The failure of the unemployment extension has affected me strongly, even though I don't collect. I've been surfing around the web reading discussions on the subject, and it's just... devastating.

One guy told of losing his young wife to cancer two years ago and trying to raise his two young children himself. He's been out of work for 18 months and can't find anything. Now his benefits are running out and he and his boys will be in the streets by the end of the month. They have no food.

Another woman in her 50s has blown through her 401(k) in the past two years and now faces eviction from a house that she has been paying faithfully on for 15 years.

All of these people have applied for hundreds of jobs. It's not like people aren't looking for jobs -- there simply are no jobs, not for the unemployed, anyway.

Stories like this are being repeated millions of times. 200,000 people are going to fall off the rolls every week. Millions of people face homelessness and hunger. I never thought I would see this in America. My God, what have we become?

Meanwhile, the very rich are richer than ever. Do they think this won't affect them? I've got news for the rich guys: It's not that far from the Bronx to Larchmont, Rye, Greenwich or wherever else you sequester yourselves. This will affect you shortly after people start getting hungry.

Is there no sense of patriotism among Republicans and the very rich? If I were making a huge income or sitting on a massive pile of wealth, I would advocate for taxing my class a few extra percentage points. You live in a society, in a nation. Have you no stake in that society's health? These people wave the flag and say they love America, but then they stab America in the back every chance they get just to get richer than they already are. They send our jobs overseas, take our tax money to cover their gambling losses (yeah, we haven't forgotten the bailouts), send us overseas to kill and die, and now they leave millions of people to freeze and starve. It's disgusting.

People will say, "Don't blame the rich." Well, I do blame the rich. They're the ones with the power. They're the ones who screwed up our financial system (and profited from it). They're the ones who bought the politicians and tilted every playing field to their own advantage. This is their fault. Not to say that there aren't good rich people, but those good rich people have not been active or patriotic enough to counteract what their evil neighbors have done.

What have they done? They have driven millions of people to poverty and desperation. May they reap as they have sown.

The Republicans are such hypocrites. They say they're worried about the deficit, but the Bush tax cuts cost over a trillion dollars in revenue. The wars have cost over a trillion dollars. The TARP and other bailouts cost over a trillion dollars. This $33 billion for the unemployment extension was a drop in the bucket compared to the havoc they've wreaked on the budget. It seems like they hate America because they've done more than anybody else to bring us to this point.

It's time for the poor and middle class to start fighting back in the class war. We no longer have anything to lose.

Here's a good place to start.