Archive for the 'Politics of Marketing' Category
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
All-American Moron Alert
Advertising Age reports that the reactionary, fake-Christian group Focus on the Family has purchased a 30-second spot during the 2010 Superbowl. The ad stars the brainless mega-ass Tim Tebow, pictured at left in a rare moment when he’s not running his mouth thanking Jesus for over-seeing one of his college football games.
Ad Age describes the anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-love, anti-real-family nature of the ad:
The organization’s ad will feature college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, sharing a personal story centered on the theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” according to a news release from Focus on the Family.
Not only do I look forward to hating whatever NFL team gets stuck with the odious peckerwood Tebow, but I commend this ad to those interested in the competing analyses of which side of the spectrum is shut out of the corporate media, and which is not, despite its fact-free, flak-providing bleats about “the liberal media” (meaning “the leftist media”).
Ad Age, of course, relays the preposterous claim that FOTF’s “Super Bowl commercial is not polarizing and does not take an ‘anti’ stance against any issue.”
Sure. And all the other ads, for each of which which CBS collects between $5,000,000 and $5,600,000 per minute (one wonders: WWJDWFMD?), are merely there to provide information, not mind-injections, to citizens.
Monday, November 16th, 2009
The Radical Truth About Energy
Nathan Lewis of Cal Tech says we’d need 10,000 plutonium (not uranium) reactors to produce 80 percent of existing energy consumption. To do that, we’d need to build a new plutonium plant every other day for the next 50 years, without any interruptions.
Conservation is coming and coming hard, my friends. The only question is whether we’ll retain any say in the adjustment process. Our current rulers, Obama distinctly included, don’t want us to gain the first glimmer of
awareness of the basic facts.
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Department of Cats and Bags
Two items pertaining to the real nature of “the free market.”
Item 1: Existing Business Markets Depend on State Suppression of Basic Information
In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel.
They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.
But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.
On Tuesday, the full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its Web site.
Item 2: Corporate Capitalists Know Private Enterprise is Often Inferior to Public Enterprise
A government-run public [medical insurance] plan would have “unfair advantage over private plans, eventually crowding out private plans from the marketplace,” said Bruce Josten, executive vice president of government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
More Blood for Autos?
{Source: American Physical Society*}
Click on the graphic at left. When you do, you’ll see one of the car capitalists’ dirty little open secrets: If and when they do finally start to sell more fuel efficient cars, the rate of death on US highways is going to rise beyond its present clip of 40,000+ annual snuff-outs.
That’s because, as the figure shows, the car-makers have been using the increasing efficiency of modern engines to make heavier cars that get about the same MPG as prior generations of lighter cars. So, there has already been some decent progress in making more fuel-efficient gas engines. But the increase has gone almost entirely into making heavier, safer cars, rather than lighter, better-MPG, but substantially deadlier cars. Vehicle mass, you see, is one of the main factors in the survivability of the frequent high-force collisions that inhere in autos-über alles transportation.
In the abstract, of course, some of the heightened danger that would come from making cars lighter and more MPG-efficient could be reduced by having everybody change to smaller, lighter cars all at once. But that isn’t going to happen, because, since it would undoubtedly require strong governmental rules and actions, it would do the one thing the car capitalists fear the most: legitimize autos-über alles as a central topic of popular democratic politics. And, if that ever happens, people might start to ask what alternatives exist. For the overlords of big business, that’s the slipperiest of slopes. Hence, it’s verboten — a topic no responsible, serious “leader” can raise.
What we’re pretty clearly going to get instead is a “bailout” that compels whatever car corporations remain to start using engine efficiency gains for higher MPG results. That will mean a swath of much smaller, lighter vehicles will be on the road, running alongside all the SUVs and heavier current vehicles.
Here’s my prediction: When that change comes online, in the next 5 years or so, the annual death toll on US roads will eclipse 1979’s record of 51,103 killed.
[And note the similarity there in the background circumstances: The worst years on record were the oil crisis years of the late 1970s and early 1980s...]
Change you can die for!
_______
* The American Physical Society’s new energy-efficiency report is well worth studying.
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
The Chevy Volt: ROFLMAO!
After years of breathless pre-advertising, here’s what “the backbone of our economy” is disclosing about its “cutting-edge” new “green” automobile, coming (maybe) next year:
G.M. says the car, which is scheduled to arrive in showrooms two years from now, will be able to travel 40 miles on a charge, but it will also have a small gas engine to extend the range to as much as 640 miles using both the battery and gasoline (the 1.4 liter, four-cylinder engine is intended to run a generator that will power the car and recharge the batteries once they are depleted). It is expected to cost about $40,000.
A 40-mile range! After billions spent over years!
As I keep saying, you know what complete excrement you’re getting when industry insiders and The New York Times are mentioning it:
“If you’re the affluent individual who wants to make a statement, it’s one thing,” said Ron Pinelli, president of MotorIntelligence.com, an industry analysis firm. “If you’re Joe the Commuter, you’re not going to spend $40,000 on an electric car. It’s insane.”
You see there the wishful thinking behind all this late, late, late capitalism. Behind the scenes, the overclass must be mired in quiet desperation, despite its unchanging public face.
And then there’s the supposedly democratic public response: The coming public sponsorship, via the Tweedle-D Party and its program of “change” you can choke on (a.k.a. the re-packaging of the usual capitalist boondoggles), of this suicidal greenwashing charade. If shamelessness and corruption were combustible, there’d be no energy crisis for many centuries:
Executives at General Motors, the largest and apparently the most imperiled of the three American car companies, are using the Volt as the centerpiece of their case to a skeptical Congress that their business plan for a turnaround is strong, and that a federal bailout would be a good investment in G.M.’s future.
Rest assured, nobody on Capitol Hill or in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is going to connect these dots…Quite the opposite.
Mad Max, here we come.
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Wabbit Hunting: Pelosi’s Turn
A month ago, it was Hank Paulson feigning at playing the cartoon fool.
Now, it’s the pancaked cadaver known as Nancy Pelosi, she who stands for, you know, some stuff and who got into politics to, you know, do some things.
Here’s Mrs. Pewosi’s “Be vewy, vewy quite” aside to the audience:
“Emergency assistance to the automobile industry would be conditioned on executive compensation restrictions, a prohibition on golden parachutes, rigorous independent oversight, and other taxpayer protections to ensure that any companies that benefit from this assistance — and not the taxpayers — bear the full burden of repaying any costs that are incurred,” Ms. Pelosi said.
“It is essential for the domestic automobile manufacturing industry to re-emerge as a global, competitive leader in fuel efficiency and in new, path-breaking energy-efficient technologies that protect our environment. For the automobile industry to be truly viable, it must continue to move in this direction.”
She don’t know her overclass wabbits — or her basic physics — vewy well, do she?
This matewial is daisy fwesh, though, ain’t it? Weawistic, too…
