I would say that most of that sentiment is shared by many of both sides about the other. Alternately though, the right is usually accused of having no emotions, or at least not any good ones.

It’s completely natural to self reinforce one’s ideology and world view with almost all new information. Given a hundred news stories, both sides will somehow see proof of their beliefs in 80 of them.

back on topic.

A still photo of a famous(or notorious) grinning mug next to the product just doesn’t seem to cut it any more. Does anyone have any more insight into the shift in GM’s advertstrategy? Can any marketeers chime in on what mkt research supports this “submarine” messaging scheme? And is there any data on the relative success of these strategies?

Is our life going to become one big “Truman Show”

Most jobs in this country are created by small businesses. These are the jobs most likely to be had by anyone, and especially by the low skilled folks. Most of these businesses are owned by a single person who files the businesses taxes and their own on the same return (mine was over an inch thick for 2006 but that’s another rant).

If you raise taxes on either the owner or the business, there is less money to be spent for payroll or anything else. As a business, less employees are hired, less equipment is bought from other companies, and many companies are switched from growing profitably to cost cutting for survival. Most successful owners don’t actually pay themselves a whole lot, they roll it back into the business. Even if the business was so highly profitable that the owner simply shrugs off the reduced profits, there are ugly consequences.

Money out of the owners, and from any high wage earners, means that there are spending cuts at their homes. Contractors will not be called for renovations and expansions. Upgrades will not be had for furniture and cars. Steak and lobster will not be served to friends at a dinner party.

“Good!” screams the liberal populist. “They didn’t need all that stuff anyway. They need to learn how the other half lives.”

The only problem is now the “other half” is out of a job because the contractor wasn’t called, he let the carpenter, plumber, and mason stay home. Since the furniture and cars were not bought, the salesmen, the delivery team, and others stayed home. And, all the folks from the rancher and fisherman to the caterer and in between also didn’t earn anything.

Raising taxes will not help the lower or middle classes, even if they get a cut at the expense of the high earners. (Note I did not say rich. Only an idiot thinks that anyone making over a quarter a year is a millionaire. I’m looking at you Gore and Obama).

Increasing domestic oil production would help our economy by stimulating economic activity within our borders. And oil, wherever it comes from, is vital to our nation’s economy.

And please note that the collapse of GM would NOT mean end of the domestic auto industry. Ford would still survive, and the transplants would, if anything, increase their footprint in the U.S.

For that matter, GM wouldn’t even necessarily disappear. There are still parts of the company with real value – just not under present management.

psharjinian: That’s the different between the current administration’s shadow-hand assistance to Oil and a future administration (Republican or Democrat, I don’t care) offering direct assistance to the Automakers.

And yes, the assistance to Oil significantly more underhanded than the direct bailouts being offered to the Automakers.

The assistance to the oil industry is in a different form than a direct bailout, but is well-known and quite open. (Especially considering that it is openly discussed not only on this site, but every other site and publication I’ve ever read. It was also heavily discussed at the time of its passage. If it’s supposed to be kept secret, someone needs to be fired.)

One only needs to search for the federal law and changes in the tax code that made this assistance possible. There is nothing shadowy about it.

A direct federal loan to a company may be easier for the average person to understand than tax breaks or incentives, but that doesn’t mean it is any more above-board than the assistance given to the oil industry.

psharjinian: This is not a healthy economy. This is an economy in crisis

This economy was still growing until recently, and unemployment is not yet in the double digits.

During the Great Depression, auto production shrank a staggering 75 percent from 1929 to 1932, and by 1933 the unemployment rate for the entire country was 25 percent.

THAT was an economy in crisis.

This slowdown isn’t even as bad as the 1980-82 recession, when Chrysler would have gone bankrupt except for the federal loan guarantees, and Ford was teetering on the abyss as well.

psharjinian: People who are having trouble meeting ends meet are not troubled by taxes. They are, however, extremely vulnerable to unemployment.

You and I must be talking to different people. The people I talk to who have been hurt in this slowdown are NOT in the mood to pay more federal taxes.

Perhaps the people you talk to are in the bottom 50 percent who pay no federal income taxes. I would therefore not be surprised that they are unconcerned about the possibility of increased taxes. They don’t pay them now.

psharjinian: If your concern is about taxation, you should look to the giant cash conflagration that is defence or Medicare.

Defense spending is sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution, and is easily cut.

Medicare is a huge burden, but given that the same people proposing a bailout for Detroit scream bloody murder when anyone suggests even cutting the rate of Medicare’s growth, I wonder why they are advocating the dispersal of federal funds for a new (and, from what I can tell, largely open-ended) commitment.

This isn’t the first time I have made this query, and it seems most people think it’s a strange question. On the face of it, it seems simple. GM is an important American company, they pay people like Limbaugh and Hannity to be spokesmen for them. The product may not be the best, but it’s not a scam, and they certainly are not being “shills”.

Still, I would think Limbaugh knows that he is going to help them sell cars. They are going to use that money to lobby congress for corporate welfare while paying millions into UAW coffers. Agree with him or not, Limbaugh is a smart guy, and he should be able to figure this out.

Also, is it just me, or are we on pretty much the same schedule? o_0

They’re lobbying both parties, but the Democrats are getting it from both industry and labour, true.

…and the oil industry is quite important to this country, given that it supplies a vital resource that literally fuels the economy.

If you were Canadian, I’d buy that line, but the US is not so dependent on the oil industry as it is oil use. Considering that the US is a net importer of oil, and would likely remain so even if more oil was drilled for domestically, the economic footprint of the oil industry isn’t likely as large–certainly not so much as automotive manufacturing and it’s satellites.

That’s the different between the current administration’s shadow-hand assistance to Oil and a future administration (Republican or Democrat, I don’t care) offering direct assistance to the Automakers.

And yes, the assistance to Oil significantly more underhanded than the direct bailouts being offered to the Automakers.

Success and failure go hand in hand in a healthy economy.

This is not a healthy economy. This is an economy in crisis

The simple fact is that a bankruptcy of, say, GM (the one most likely to file) would not be the disaster that everyone thinks it will be. The worthwhile parts – factories, model lines, even brands – will be picked up by competitors who will run them better.

Possibly, but certainly not quickly. Bankruptcy proceedings are slow, and I wouldn’t suspect that, given supplier reticence, production would be consistent. At best, there would be significant layoffs and stoppages. There would definitely be an across-the-board loss of consumer confidence. Had this occurred in 2004, it would be have been easier to swallow.

GM is not a viable enterprise in its present configuration. Federal aid will only prolong the agony, and waste a lot of taxpayer dollars taken from people who could use them to clothe, feed and shelter themselves with that money.

People who are having trouble meeting ends meet are not troubled by taxes. They are, however, extremely vulnerable to unemployment.

If your concern is about taxation, you should look to the giant cash conflagration that is defence or Medicare.

Rush Limbaugh has stated several times in the past on his show that GMC is one of his advertisers, and that he offers advertisers a unique style of commercial where he interjects positive comments about their products into the story line of his show. Thus, Rush’s glowing comments about GMC products are not the result of him having a preference for those products; they are part of GMC’s paid advertising campaign. Another twist to the ad campaign is that GMC lends Rush and his staff vehicles for them to drive, presumably so he can speak more knowledgeably about the product’s features and so his comments sound like a customer testimonial, lending them more credibility to the listeners. This is no secret.

He does these kinds of ads for many products – a tankless water heater, steaks, clothes, etc. – which he often “casually mentions” during his program. It’s a clever technique, and is apparently so effective many people are convinced he’s a GMC fan. However, as another poster mentioned, he owns a Maybach vehicle. I doubt Rush tools around his Palm Beach neighborhood in a flex-fuel GMC truck or Buick Lucerne :)

The ads are an indication GMC’s marketing machine at least has some good ideas – Rush has a very large listener base, ensuring GMC’s ads reach the ears of millions of listeners daily.

Which isn’t a distinction at all in this case, because the auto industry (especially the UAW) is lobbying the Democrats for this bailout, and the oil industry is quite important to this country, given that it supplies a vital resource that literally fuels the economy.

What you support is corporate welfare. It is guided by the same principle that led the Bush Administration to give tax incentives to the oil industry. The difference is that this one is proposed by the star of the Democratic Party, so it is somehow okay.

psharjinian: But we have to be pragmatic, here: North America is teetering on the edge of recession and has suffered a bit hit in credit and consumer spending. One or more of the domestic automakers failing would be very bad for most Americans, Canadians and Mexicans, just as one or more major banks doing so would achieve the same thing.

A failure of one or more would be a necessary shock to the survivors, and free up capital and resources that would be better used for other, more productive enterprises.

Success and failure go hand in hand in a healthy economy. The simple fact is that a bankruptcy of, say, GM (the one most likely to file) would not be the disaster that everyone thinks it will be. The worthwhile parts – factories, model lines, even brands – will be picked up by competitors who will run them better. The rest will wither away and die, as they should. It’s not the responsibility of taxpayers to prop up mismanaged, failing empires, or ensure that UAW members never lose a job.

GM is not a viable enterprise in its present configuration. Federal aid will only prolong the agony, and waste a lot of taxpayer dollars taken from people who could use them to clothe, feed and shelter themselves with that money. That’s not ideology; it’s common sense and a knowledge of history, how the political process really works, and what GM’s management would do with federal aid.

(And please don’t induldge the fiction that the government is really going to demand a thorough house-cleaning of GM. It will likely demand the heads of a few top leaders [Wagoner, Lutz, etc.] but not enough to really change the corporate culture. The rot at GM extends FAR below the executive suite.)

Thanks for a burst of humor. The thought of leaving this site with Windbag on my mind would make me ill. Rush is to me what Al Gore is to conservatives. I detest the ignorance that spews out of his mouth, but hey, he gets paid big bucks to basically talk about his opinion of what a conservative should be and how great his views are. Most of us wish we could make a substantial living by voicing our opinion. In a way, I am envious of him. Can’t help but wonder: Why has the left not tried to prosper in the talk radio world? Seems that there would be a market on both sides. Glad I have a CD changer in the car and ignore the talk radio world entirely. Surprised nobody brought up any comparisons to Bill O’Reilly or Faux News…

The distinction is: is it corporate welfare because you’re doing it for industries that lobby you, or is it because you’re trying to bail out an industry that’s responsible for at least 10% of the employment in this country.

I don’t support the first. I do support the second.

I don’t think any of us who support a bailout have said that it should be carte blanche, though. And no, we don’t like doing it. But we also like to work, make mortgage payments and eat, and those become significantly harder when people are thrown en masse out of the workforce, and their spending power shrunk or withdrawn.

I think that a lot of people don’t want a bailout out of either spite or political principles. There’s nothing really wrong with both, because a) the domestics have been awful and b) there is value to the philosophy of fiscal nonintervention. But we have to be pragmatic, here: North America is teetering on the edge of recession and has suffered a bit hit in credit and consumer spending. One or more of the domestic automakers failing would be very bad for most Americans, Canadians and Mexicans, just as one or more major banks doing so would achieve the same thing.

You cannot eat an ideology. You cannot clothe yourself in ideology, you cannot make payments with ideology.

Because the current administration is not truly conservative in virtually any sense of the word. Unless one considers tax cuts and an anti-abortion stance as sufficient to constitute “conservatism.”

Bush was only conservative in comparison to his 2004 opponent.

This has happened before. President Nixon declared himself a conservative, when in reality he was anything but. He only looked conservative in comparison with his 1972 opponent, George McGovern. (Who has since backed off many of the stands contained in the 1972 Democatic platform. Living in the real world will do that to people.)

Four years earlier, Nixon ran against Hubert Humphrey. George Wallace had his faults, but he had it right in 1968 when he said that there wasn’t a “dime’s worth of difference” between Nixon and Humphrey.

AKM: Oh, and whoever supports the D2.8 bailout does NOT support free enterprise.

What’s amusing is looking up the quotes of the Obama fans (one hesitates to call them supporters, as their glassy-eyed fawning over the man goes beyond mere support) who once decried as “corporate welfare” Bush’s tax breaks and incentives for the energy companies. Now they are practically wetting their pants for the candidate who, in his acceptance speech, basically said that Detroit will receive some form of federal assistance if he is elected.

(”We will help ensure that the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow are built here.” Um, last time I checked, the fuel-efficient cars of TODAY are being built right here in the U.S. The problem is that they have names like Honda Civic and Toyota Camry, and aren’t being built by UAW members, meaning that people who assemble them don’t pay dues to an organization that, in turn, writes checks to the Democratic Party.)

Newsflash – this is corporate welfare, too. Just because a Democrat touts it, and union members living in a key battleground state support it, does not mean it is not corporate welfare.

When he was a rock-and-roll DJ in Pittsburgh back in the ’70’s, he was calling himself Jeff Christie.

in the 2008 campaign vernacular: ‘elites’
.

“…playing the victimization angle, selling to people who feel, rightly or not, that their peers believe they’re unintelligent.”
psarhjinian / September 4th, 2008 at 10:39 am

ever wonder why?
.

“Rush is not the only one who advertises for GM. Laura Ingram and Shawn Hannity (I think), among others, do this. To them, it’s probably just business.”
ZoomZoom / September 4th, 2008 at 11:09 am

here’s how i see it. the common denominator seems to be this: respect and/or lack of respect for the truth.

[1] gm can’t sell most of its products based on the truth because the truth is, it builds way too many substandard vehicles and that admission is hardly an effective ‘unique selling proposition’ for generating new business.

[2] the big limburger, hannutty, ingrained and o’leilly, et al, don’t have much use for the truth either, because they’ve been too busy shilling for the universally-discredited, irredeemably-corrupt bush administration – and profiting handsomely from the process.

[3] all of which makes this particular targeted audience ideal for gm because, as this audience’s continued support for this fatally-flawed administration and these blathering b.s.ing cartoons quite clearly confirms, truth is not something it is seeking.

So what if he schills for GM? Most of the ads during his program in my area are for Greenpeace, Pickens, Global Warming, and CFLs. Touting GM doesn’t seem that bad by comparison.

As for the Impala, it has been the third best-selling car in America for almost a decade. It has more interior room than either Camry or Accord. It’s cheaper to buy and insure. Why not plug it? It’s not like he’s schilling for Chrysler…

But of course!! Somehow, the evil Democrat conspiracy has penetrated W’s brain and turned him into a Manchurian candidate.
What happened to accepting personal responsibility?

And yes, Democrats in Congress are also guilty of politics as usual. But they weren’t in Congress for most years of the Bush administration. Cheney himself famously declared “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”. That’s fiscal conservatism if I’ve ever seen it.

But do not worry about stirring the pot. It happens every so often, and is actually quite healthy. I trust all of us to remain polite (if indeed off -car-topic), and the mods to tell us to stop if they get bored with our political debates :-)

If any statement highlighted the secret angst of Rush’ demographic, this does. I can’t believe such a statement made it on the air.

What’s the big deal? Why is it such a shock that ’such a statement made it on the air.’?

Marketing by tapping an underdog sentiment is common. I don’t much care for most GM products or Rush’s style, but he has a point in tapping the condescending arrogance of Tom Friedman types. It’s Rush’s program, he can say what he wants (within reason), and if you don’t like it, don’t listen.

Undeniably, talk radio has issues. Personally, I find (non-satellite) commercial talk unlistenable. I even enjoy NPR’s Tom Ashbrook. But unlike welfare radioNPR, commercial talk radio doesn’t extort tax dollars from those with whom it disagrees.

Touting E85 is equivalent to showing up to a football game with a baseball bat.

What a tool…

Yes, Laphroaig is a great, nicely though slighly, smokey scotch…and MUCH better priced.
I just want my scotch soooo smokey, its like licking an ashtray.

Sorry people for letting this get off the anti-Rush topic.