The Bailout and the Tarp and the Stimulus and the Multi-Trillion Budget and Tarp 2 and Stimulus 2 and Tarp and Stimulus Meet Frankenstein and The Wolf Man are like the old Saturday-morning cliffhanger serials your grandpa used to enjoy. But now he doesn't have to grab his walker and totter down to the Rialto, because he can just switch on the news and every week there's his plucky little hero Big Government facing the same old crisis: Why, there's yet another exciting spending bill with 12 zeroes on the end, but unfortunately there seems to be some question about whether they have the votes to pass it. Oh, no!
And then, just as the fate of another gazillion dollars of pork and waste hangs in the balance, Arlen Specter or one of those lady senators from Maine dashes to the cliff edge and gives a helping hand, and phew, this week's spendapalooza sails through. But don't worry, there'll be another exciting episode of Trillion-Buck Rogers of the 21st Century next week!
I started calling the fall TARP panic the Perils of Pauline Paulson but Steyn went me about 100 times better with those two paragraphs!