I found a pretty neat tool yesterday... Everyone knows it's a little difficult to run around and gather the contact information of your state's Representatives and Senators on the local and federal levels. It's possible, but I've always had to go to individual sites, remember my region, find the guy's site and dig for contact information. Takes longer than I would really like, especially since I keep forgetting which district we're in. But no more! I found the perfect site to learn who you should call for this kind of stuff:

HTTP://WWW.CONGRESS.ORG

That's .ORG, not .GOV... Put in your zip code on the left and voila! Your officials. Go on! Give it a shot... Let's put your voter spirit to the test. You know what else I found? The roll call for the bail out bill yesterday. If you weren't following, it died in the House of Representatives, so everyone on this list is (obviously) a Representative. I'm pleased to announce that Representative Dan Burton (my Representative) voted against this bill. At least the House listens to what we say, eh? If this had gone to the Senate, Senators Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar are notorious for completely ignoring any input whatsoever and I seriously doubt they would have voted against this thing... Why they keep getting in, I don't know. I keep hearing nothing but disappointment come from them. Anyway!

Check out the roll call... Look up your officials using Congress.org and see if they did what everyone wanted. Look, these people voted for the bill against the wishes of a vast majority of voters. It's all over the place... Rush Limbaugh had a Representative on his show yesterday and he said they've had more calls for this bail out bill than they did for the Immigration Amnesty bill last year, and THAT drive of callers swayed the House from 5 against to enough to kill the bill. It was only logical that this bill was killed, too... It was, but very narrowly. Ugh... This Congress is a disgrace. It is consistently the most disapproved of Congress in history and they continue to live up to their nickname "The Do-Nothing Congress", and what little they do try to pass isn't what anybody wants, anyway! Seriously... Ban incandescent lights? Who wanted that? We need to get them out, folks... They're literally worthless.

See that? The markets dropped by 778 points at the most after the bail out bill was killed yesterday... The Democrats went insane and said we're all doomed unless we pass something stupid like that 700 billion dollar inflation and pointed at the stock markets as proof. I have to say that I've always thought Congress was painting a dismal picture of doom just so they could pass their stupid socialist nationalization plans... I mean, come on. Growth and recession. It's the natural ebb and flow of the economy.

But, look! The market's going back up! Not quite recovering completely, but it needs to slow down anyway. The saying "what goes up must come down" applies directly to free market capitalism. Can't keep growing for eternity. (Which is something that the government simply can't seem to accept...) I wouldn't say it's all free and clear... Not by a long shot. With the economy still based so much on the loaning industry that is slowly crumbling beneath us all, I look to the market dropping still further, but I honestly don't think it will crash. Banks aren't crashing in a domino effect like everyone was expecting. There are enough large banks who are well off enough to have taken over everything that's died so far... Most people seem to have kept their money so far, and I think the bank failures will happen slowly, if they even all implode to begin with, so I don't think anything will catch us off guard. If a market crash would have happened, it would have happened this morning... But it didn't. Someone's lying to us.

I'll tell you who: It's the Democrat-controlled Congress. The one comprised of people directly involved with the disaster of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Please tell me why those companies are still alive to begin with? And why the overseers and CEOs of those companies aren't in some serious trouble?) I'm not at all pleased with President Bush, either... He's always been known as a crazy spender, but this is just a disgrace. Presidents always go a little crazy at the end of their second term, but this is just insane... I'm glad some (most) Republicans and some (few) Democrats still have their heads screwed on straight and decided to keep government out of the economy. But they're still talking about putting together another bill... I can only hope that it won't happen until after November and with a different set of Representatives and Senators. Seriously, we need to vote out anyone who voted for this. Why? For the simple reason that the vast majority of voters did NOT want this passed, and it just barely died... They only needed 13 more votes to pass it. That's way too close, people. Someone's not listening to their voters and they need axed as soon as possible.