I'm not going to get the quotes exactly right, but close enough to exactly right that you'll get the point...

A couple of hours ago, I saw Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) interviewed on Fox News by Greta Van Susteren. Greta asked the Senator how the numbers for each line item were arrived at to which the Senator replied "People can look at any line item in the bill and find something they don't like."

Now, I'm sure she didn't mean it the way it sounded, i.e. that every line item was objectionable to almost everyone, but that probably is fairly close to the truth if you were to ask anyone other than Democrats in DC for his opinion. So how is it that such a disaster is likely to be passed in close to its current horrendous form?

It goes along with another answer given by Landrieu to a similar question. When asked again if the line items were carefully studied to come up with the amounts allocated to them, she said "It's not that scientific."

In other words, Senate Democrats are abdicating any pretense of responsibility to understand how they are burning future generations' money. And they're so cowed by the enormous sums (and who wouldn't be) that they are intellectually unable to defend them or even to comprehend them. Furthermore, there must be a heck of a lot of "you leave my pork alone and I'll leave yours alone." Typically these things are a couple million dollars each. This time they're a couple billion.

They say there are two things you never want to see made, laws and sausages. Right now I feel like I'm seeing both, as the Senate grinds our economic and political liberty to little bits in order to stuff it into a nasty skin of permanent expansion of government intrusiveness and cost.

Streaming under the Fox News interview were two excellent quotes.

First, from the always clear-thinking (at least on economics) Tom Coburn: "the economic stimulus bill represents one of the most egregious acts of generational theft in our nation's history."

And second, from the surprisingly on-target John McCain: "If this legislation is passed, it'll be a very bad day for America. My goodness, it's a moment in history of spending the likes of which this nation has never seen."

It appears that the villains at the vote will be the RINOs Arlen Specter and Susan Collins. If true, I will do what I can to encourage and support a primary challenge to both, but especially to Specter. He's worse than worthless.

If the bill passes the Senate by just one or two votes more than necessary to get past a filibuster, it will be a small political victory for the Republican Party but a huge loss of wealth and freedom for the nation.

One interesting thing to consider: I wrote quite a bit before the election about how politicians tend to believe that an electoral victory means the voters were voting for them whereas just as often they were simply voting against the other guys. When Obama and Pelosi argue "we won, so we'll make the laws", I believe they're making that exact mistake. Their majorities are so large that they can probably get away with it for two years but I strongly believe that their distinctly partisan behavior dealing with the most important issue in decades will come back to haunt them. And again, as I've said many times, that prediction will only have a chance to come true if the Republican Party can offer a better alternative than simply "at least we're not them."