House Republicans (some in tight election races and playing off public distaste) torpedoed the bailout bill yesterday, sending stocks plummeting. McCain’s gamble to appear presidential and save the day by racing to DC upon his white steed, has him instead tilting at windmills, and paying the political price. Obama’s no better. Word is, while he supports the bailout, he hasn’t exactly been burning up the phone lines coercing any naysayers in Congress.

Another day has dawned, Wall Street and the world is holding it’s collective breath. In the balance is the free-market economy and every one of us that lives in it. As ugly and unfair as it is to bail out financial institutions and the dolts that ran them, it has to be done soon, politics be damned. The bull isn’t running on Wall Street, it's hurtling to earth from altitude. If Congress doesn’t stop the freefall it’ll be just so much hamburger strewn over a wrecked economic landscape.