Wednesday, December 30, 2015

The Giant Bubble Made of Whine

Preamble_Burn


In 2007, the housing bubble collapsed.
In 2000, the dot-com bubble collapsed.
In 1637, the tulip bubble collapsed.
Tulip mania reached its peak during the winter of 1636–37, when some bulbs were reportedly changing hands ten times in a day. No deliveries were ever made to fulfil any of these contracts, because in February 1637, tulip bulb contract prices collapsed abruptly and the trade of tulips ground to a halt. The collapse began in Haarlem, when, for the first time, buyers apparently refused to show up at a routine bulb auction. This may have been because Haarlem was then at the height of an outbreak of bubonic plague. While the existence of the plague may have helped create a culture of fatalistic risk-taking that allowed the speculation to skyrocket in the first place, this outbreak might also have helped to burst the bubble.
Eventually they all do.

But after 30 years, the unhinged Conservative bed-wetting bubble is still going strong.

Every day, reality slaps it in the face over and over again.  Every day it piles the sandbags of delusion, rage and paranoia higher around itself a little.  And every day, the unhinged Conservative bed-wetting bubble continues to pay off at 10-to-1 because the operators of the Conservative media and political machine continue to profit handsomely from feeding their madness.

Eventually the tulip and dot-com and housing bubbles collapsed because the shared delusion was ultimately based on tangible proposition which could not survive scrutiny.  But the toxic asset which keeps the unhinged Conservative bed-wetting bubble going is not the value of a flower bulb or a NINJA mortgage, but the ever-shifting matrix of batshit conspiracies that are constantly rat-scuttling around in the skulls of millions and million of Conservatives.

And so, inevitably (from the Boston Herald):
Carr: RINO Ryan sold us out

It’s not so much that the country needs a third political party — we need a second political party, one that represents everyone who isn’t an illegal alien, a crony capitalist, a hack, a welfare recipient or a beneficiary of one form or another of government favoritism or largesse.

Wait, you say, don’t we already have the Republican Party? Yes, and that’s the problem. As a Democratic governor from Alabama used to say, there’s no longer a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.

It’s Democrats and Democrats Lite. Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.

Exhibit A: The so-called omnibus spending bill passed in the dark of night this week by a 316-113 vote in the U.S. House. The new House speaker, a RINO named Paul Ryan, described it as a “bipartisan compromise.” He was so proud of his work that he dumped it out on the night of the GOP debate in Las Vegas...

There is no market force which can burst this bubble because there is no longer any external reality which unhinged Conservative bed-wetters recognize as valid.  It has withstood wave after wave of unremitting disaster. humiliation and failure.   Lose elections, win elections, doesn't matter. Get the war you wanted, the tax cuts you wanted, the president you wanted, the deregulatory idiocy you wanted..and when it all falls down they just change their war paint, wish the past away and play Blame the Negro for seven years.

There is no force which can burst this bubble except you and me.

18 comments:

proverbialleadballoon said...

You'd think that the results of the 2000 election would have put to rest 'there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties'. The press so critically wrong. But W has been sent down the memory hole, and there's this weird gap in history where all of a sudden the black guy was in charge, and the country was on the edge of collapse, so it must have been all his fault. The press has never fessed up, never admitted its mistakes, those 'facts' are still out there and become 'history'. So there's not a dime's worth of difference.. is treated as accepted fact, when it was proved wrong 15 years ago, and the charade goes on.

Fortunately, on a face-to-face basis, conservatives can't pretend that all never happened. We're all adults here, all lived through it, know it happened. I usually try to steer the conversation along the Look at all the things we agree on that are problems, we only disagree on the causes, lines. And liars? Yeah, all politicians are liars. they'll usually bring up Clinton's perjury, to which I say, you want the cumstain on the blue dress lie, or do you want the aluminum tubes and yellowcake lie? The small lie, or the big lie? Not a dime's worth of difference.. that's at least $200 worth of difference, if we're talking about increments of dimes.

Robt said...

There are compartmental vestiges of bothsiderisms.
As (above comment) compares, Out of wedlock consensual sex between two adults which might bruise the moral Id and the Mushroom cloud lie to shove spending war and death without conscience.

When it comes to the news media and the networks that portry news. It dawned on me one night with the TV on.
Commercial;
Kerr/ Mgee
On screen video of oil drilling platforms...Beautiful ocean and blue skies above"
Narrative;

Kerr/ Mcgee, we serve the world. (simple)
---It was an advertisement for for offshore oil drilling platforms. As if those in the industry have NO idea of where to go if they happen to need a offshore oil drilling platform for their business. You know, Shell oil CEO is watching TV and says, "hey board of directors why don't we look into this oil platform company because we don't know where to get them.
The other thought came to me where it was imaging someone like me being advertised to to contact Kerr/Mcgee to buy one of the oil drilling platforms for the wife birthday present.

The electrical impulses to my brain had not been coated by Cannabis usage to where they could not reach the other brain cells. Because....
There were brief (very brief) news reports of oil spills and its damages to the ocean(s).
That is when dawn came at midnight,
The ad itself was B.S.. They weren't advertising their off shore oil rig to consumers. No phone number to call and inquire, no prices, not even check with your doctor disclaimer for usage.
It was an ' INSURANCE POLICY'.
Not in case of, but when it occurs. When the oil industry plunders the economies and the environments of entire regions. To limit the media reporting, to make the media report minimized failures, to grasp that positive corporate image. The insurance policy was, They can simply call the the network and restrict the news by telling the networks we will pull thse Millions of dollars of ads (that meant nothing). You will lose that money. We paid that money just for this moment as an insurance policy shell game and you took the money and ran the bogus ads in exchange to make it look like a legitimate business deal.

Corporate P.R. in the conservative world is buying and paying (once respected) news outlets as insurance policies. Since news is put under the "entertainment" category for network profit. make some money.
So how long can networks continue to sell these insurance policies when the prior journalistic reputations are long gone? Just keep broadcasting. Repetition message plus the lack of facts can still brainwash a portion of the public.

the relationship with our government representatives has taken on much of the same. Even with religions.
It is out of hand.
Sort of like,
If an accountant begins and continues to fudge the numbers for the corporation. When the corporation heads need to correct and or adjust. They are now doing so on false figures. Which presents failure for any future actions.
But hey,
I read where someone in Calif. is trying to propose all politicians wear the logo patches of their donors on their jackets..




Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

"There is no force which can burst this bubble except you and me."

How? What do you think we peasants can do?

Neo Tuxedo said...

What part of the country do you live in, proverbialleadballoon? I live in Chambersburg, Pennsyltucky, where conservatives can and do pretend it never happened, because Supply-Side Jesus. Talking to these people only wastes your time and annoys the pig (who gets up and slowly walks away).

Unknown said...

Paul "Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver" Ryan. Ayn Rand-worshipping Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan, whose Social Security "reform" plan was such a cruel joke on seniors and such a blatant giveaway to high finance that even the George W. fn Bush Administration told him to cram it up his ass.

This guy is now a RINO in today's GOP. God help us all.

Unknown said...

This is not snark. Is the Herald a real newspaper? I read your post, thinking this was a letter or comment from a typical gooper swine to the paper. Imagine my surprise that this screed was from a columnist. I despair for our country, not even for 'the divide' or the rising fascism of the right, but for the fact that someone got paid to write that insanity.

Soprano said...

A useful perception of reality depends on one's willingness to accept conclusions drawn from data. Unfortunately, in our current political climate, data cannot and do not overturn belief. If someone "believes" that the tyrant Obama and a cohort of Leftist/Liberal Democrats and compliant RINOs have caused our current problems, even the most irrefutable data will not convince that person otherwise.

waldo said...

How? What do you think we peasants can do?

Duhmbastan residents, sit on your hands and do nothing except whine how nasty and fucked up and bullshit everything is. All of the rest, study the platform of, campaign for and VOTE Bernie Sanders.

Green Eagle said...

The collapse began in Haarlem...I knew it was the black people's fault.

Robt said...

Paul Ryan the RINO" ?

What does that make Trump?

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

I remember the Waldos of 2008 thought another magical candidate would vanquish the reactionary Orcs and lead us to Utopia.

Oh wait, no, he wouldn't need to "vanquish" anyone. The sheer wonderfulness of his Lightworkerness would charm all the venom out of the Orcs, and the Orcs would join us.

That "strategy" failed.

If Sanders is awarded the nomination by the Democratic Establishment (2008 taught me the rigged nature of the primary system), I may vote for him anyway, but I will expect little.

However, if Sanders's supporters act like sneering rape-culture Red Guard-wannabes, as too many of the supporters of Magical Candidate 2008 did, I will bolt to the Green Party again.

proverbialleadballoon said...

@ Neo Tuxedo: I guess I forgot I live where conservatives are 'reasonable', around Chicago. Not that they'll ever change their mind, even when shown wrong. Yeah, if someone won't even admit to basic facts, I don't know what one can say to such a person. I rescind my statement.

Unknown said...

"sneering rape-culture Red Guard-wannabes" Say, wha? I have never seen nor heard of any such Purple People Eaters among the New Deal Sanderites, nor the Moderate Democrat (long vanished) Liberal Republican Obamalamas. Where is this Tempest in the Sargasso Sea? Show me a ripple in the Still Waters.

Neo Tuxedo said...

(Sorry I'm late, but the second comment gave me a reason to remember I hadn't replied to the first.)

@proverbialleadballoon: Not a problem. I've often thought one of the reasons Obama took so long to realize what he faced in the national Republican Party was that he thought they'd be like Cook County Republicans, going along to get along. They're not even like Cook County Democrats, so entrenched they can afford to be magnanimous. The national Republican Party regards the very existence of an opposition party as an affront to themselves, to America and to the Baby Jesus, to the extent they acknowledge that those are other than synonymous.

@John MacCuish: Ivory Bill's choice of words is too strong (especially "rape-culture"), but a quick search of the googles will show at least one person who talks about Hillary-vs.-Bernie the way the Party Unity My Ass crowd in 2008 talked about Obama-vs.-Hillary. (These might actually be the same people for the most part, taking advantage of Haruhi recreating the world, and Nagato resetting it in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, to reinvent themselves.)

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Mac & Neo:

I found the behavior of some of Obama's cultists--er, supporters--so obnoxious in 2008 that I saw them as mirror images of Busheviks (the Tea Birchers were Busheviks before they re-invented themselves as Tea Birchers). Between the "Red Guard" type of Obama supporter and the Democratic Establishment's, ahem, questionable nomination process in 2008, I became so disgusted I voted for the Green presidential candidate in 2008.

(Of course, in this age of unaccountable vote-counting computers, can the outcome of any close election ever be trusted again?)

To say the least, Obama's diligent kissing of the feathery hindquarters of the McDuck Elite did nothing to win me over by 2012, although it did make me feel somewhat vindicated in not voting for him. I voted Green again in 2012.

IF Sanders's supporters start acting like the obnoxious faction of Obama's supporters did in 2008, I will walk away in disgust again. Please note I said "IF".

waldo said...

Ivory Bill Woodpecker "sneering rape-culture Red Guard-wannabes" !!!! ????

When I was new to the intertubes, I went to Powerline to argue with those guys about Bush's war on Iraq. I was quiet, reasonable, logical; John Hindraker called me, among other things, "a stupid lefty c*nt" and told me the New World order had no place for Saddam ass-kissing scum like me.

So it doesn't seem to be possible to talk to the left, right or middle of US politics without being sneered at; nevertheless, read up, and try not to feel that everyone one to smack your fee fee.

http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-drug-policy/

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

The "Red Guard wannabes" were the mostly young, male--and, I suspect, palefaced--punks among the Obama supporters (many Obama supporters were better behaved, of course) who threw misogynist, "rape-culture" references around on the Net the way the Pig People toss around the *BONG* word in private.

The Powerline punks Waldo was talking about are Brownshirt wannabes, not Red Guard wannabes.

The psychological differences between those two types of obnoxious punks are minor, at most, and their underlying psychological similarities outweigh their superficial ideological differences.

I hope the Sanders campaign will not spawn the hordes of such punks in 2016 that the Obama campaign did in 2008.

Maybe it has always been like this. I am a late adopter, and did not get on Da Intertoobz regularly until August 2004. Hence, 2008 was the first presidential election where I saw the "sausage-making process" up close for the first time. Maybe all primary campaigns spawn imperious, obnoxious punks.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

"everyone one to smack your fee fee."

Uh, what's that in English?