Federal Bailout or Terrifying Police State?

He was right there on C-SPAN, an actual congressman and opponent of the Bush Administration's bailout of Wall Street, speaking on the House floor about those mysterious warnings Henry Paulson supposedly gave to the doubting lawmakers before the $700 billion bill was first rejected by Congress.

"The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere," Congressman Brad Sherman said Thursday. "Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill ... there would be martial law in America."

The next day, the House passed the Senate's version of the bailout -- the one McCain approved, with all those pork earmarks he loves so much -- and we were miraculously saved from an American Police State. For a few more days, anyway. But would it really be so bad, to live under Bush-Paulson-McCain tyranny?

Here's the video of Sherman, who is not a fringe right-wing militia nut but a suburban California Democrat, telling America about this threat of martial law:



You'd think people would've been all excited about this on the talk radio or whatever, but Sherman made these frightening remarks just an hour before the big debate when Sarah Palin read those index cards about nothing, so obviously nobody was paying attention to some congressman on C-SPAN.

Anyway, as our economic system and capitalism itself continue to collapse and it's increasingly evident that the federal bailout of Wall Street has done nothing to calm investors or businesses, we have to assume the new police state will be put into place sometime this month, before the presidential elections, and that John McCain will become our new crazy old dictator guy.

Will it really be so bad?

It's not like we have big street protests in America, except every four years at the presidential conventions -- and we ignore those because, come on, hippies! People are pretty well fed in this country. Obese, really. Terribly, terribly obese. So food riots aren't in the picture anytime soon, and nobody's really in good enough shape to mix it up with the armored SWAT cops and National Guard troops who are already hanging around our cities and airports, looking very menacing in their Darth Vader suits.

Martial law might even be good for us. We wouldn't be having all those gasoline shortages in the South if the national police simply told us when we could drive to work, and when we needed to walk. I bet Americans would start looking and feeling a lot better, too. Nothing like a 10-mile walk down an empty interstate from your foreclosed house to the office park. And with the drought and global warming, we hardly have rain or snow anymore!

Every day is pretty much beautiful.

Things are already hard for most Americans, and they are about to get absolutely apocalyptic, and it's no fun to tell the kids they can't have another truckload of electronic consumer crap for Christmas. Just let the black-clad government thugs do your "dirty work" and maybe those kids will start enjoying the simple things -- like not being taken down to the work camp, forever.

We all know it would be nice to have a garden and to maybe talk to the neighbors every six months or so. Won't it really be a blessing when the heavily armed federal troops force us, at gunpoint, to grow 35% of our food in community gardens? Food just tastes better when you grow it yourself. Especially when you're always so hungry.

Anyway, what's a 401k plan except some complicated numbers on some paperwork mailed to your home every three months? It's not like you were ever going to see any of that "money."

Ken Layne is the managing editor of Wonkette and a famous optimist.