Here’s a tip for all you wannabe media moguls: If you want to get ahead in the business, make sure you have a very successful parent.

22 year old Gus Wenner, son of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner has been promoted to head up operations at RollingStone.com after a long career in….college. Via JimRomenesko.com:

Here’s Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner’s memo about his son‘s promotion.

From: Jann Wenner <jann.wenner@rollingstone.com>
Date: Monday, May 20, 2013 2:52 PM
Subject: Gus Wenner

Gus Wenner (from his Facebook page)

Dear all:

[Wenner Media chief digital officer] David Kang and I are very pleased — and I am very proud — to announce that Gus Wenner, after leading the re-launch re-design effort for our website, will now continue by heading up the overall operations of RollingStone.com.

Jann

Hamilton Nolan’s take:

Gus Wenner, 22, is an amazing media success story. Just a few years ago, he was a Brown University student playing in a band with fellow celebukid Brown student Scout Willis. Today, he’s still playing in a band with Scout Willis— and also running the website of a major national magazine!…..Gus followed the traditional route to a perch atop the media hierarchy: playing in an alt-country band in college.

[Full disclosure: My father was a big figure in the entertainment industry. He did once get me a job in the video tape library of his company as a runner, but after almost getting fired for incompetence on several occasions, I left after 4 months.]

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Only in the South…

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a man selling shrimp on the side of the road had his sign stolen by a man in passing truck. Taking matters into his own hands, the shrimp seller jumped on the hood of the truck and the driver took off down the freeway with him on it.

A car passing by captured the incident on camera and had the following relatively relaxed conversation with the shrimp seller, going and God knows how many miles per hour:

Man on hood of speeding car: Call the police for me!

Woman holding camera: What’s going on?

Man on hood of speeding car:He ran me over and I jumped on the hood! Call the police for me.

Woman holding camera: Ok.

While the man on the hood of the car was not apparently telling the truth (he didn’t get run over according to the police) he did seem fairly annoyed at the driver:

Apparently, no charges have been filed by any parties involved.

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Jamie Dimon: Wall St Titan and major dick

Macho man and JP Morgan Chase Chairman, President and CEO Jamie Dimon is regarded as a titan on Wall St, and a dick by pretty much everyone else. Dimon is a balls-to-the-wall capitalist and unapologetic advocate of the system that makes people like him rich, and brought the global economy to its knees in 2008.

In April 2o12, JP Morgan reported a loss in a London-based division, first calculated to be $2 billion. The estimates then kept going up, finally reaching over $6 billion. Dimon dismissed the incident initially, calling it a “tempest in a teapot”, then embarrassingly had to walk back his statement and accept his bank screwed up big time.

Thankfully, Dimon might get dealt a small dose of humility tomorrow as shareholder groups are calling for the bank to strip him of his chairman job. At the bank’s annual meeting in Florida, several groups including the union AFSCME, the NYCCO (New York City Comptroller’s Office) will ask bank shareholders to approve a proposal that splits the roles of chairman and CEO, giving the chairman job to someone outside the bank. This would essentially strip Dimon of much of his power and ensure he faced far more scrutiny in his job.

But of course Dimon wants none of this, claiming the event is a “sideshow” orchestrated by unions. Dimon wants everyone to understand just how how vital rich bankers are to the survival of America.  ”I am not embarrassed to be a banker” Dimon once told a roomful of corporate clients in response to attacks on his industry.

Quite the claim given the public had to put up $12.8 trillion to keep his industry from collapsing.

Dimon, described by the New Yorker “as an overgrown frat boy” has a long history of making dick statements, making his impending comeuppance all the more gratifying.

Here’s 9 quotes from the Wall St mogul that definitively prove that he is in fact, a giant dick:

1. “That’s why I’m richer than you.”

- Jamie Dimon Speaking to Mike Mayo CLSA analyst when asked whether he agrees that customers should feel safer with banks that have higher capital ratios (like JP Morgan).

2. “I have gotten disturbed at… some of the Democrats’ anti-business behavior, the sentiment, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it’s very counter-productive.”

- Jamie Dimon on Meet the Press in 2012 forgetting that his industry almost wrecked the entire global economy.

3. “You read constantly that banks are lobbying regulators and elected officials as if this is inappropriate. We don’t look at it that way.”

-Jamie Dimon in his annual shareholder letter arguing that banks have the right to corrupt the political system with money (JP Morgan spent $7.5 million on lobbying in 2011).

4. “I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.”

Jamie Dimon defending the business of taking tax payers money and lending it back to them at extortionate rates.

5. “The term ‘too big to fail’ must be excised from our vocabulary.”

- Jamie Dimon forgetting that the public bailed out the banks because the were indeed, too big to fail (and still are).

6. “Giving debt relief to people that really need it, that’s what foreclosure is.”

-Jamie Dimon arguing that banks taking people’s houses and kicking them onto the streets was in fact, a good thing for people ruined by debt.

7. ”JPMorgan would be fine if we stopped talking about the damn nationalization of banks. We’ve got plenty of capital. To policymakers, I say where were they? … They approved all these banks. Now they’re beating up on everyone, saying look at all these mistakes, and we’re going to come and fix it.”

— Jamie Dimon in 2009 at Davos speaking about the financial crisis, forgetting that his own bank required nearly $100 billion in taxpayer help to fill its own lack of capital during the meltdown.

8. “Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was.”

— Jamie Dimon on the losses incurred by JP Morgan in 2012, rejecting the notion that more regulation is needed to prevent them happening again.

9. “We don’t think there are cases where people were evicted out of homes when they shouldn’t have been.”

— Jamie Dimon in 2010 responding to the investigation led by 49 state attorney generals into bank foreclosure practices. Along with several other banks, JP Morgan settled with regulators after widespread mortgage abuse was found and paid out a combined $9.2 billion to those it foreclosed on illegally.

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Having built a business selling enormously high calorie drinks, Coca Cola now wants to help put right the growing global obesity epidemic.  From ABC News:

Coca-Cola says it will make lower-calorie options and clear calorie labeling more widely available around the world, intensifying a push against critics who say its drinks pack on the pounds.

The Atlanta-based company, which makes Sprite, Fanta and Minute Maid, already offers diet drinks in most markets. But there’s no consistency in their availability, particularly in emerging markets such as China and India.

Coca-Cola also said Wednesday that it would support programs that encourage physical activity and no longer market to kids younger than 12. That policy is already in place for the U.S., but the company did not say in which countries it currently markets to children.

As a fan of Coca Cola (at least the original drink), I’m slightly reticent to get too sarcastic about this, but it is rather like tobacco companies getting into cancer prevention. Sure, Coca Cola’s new campaign might have some sort of effect, but it isn’t about to do anything too serious about the epidemic. At its core, it is a business that sells sugar, and sugar makes people fat.

So really, it is in the business of making people fat.

If Coca Cola was serious about the obesity epidemic it would support legislation that prevented advertising its products altogether. Of course it doesn’t support this because that would hurt its business, making its announcement pretty much meaningless.

In magical free market fantasy land, this is all ok though because people want sugary drinks, and dammit, Coca Cola is going to give them what they want! If they don’t want it, they’ll make them think they do by having celebrities drink it on television, and if they figure out they’re being duped, they’ll hire more celebrities to drink slightly less sugary versions of it so that they’ll buy that instead. Sure, over 300,000 people a year die from obesity related diseases in America, and obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years, but what has that got to do with anything?

Image via Shutterstock

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In this weeks edition of ‘Glenn Beck Comment Porn’ we look at his reader’s reactions to an article on Pat Robertson and submissive women. The televangelist had got himself into a whole heap of trouble when he declared that women who have been cheated on by their husbands should stop dwelling on the cheating and “make a home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander”.

Reader’s of Glenn Beck’s site ‘The Blaze’ weighed in with their usual combination of wit, intelligence and compassion, offering the following gems all women should take to the bank.

MIKEINLEEDS agreed with Robertson, arguing that most men he knows who “has (sic) cheated is mainly because women are not submissive anymore”:

MODERN_CICERO said that only Jesus Christ can stop men cheating:

CAVALLO warned that getting married in the first place is a bad idea, likening marriage to entering a ‘lion’s den’:

And TERM LIMITS FOR CONGRESS reminded the woman who was cheated on should be grateful she isn’t married to a muslim: 

Until next week….

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Gawker wants you to pay for a video of Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smoking crack cocaine. Writes John Cook:

As you may have heard, Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack cocaine. We’ve seen a video of him smoking crack cocaine, and the people who have the video would like to sell it. Through the miracle of crowdfunding, you can help. Please consider donating to the Rob Ford Crackstarter.

How Much Do We Need? $200,000. That’s what the owners of the video want. That sounds like a lot of money. The good people at Indiegogo believe that, with the appropriate amount of virality, that goal is achievable.

The crowdfunding site Indigogo has the power to help many a worthwhile project, and it’s highly debatable whether this is one of them. Gawker, which is worth in excess of $300 million, is basically asking the public to pay for something it will profit from. They’re obviously calculating that the virality of the video won’t make them $200,000 in ad revenue, so they’re asking their readers to foot the bill. I’m all up for reader funded journalism, but it has to be actual journalism not just slapping a video up of something controversial. If Gawker wanted $200,000 to do a series of in depth pieces on crack use in Toronto, then sure. But this is just a cheap move to get people to pay for stuff they should be buying themselves.

How about this? Let the project stand, but Gawker must use all ad proceeds from the video to doing some serious journalism on the subject (that it can also profit from).

I think Gawker is an excellent site, and while I’m giving it a hard time for this particular story, it does do some very good original reporting (Hamilton Nolan in particular has done some great work on poverty and wealth inequality).

So take up the challenge and put that money to good use. I’ll donate myself, and gladly watch the video of Rob Ford getting high as a kite.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger: Muscle size directly related to his political leanings

An interesting study from Denmark has shown that upper body strength in men is a pretty good indicator of their political leanings. Stronger men are apparently more likely to be right wing, while weaker men tend to lean left. From the Daily Mail:

Men who are strong are more likely to take a right-wing stance, while weaker men support the welfare state, researchers claim.

Their study discovered a link between a man’s upper-body strength and their political views.

Scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark collected data on bicep size, socio-economic status and support for economic redistribution from hundreds in America, Argentina and Denmark.

The figures revealed that men with higher upper-body strength were less likely to support left-wing policies on the redistribution of wealth. 

Men with less upper body strength are more likely to support the welfare state – like Labour leader Ed Miliband

But men with low upper-body strength were more likely to put their own self-interest aside and support a welfare state.

The researchers found no link between upper-body strength and redistribution opinions among women.

Professor Michael Petersen said: ‘In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursued the self-interested position on redistribution.

‘However physically weak males were more reluctant to assert their self-interest – just as if disputes over national policies were a matter of direct physical confrontation between individuals.’

It’s a good reminder that political beliefs are as much a product of human evolution as anything else, and not some abstract concept based on anything that transcends nature. It makes sense that those most able to provide for themselves in early human societies would believe that individuality trumps all, and those least able would believe in a more mutualistic approach. Both are selfish in the long run they are about long term survival – it just boils down to whether you think you can make it better alone or in a group.

Given strength doesn’t effect women’s political leanings, perhaps it’s a good idea to let them make the decisions. After all, an ability to do pull ups isn’t exactly the best predictor of good decision making.

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One of the best ways to understand the effects of global warming is to see it visually. Thankfully Google Earth can do this for us. Via UpWorthy:

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Monstrous liar Dick Cheney is at it again (spirit of america / Shutterstock.com)

Dick Cheney will rightly go down as one of the most despised figures in American political history. The ruthlessly cold neo con was one of the major architects of the Iraq War and the ‘War on Terror’, and used his power in office to do an astonishing amount of damage at home and abroad. Cheney represents cartoon character evilness – a sinister, lying bastard who would sell his own mother if it meant more power.

After his turn in office, Cheney has thankfully disappeared for the most part. But the Dark Lord has returned to offer his poisonous opinion on the so called Benghazi scandal, adding to the mounting bullshit coming from Republicans in a pathetically obvious attempt to smear Obama. Speaking with Sean Hannity via phone, Cheney told the Fox News host that he thought Benghazi was “One of the worst incidences, frankly, that I can recall in my career.”

It seems Cheney may have forgotten one small event that happened on his watch (here’s a clue):

Never one for self reflection, Cheney continued, “It put the whole capability claiming the terrorist problem solved once we got Bin Laden, that Al Qaeda was over with. If they told the truth about Benghazi, that it was a terrorist attack by an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, it would destroy the confidence that was the basis of his campaign for re-election.”

Never mind the fact that there is absolutely no proof of this WHATSOEVER. As Max Read at Gawker points out after State Department memos were released:

The memos don’t make the State Department look noble, but they also show that before and throughout the revision process the top talking point across all memos was still about spontaneous protests—and that the motivation was more inter-agency cover-your-ass jockeying than protecting Obama.

So Cheney has literally pulled this out of his ass.

Not satisfied with the accusation that the Obama administration were attempting to gloss over events in Benghazi, Cheney went on to claim that the White House told direct lies to the American public about what happened. “They lied,” he went on. “They claimed it was because of a demonstration video, that they wouldn’t have to admit it was really all about their incompetence. They ignored repeated warnings from the CIA about the threat. They ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they need more security. They reduced what was already there.”

Again, if you look at the facts, this is utter horseshit. The released emails show that the CIA itself originally believed it to be a spontaneous attack. As Salon notes:

While references to terrorism were removed at the behest of the State Department, the CIA’s original draft of the talking points stated that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.” In fact, all 12 drafts did.

It’s clear now that some people in the administration, including those on the ground, believed it was a terror attack from the get-go, but the CIA’s job is to synthesize disparate and often conflicting intelligence and make its best guess about the truth. So even if there was conflicting intelligence, the White House was correct in saying they were merely following the intelligence community’s lead, as they have maintained all along, by blaming the attack on a protest.

But no, facts will not suffice for Mr Cheney who insists on creating a totally new reality where actual evidence is disregarded in favor of whatever he wants it to be.

“The cover up included several officials up to and including President Obama and the cover up is still ongoing,” said Cheney.

So desperate to cover up the scandal that they released all the emails  to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees….

The memos released do show that there were mistakes made in regards to the events in Benghazi – there’s clear evidence that there was a lot of inter-agency back and forth between the State Department, the White House and the CIA that resulted in references to terrorism being removed from initial public briefings. But so what? As the administration learned more, it accepted the facts that it was indeed a terrorist attack and told the public so.

The truth is that some people believed it to be a terrorist attack from the get go, and some didn’t. The White House waited for the State Department and the CIA to give them a briefing to run with, and that happened to be one without reference to terrorism. And that’s about it.

Cheney running with this line of attack is particularly annoying for anyone living in the real world given the monstrous lies he told while in office. As WashingtonsBlog notes, Cheney:

• Falsely linked Iraq with 9/11 (indeed, the entire torture program was aimed at establishing such a false linkage; and Cheney is the guy who pushed for torture, pressured the Justice Department lawyers to write memos saying torture was legal, and made the pitch to Congress justifying torture. The former director of the CIA said Cheney oversaw American torture policies)

• Falsely claimed that spying on Americans, torture, the Patriot Act, the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war and the “war on terror” were all necessitated by 9/11 … when all of them started or were planned before 9/11

• Falsely stated that an attack such as 9/11 was unforeseeable, when Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was something which American military and intelligence services – and our allies – knew could happen

• Falsely pretended that he was out of the loop during the 9/11 attacks

• Falsely blamed others for 9/11, when Cheney was in charge of all of America’s counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. See this Department of State announcement and this CNN article

So it’s no surprise that the liar Dick Cheney is telling lies about other people telling lies.

It’s what he does.

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Forbes reports on the app every activist everyone is talking about – ‘Buycott’ – a simple, free smartphone application that allows people to scan barcodes of items they buy and see which company profits from your dollar:

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.

Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and GoogleGOOG +1.09% Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & JohnsonJNJ +1.3%.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

It’s not like the Obama administration is doing much to tackle wealth inequality and corporate abuse of power, so anything that allows individuals to take matters into their own hands is a big step forward. Consumer knowledge is incredibly important if anything is to change at the top, and given companies spend billions of dollars a year in advertising to cover up the truth about their business practices, easily accessible knowledge could be key to leveling the playing field.

Get it now.

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