US Politics Mega-thread - Page 432

On September 13 2013 11:30 Roe wrote:


I haven't found a good, valid reason as to why they do spend that much.

Sure I do People buy soap when they need it. /End

On September 13 2013 11:32 DeepElemBlues wrote:


But why should they buy Dove soap. Do you know why people should buy Dove soap over other brands better than the people Dove pays to make other people think they should buy Dove and not something else?

On September 13 2013 11:34 Roe wrote:


Hell I don't know why they should buy Dove. Maybe they found out empirically that it's a good soap to use, instead of being "persuaded" that it's a good product to buy. At any rate how does this validate advertisement?

On September 13 2013 11:23 DeepElemBlues wrote:

Firstly, I find that hard to believe since you parrot the articles' claims in the same order the article did.

Secondly, the Bakken play is now producing at 5.6 million instead of the previous 5.3 with about half the number of wells as previously were operational. I suggest you learn the difference between a larger number and a smaller number and how this relates to proper usage of the word "decline." Or maybe you should just stop lying. Total resource extraction amounts do in fact matter when that number keeps rising, not the conclusion you're pushing, now is it? Oh that's right we have to wait 5-10 years for you to be proven right or wrong but hell it is inevitable that you're right because... well because nothing really.

7 billion recoverable barrels is a bullshit number and it's not really surprising given your prior inaccuracy that you would use such a number. The actual number is 45-58 billion according to the EIA and your argument is shitstink anyway. Is shale oil supposed to meet 100% of US demand, now or in the future? No. So what relevance does your statement about US yearly oil usage have? Zippidee doodah. Is everyone in the field saying the US will be able to become a major exporter of oil in the next 5=10 years either fools or knaves? I find that hard to believe, but hey, you've got the Post-Carbon Institute (real subtle name there, wonder what their attitude is towards fossil fuels hmmm), the Energy Policy Forum (a quick glance at their website tells you where they're coming from) on your side! Might as well ask RJ Reynolds Tobacco about whether they think smoking is really dangerous or not.

You might want to actually read the Belfer Center's report, it does not say what you imply it says.

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/The US Shale Oil Boom Web.pdf

I do not care one whit about your lecturing regarding "puff pieces" and "total resource numbers," you think there are only 7 billion recoverable barrels of shale oil which is laughably inaccurate. The rest is just you compounding on your errors with a lot of verbiage that doesn't mean anything.

The reason shale oil wasn't tapped before now is it was too expensive to be profitable. Now it is not too expensive to be profitable. It has nothing to do with "desperation." It has to do with advances in drilling technology bringing the price of frack drilling and the fracking itself down more than it does desperation about supply capacity. You remind me of a peak oilist circa 2005 saying the same thing about oil production in general, complete with implications about cooked books, disbelieving references to technological progress, and boring dogma about production. It's all the same bullshit and it's pretty sad. I understand you're touchy about "media puff pieces" (as opposed to think tank or academic puff pieces, but whatever), but:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2013/09/02/shale-gas-production-and-high-decline-rates/

And here is a *gasp* even-handed article on the whole issue:

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059985001

tldr you're another chicken little with a bad grasp of the numbers or of how any of it actually works. in 5 years when you're wrong you'll stretch it out another 5, and when that comes you'll stretch it another 5 because hey if you keep pushing it back you'll be right eventually. if you extend the timeframe long enough every economic activity will go through a "bubble" period eventually.

When considering the market implications of abundant shale resources, it is important to distinguish between a technically recoverable resource, which is the focus of this report, and an economically recoverable resource. Technically recoverable resources represent the volumes of oil and natural gas that could be produced with current technology, regardless of oil and natural gas prices and production costs. Economically recoverable resources are resources that can be profitably produced under current market conditions. The economic recoverability of oil and gas resources depends on three factors: the costs of drilling and completing wells, the amount of oil or natural gas produced from an average well over its lifetime, and the prices received for oil and gas production.

The Florida Department of Health took a big step toward obstructing Obamacare outreach this week — then almost immediately walked it back Thursday, at least in one of the state’s biggest counties.

The state health department quietly sent a directive Monday to local county health departments, telling them that Obamacare’s so-called navigators — federally funded groups that are charged with helping people sign up for coverage under the law — would not be allowed to do outreach in their offices.

“Navigators will not conduct activities on the grounds of the health departments,” the state directive read. It also said that county health departments could accept information from Navigators and provide it to citizens, if citizens asked for it. “If citizens request informations about the Navigators’ operations, health department staff may provide those materials as well as direct citizens to the appropriate location or contact number for additional assistance,” the directive said.

Within a few days, navigators were pushing back. The Pinellas County Board of Commissioners, which received its own $600,000 navigator grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is the only county in the state to receive navigator funding, had planned to hire 15 navigators through the health department and have them work out of the department’s offices.

County Commissioner Kenneth Welch, a Democrat, told TPM that the actions of the state health department, which is under the authority of Gov. Rick Scott, a vehement Obamacare opponent, were “purely political.”

“It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s ridiculous,” said Welch, whose county is the sixth-largest in Florida. “They’re reaching for any way to obstruct anything that’s related to the Affordable Care Act.”

In Florida, local county health departments are extensions of the state health department. The state operates them and their workers are employed by the state. But in Pinellas County, the county government owns the building that the health department’s facilities are housed in. Welch charged that the state couldn’t tell the county what to do on its own property.

On September 13 2013 12:08 sc2superfan101 wrote:

Because Dove soap may or may not be empirically better than any other soap. The reason why people buy Dove soap is because they've seen the ads and they know the name. So when they think to themselves while at the store:

"I need some soap!"

They'll see the Dove logo, know it's soap, know they like that soap, and they'll buy it.

Without any advertising whatsoever, how would you know when SC2 came out? Does advertisement include a company announcement on their webpage? Sure some people might know that it's gonna come out through word-of-mouth, but wouldn't it be a thousand times more efficient for Blizzard to just make an ad that can reach millions of people at one time, rather than hire thousands of people to go out and talk about the game?

Imagine a soda aisle in the grocery store where every single different type of soda is contained in all white cans with black, normal font letters that say the name of the brand on them. Imagine I come in with my new soda and make my cans bright red, with big bubbly font that says my brand name. Human psychology dictates that my soda will begin to sell better than everyone else's because mine stands out. It attracts the eye. People will see it.

Advertisement doesn't need validation or justification. It works. It is known to work. There are tests proving that it works. Any moral questions about it end at false advertising.

For the record, that Dove ad was great. It flew in the face of what most people whine about advertising for. Most people complain that advertising makes people feel bad about themselves. The entire premise of the Dove ad was: "We feel bad about ourselves, but we're wrong. We are more beautiful than we think." I love how whoever picked one of the friendliest ads ever to make their point that advertising is eeeeeeeevul!

On September 13 2013 11:34 Roe wrote:


Hell I don't know why they should buy Dove. Maybe they found out empirically that it's a good soap to use, instead of being "persuaded" that it's a good product to buy. At any rate how does this validate advertisement?

On September 13 2013 12:08 sc2superfan101 wrote:
And what does any of this have to do with US politics?

On September 13 2013 12:51 IgnE wrote:


The Dove ad was the most insidious kind of ad there is. The Dove ad is designed to make you feel good. This ad isn't selling based on the women in the ad or their beauty.

Normally ads operate by creating a gap between you and an ideal. You are anxious to fill that gap, and the only way to alleviate that anxiety is the product itself. But this ad reduces anxiety about beauty and avoids the usually cynical response of ad viewers. So it's not a beauty products ad at all. There aren't even any products in the ad.

The ad tells women they don't need anything to be beautiful, but Dove knows full well that women must do something to themselves to feel good about themselves. Like using a moisturizing soap. All Dove has to do is be recognized as an authority on beauty, the real kind, the kind that the women in the ad have, not the typical photoshopped beauty of other ads.

The interesting part is not that Dove wants to become an authority on beauty to sell you things, it's why does Dove think the ad will work? Why do we want an authority on beauty? Part of it is the fact that it's a viral internet campaign. If you are watching the ad you likely found your way to it. It was made for you. So while the typical viewer might claim not to want an authority on beauty, what with everyone resenting media stereotypes and trying to define beauty in their own individual way. The fact that the typical viewer is watching the video in the first place, and that most of them like the video belies the fact that they do want an authority on beauty.

It taps into a certain kind of laziness for the average viewer: on the one hand you don't like being told what to wear, how to dress, what is beautiful, but on the other hand you don't want to confront the terror of not conforming to some kind of standard.

In some sense the ad is selling you self esteem. But instead of comparing you to an ideally beautiful woman, it compares you to your ideal self. It makes you feel good about you, and so automatically assumes it's place as a real authority figure on beauty.

The point is that advertising is evil because it's bread and butter is creating a gap between you and an ideal. The Dove ad is insidious because it seems like this is not a normal ad. It's not immediately transparent to most viewers. And yet it operates in the same way. The problem with America is debt. And ads are creating self-esteem debt.

On September 13 2013 13:10 sc2superfan101 wrote:
It has nothing to do with Dove being the authority on beauty. It has to do with them being the authority of soap and beauty products.

On September 13 2013 12:08 sc2superfan101 wrote:
And what does any of this have to do with US politics?

On September 13 2013 12:08 sc2superfan101 wrote:
And what does any of this have to do with US politics?

On September 13 2013 15:53 Danglars wrote:

If you look back 3 pages (might be 4 now), I was making the point that capitalism isn't utopia for efficiency, but it's damn efficient when compared to everything else out there for a large society. Every argument about waste in the system hitherto put forward is seeking a doubling when compared to the other ways waste would be introduced with the pretend fixes to the waste. Sam brought up advertising as a necessary driving force behind capitalism (it's not), as if the cultural critique had any relevance (it doesn't).

Then we talked about all its evils, and you have this page today.

On September 13 2013 13:24 IgnE wrote:


Lol man. Keep telling yourself that.

I know it's a brand ad. I know it's effective. Those things are insidious. They don't just tell us what to want. They tell us how to want.

On September 13 2013 18:51 sc2superfan101 wrote:

And let me guess, you and the people you respect are just a cut above the rest right? You see the writing on the wall. You're too smart for those ads, but the rest of us are all just brainwashed little drones too stupid to know what's going on. We all just sit, drooling like the mindless automatons that we are, eating up every little scheme that the MAN comes up with, while you despair because we're not all as unique and super-smart as you.

That's what this is really about. It's about you and the people who propagate this nonsense wanting to feel good about yourselves by convincing yourself that you're the few who see through the foggy window into the ugly truth of the world. Like I said, this shit might be impressive to someone who doesn't know better, but to the rest of us it's just the result of an inferiority complex on your part.

Advertising has to be some insidious evil, because if there's no wool being pulled over the eyes of the general public then you lose your specialness. You lose that perception of intelligence that you've manufactured within yourself. If you're not one of the special ones who see the writing on the wall then you're just a normal like the rest of us, only worse because the rest of us don't need to create fantasies to make ourselves feel smarter than everyone else.

This act might be cute when it's being done by a kid in middle-school, but after that it's just sad.

On September 13 2013 11:24 ziggurat wrote:

Why do you think businesses spend so much money on it then? Do you think you know how to sell soap better than the people at Dove?

House Republican leadership is furious with ultraconservative Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) whom they see as hobbling their efforts to secure an achievable spending victory by insisting on threatening a government shutdown over the unachievable goal of defunding Obamacare.

House GOP leaders want to pass a continuing resolution that jams Senate Democrats with lower spending levels while forcing a vote — without the risk of a shutdown — on Obamacare. But Lee and Cruz are giving them heartburn by screaming that this proposal amounts to surrender on Obamacare.

“If House Republicans go along with this strategy, they will be complicit in the disaster that is Obamacare,” said Cruz, dismissing the plan as “procedural chicanery.” Lee spoke out against it earlier this week, and is now supporting an alternate GOP measure backed by 43 Republicans which threatens a shutdown over Obamacare.

The two senators have significant influence among conservative House Republicans and activists who want to destroy Obamacare at all costs. So their opposition to Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) plan quickly contributed to the headache for House leaders, who were foced to postpone consideration of the bill until next week. It remains unclear if they’ll be able to get the votes.

House Republican leaders are tired of being painted as weak on Obamacare while Cruz and Lee are seen as grassroots heroes without having to take risks or make unpopular moves. The Boehner stopgap bill would let these senators filibuster if Democrats try to fund Obamacare, House aides point out, if they have the courage to.

“Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have been demanding a fight to defund Obamacare. The House offers to give them one and they say, no, no, you guys fight it,” said a House GOP aide, venting about colleagues on condition of anonymity. “We have been. For three years.”

A House Republican aide put it more bluntly to Politico: “They’re screwing us.”