socialism this country has ever taken. They objected but were scared. After adding the tasty treats to the bill, it gave them a rational to pass the bill, a way, at least in their own twisted minds, to reconcile the dissonance between this bill and their own philosophies.

Of course, I don’t want to say that most people in congress are bad people. They are human. But they were barraged by doomsday prophesy after doomsday prophesy, over and over and over, by the industry that caused this problem and that desperately wants this handout and by our clueless and sensationalist media who isn’t far removed financially the banking idiots.

So, it is no surprise that many of them gave into the fear mongering of the Bush administration and the banking industry. They showed the same failing on the Patriot act and the Iraq war. I’m not saying we should send them home because they are bad people. I’m saying we should send them home because they are spineless cowards. They are not leaders. In a crisis they run screaming from camera to camera about the end of the world instead of insisting that the financial establishment provide alternative to consider. “By god, if they only present us with one option and insist the world will end unless we give it to them right now, it must be true!” They simply caved, curled up in a little ball and sucked their collective thumbs.

So what I’m really saying is that we should send them home because they are bad leaders with weak minds and little true conviction.