Longtime ASZ readers know that I spent several years in the U.S. Navy submarine force. We all view current events in our lives through a lens that we develop from our personal experiences, and for me, there’s a really great analogy from my time in the Navy that relates to the Wall Street bailout bill. I won’t give away any state secrets in the process of describing my lens; this is stuff you can find in any Tom Clancy book.

In sub-surface warfare, when one submarine is chasing another, the object of evasive maneuvers by the submarine being chased is to get away before the other boat can get a firing solution and snap-shot a torpedo. But if the guy on the bad team is able to get a shot away, and a torpedo is heading in your general direction, the game changes and things get interesting. One of the tactics available to the submarine being chased is to launch counter-measures. The purpose of a counter-measures container is to confuse the incoming torpedo, with various embedded noises and materials, and to pull the torpedo off of its track.

Still with me? It occurs to me that the current Senate markup of the Wall Street bailout bill seeks to do just that - embed enough fluff and noise in the bill that the original intent of the legislation becomes almost hidden, and the ire of constituents and voters gets confused (and redirected).

Over the past week, Americans of every political stripe have fired a torpedo directly toward their congressional representatives. Hank Paulson’s original 3 page, $700 billion “trust me” bailout bill was in dire trouble. So, Senate authors have launched a counter-measures container at the taxpayers in the form of a bill that has morphed overnight into an amendment packed, 450 page monstrosity that no Senator will completely read or understand prior to the vote that will apparently be held tonight.

The bill has been dressed up with Democratic Party amendments from past failed energy bills (there’s a lot of green energy support built into the Wall Street bailout bill), more Republican tax cuts for the rich, increases in bank insurances, changes in accounting rules, bridges to nowhere (just kidding, I think) and recognition of Julious T. Cornpone’s 100th birthday (I’m really kidding about that - but you get the point). See this for what it is: counter-measures meant to confuse and deflect incoming fire.

The basic premise of the bill appears to remain much the same. A blank check is written to Wall Street in an attempt to free up credit markets. There is limited congressional oversight of the plan. The Secretary of the Treasury is still given unprecedented power over the implementation of the bill, and other long term changes to the job description that will further remove the Treasury of the United States from any meaningful accountability.

The difference between the motivations in the House and the Senate? Every House representative is up for election this year, and they’re responding - as they should all the time - to pressure from constituents. Many Senators have no such reelection concerns.

As a general rule, Americans are largely disengaged from the political process on a day-to-day basis, but this time, the sheer magnitude of the lunacy has captured the attention of all but the most somnolent. I think it caught Washington by surprise that so many people actually understood the magnitude - maybe not the specifics - but there wasn’t even the need to make stupid media analogies about a $700 billion stack of $100 bills reaching into the next galaxy to bail out fat cats in the market. We knew. We inherently knew. And we made calls and wrote letters and fired off emails.

The big sell started in earnest yesterday, when the bailout morphed into a “rescue plan”. Then, this morning, details of the Senate bill were released, and smarter minds than mine are now getting bogged down in the minutia of crap that really doesn’t alter the fundamentals of the bill.

Given the alleged magnitude of the issue, our representatives in the Senate are doing us no favors by weighing down the bill with extraneous crap and counter-measures to render the bill largely beyond understanding by even seasoned legislative lawyers.

So I ask you once again: please, please call your Senators TODAY, before the vote goes down, and express your displeasure (if you are, indeed, displeased). If your Senator (whether GOP or Dem) is up for election this year, let them know that you have the added leverage of denying them your vote in November, and that of every voter in your household.

Make it stick. Hold them accountable, for once, to you.