Mr. Big Stuff, who do you think you are

Explain please why this guy gets 1 second of exposure on the teevee machine:

Facing tough competition and sliding revenue amid the economic meltdown, Trump Entertainment Resorts will have to skip a $53.1 million interest payment scheduled for Monday on its 8.5% senior secured notes due 2015 in order to maintain sufficient liquidity.

The Atlantic City, N.J., casino operator, with about $1.25 billion worth of the notes outstanding, said late Friday that it has a 30-day grace period to pay up and will meanwhile seek talks with its lenders to revamp its capital structure and improve its liquidity.

Oh yeah, it's because he's such a fabulous businessman, with all those successful projects under his comb-over:

Starting with the renovation of the Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt with the Pritzker family, he continued with Trump Tower in New York City and several other residential projects. Trump would later expand into the airline industry (buying the Eastern Shuttle routes),^[3] and Atlantic City casino business, including buying the Taj Mahal Casino from the Crosby family, then taking it into bankruptcy. This expansion, both personal and business, led to mounting debt.

. . .

He was also instrumental in steering the development of the Javits Convention Center on property he had an option on. The development saga of the Javits Convention Center brought Donald Trump into contact with the New York City government when a project he'd estimated could have been completed by his company for $110 million ended up costing the city between $750 million to $1 billion. He offered to take over the project at cost but the offer was not accepted.

. . .

By 1989, the effects of recession left Trump unable to meet loan payments. Trump financed the construction of his third casino, the $1 billion Taj Mahal, primarily with high-interest junk bonds. Although he shored up his businesses with additional loans and postponed interest payments, by 1991 increasing debt brought Trump to business bankruptcy^[4] and the brink of personal bankruptcy. Banks and bond holders had lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but opted to restructure his debt to avoid the risk of losing more money in court. The Taj Mahal re-emerged from bankruptcy on October 5, 1991, with Trump ceding 50% ownership in the casino to the original bondholders in exchange for lowered interest rates on the debt and more time to pay it off.^[12]

On November 2, 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel was forced to file a prepackaged Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection plan after being unable to make its debt payments. Under the plan, Trump agreed to give up a 49% stake in the luxury hotel to Citibank and five other lenders. In return Trump would receive more favorable terms on the remaining $550+ million owed to the lenders and retain his position as chief executive, though he would not be paid and would not have a role in day-to-day operations.

. . .

In 1995, he combined his casino holdings into the publicly held Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. Wall Street drove its stock above $35 in 1996, but by 1998 it had fallen into single digits as the company remained profitless and struggled to pay just the interest on its nearly $3 billion in debt. Under such financial pressure, the properties were unable to make the improvements necessary for keeping up with their flashier competitors.

. . .

On Sept 17, 2008 Trump officially endorsed John McCain for U.S. Presidency on Larry King Live show.

Why does this happen? Media darlings like Rush Limbaugh get busted for drug possession, and skate. Trump has a closet full of bankruptcies, but gets teevee time and special treatment.

This train wreck of the fatally flawed American system of capitalism deserves to be run out of town and off the airwaves.

Bastard.

Voices

Remember when we were young, oh, it seems only twenty minutes ago?

There was a book titled Subliminal Seduction, purporting to ascribe 32 different flavors of deliciously manipulative evil to Madison Avenue advertisers in the never-ending quest to separate the marks from their wallet's contents, such naughtiness to be hidden in plain sight by the stratagem of subliminally hiding 'triggers' in the contents of the ads and the product to be sold.

Much of this tome's theory and research was disputed, although methods to exploit the subjective inner workings of an individual certainly exist and can be used in myriad ways...and now we have this:

The Audio Spotlight directional sound system from Holosonic Research Labs, Inc., a pioneer in nonlinear acoustics, was recently deployed in retail outlets throughout the New York metropolitan area for a Court TV advertising campaign promoting its new television series, Murder by the Book.
Technology integrator BlueBlast Media, in conjunction with Zoom Media, designed the Court TV retail display, using Holosonics' Audio Spotlight, to deliver discrete messages directly to shoppers.
As customers perused store shelves, they passed motion sensors installed near the Court TV displays that triggered a subtle, targeted message delivered via an Audio Spotlight speaker disc.
The disc precisely beamed a recorded message to the customer, making it sound as if someone, a "Mystery Whisperer," was speaking directly to them.
Holosonics' Audio Spotlight signal is only audible to those standing directly within the acoustic beam, so when the shopper stepped out of the beam, the voice disappeared.

During the month-long campaign, targeting eleven bookstores and cafes throughout Manhattan, the Audio Spotlight directed more than 100,000 messages to shoppers asking them to tune in to the new Court TV television series.

"Because the message delivered by the Audio Spotlight system is only audible when directly in line with the narrow beam of sound, we were able to capture consumers' attention in a whole new way," said JP Freeley, owner of BlueBlast Media. "We left consumers with a message that resonated instead of one they just walked right past."

And such technology has slipped the bonds of the mall and escaped to the wild, being used in such venues as this:

Walking westward on Prince St. between Mulberry and Mott Streets, I heard a woman's voice in my head whispering, "Who's there? Who's there?"
Not like I "heard" a woman's voice like when I wear flared jeans with skinny shoes and I "hear" a woman's voice in my head say, "Wait, you've got to be kidding?" but like an actual woman's voice in my head.

Then I noticed that, above a billboard for some A&E show called Paranormal State were some speakers that looked like hypersonic sound beams, a device which uses your skull as a speaker—that is, it transmits soundwaves that resonate against whatever surface they hit.

So when they hit your head, it sounds like the call is coming from the inside the brain-house.

Mama, we're all going to be schizophrenic now.

h/t Majikthise.

I'm sleeping in a fighter plane

Those on the right who blindly trust capitalism and free markets should be thrilled with this LATimes story:

THEY DON'T CALL US the sole superpower for nothing. Paul Wolfowitz might be looking for a new job right now, but the term he used to describe the pervasiveness of U.S. power back when he was a mere deputy secretary of Defense — hyperpower — still fits the bill. Consider some of the areas in which the United States is still No. 1:

Any guesses? Anyone, anyone? In what area are we the leaders:

Certainly not progress, as Reagan used to intone on GE's General Electric Theater, during his salad days as an actor in the '50s: "Progress is our most important product."

Hardly. Today we are world leaders in:

• First in weapons sales: Since 2001, U.S. global military sales have totaled $10 billion to $13 billion. That's a lot of weapons, but in fiscal 2006, the Pentagon broke its own recent record, inking arms sales agreements worth $21 billion.

• First in sales of surface-to-air missiles: From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. delivered 2,099 surface-to-air missiles like the Sparrow and AMRAAM to nations in the developing world, 20% more than Russia, the next largest supplier.

• First in sales of military ships: During that same period, the U.S. sent 10 "major surface combatants," such as aircraft carriers and destroyers, to developing nations. Collectively, the four major European weapons producers shipped 13.

• First in military training: A thoughtful empire knows that it's not enough to send weapons; you have to teach people how to use them. The Pentagon plans on training the militaries of 138 nations in 2008 at a cost of nearly $90 million. No other nation comes close.

Cool! And just to prove that we are Equal Opportunity enablers:

Turkey and the U.S. signed a $1.78-billion deal for Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes. As it happens, these planes are already ubiquitous — Israel flies them; so does the United Arab Emirates, Poland, South Korea, Venezuela, Oman and Portugal

Catch that? Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Oman all have the same war planes from the U.S.

The article continues:

Maybe the only way to break through this paralysis of analysis would be to stop talking about weapons sales as a trade and the export of precision-guided missiles as if they were so many widgets. Maybe we need to start thinking about them in another language entirely — the language of drugs.

After all, what does a drug dealer do? He creates a need and then fills it. He encourages an appetite or (even more lucratively) an addiction and then feeds it.

"Just Say No" worked so well in the Drug War, maybe it will work for arms as well.

Nope, not when we can make a buck. Still, I wonder how many American soldiers have been killed by munitions we sold Iraq and Iran?

(Graphic from ControlArms.org)

Update: From Peromyscus in comments:

The LA Times on Sunday reported that the US is 32nd in longevity, 29th in preventing maternal deaths during childbirth and 38th in preventing infant mortality. So, number one at death-dealing, not so great at life-preserving.