The real story about getting this thing through Congress is about packaging it for digestion by the American electorate. It isn't "ground-up snouts and tails," it's "cold-cuts."

One can only marvel at the political tone-deafness of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who first stuck the label "bailout" on the plan. Tack on the modifier, "Wall Street," and it immediately set up a populist "us vs. them" mentality that had Congresspersons heading for the tall grass.

Nobody likes the "rescue," but the stock market gyrations that followed its original failure showed us that this is no time to play cute.

I almost didn't go with this cartoon because I thought the "lipstick on a pig" analogy was getting shopworn. It seems to be the metaphorical currency of the moment, however, so I decided to go with the flow, as long as I could use it to say something meaningful.