UPDATE: the house has passed the bailout bill!

I'm sure everyone reading this now has been following the Bailout Bill at least somewhat. Recap: The bill failed to pass in the house so far, many say due to the flood of phone calls and other forms of communication coming from the public saying that they don't want the bill to pass. In the Senate the bill passed. Not as many senators are up for election in the immediate future, so that may have something to do with the difference. The following are a few bits of information that my readers may or may not have heard.

Here is a video of Rep Brad Sherman on the floor, saying that some reps have been told that martial law will be the consequence if the bill does not pass. It's on Vlogging the Apocalypse, and for me it was a little slow to load, but that may have just been my computer. It's a short clip, and very worthwhile.

Lending credence to that claim, part of the army is being trained for "homeland scenarios" including training in traffic control, and non-lethal weapons for crowd control. The unit is being called Consequence Management Response Force.

All kinds of ridiculous have been added on to the bill, starting about page 261, feel free to see for yourself, "exemption from tax, certain wooden arrows designed for children," and "accelerated depreciation for business properties on Indian reservations." It may sound like a joke, but it's not.

In the meantime, several major cities throught the south are experiencing gas shortages. There has been some mainstream attention to the problem, but little. Witness report thirty-minute to an hour waits at gas stations, when a station can be found with gas. Mainstream sources quote politicians as claiming that shortages are caused by panic. Witness say there is some panic, but not enough to warrant the situation still continuing twenty days or more after the storms, originally said to be responsible, have passed. Speculations have ranged from those who say that the shortages may be caused by the credit crunch, while others have speculated more darkly that someone wants restrictions on travel in the area. Paranoia is easy to understand when one takes into account how hard hit businesses in the area, especially small businesses, have become by the shortage. (I have not quoted any sources on this because most of my information comes from people that I know and message boards that I frequent. Basic searches should access some articles.)

There are unsubstantiated rumors, perhaps started by a seller of gold, that banks may be getting ready for a one to two week bank holiday, during which credit cards, debit cards, atms, and all deposits would be unusable. Here's the source. As I have said, these rumors are unsubstantiated, and the author of the article may have some ulterior motives.

A quick word about the rumor that there may be some big bad unnamed thing happening on October 7th, 2008, from the Web Bots. Project Camelot recently interviewed Half Past Human's Clif High recently. I would encourage anyone who is taking this rumor seriously to read the whole transcript of the interview. In my opinion this web bot program sounds like a new kind of divination tool. The current predictions being made are extremely off-the-wall. Imagine for a moment that a tarot reader who is said to be very skilled, but has also been wrong before, were making similar predictions. That is essentially what is happening. I mean no disrespect to any practicioners of divination, but the idea that these web bots are in any way more reliable or scientific just because technology is involved is silly.

I can't convey how many people I have seen/heard/read freaking out over these predictions. First of all, in the interview High never says that the event he predicts will be as intense as 9/11, he merely says that the emotional outpouring will take place over a longer period of time. Then he goes on to talk about things like aliens fighting wars over human body parts. These predictions, while perhaps interesting on a philisophical level, are nothing to warrant the freak-outs I have witnessed.