US nationalizes Chrysler, GM auto warranties

From The Wall Street Journal: To assure consumers reluctant to buy GM or Chrysler cars, the government plans to take the unusual step of guaranteeing all warrantees on new cars from either company. These guarantees would lapse back to the companies once they return to health. For those of you on the conservative side of [...]

Why you should read A.J. Liebling

“In the twilight, as we walked to our dinners, German planes would come like swallows out of Sicily, far away, and jettison their bombs before reaching the center of our magnificent anti-aircraft display, like a beehive drawn in lines of orange tracer. … Then, in the dark after the third armagnac, we would steal away [...]

Even Brenda Starr’s got the real world blues

In tomorrow’s strip America’s favorite gal reporter get’s the old furlough treatment from publisher B. Babbitt Bottomline. Maybe she can share a blog with Doonesbury’s Rick Redfern. =

“States consider drug tests for welfare recipients” — does this includes bankers?

“It’s not against the law to be poor in the U.S. but it might as well be.” I read that somewhere once and wish I could remember where. It came immediately to mind when I read the following: Lawmakers in at least eight states want recipients of food stamps, unemployment benefits or welfare to submit [...]

My kid’s school officially doesn’t have a vampire problem

A school administrator wants to set the record straight: There are no vampires at Boston Latin. The headmaster of the prestigious exam school took the unusual step today of sending a notice to faculty, students, and parents saying that “rumors involving ‘vampires’” had begun spreading through the building Wednesday, causing disruption and anxiety for a [...]

New game is a wonderfully bitter version of the economic mess

“Crunch, The Game For Utter Bankers” is a card game for anyone with a distinctly gallows sense of humor: [It] allows you to experience the upside of down. Placed in the role of a global banking CEO, you have to juggle the conflicting demands of your ailing bank and your flourishing bank account. … Each [...]

Clorox offers $5K to flush out SF ‘toilet torcher’

Never ones to miss a civically responsible branding opportunity, The Clorox Co. is offering $5K and a year’s supply of toilet cleaning products for tips leading to the arrest of San Francisco’s notorious portable potty pyromaniac. “At Clorox, toilets are very important to us, and we support the rights of toilets to be clean, sanitary [...]

US candy chain sells commemorative Barack Obama chocolates

(Pic via ace marketer/stand-up comedian Nathan Hartswick. Follow him on Twitter!) CandyExpress claims these commemorative Barack Obama heads are available for a limited time only. Not limited enough, unfortunately.  Off the top of my head I would thought of three things Mr. Obama should not be used to advertise: Chocolate, fried chicken (as a German [...]

Nigeria launches re-branding campaign: “At least we’re not AIG”

Apparently having a name synonymous with corruption (for a good reason) is not all that good for your national image. So Africa’s most populous nation has decided to tackle it’s massive corruption problems with that most modern approach: Marketing. “At international airports, in trains, in shopping malls, and almost everywhere, every Nigerian is a marked [...]

What Twitter can’t do

Twitter* has hit the mainstream with a vengeance. The final sign of this was yesterday when John McCain – who during the campaign admitted his own computer illiteracy – did an interview (called a “twitterview” YUCK) with George Stephanopoulos. I guess they both wanted to show how “down” they are with all the latest hep-cat [...]

In branding/copyright move SciFi becomes SyFy (& I don’t care what they call it as long as I get to see the last Battlestar episode)

My old buddy David Gianatasio posted this over at AdFreak and I can’t improve on it, so I won’t try. Sci Fi Channel’s rebranding as "Syfy" has created the worst cable-network name since Court TV became whatever the hell it’s been calling itself lately. (It’s TruTV, but I had to Google to make sure, and [...]

German co. selling frozen fried chicken bits as “Obama Fingers”

I can’t improve on the actual story: Sprehe, a company that has all manner of frozen delicacies on offer, has come up with a new product it calls “Obama Fingers.” Far from being real digits, though, the “fingers” in question are “tender, juicy pieces of chicken breast, coated and fried,” as the product packaging claims. [...]

AIG claims it is paying bonuses to retain “best and brightest talent”

“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.” — Edward M. Liddy, government-appointed chairman of A.I.G. [...]

US media finally catches up to tent city story BBC ran a year ago

Exactly a year ago the BBC ran a story about a shanty towns in LA that were a result of The Great Downturn. At the time BoingBoing and those few others who saw it asked why we were learning about this from the UK media and not from the US media (in fairness the LATimes [...]

Why Jon Stewart is today’s Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite was known for years as the most trusted man on TV (or America – depending on who you listened to). Watching Jon Stewart’s evisceration of first the entire “financial TV news” farce and Jim Cramer on last night’s The Daily Show is the latest and best example of why Stewart now has the [...]