Category: Not-politics

Well, SOMEBODY’S getting fired over this global warming ad flap.

To quote Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate:

‘Global warming is baloney’ signs put the heat on Burger King

A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming “global warming is baloney”.

The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting “kinda like cockroaches” over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down.

The Guardian shoved in as many cooking allusions as it could – which they shouldn’t have, but it’s forgivable – but the, ah, meat of the matter is that the Burger King spokesman says that they have the right to shut down this kind of signage on the part of its franchisees, and that the franchisee has agreed to take down the signs; while the franchise spokesman says that Burger King doesn’t have the right to shut down these signs, and that Burger King can… deal with it. The word ‘cockroaches’ was used in the latter’s response, as was an explicitly cheerful willingness to drag it out in court for the next ten years.

[[John]] McNelis added: “The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. Notwithstanding a franchise agreement, I could load a Brinks vehicle with [rights] I’ve got so many of them. By the time the Burger King lawyers work out how to make that stick we’d be in the year 2020.”

Which is why I figure that somebody’s getting fired. You usually don’t have people in marketing making statements that are that direct unless they’re either sure that they won’t get fired, or that they’re sure that they will…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Unlike Hot Air, there is no reason for MoeLane.com to be on a top 100 political blog list.

I’m flattered that Little Miss Attila thinks so highly of this site, but even if I thought that this list of the supposed top 100 political blogs made any coherent sense, ML still wouldn’t be on it.  I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have some influence in this field; I’m a major contributor and site moderator for RedState, which is one of the top 100 political blogs.  But RS isn’t ML.

Not that I take the aforementioned list seriously, anyway.  If I understand this correctly, the rankings are chosen via a combination of: a). outbound links from RSS feeds and b). Wikio’s internal rankings of the blogs in question, modified by ‘freshness.’  Translation: if you get linked to a lot by blogs with high Wikio ranks whose RSS feeds allow HTML, you’re well on your way to being one of Wikio’s top 100 bloggers.  If not, well, Wikio will be happy to encourage you to behaviors that will enhance your Wikio score.

Personally, I would be worried if ML was on this list: the traffic for this site is about what I’d expect from the linkages that I get.  If I got enough links from high-ranked blogs to put me on the top 100 list, but wasn’t getting their traffic, I’d be forced to conclude that none of the readers from those sites were actually clicking through; they were just reading the summaries/excerpts and moving on.  I don’t mind that so much from the Other Side – I more or less disagree with RS McCain’s Rule 4; starting a fight with a Left-sphere blogger is almost never worth the usually miniscule traffic – but it’d be alarming coming from mine.

All that being said: I have no idea why Politico isn’t on that list.  By Wikio’s own rules – flawed as they might be – it should be in the top ten.

And on that note…

…I need to get ready for a SCA event.

In the meantime, I saw the words ‘G-Force trailer’ and prepared the snark… until I watched the trailer.

We call that ‘cognitive dissonance.’ And ‘well, at least it’s a Jerry Bruckheimer film.’ Yes, that’s a selling point: Jerry knows what I want to see in a film, and he makes sure that I see it.

Two random cable-binging movie observations.

This isn’t exactly a stunning revelation or anything, but seeing the Michael Keaton Batman after you’ve seen The Dark Knight is… interesting. The first isn’t bad, but it’s definitely nothing like the second.

Also, Con Air is living proof that a movie doesn’t actually have to make any coherent sense in order to be great. Or at least worth watching again.

No longer traveling.

But, apparently, my mom’s cable modem refuses to admit that my laptop exists, let alone is worthy of an Ethernet connection.  This is simply going to limit my presence for the next couple of days.

In the meantime, I got this from Lorie Byrd.  I promise to give full attribution as soon as I can get Adode Flash Player up and running on my mom’s new laptop, I swear. Done.

Nice deal on Flip video cameras.

(H/T: Glenn Reynolds).  I ‘m not normally this unsubtle in pointing this stuff out.  Then again, they’re not normally offering Flip camcorders at two-thirds off, so what the heck. Seriously, a camcorder is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool in blogging, particularly if you’re doing anything like local journalism. The difference is like night and day in what you can do: the one that I have now has seriously improved both my access and my reach.

In fact, I’m even thinking of an upgrade; so hit the tip jar, or something.





Moe Lane