By now it should come to no surprise that the financial bailout is a mess. It should also be no surprise that the solution is more taxes.

We've played this game for too long. The answer to our problems is not to increase taxes, but to decrease spending.

How ironic is it that those in charge of much of this politically have also received the most contributions from the failed companies such as Fannie and Freddie. Of course they aren't going to be for legislation to crack down on the corrupt companies if they're essentially receiving a paycheck from them as well.

The ones in charge of this bailout have criticized John McCain for injecting "Presidential Politics" into the mix, while he's simply doing his job - you know, representing the people as an elected official. Adding another idea is not a bad thing - unless you're only interested in one side, which appears to be the case as the evening negotiations taking place have gone from being a 4 person bipartiasn team, to involving other senior Democrats, balancing out the talks with 9 Democrats, 2 Republicans and Secretary Paulson.

The Wall Street Journal has a nice breakdown of some of the major players:

Here's hoping that the members of Congress actually settle down and think for a small amount of time, rather than try to pull a fast one of the American Public and pass a deal over the weekend while we're all away from things. This is one of the biggest issues of our time, and we need to be looking at the long term consequences from any bailout over any short term ones. Unfortunately, politicians on both sides of the aisle all too often are only concerned with the short term to try and get re-elected.