Just narcissistically brutal, and stupid. Never mind you desperate worker guppies, it’s nothing against you, we just have a bigger fish to fry.

Right-Wingers To Boycott GM?

The Detroit Bureau reports that an idea seems to be picking up some cachet on the right-wing blogs and in talk radio: Fighting the “Government Motors” bailout by boycotting the company. Most of it so far is limited to relatively little-known writers, but two big names have picked up on it: Hugh Hewitt, who wants to save free enterprise — and Rush Limbaugh, who wants anything President Obama does to fail, and is urging his listeners to help push towards that goal.

Limbaugh reassures any GM workers who might be listening that the boycotters aren’t angry at them. “They don’t want to patronize Obama. They don’t want to do anything to make Obama’s policies work!” he explains. “This is an untold story, by the way. Of course, the government-controlled media is not gonna report anything like this but there are a lot of people who are not going to buy from Chrysler or General Motors as long as it is perceived Barack Obama is running it, because people do not want his policy to work here because this is antithetical to the American economic way of life.”

Not that I’d wish it to happen, but if some equally selfish and unhinged asshole shot Limbaugh dead, perhaps in church, I wouldn’t get upset.

How is it that there’s this whopping disconnect now between the ‘propaganda media’ and politics? They just haven’t lost that many viewers or listeners over the last five years (in fact, I think Fox News viewership is actually up this year) to explain why only 23% of people now call themselves ‘Republican’.

So the only other thing to conclude is this: people aren’t as easily swayed as they once were. The angry titans are throwing media punches, but they’re not landing.

Why the big ‘disconnect’? Here are my guesses. I believe they are all to blame at least in some small part for the current failures of the propaganda media.

1.) Everybody’s in on the joke #1. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity–their schtick has been going on long enough that everybody knows they’re hired for 2 purposes: ratings and propaganda. It’s an unholy marriage that orphans rational thought and average sensibility to any other outlets but theirs. Because of that, if you hear an argument of theirs that seems extreme, you don’t give it a second thought (such are the kin of ideological rigidity and gaudy anger). I think the drawn out, brutal years of the Iraq War were what finally exposed them for the corporate propagandists they really are. While so many people came to feel the costs of the War personally, the paycheck black-and-whiters blithely pushed on without a second thought because that’s what they were paid to do. You can’t trust people like that, they’re not human.

2.) Everybody’s in on the joke #2. Fear Factor, the auditioning freaks of American Idol, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Outta Whatever, Paris Hilton, Brangelina, Octo-Mom: the fish-eye psyche of the culture that drives ratings now has got nothing to do with the high quality of anything, it’s just about watching the ‘spectacle’. Fox and Rushbo pull down the big ratings–so what? They’re outrageous, that’s how everything works now. Leave Britney Alone, buddy.

3.) They over-played their strategy. Somewhere during the last eight years, at a height perhaps around the 2004 campaign, they figured that merely bringing up a topic to discuss it isn’t particularly effective in getting your message across. You needed to define your message as the discussion.

Something like this–traditionally: ‘New revelations may bring into question John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. What do you think?’

The new strategy: ‘It turns out John Kerry’s service in Vietnam isn’t what he said it was. What’s your reaction?’

You start with the result you want, you make it the truth and let people weigh in on the ‘revelation.’ This strategy, though, has a huge flaw: it only works if enough people are willing to consider the lie that they’ll ‘jump in’, so to speak. They can’t be too far outside of the sphere of your propaganda, you won’t be speaking to them. You can’t ‘lead’ them by too much, they just won’t get it.

The nation has changed and shifted back, centrally, leaving radio and Fox behind. Yet there they are, trotting out the same far-right incendiary stuff, to no effect. The ‘Sotomayor is a racist’ clip is a perfect example of this sort of misfiring. They’re going to have to move to the center to get enough people back within firing range if they’re going to hit anybody. But they’re not remotely going to do that soon, they’re still adamant that they weren’t right-wing enough in 2008. It’s insane, and I couldn’t be happier.

4.) They can’t back people up against the wall any more. We’ve been dealing with savage terrorists and endless wars for a while, and it’s just part of our daily existence. It once was pretty easy to win an argument when everybody was freaked out post 9/11. You could just play the ‘You’re going to just coddle the murderers?!’ or ‘You wouldn’t kill these scumbags if you had a chance?!’ card, or any other such all-or-nothing ace. But they don’t work now–we’ve regained some composure.

A classic example of this is the current debate on torture: ‘You wouldn’t torture a guy you knew had information on a ticking bomb? What?!‘ This is a ridiculous scenario. We know that torture doesn’t work, it didn’t work, it blackens our national character and reputation, and it’s been illegal the entire time. That still doesn’t stop right-wing radio and Fox from trotting it out daily, but it just falls flat. Thank gawd for sanity’s Yo-Yo effect.

There you go, those are the four that I came up with. I think all of these things are going on, hollowing out what once was a pretty effective propaganda bludgeon. What do you see, what did I miss?

Next up: how Conservatives can re-gain the offensive. Sure, stay tuned.

I’m not the first to observe that the Republicans seem to be moving into a smaller and smaller political neighborhood. Connecting less and less frequently with the center, but still going on and on about silly stuff, still offering little or nothing to make America a better place, they seem to be aiming at irrelevance.

GOP Losses Span Nearly All Demographic Groups

The decline and fall of the Republican Party in recent years has been so widespread that the party has lost support among nearly every major demographic subgroup of likely voters across the country, according to a new Gallup poll.

The party lost support among a broad swath of Americans, from conservative to liberal, low-income to high-income, married to unmarried, and elderly to young.

The only subgroup in which the party saw a slight increase in support from 2001 to 2009 was frequent churchgoers.

I will be foolish enough to hazard a guess as to why it continues unabated: because having a lock on radio and a giant television channel feels like having power. They’re so often on the air, they look so professional getting their talking points out, they’re so wildly popular on American radio–they must be making a killing in the political game, right? Hell, everywhere they go, audiences immediately agree with them, and then they’re cheered off stage. Everything’s swell. Other than the party being almost completely impotent and having a dismal future, other than that, sure.

As a result, there is a huge disconnect between the arrogant ‘reality’ that comes out of radio and Fox and the actual reality of what’s going on in politics, and it is mind-bending.

Take for instance, the just-started ‘debate’ on Obama’s new SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The Right-Wing Communicators are absolutely of one mind on her: she’s a racist, she’s an atrocious candidate, and they are absolutely furious that she would even be considered. There’s no ‘debate’ there, that’s for sure; Sotomayor appears to be one of the worst Americans on the planet, and perhaps in history.

And who is saying this? The giants of giant media. Rush Limbaugh is the biggest, most powerful American radio personality in history: inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame back in 1993, he reaches something like 15 to 30 million listeners every week. Fox television is the second most watched network, their News Channel is the #1 rated cable news outlet. And good old ABC and NBC have their Conservative mouths too, and they’re just as strident. And here they all go:

All of these experts, personalities, discussers, elders, veterans of politics, reaching millions and millions of Americans, all so monolithically furious about this woman, this disgusting racist. What’s the net result?

Sotomayor’s expected to sail right through.

These people are insane, yeah, I know, but there’s something more here worth looking at. How is it that there’s this whopping disconnect now between the ‘propaganda media’ and politics? They just haven’t lost that many viewers or listeners over the last five years (in fact, I think Fox News viewership is actually up this year) to explain why only 23% of people now call themselves ‘Republican’.

So the only other thing to conclude is this: people aren’t as easily swayed as they once were. The angry titans are throwing media punches, but they’re not landing.

[next: theories on the 'disconnect']

Poor Michael Savage. Can’t summer in Dover any more, which he would hate and wouldn’t ever do absent a fat check or a penitentiary sentence. Matt Towery goes out of his way to try to pretend Savage is only a sharp-tongued radio provocateur, but he’s obviously a hate-monger.

Britain’s Ban on an American Talk Show Host is An Outrage
by Matt Towery

It’s been decades since I was a student at England’s Cambridge University. Since I graduated in 1984, I have returned only a few times to this wonderful country, which I love so dearly and whose people so warmly embraced me.

So I admit to shock over British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s publication of 16 names of persons now banned from the United Kingdom for allegedly fostering extremism or hatred…

So militants who advocate or glorify terrorism are now somehow the equivalent of one of the most listened-to talk radio hosts [Savage] in America?…

Most likely media disdains him partly because he is both well educated — he holds Master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Berkley [sic]– and because his on-air personality is often gruff and cantankerous. Savage is prone to take on controversial social and political issues, often pushing things to the edge of opinion.

I went to Berkeley. And I remember running into guys like him there. The place was full of morons, believe me. Savage on autism: “[a] fraud, a racket. … I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ “

There is no controversy about the existence of autism. This is an incendiary, idiotic rant. It’s also guaranteed to hurt the already-hurting parents of these poor kids.

While some may find Savage’s opinions offensive — for example, he often acidly comments on what he refers to as his hometown of San Francisco’s obsession with gay and lesbian issues — he to my knowledge has never urged listeners to incite riots, harm other humans, commit terrorism or advocate other acts of hatred. Indeed, more often than not he bemoans the ineffectiveness of both Republicans and Democrats. He often drifts from political and social issues altogether to discuss everything from the food he ate the night before to some funny story from his childhood.

That was very slippery of you, saying he hasn’t urged his listeners to do those awful things. See, he’s not so bad, he’s not really fomenting violence, right? Savage merely urges reality that it should happen. That’s so much better, Matt.

Back in 2004, Abu Ghraib prison was one of his anti-Arab/Muslim hate-jump points. Savage:

–repeatedly called it “Grab-An-Arab.” Classic ethnic hate-mongering.

–said “Nick Berg, an American, not military, over there building transmission towers, was captured by the Untermenschen the sub-humans, who wrap themselves in a religion. He is seen saying his mother’s name, his father’s name, sister’s name, his brother’s name and then the smiling Arabs cut a living human beings head off as he screams.” The ‘Untermenschen’, or ‘smiling Arabs’? More of the same.

–said of Muslim women’s attire: “Don’t give me this crap that they’re doing it out of a sacred ritual or rite. It’s not required by the Quran that a woman walk around in a seventh-century drape. She’s doing it to spit in your face. She’s saying, ‘You White moron, you, I’m going to kill you if I can.’ That’s how I see it! What do you want me to do, mince words with you?”

–…and–for kickers–said of our home-grown foreigners: “Twenty-nine percent of all inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens. No, Mr. Bush, they do not all come here to work, they do not all come here to work. They come here to work the system, sell drugs, rape, and kill on contract. Don’t lie to us.” [...and I got those last two here, Matt: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=503156]

But on what you think is your salient question–how could he possibly get thrown in with the types who “advocate or glorify terrorism”? Well, you screwed up big time, Matt. If Savage isn’t out to glorify terrorism, then what the hell is this?

–said of the Abu Ghraib prisoners: “And I think there should be no mercy shown to these sub-humans. I believe that a thousand of them should be killed tomorrow. I think a thousand of them held in the Iraqi prison should be given 24 hour — a trial and executed.”

–said “Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices and they should be dropped from airplanes. How’s that? You like that one? Go call somebody that you want to report me to, see if I care. They should put dynamite in their behinds and drop them from 35,000 feet, the whole pack of scum out of that jail.”

Matt, there were about 7,000 detainees at Abu Ghraib at that time, and virtually all of them have been released back into the population. 1,000 of them alone were released in one week back in 2005. The homicidal mega-terrorists weren’t there, they were elsewhere: you’d have a difficult time finding even a single prisoner from there that was tried and executed, as Savage would have summarily done to the entire population. By dynamite sodomy and splatter-ment. But then, we both know he doesn’t care about such details of reality. Because the point of his rant was to take out his infinite rage on the people he supremely loathes, clearly wishing he could slaughter, or at least punish and permanently scar, them all.

More of the Savage ethos:
–’On his September 21, 1999 broadcast, while voicing his contempt for San Francisco’s homeless and the efforts to help them, Savage, a long time Bay Area radio personality, said that female students who come from a Marin County private school to feed and provide services to the homeless “can go in and get raped by them because they seem to like the excitement of it…”‘

–’On the March 18, 2003, broadcast of The Savage Nation Michael Savage called Elizabeth Smart, “Snow White.” Savage then went on to say that if he were writing a newspaper article about what had happened to Elizabeth Smart that the headline would be, “Snow White Gets Raped By Bum In White Robes.”‘

But then, what’s this? “She’s saying we killed tens of thousands of innocent people? Is that what’s she’s saying? What does this idiot know? Everyone knows she’s a communist. She’s a prostitute– she should be raped.”

That’s spicy, you’d say. The manner of provocateurs. It’s free speech, you might add. But that wasn’t Savage. Those were the comments of Warlords in the Afghan Parliament after a female MP, Malailai Joya, accused them of murder.

I’d bet, Matt, that the Britons would have a problem granting the pro-rape lobby access to their country. I’d even venture that a political warlord would get into the UK more easily than a useless radio fatmouth who called for the rapes of women who annoyed him. Savage adores violence and terrorism. He shouldn’t be tolerated by any country, Britain included.

It pains me to say this, but it appears that in this unfortunate instance, the true Savage Nation isn’t Dr. Savage, but the United Kingdom, for its equating of a talk-show host with killers and advocates of terrorism.

No, what’s painful is that you don’t have the courage to tell the truth. Michael Savage is a national troll.

It’s probably not actually true, given all the warmongers who are terrified of serving in the military, but having this ‘public personality’ collapse on video is just too good a thing not to reward it with some damning praise.

John Ziegler is a rotten right-wing counter-truth tantrumist whose particular milieu is resuscitating Sarah Palin’s laughable reputation.

In his ‘documentary’ conservative-big-bucks propaganda piece, he goes on and on about how the liberals–CBS, ABC, those assholes–assassinated poor little Sarah. He even interviewed the Sesame Street Governor herself. She rewarded her supporters, once again, by appearing to be an idiot on camera.

(Her responses to the Katie Couric interview, a very sore point for Ziegler, are from 2:26 to 5:50 in the clip.)

This is the sort of ‘journalism’ Ziegler does: “It seems to me as if Tina Fey and Katie Couric have been treated as..almost heroes or heroines among the media elite for what they, the perception of what they did to you. Do you feel the same way?”

Now that she’s destroyed your VP ambitions, how do you feel about Couric? That hack Tina Fey is not fair and balanced at all, screw her. That attempt would have been funny enough, but Vice-President-Me Elma trumps it with yet more of her brain-freezing word association:

“Oh, job security is important, uh, in my agenda here in the state, I’m just helpin’ those outside of my state also keep their jobs secure, but yeah I did see the Tina Fey, it was named entertainer of the year and Katie Couric’s ratings have, have risen, and I know that a lot of people are capitalizing on, um, I don’t know, I think some perhaps exploiting that was, that was done, uh, via me, my family, my administration. That–that’s, that’s a little bit perplexing it also says a great deal though about our society.”

Just reading that stuff for typos erases part of my mind. The clip, with her eyes wide, the urethane of furious back-brain searching on her face–it’s like a grey-matter freon bomb. How did Couric survive that interview?

“Good evening, Governor”
“Good evening, Katie, and might I add: zoops phuddle-pixie triceratops meaty farm glow. That–that says, er, a great deal though about our society.” *zombify*

Perhaps it was a latent paralytic effect of Palin’s that shut down the propagandist Ziegler’s motor neurons below his belt. In the clip, his legs become completely disabled, and thus he wobbles and topples all over the place, poor fella.

Which makes it strange to recall that, not too long ago, he had enough spine to scream and yell at the far more courageous and honest Max Blumenthal while they were surrounded by hundreds of fawning ultra-conservatives. And then brag about it to the same folks immediately afterward:

“..but based upon the audience reaction, this was a first round TKO, uh, that was, uh, never a contest… There was no physical contact, although, he, uh, thought I was getting in his personal space at one point. Which I said well if you’d like to make me back off, feel free to try… Well, he’s a gutless, ball-less coward. So, I mean, it really, it’s like taking on, you know, Bambi or something.”

Below, still hating Katie Couric, he’s not so eventually triumphant: but most of that is simply due to his refusing to acknowledge what’s ‘Private Property’, which the (very conservative) University of Southern California is. The security guards come out, the microphone goes away, the cuffs come out and Palin Paralytic Syndrome kicks in:

[Warning: if you're anything like me, buckle in because you're otherwise about to laugh yourself out of your chair.]

Cue conservative outrage.

Fill out the RNC survey–Michael Steele needs your ‘answers’…

3. What are the weaknesses of the Republican Party? Check all that apply.

–Bad Messaging
–Poor Response to Katie Couric
–Republicans who don’t vote like Medieval Monks
–Need to be more vigilant during Public restroom sexytime
–Need More consistent Capitalization in surveys
–Other:

Try this bit of head-scratching history:

Good Intentions Caused Financial Crisis

The financial crisis began with the best of intentions. Many Americans believe it is good for people to own their own homes. Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government began helping people to buy homes. By 1980, 65% of households owned their own homes. Among minorities, the number was lower, but because the percentage of people owning homes had been slowly rising since the 1950s, no one was too alarmed by these numbers. After 1980, however, the percentage of people owning homes declined to 64% and then remained unchanged for the next 10 years.

Many people grew concerned that buying a house had become too difficult and that a large number of Americans were being shut out of the opportunity to own a home. So the federal government decided to help increase the percentage of home owners. This goal was shared by Democrats and Republicans alike. Both Presidents Clinton and Bush worked with Congress to promote homeownership. No one realized that the programs they passed were sowing the seeds for an enormous economic crisis 14 years later.

Uh-oh, this sounds like more of the right-wing attack on the CRA. Here it comes…

In 1995, Congress revised the Community Reinvestment Act, a law passed in 1977 to encourage banks to lend to people with low incomes….

Great. So who’s the latest loon to ‘catapult the propaganda’? Would you believe McGraw-Hill, the school textbook company? Comes straight off their website.

In testimony before a House committee, Michigan law professor Michael Barr:

Despite the fact that CRA appears to have increased bank and thrift lending in low- and moderate-income communities, such institutions are not the only ones operating in these areas. In fact, with new and lower-cost sources of funding available from the secondary market through securitization, and with advances in financial technology, subprime lending exploded in the late 1990s, reaching over $600 billion and 20% of all originations by 2005. More than half of subprime loans were made by independent mortgage companies not subject to comprehensive federal supervision; another 30 percent of such originations were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts, which are not subject to routine examination or supervision, and the remaining 20 percent were made by banks and thrifts.

So only the last 20% even could have been influenced by CRA provisions. Everybody knows it was the mortgage guys in cahoots with the financial ‘wizards’ that created the big bubble, enough of this bullcrap.

Fox News’ Glenn Beck strikes ratings gold by challenging Barack Obama

Reporting from New York — Before Glenn Beck started his new show on Fox News in January, he sat down with Roger Ailes, the network’s chief executive, to make sure they were on the same page.

“I wanted to meet with Roger and tell him, ‘You may not want to put me on the air. I believe we are in dire trouble, and I will never shut up,’ ” said the conservative radio host.

But before Beck could say anything, Ailes shared a message of his own: The country faced tough times, he said, and Fox News was one of the only news outlets willing to challenge the new administration.

“I see this as the Alamo,” Ailes said, according to Beck. “If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.”

This is really annoying. This has gone past being amusing because the right is hammering on this hysteria non-stop: the world is coming to an end. We are all about to die. They’re absolutely serious: the faltering of the American economy and the government’s Stalinist liberal fascist tactics put the nation on the road to inevitable insurrection, all-out carnage, civil war. Armageddon.

What’s scary isn’t the future, it’s these right-wing spasms. If the networks do enough of this stuff, someone will start to believe it. Soon enough, people will scream bloody murder if the government so much as sneezes.

The truth is that loons are obsessed with power, and when it’s not theirs, it’s a mortal threat. If they don’t call the shots, the shots that are being called must be aimed at them. Why, I don’t know, probably just narcissism.

George W. Bush can put together a tax-cut bill that costs $1.2 trillion, and that’s a good idea. Obama can put together a tax-cut-and-infrastructure bill that costs $800 billion, and you better join a militia because someone is coming to cut your head off.

The tip-off to the stupidity is right up front, in the initial scenario:

—————————-FINANCIAL MELTDOWN—————————
——————————–THE YEAR IS 2014——————————-
———–ALL U.S. BANKS HAVE BEEN NATIONALIZED————-
———————–UNEMPLOYMENT AT 12-20%————————-
———————THE DOW IS TRADING AT 2800———————–
—————REAL ESTATE MARKET HAS COLLAPSED—————-
—-GOVERNMENT AND UNIONS CONTROL MOST BUSINESS—

Liberal steroetypes and the disintegration of society are exactly the same thing. Notice that ‘bad for business’ is also equated to The Apocalypse, pretty telling. I suppose when you’re this touchy, once a Democrat gets elected you’d better retreat to the War Room.

Barack, incidentally, has been president for 39 days.

More of Douglas Mackinnon’s attempt to denounce those bad old pensions:

A county government official recently told me that just the “pension obligations owed to firefighters and police” were keeping him up at night. One thing that so many large employers have in common – from car companies, to the U.S. Postal Service, to local governments – is massive pension obligation that are wreaking havoc on their bottom lines and threatening their viability.

But why should anyone be “entitled” to a pension? The fact is, the vast majority of Americans have no access to a pension, do not expect one, and will never get one. And if they don’t get a pension for the hard work and long hours they put in, why should a shrinking minority be “entitled” to one?

I would argue that, although police and firefighters are deserving, in our current economic climate no one other than career military members are “entitled” to a pension. If you are a member of Congress who currently gets a very generous pension and free health insurance for life, I ask you: “Why, when you are paid by the people, are you entitled to something your constituents will never get?”

These arguments are a complete mess, wholly unrelated and dumb. This is an unorganized attempt at discrediting any idea of a pension.

Hey, the private sector can do whatever it wants, right? They can pay ridiculous bonuses to talentless bosses if they like, it’s their company to run. Everybody is concerned with how they’ll pay for their lives when they’re old and feeble, why not lure prospective employees with attractive retirements and pensions? It’s part of an employment package, along with perhaps stocks, and year-end bonuses and just about anything else you could dream up. It’s a good strategy for luring the best and brightest. So you can leave the car companies and all the rest of the private sector out of this fight, they’re free to do as they choose.

That leaves all the governments, subsidized by us, as the pension ‘foolish.’ But the whole initial reason for government retirements, or ‘Social Security’, being started was a good one: old people were living and dying on the streets during the Great Depression. People did not want their America, the great nation, to be a place where old folks sat suffering on the sidewalks. The idea of a minimal security net was what Social Security was, and is today.

Still, if Mackinnon were capable of destroying it, he would. And slowly but surely you’ll see old folks returning back to the streets in increasing numbers to die. Why do you think the AARP are such a crazed, effective political force? It’s not because their members are rich and secure, it’s because so many of them live by minimal means. They get by on small fixed incomes, thanks to their former jobs and their government; let’s leave them alone.

Anyways, if you get the government to give up on Social Security, how does that help the economy? That’s where Mackinnon started: One of the most dangerous words in the English language is “entitlement.” It helped create, and continues to fuel, the current economic meltdown. What little money pensioners get goes right back into the economy for survival staples. You cut that off, and everybody loses. Mackinnon’s arguments are just stupid.

Douglas Mackinnon at Townhall.com tackles those wasteful, ridiculous pensions with some tired propaganda.

One of the most dangerous words in the English language is “entitlement.” It helped create, and continues to fuel, the current economic meltdown. It underscores a dangerous lack of accountability and honesty by some of our leaders – and ourselves.

Well, right off the bat, he’s doing the usual conservative dance: ‘the usual liberal stuff caused this problem.’ No. Entitlements have been around a long time and were not acting in any way differently than before, so that’s a dead end.

The new issue that caused it is well known. Really risky financial instruments were being cut out from an underpinning of the economy: home buying. When the instruments rewarded so astonishingly in the short term, it created an incredibly lucrative incentive to crank out mortgages. The result: rubber-stamped loans that were only good on paper, and exploding housing prices that reflected the numbers of people unwisely propelled into upscale markets. When you throw in the ‘insurance’ for these loans–another risky money-maker, the ‘credit default swaps’ that were backed by promises alone–you’ve got a perfect bubble. Bubble collapses, takes out homeowners, takes out housing values, takes out banks, takes out lenders, takes out financial institutions who created the schemes. There you go: homeowners, values, banks, lenders, financial giants. When you take into account the investors who got burned in the schemes, it’s a nightmare.