Pelosi prepares for amazing thought experiment

Here’s one for those ready to play the Feud: between Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, whom do you think Americans dislike more? Both are future former heads of the most reviled body in the United States government. Both are perceived as dishonest hacks—Pelosi in service to an increasingly demonized Democratic establishment and Gingrich in service to, well, Gingrich. Both appeared in a global warming commercial that each frankly acknowledges was bad for Gingrich, for the strangely agreed-upon reason that people hate Nancy Pelosi. Perhaps most importantly, both know what Newt Gingrich did in 1996. Her tenure on the House ethics committee that investigated him has left Pelosi with privileged information, which she is now promising/threatening to reveal “when the time is right.” From a PR standpoint, this is like Saddam Hussein inviting everybody to watch him hit Osama Bin Laden with nerve gas.

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Rick Perry releases Armageddon 2: Antichrist

Kaboom! Mitt Rombama has a psychic episode.

A few weeks ago we discussed the terrifyingly cinematic campaign commercial in which Rick Perry teaches a broken America to make jet fighters again. That was back when he was the front runner and logically impelled to demonize the President. Now that the American people have gotten to know him, Perry is trailing fellow suit-mounted jawline Mitt Romney. (Ed.: Who? Who?) The two men couldn’t be more different: one is the millionaire son of a former governor, and the other became a millionaire while he was governor. Also, one of them is basically Barack Obama. In order to make clear which, Perry has produced this 59-second biopic. Props to Micky for the link, and video after the jump.

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Compunctions: Bob Parsons

A different photo of Bob Parsons

As our pageload times will attest, Combat! blog is hosted by GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registration and webhosting corporation. I settled on GoDaddy after an exhaustive process in which I researched literally threes of hosting companies and went with the lowest bidder. If you choose GoDaddy, you’ll know where your $4.95 a month went. Their WordPress servers are notoriously slow, and I am routinely locked out of the administrative side of Combat! for hours at a time. Also, CEO Bob Parsons appears to be maybe not a great guy. I don’t know if you’ve detected this, but a lot of GoDaddy commercials have vaguely sexist overtones.

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Verizon Thunderbolt will empower, baffle you

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXkqpul38wE&feature=player_embedded#at=12

 

I have watched this advertisement for the Verizon Thunderbolt several times now, and all I can say about the actual phone is that it looks hard to charge. Those of you who have seen The Daily Show or a Shia LaBeouf movie in the past three months will recognize this latest in a series of tone-deaf Verizon commercials that present the smartphone as an alien product that smashes trees and evokes submissive awe in rural people. Like that spot—in which a young man waits eagerly for his new phone to arrive and, once he actually gets it, decides to hurl it as far away as possible—this commercial manages to capture my two main fears about any new smartphone:

1) I have to charge it for eight hours every 16 hours.

2) It may provide evidential proof that I am some sort of douchebag.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.

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Trident commercial lays out worst argument in sales history

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG2MuOyrCrQ

The fanciful commercial above is for Trident Layers, a chewing gum that contains a layer of mouthwash or food coloring or industrial epoxy or something in the middle. The candy industry is a fresh, minty mystery to me, but I assume now is not a great time to try to sell a new kind of gum to adults. Perhaps for that reason, Trident has broken the standards set by Juicy Fruit* and Doublemint** to go with something funny—sorry, “funny.” Like many commercials, this one is essentially a comedy sketch. Unlike many commercials, it is predicated on the viewer believing that the product being sold is not worth the money.

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