CNBC is "Saving GM"
TTAC has its General Motors Death Watch Series and innumerable daily blogs on The General's fall and fall, but CNBC has it's own GM's Up Shit Creek website. In anticipation of next Wednesday's documentary "Saving GM," the peakcock people have added a new url to their e-arsenal: insidegm.cnbc.com. Of course, the title of this magnum opus and the fact that GM advertises heavily on NBC will have alerted TTAC's Best and Brightest that a major PR job is in the offing. (I'm thinking that if you downed a shot of Jack Daniels a everytime your heard the word "embattled," "beleaguered," "challenge" or similar, you'd be wasted by the first commercial break.) The program's strapline tells the tale: "In this original documentary, CNBC's Phil LeBeau goes inside GM [it was raining at the time] and reports on the company's dramatic struggle to transform its tarnished image and sagging fortunes." Even without whiskey, there's some funny shit coming down. In a clip from the show, Phil says, without irony, that Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz' first job was getting his employer out of denial. And yet… "The quality gap only remains in the public's awareness," Maximum Bob asserts. "It's gone." Well something's gone; like CNBC's credibility. Wait, did they ever have any?
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"Al Gore won the popular vote in ‘00 but Bush’s daddy’s Supreme Court fixed that little problem" In this particular leftwing mantra, it's not so much urban legend as rallying cry ("Remember the Maine!"). "That little problem" was Bush's winning (albeit narrowly) the electoral college vote--the one the Constitution counts. And after exhaustive review, even the NYT had to admit that. The Supreme Court "fixed the problem" only in the sense that it stepped in to prevent the Florida legislature and supreme court from, first, using selective recounts to help Gore and, secondly, maneuvering to prevent Florida's vote from being recognized at all in the electoral college. Major mistakes were made by both sides in 2000. Bush chose Cheney as his running mate. Cheney is a good administrator but was a terrible selection in terms of political appeal and attracting more votes. Bush didn't disclose and dispose of the issue of his youthful DUI early in the campaign, which allowed the enemy media to release the story as a massive "scandal" just before the election. That cost Bush many votes from evangelicals. The Bush campaign allowed California-raised money to be spent there, though carrying California was hopeless, instead of using the money where it could have switched a state from blue to red. Finally, in Texas the campaign didn't bother with a get-out-the-vote drive. They figured Texas would go for Bush anyway, so why worry about getting even more votes? They also put too much trust in Jeb to win Florida. In hindsight, the additional votes probably would have kept Gore from winning the popular vote. I've never understood why Karl Rove is supposed to be a wizard at running campaigns. Gore's campaign had major mistakes too. He didn't separate himself properly from Clinton, whose sexual escapades disgusted social conservatives and whose subsequent abuses of power fighting to keep office repelled those who knew it wasn't "all about sex." Gore veered leftward, disappointing centrist Democrats. That was sufficient to cost him his home state (!) of Tennessee--enough by itself to lose the electoral college. Gore chose Lieberman as running mate; an honorable man but he had no ability to switch red states to blue. Finally, in Florida the Gore campaign financed a tremendous get-out-the-vote drive. But they skimped on follow-through, so lots of new voters who didn't know how to properly cast their votes. Nader was a factor, too, but neither Bush nor Gore could do much about that. Note that I have talked about tactical errors by the campaigns. As in the Super Bowl, if your side loses it doesn't mean the other side won only because it's depraved.
Yeah home state in the sense that he has visited it a few times... VBG! I live in next big town from his family farm. You'd think he would be seen in these parts occasionally. Nope. Never. Doesn't happen. Here is to hoping that this year's election will be more grounded in fact and solutions to our numerous national problems rather than in trivial (in the big, big picture) squabbles over the candidate's past. None of the candidates do a very good job of telling the truth. Let the websites like FactCheck.org chase the details and may the mainstream media feed us soundbites (or even whole courses of diatribes) about what our real problems are and how the candidates and their teams will solve them. Hopefully TTAC can assist with keeping the facts straight when the candidates go off talking about energy policy or rescuing the auto industry at the expense of the tax payers. The fact that we the consumers don't want to buy their cars might indicate we don't want to bail them out either. The quickest way to downsize is indeed to go broke and come back as a company of 100 that holds the trademarked names... I am purposefully avoiding the mainstream press during the remainder of the year b/c I am tired of their "fair and balanced" news. I'm not just picking on that one network - honest. They all have problems, some are more obvious.
Honestly, is this a "MoveOn.org vs. Moral Majority" now? I was under mistaken impression that it was a car-related board. Or is this just trolling for posts? Someone please straighten me out or start moderating.