Remember how Treasury Secretary Paulson said that he watned 700 billion dollars to buy up bad debts so that banks wouldn’t have to worry about them? Remember how the people who liked that idea told us that we might just get our money back selling that debt off after a couple few years so that we wouldn’t really be out 700 billion dollars? Remember how Congressional Democrats, and more than a few gullible Republicans tried really hard to hornswoggle us and actually got the MSM to help peddle the story?

They couldn’t even keep up the pretense of the scam for three months.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday largely abandoned its plan to buy up toxic mortgage assets and said it will focus its $700 billion financial bailout fund on making direct investments in financial institutions and shoring up consumer credit markets.

If it were only 700 billion dollars we were throwing down a rathole of failure, it might be okay because in the scheme of things, our country can make up that kind of money with one good month of production.

What do we do when our government has already committed 3.5 trillion dollars to various bailouts and is ready to hand out even more money to whichever industry sends the smarmiest, most gift-laden lobbyists?

That, I don’t know. I’ve no idea what happens when the government diverts about a quarter of our yearly GDP wherever the heck it wants to without considering any potential consequences whatsoever and without caring about the people from whom it’s taking that production.

I do know we’re going to find out.