By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
 10 hard facts about late night infomercials (Brace yourself):
1) No book, program or technology will “transform your life” in 14 days. Or even 30 days.
2) Operators are always “standing by” –even if they act like it’s only for a few more minutes.
3) Remember, you don’t really want to be like Anthony
Robbins. Just look like him. But he’s not telling you how to do that.
4) Ronco knives work well but you never use them as much as you think you will.
5) If you are over 40 what it takes to get “Six pack abs” isn’t worth all the effort required.
6) The 1-900 Psychic lines where a stranger predicts your future, is a pretty good deal. They are right about 50% of the time with predictions that you will have something good or bad happen in the near future.
7) It’s hard to “re-gift” products purchased through Infomercials because people know that’s where they came from.
8) There’s nothing you need at 2:30am that you couldn’t get by without at 1am. You are just tireder and more vulnerable to persuasion.
9) I have never heard any male brag that they grew a new head of hair after purchasing a late night infomercial spray.
10) Nothing changes until you are ready and willing to change.
By Krystal Ball, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  There is a caterpillar native to the Americas from the Silkworm moth genus Lonomia.
The caterpillar doesn’t look dangerous, but if you attempt to harm it, it secretes a venomous anticoagulant that causes renal failure, hemorrhaging, and death. Perhaps this is what Reince Priebus meant by the GOP “War on Women” being like a “War on Caterpillars.”
Although any given incremental erosion of women’s reproductive rights from a GOP sponsored bill at the state level seems harmless enough to the future of the GOP, taken in the aggregate they are likely to cause the party severe electoral distress.
Caterpillars aside, the GOP “War on Women” is real and it has real-world consequences for the millions of women whose lives can and will be impacted by legislation that erodes more than a century’s worth of progress on women’s reproductive rights.
 There were over 1100 antichoice provisions introduced in 2011 and 900 antichoice provisions introduced so far in 2012. Legislators in 13 states have introduced 22 bills seeking to mandate that a woman obtain an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion.
Of these, seven states are pursuing the state-rape vaginal probe variety. In addition, legislators in 13 states have sponsored right-wing “Personhood” type bills, too extreme even for the electorate of Mississippi, that could make both abortion and reproductive choices highly restricted.
Lest we think that the rhetoric around these bills might contain the damage to the GOP’s standing amongst women, please note how Georgia state legislator Rep. Terry England compares women to cows and pigs on his farm in support of bill forcing women to carry even inviable fetuses to term and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett justifies forced ultrasound bill by telling women to “just close your eyes.”
Read the rest of…
Krystal Ball: The GOP War on Women is Real
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Impenetrable Packaging: There’s got to be a better way.
A few years back the “He Man” serving was all the marketing rage. Restaurants would offer up 20% more food than people could eat and charge 40% more and get away with it because of the “perceived value.”
Today the problem is with packages that cannot be opened by mere mortals. If you are a bodybuilder or keep a chain saw in your car, no need to keep reading. This doesn’t apply to you.
For the rest of us, though, I don’t get this need of putting items we purchase in packages we can’t open.
Is it to create a “perceived value add” bc we have to work so hard to open our new product that we are supposed to feel even more excited than we would have been to start using it?
It can’t be to prevent store theft. If so, only easily lifted store items would be encased in a impenetrable packaging –not everything in retail stores.
Yesterday, after wrestling for nearly 10 minutes with an ear bud package, I finally successfully tore it open. I looked around to see if others were watching. I felt like Arthur successfully withdrawing the embedded Excalibur sword from the giant stone.
I felt I should be knighted or at least applauded.
And I didn’t feel a “value add.”
I did feel several abrasions on my hands and fingers. Which I hope I’m not being charged extra for. And I didn’t bother trying to buy band-aids. That would be another battle to open that package.
By Artur Davis, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  Some post-mortems on Rick Santorum’s partly admirable, partly vexing candidacy: First, his is a campaign that can credibly spend energy on the “what-if” game. That distinguishes him from Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann, all of whom were so thin in national campaign skills, or so palpably unprepared to be president, that no assembly of tactics would have gotten them there.
I’ve believed since the night of his Iowa speech that Santorum did have a pathway. It involved owning a unique economic message, one that chastised both Wall Street and Washington for breaching the social compact, and one that recognized that middle class anxiety has cultural and economic roots. He could have so easily broadened that theme by embracing tough education reforms and a crackdown on special interest influence. He could have wielded the Bain Capital card much more credibly than Newt Gingrich.
 For a mix of reasons—the lack of a strategic thinker in his campaign circle, an undisciplined communications style, and way too much time arguing process and electability instead of ideas–Santorum never polished the smart populism that I described above. Instead of becoming the “creative, new ideas” alternative to Romney, he lapsed into the politics of last conservative standing, which after his peak in February, was only good enough for the Deep South and a string of solid seconds. It’s a gambit that might have worked against a Giuliani or a Huntsman; but against a mainstream conservative like Romney, whom the right found acceptable if unexciting, the game plan was too cautious and too uninspiring.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: A Santorum Post-Mortem
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Leaving Starbucks –which was packed with middle-aged patrons like me.
Couldn’t help wonder if ages 45-49 is when we Americans transform body types from the angular to more of a spherical body shape.
UPDATE: Just leaving Starbucks and couldn’t help but notice how trim and fit everyone was.
I used to think (about an hour ago) that ages 45-49 may be when we Americans developed softer body types.
After reflection and discussiion, I now realize I was mistaken.
Turns out it was just me projecting and rationalizing as I wolfed down an apple fritter. ; )
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
By Jeff Smith, on Mon Apr 16, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  Media victim? Seriously? He’s a media victim in the same way that Kim Kardashian is: every dollar they raise/make is due entirely to their shameless exploitation of media fascination with them as opposed to any iota of talent they might possess.
These two peas-in-a-pod exemplify the modern-day media corollary of “If it bleeds, it leads,” which is “If it screams – or has implants – it leads.”
This episode will inevitably help him raise more money from the nutjob base, which helps him. But I don’t know enough about the dynamics of his new district to say whether it hurts him with actual swing voters.
People who talk about him seriously as a VP prospect should immediately report back to the asylum from which they’ve escaped.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 16, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET Tax Day and silver linings.
When I found out about tax extensions I had the same ecstatic feeling as when I was a college freshman and found out I could withdraw from a class I was struggling in.
Sure it just puts off the inevitable –and with a penalty.
But much like dropping a college class, it sure can do wonders for my attitude today.
By Krystal Ball, on Fri Apr 13, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET When Republicans took over state legislatures and the US Congress in 2010, we were promised a war on unemployment. Instead we’ve gotten a war on the environment, women, minorities, unions and everything else that moves, organizes and votes Democratic.
What the heck happened? While a lot of attention has rightly been focused on Super PACs, there’s another type of organization that has had an even more dramatic and troubling impact on our democracy. Secretive, tax-exempt 501©(3)s have been gaming our system, enabling corporations and private foundations to buy our democracy at wholesale. They have orchestrated a broad sweep of extreme legislation across the country while using a tax-exempt status to hide their funders and sustain their existence through favorable IRS treatment. Two organizations in particular, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Americans United for Life (AUL) have led the charge in what has been described as “ghostwriting the law”but which in fact goes far beyond that.
 The idealized “Schoolhouse Rock” version of our democratic process works something like this: Constituents concerned about a problem in the community contact their representative in the legislature, who recognizes the issue and decides to respond. The legislator works together with a skilled staff to draft legislation. The legislation is honed in committees where other members bring the perspective of their districts.
Finally, the entire body votes for the bill and it either succeeds or fails on its merits. We all know that this ideal has long been perverted by lobbyists and large donors who hold undue sway in our democracy. Less visible but even more pernicious is the impact of organizations like ALECand AUL who turn legislating into a wholesale, Costco-style activity.
Read the rest of…
Krystal Ball: ALEC and AUL: Buying our democracy at wholesale
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Apr 13, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Celebrity look alike?
Who are the celebrities you think you look most like? And which one do you really look most like?
Oh, I know. You’ve never thought about this because you aren’t that shallow. Baloney. Don’t worry, I haven’t either.
And that’s baloney too.
I’ll go first.
Being associated with a celebrity based on appearance must have some instinctive pull on us. Maybe it gives us a sense of validation that we are somehow important (or have the potential to be) bc we look like someone who is considered important and successful.
When I was a boy I had blondish curly hair. And lots of it.
The first celebrity I was told I looked like was Shirley Temple. A little girl. This displeased and distressed me to the point I took a pair of scissors and cut my own hair. It would be the last time I’d do anything like that again before the Flowbee was introduced some 25 years later.
 The Shirley Temple comments ended around ages 6 or 7. And a new celebrity comparison began. Jody –from Family Affair (as in Buffy and Jody), i.e. Johnny Whitaker. Jody was a quantum leap better than Shirley….And best of all he was a male! But if I could have chosen any celebrity in Hollywood, he would have been my first choice.
So I tried to improve on it. When I was 15 the movie Blue Lagoon came out. Two good looking teens, Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields are stranded on a deserted island and forced to fall in love. Atkins had curly hair and was my age. I floated a the idea to several people that someone had suggested I looked like him. (The person who suggested I looked like him was me–and I suggest it to me.) Suffice it to say the idea never caught on.
No one –other than me–ever thought I looked like Christopher Atkins. Ever. Not even a little.
Chastened, a lowered my standards. I floated the idea a few years later around age 17 that someone (again me) told me I looked like Tommy from the sitcom Eight is Enough.
It didn’t catch on either. Mostly because no one I told could understand why I would want to look like Tommy –of all the celebrities out there.
That’s when I gave up on trying to find a celeb look alike to bolster my self -esteem. At least for the next 30 years.
I may float a rumor later this week that I look like a mature Jonah Hill (after the weight loss). It’s not that I want to look like Jonah Hill. It’s mostly my last ditch resistance before making peace with the fact that the only celeb I’ve ever seriously been told I look like is Johnny Whitaker (Jody).
Like so much in life, it’s not what I was hoping for. But could have been a lot worse. I need to simply accept this and be grateful it’s not Shirley Temple.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Apr 12, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET You know what’s really funny?
Well….um…..shoot. I was thinking of something really funny and now it’s gone.
Huh.
It’s on the tip of my tongue….give me just a minute……
…well……..I think it started with the letter “r” and was a humorous story that happened recently.
It had something to do with….um….Doggone it.
It may have started with the letter “b” and happened when I was a child.
Well, anyway, I had a good laugh to myself about it and if I think of it again I’ll try to share it on Facebook.
Or at least share what letter it starts with.
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