Typical executive branch defenestration of Congress:

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

I mean, it's only the taxpayer's money we're talking about!

Maybe Harry Reid and Leader Nance could send a sternly worded letter?

And typical weakness from Congress. Here's a gem from Barney Frank:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said his concerns about oversight diminished after the Treasury program's focus shifted from purchases of financial firms' troubled assets to capital injections into companies. "The concern was they'd be buying assets and we wouldn't know the price," Frank said. The revised bailout program "doesn't have the conflicts of interest and the other things people were concerned about."

Oh, really? If Hank Paulson, late of Goldman Sachs, injected capital into Goldman Sachs, where (presumably) he hopes to return to work, why wouldn't that be a conflict? And, last I checked, money was fungible, so if Goldman Sachs then turns around and used its capital to buy a bank in which Paulson has an interest, wouldn't that be a conflict?

The legislation also created a body called the Financial Stability Oversight Board, whose five members include Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. But it has no staff of its own, and few expect that policymakers can conduct oversight of themselves. "It's sort of a joke in terms of oversight," a congressional aide said.

If the bailout was nothing more than a slush fund for Hank Paulson's golfing buddies, how would we know?

Really, with the NOW NOW NOW AUMF-like passage, the hundreds of billions pissed away, the privatization, with Congress rolling over, and with no oversight at all, the Bush + Reid + Paulson + Obama + Paulson bailout's looking more and more like Iraq every day: The folks at the top of the food chain collect a bag of money and get away clean, and the little people get fucked. Quelle surprise.

And just like Iraq, wouldn't it have been simpler, cheaper, and far more effective simply to fly cargo planes over the country and airdrop pallets of cash?