As God is my witness, if I read one more headline like this, I swear — I’m going to lose it.

At a press event in North Portland in front of the home of a family struggling to avoid foreclosure, Senator Jeff Merkley unveiled a six-part plan to fix the housing market and rebalance the relationship between borrower and lender. The plan includes what Merkley calls “lifeline bankruptcy,” which is basically the cramdown proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of primary residence loans.

Rather than admit that property owners have the right to sue in this country, the Third Way thinks that we can best protect them by limiting their right to sue to actual damages.

I was on the PBS News Hour with Jim Kessler of Third Way last night, during which Kessler said the NAFTA-like South Korean free trade agreement was a great deal for the U.S. Of course he thinks KORUS is good for the US. What’s he going to say, the banks that fund his organization are tickled pink the US government won’t be able to pass “too big to fail” laws, or ban risky financial products and services?

This is a really vicious proposal. But just because it has a few tax increases doesn’t necessarily mean that Republicans won’t take it and run with it. And there are enough Democrats in the Third Way side of things to be swayed by a “get serious” approach.

I find this memo from Third Way (PDF) to be comically poorly timed. No surprise they mine any and all data points to claim the need for Democrats to move to the right, but they also claim the path to victory this November is not rallying the liberal base, but winning over the moderates–despite the fact that Democrats have already won over moderates.