My cruller is cooked. Between the election combat and now the financial mess, I’ve hit “overload.”

As for the election stuff, let me say that there is nothing, NOTHING Barack _____ Obama has ever said with which I agree. If you feel otherwise, and if you have paid as much attention to all of this as I have, then neither of us will ever convince the other. We’ll just have to agree to disagree and live with the consequences of our convictions. If, however, you are an Obama supporter and you haven’t been paying as much attention as I have, I won’t change your mind, so please spare me the talking points and do whatever it is you want to do on Election Day. With any kind of luck, you won’t vote.

With respect to the financial mess, let me say that I am most skeptical of any kind of solution that can be cobbled together in a few days. I have worked on more than a few transactions involving significant sums of money, and the details of those transactions have always been damned near mind boggling. And yet, here we are, asking a bunch of goddamned legislators (most of whom, in both parties, are absolutely clueless and some of whom are part of the problem) to pass on possibly the biggest transaction in American history – one that has been put together in a matter of days!

Look, you can’t do a proper job of buying or selling even a goddamned luncheonette in this amount of time. Even with the buying or selling of a luncheonette, the devil is always, always in the details. Doing a transaction that is worth possibly a trillion dollars in such a short time is begging for trouble.

My immediate inclination is to say NO to this massive bailout. I admit that I am not an economist, but I speak English as well as most folks. I have yet to hear a single, relatively straightforward explanation of what would happen if we let the businesses that can’t make it simply fail.

Sure, like you, I’ve heard conclusory statements such as, “We must act NOW, or the entire system will collapse! Depression! The end of the world as we know it!” Maybe so, but I would like a bit more explanation than that before “we” sign off on a trillion-dollar deal.

Until I am convinced otherwise, I say, no bailout. Let the chips fall where they may.