The swagger of these people is astounding. The public is against this 9-to-1 by some measures, such that they pass it literally in the middle of the night on a weekend, and then they have the audacity to pretend that we were worried they couldn't agree on how to split up $700 billion amongst themselves? Ha ha, I wasn't worried at all that the deal wouldn't pass.

Just read these comments:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the $700 billion accord just after midnight but said it still has to be put on paper.

"We've still got more to do to finalize it, but I think we're there," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who also participated in the negotiations in the Capitol.

"We worked out everything," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the chief Senate Republican in the talks.
...
Hours later, when he and others told reporters of the plan in a post-midnight news conference, Reid referred to the sometimes testy nature of the negotiations.

"We've had a lot of pleasant words," he said, "and some that haven't always been pleasant."

"We're very pleased with the progress made tonight," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "We appreciate the bipartisan effort to deal with this urgent issue."

I am getting so cynical about this stuff, now I'm wondering if the whole House Republican thing was a sham too, to give the voters the illusion that their interests were actually considered. This way everybody wins (except taxpayers): The Democrats have cover, since they weren't the only ones who signed on to this robbery. But the Republicans are OK too, since they can say they were a powerless minority and yet won concessions for the taxpayer.

Oh, and the other benefit to them is, they just extracted $700 billion more from us. Let's not forget that aspect of the "agreement."

This farce should be sobering to those who still think we have a democracy in this country--not that there's anything right with that (to paraphrase Seinfeld).