As only The Rude Pundit can offer

Commentary on the SS fiasco...

The awesome part of this massive effort to do away with Social Security through the enormous expenditure of Bush's "political capital" is that he's squandered it, tossed it in the garbage heap. How awful does your not-even-proposed plan have to be if, with a Republican Congress and a conservative media that spouts White House press releases unquestioningly, you are losing support every day for the biggest goal, privatization, or the less-threatening "personal accounts"? That the citizenry you control with nearly unchecked power is turning its backs on you when it comes to your dearest goal, even as you push harder and harder for it? That the opposition, so seemingly whipped, has found its soul again in your new weakness? That members of your own party and ideology are running like whipped mongrels from your lash? Goddamn, it's just something to see.

When the Hindenburg, full of gas and Nazi hubris, burst into flames, killing 35 people, no one knew why. But some present at the explosion agreed that, in a horrible way, the burning ship was really quite beautiful.
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And the bankruptcy bill...

Here's the short version of the five-hundred page bill, given the oh-so-sweet name "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005," that's a corporate ball-lickin' lawyer's wet dream: if you, as an individual, incur too much debt, whether that's from credit card spending sprees or your husband's brain cancer, filing for bankruptcy will no longer be a kind of protection from homelessness. In fact, the bill specifically applies a "means test" to income without regard to why bankruptcy may be necessary, like the aforementioned brain cancer. So individuals whose income and assets fall above some arbitrary line would have to file under Chapter 13, which allows for creditors to sodomize you and leave you naked in the hole where your house once stood with more debt to be paid. The kinder, gentler Chapter 7 fucks your credit, but gets rid of all the debt, but for most people, that'll be off the table.

The Senate had a chance last week to soften the bill with Democratic amendments that would have capped interest at a slightly less-than loan sharking 30%, would have given an exemption to all military members on the means test (instead passing a more restrictive Republican amendment), would have shielded those who have to file for medical-related reasons, and more. All, all were defeated because they would have, in the end, made this fierce wrecking of the lives of the average citizen less toothsome. Now Ted Kennedy is trying to add a minimum wage-raising amendment that'll fail, as will Rick Santorum's, which has the added bonus of eliminating the 40-hour work week and exempting some "small businesses" from the minimum wage and labor laws.

There is no justification for this bill beyond some vague idea of "abuse" of personal bankruptcy, which occurs in such a low percentage of filers that it'd be like banning cars because some people drive drunk.

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The bankruptcy bill is class warfare in its purest form: it states that the poor and middle class are bad and that the rich are good. And maybe it's time to start considering how we respond to such blatant, intentionally barbarous acts by those in power.
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