Hold your nose boys, the stench of this one is overwhelming!

In typical Washington fashion, lawmakers bent on passing the bailout added a few carrots in the hopes of getting more support.

Most major news organizations will tell you the bill ballooned to $810 billion with added tax breaks and "other sweeteners."

It's those other sweeteners that should concern you. It's typical Washington. Unfortunately most Americans aren't aware of how common the practice is, completely distorting the public's perception of proposed legislation.

Can't seem to figure out why your congressman didn't vote for legislation intended to stop government corruption and wasteful spending? It's entirely possible it was the added "sweeteners" of sending $50 billion to the Congo to study the mating habits of gorillas, sending $140 billion to a research company trying to discover if people who like the color red are more inclined to shop at Target and another paragraph buried that would allow the mice squatter's rights in your home. (*Please note these are fictional examples, however many of the measures slid into legislation are even more ridiculous.)

This is what causes lawmakers to "hold their nose" to vote for key legislation. Yes, I have actually heard US Congressmen use that phrase on more than one occasion.

This recent bailout, which seems more like a temporary stop-gap to prolong the inevitable and a fast track to the slippery slope of socialism, is no different. The legislation that began as less than 20 pages is now the length of a novel and includes such "sweeteners" as the following:

• More than $100 billion in tax breaks for businesses and the middle class. Most of these breaks are merely extensions of current breaks offered, but there are a few tempting extras such as $8 billion in tax cuts to those affected by natural disasters in the Gulf. Some of the more obscure tax breaks will go to certain wooden arrows made by children (no, this is not an exaggerated example) and litigants in the '89 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

• Raising the Federal Deposit Insurance Cap from $100,000 to $250,000. Lawmakers say this measure was included to alleviate panic among the citizens, fearing that people jerking money out of the bank would further cripple the country's ability to receive credit. It may be a bit more reassuring if the FDIC actually had the funds to cover the current deposits. There's no way they'll be able to cover an additional $150,000 per depositor and lawmakers are banking on the American people being too stupid to realize that. The media doesn't seem to be going out of their way to educate folks either. And have any of these economic geniuses realized yet that living on credit is what got us into this mess to start with? In an effort to make this seem more like a bail out of middle America than Wall Street, several lawmakers actually offered the example of small to medium-sized businesses who couldn't make their payroll or stock their shelves if they couldn't be extended credit for those expenses. Seems to me like if you can't keep your folks paid or your shelves stocked without taking out a loan, you're probably not going to be in business much longer anyway.

• Also crammed into the bailout bill is a measure to force large companies' health plans to give equal treatment to mental health and addition issues, if such are covered by the plan. Can anyone tell me what THAT has to do with the current financial crisis, other than the fact that the complete incompetence of our leaders is enough to drive anyone over the edge?

MEANWHILE....The Securities and Exchange Commission has decided to make it a little easier to allow companies to look better on the books, easing rules that currently call for companies to devalue assets on their balance sheets to reflect the price they can get on the market. In other words, this whole crisis would seem much less dire if you guys could go back to inflating the worth of your assets.

Jackasses. No matter how much sugar you add to a big boiling pot of shit, it's still a pot of shit and no one in their right mind should be able to "hold their nose" to get past THAT stench!