Guns, Anger and Infomercials

CATEGORY: Obama, Infomercial, President, United States

DIVISION: Modern Evil

EDITORIAL: For the many Americans wanting to bomb, kill or otherwise harm Barak Obama, a quick reminder that he will air his Presidential Infomercial tonight at 8 PM Eastern. So grab your 12-gauge from your Back-Up rack and enjoy a round of target practice on your 42" plasma. Guns, anger and infomercials - together at last. God bless America.








Obama Infomercial, a Closing Argument to the Everyman

By JIM RUTENBERG

Senator Barack Obama will use his prime-time half-hour infomercial on Wednesday night to make what is effectively a closing argument to a national audience of millions. At times he will speak directly into the camera about his 20-month campaign, at others he will highlight everyday voters, their everyday troubles, and his plans to address them.

Mr. Obama’s campaign agreed to provide The New York Times with a minute-long trailer for the 30-minute program, which is to run on four broadcast networks at 8 p.m. It will be the first time in 16 years that a presidential candidate has bought network time, in prime time, for a prolonged campaign commercial.

The trailer is heavy in strings, flags, presidential imagery and some Americana filmed by Davis Guggenheim, whose father was the campaign documentarian of Robert F. Kennedy. As the screen flashes scenes of suburban lawns, a freight train and Mr. Obama seated at a kitchen table with a group of white, apparently working-class voters, Mr. Obama says: “We’ve seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history and on American lives; much that’s wrong with our country goes back even farther than that.”

Then, while standing before a stately desk and an American flag, Mr. Obama, in a suit, says: “We’ve been talking about the same problems for decades and nothing is ever done to solve them. For the past 20 months, I’ve traveled the length of this country, and Michelle and I have met so many Americans who are looking for real and lasting change that makes a difference in their lives.”

Jim Margolis, Mr. Obama’s senior advertising strategist, said the program would then go on to feature “the stories of four different Americans, or American families, and kind of what they’re confronting.”

He said the stories would highlight “the challenges people are facing and what we should do in terms of solutions.” He said Mr. Obama would also share the story of his mother, “who struggled through her bout with breast cancer and the difficulty she had with her insurance company, to help viewers understand why his health care reform program is what it is.”

It will also have a live component, featuring Mr. Obama at a rally in Florida. The infomercial has been under production for weeks in the Virginia office of Mark Putnam, whose firm, Murphy-Putnam, is part of the Obama advertising team.

The program is to be shown on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, MSNBC and two cable networks that cater to African-Americans, BET and TV One. Ross Perot, the last presidential candidate to run similar programming, broadcast eight long infomercials to an average of 13 million viewers, with one of them getting 16.5 million viewers.

Costing the campaign more than $3 million, the infomercial is the ultimate reflection of Mr. Obama’s spending flexibility. Mr. McCain, with far less money in the bank, has been unable to produce a similar commercial.

The McCain campaign has seized on the advertisement as excessive, with Mr. McCain pointing to reports that Mr. Obama’s infomercial would bump back the World Series on Fox by 15 minutes. “No one will delay the World Series with an infomercial when I’m president,” he said, in Hershey, Pa.

(Fox executives have said that they, and not the Obama campaign, had initially asked Major League Baseball to move the start of Wednesday’s game to 8:35 p.m. from 8:20, to make way for his infomercial. But as it turns out, such a delay was not necessary anyway; none of the World Series games has started before 8:30, and two started after 8:35.)

For its part, Mr. Obama’s campaign said it was not worried about turning off viewers.

“Many people have 150 channels; they’ve got plenty of other choices,” Mr. Margolis said. “Or they can drop into a video game.” Then again, Mr. Obama is advertising in video games, too.

Smile! It's Serf 63 for You and Me!

CATEGORY: Rex 84, Round-Up, Raids, Repression

DIVISION: Modern Evil

COMMENT: The real question is what to do AFTER a Rex 84 Round-Up with all the thousands and thousands of people deemed "subversive"? Since idle hands are the devil's playground, we welcome the Whitehouse Adminstration's proposed addendum to Rex 84 - Serf 63; the auto-declaration of all roundees as labor assets of FEMA. In short, people [forcibly] helping people. Crisis really does bring out the best in us.










Rex 84

Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, is a plan by the United States federal government to test their ability to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest or national emergency.

Exercises similar to Rex 84 happen periodically. Plans for roundups of persons in the United States in times of crisis are constructed during periods of increased political repression such as the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy Era. For example, from 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the "ADEX" list.

The Rex-84 Alpha Explan (Readiness Exercise 1984, Exercise Plan; otherwise known as a continuity of government plan), indicates that FEMA in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies conducted a civil readiness exercise during April 5-13, 1984. It was conducted in coordination and simultaneously with a Joint Chiefs exercise, Night Train 84, a worldwide military command post exercise (including Continental U.S. Forces or CONUS) based on multi-emergency scenarios operating both abroad and at home.

In the combined exercise, Rex-84 Bravo, FEMA and DOD led the other federal agencies and departments, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, the Treasury, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Veterans Administration through a gaming exercise to test military assistance in civil defense.

The exercise anticipated civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization. To fight subversive activities, there was authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial law.

DIEt! DIEt! DIEt!

CATEGORY: Flat Belly Diet, Self Image, Perfection

DIVISION: Modern Evil Products

EDITORIAL: The truly wonderful evil of any modern society is "the diet". The schizophrenia of gorging and purging whipsaws the rat-running populace into a never-ending frenzy of personal perfection. And we applaud it.

Coming Soon: Eat Younger - The Fountain of Youth Diet and BBQ + Beer Battle Baldness.












The Flat Belly Diet

Prevention magazine is the country's most authoritative, trustworthy, and innovative source for practical health, nutrition, and fitness information. Now, its editors bring you a weight-loss plan that's specifically designed to target your number-one trouble spot: BELLY FAT.

For women over 40, belly fat is incredibly stealth and incredibly stubborn. It's also the most deadly, contributing to a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and chronic illness than any other type of fat on your body. Finally, science has helped uncover a key dietary weapon in the fight against belly fat. Monounsaturated fatty acids, or MUFAs, help dieters lose more weight--in their bellies specifically--and keep it off longer.

Flat Belly Diet! will lead you step by step, day by day, meal by meal toward a flatter belly...and a longer, healthier life.

Let's Move the Poltergeist Curse

CATEGORY: Curse, Movies, Hollywood

DIVISION: Modern Evil PR

COMMENT: Frustrated by the inflexibility of the movie industry, we at The Modern Evil Company are creating a lobby group with one focus - to move the Poltergeist Curse to the Saw series. Really, what better LEGAL way is there to get rid of Donnie Wahlberg?

To support the lobby, email - Modern Evil PR with "Let's Move the Curse" in the subject line.










The Poltergiest Curse

The Poltergeist curse is the rumor of a supposed curse attached to the Poltergeist motion picture series and its stars.

The rumor is superstition largely derived from the fact that four cast members died in a relatively short span of time (six years) between the release of the first film and the release of the third, with one dying during production of the second film. Two of them died at young ages, 12 and 22. It is not clear that these particular films are atypical in the number or nature of the deaths of their actors, and at least two of the supposed victims had serious health problems before becoming attached to the film series.

The actors who are supposed victims of the curse include:

Dominique Dunne, 22-year-old actress who played the oldest sibling Dana in the first movie, died after being choked by a jealous boyfriend in 1982. The boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, was later convicted and sentenced to six years in prison, though initially he only served two and a half years.

Julian Beck, 60-year-old actor who played Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side, died in 1985 of stomach cancer, with which he was diagnosed before he had accepted the role.

Will Sampson, 53 years old, who played Taylor the Medicine Man in Poltergeist II, died of post-operative kidney failure and pre-operative malnutrition problems in 1987.

Heather O'Rourke, actress who played Carol Anne in all three Poltergeist movies, died in 1988 at the age of 12 after what doctors initially described as an acute form of influenza but later changed to septic shock after bacterial toxins invaded her bloodstream. At the time, she had suffered acute bowel obstruction, initially diagnosed as Crohn's disease, which may have been the cause of death.

Return to Owner - Goat Heads

CATEGORY: Goat Heads, Sacrifice, Offerings

DIVISION: Modern Evil

EDITORIAL: Even though chickens are the most common religious sacrifice, goats rate a strong second, with pigs and rabbits tying for third. So finding errant goat heads, prepped and ready for ceremony, should not be surprising - especially on a beach in Florida - given the popularity of Santeria worshippers throughout the Caribbean. We suggest the local authorities post the sacred items as "Lost and Found" on Craigslist.













Beheaded Goats Each Found in Bag with $5 on Fort Pierce Beach

By Will Greenlee

FORT PIERCE — Two beheaded goats and a third dead goat with its head still attached were found Sunday by a lifeguard and appear to have washed up on the beach, according to a police report released Monday.

The first beheaded goat was in a bag along with its head and five $1 bills, found by a lifeguard on a beach along south A1A. Another goat discovered nearby also was beheaded and found in a trash bag with a $5 bill, while another goat not in a bag was found still with its head attached.

The hooves of all three goats were bound with string, and all three had tags attached to their ears.