The bailout is simply a bad policy that is a political stunt to try and help in the upcoming elections.  Is it really a good policy to take bad debt from an institution and tack it on to the debt of each American?  Sure this bandaid may help the economy stabalize a month or two faster (its about to get worse before it gets better, dont expect huge gains this year in the market, housing prices etc.).
The fact of the matter is by bailing out the economy today, all we have done is increased the amount of fake money in circulation which will compound the underlying problems with our monetary policy.  If you want to be truly free we have to cut spending by our government (and get rid of a large amount of it), lower taxes (we will have lots of extra money when we get rid of it) and focus on the future of America.  A bandaid today when we need a heart transplant really wont get us that far in the long run.  We need to make major changes.