This is Class Warfare

So the conventional wisdom regarding the House of Representatives' failure to pass the, cough, $700 billion bailout of Wall Street goes something like this: Representatives from rural, largely Republican districts killed the bill because they were inundated with calls and emails from uninformed hicks constituents demanding they vote no.

But maybe the constituents are just differently informed.

Regular people in American who used to be middle class have, in the last year or so, seen their ability to pay for gas, food, heat, medical expenses, taxes and in many cases their mortgages, erode or disappear. They have pretty much lost everything already. So when W. and prominent lawmakers warn them that massive amounts of tax dollars are needed to avoid a catastrophe, they rightly wonder whose catastrophe? Whose Great Depression?

Essentially lawmakers are asking suffering people to suffer more so that everybody else doesn't have to suffer too much. This thing is not going to fly, I'm afraid.

Rural people know they can always shoot their lunch and turn the hides into blankets. What will we turn our credit default swaps and higher educations and blogs into?