And so it begins

From the Economist, in a story about a new $25 billion bailout for Detroit:

The logic of bailing out Wall Street is that finance underpins everything. Detroit cannot begin to make that claim. But, given its successful lobbying, can it be long before ailing airlines and failing retailers join the queue?

From the Washington Independent, reviewing the newly-added pork in the bailout bill:

This includes: billions in renewable fuel tax credits; billions in relief for families who would otherwise have to pay the alternative minimum tax next April; a tax credit for companies that promote bike commuting; a provision expanding insurance coverage for mental health services, and the list goes on. (Indeed, the original bailout bill was three pages long; the latest version is 451.)

I fear Glenn Beck has it right, in a mock commentary from the future:

The airlines came first -- we just couldn't live without them. Then it was the automakers (Detroit would've died), health care (they said they could manage it better), and eventually, the oil companies (I'm not sure where all of those "windfall profits" have gone).
...
It didn't take long before so many of our tax dollars were going toward interest payments that we couldn't fund even the most basic of government programs without massive tax increases on everyone. People now work most of the year just to pay Uncle Sam (or, as we now call him, "Comrade Sam").

I was terribly excited when we had a budget surplus, and we thought we could pay off the national debt in a decade. Remember that? Just one presidency ago. Our future was finally much less gloomy.

Pride goeth before a fall. And this one has been a doozy.