Barack Obama made two moves recently that leave him open to charges of selling out. One, his selection of James Johnson to help select a running mate. Johnson is a former CEO of Fannie Mae, where he helped usher in the subprime lending crisis. Also he's a Bilderberg attendee! The other new hire, though, will surely upset many more liberal stalwarts: Obama named Jason Furman as his economic policy director. Furman is a former Clintonite economist who loooooooves giant retailer Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, he says, is a boon to poor Americans, because their prices are so low. They keep their prices low, critics charge, by fucking over their non-union workforce and aiding the export of manufacturing jobs overseas, but Furman argued in a 2005 paper that consumers saved enough money shopping at the store to offset the impact on wages. Obama's never quite been a champion of organized labor, but this selection does throw him open to accusations of pretty blatant hypocrisy (hooray electoral politics!):

An amazing, real item on sale at K-Mart now: "These athletic pants boldly proclaim just where she stands by pointing out that 'True Love Waits' in a large screen print on the front and back of these pants." Abstinence: It's right there on her ass. Click through for the colorful varieties you can order for your teenage daughter:

Back in 2005, two activist groups—Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch—launched campaigns to kick Wal-Mart's ass in the media. Which they did quite successfully for a while. The soulless retailer spent untold millions on a huge, political-style PR campaign from our friends at Edelman to fight back against the criticisms of them for everything from poor health care to union busting. But the Times reports today that Edelman's Wal-Mart war room shut down months ago, and the torrent of news stories about the company's flaws has died down. Why? Because Wal-Mart has adopted a philosophy of working with critics, and made their enemies their friends. This is either evidence of progress, or cause for despair. Since the company is still a horrible union buster, we'll go with "despair."

Think of all the tasty treats of your childhood that you can't find any more—what mighty act of will would it take to bring them back into existence? "1,300 phone inquiries, an online petition with more than 1,000 signatures and Internet chat sites lamenting the demise of the snack." That's all it took for Kellogg to resurrect the odd Oreo ripoff cookies called Hydrox, which were discontinued in 2003 after nearly 100 years. Turns out some people really like their Hydrox! The product always seemed like an inferior, superfluous, knockoff cookie with a terrible name. Which it is! But that has proven to work in its favor from a marketing perspective, because, it seems, "Its fans came to see their sandwich-cookie choice as a call to arms for nonconformists." Sad—but effective. Unfortunately, its kitsch value is the only thing Hydrox really has going for it:

File this under "Confirmation of scary news that you already suspected was true": a new survey says that corporations have become so paranoid about leaks (justifiably) that many are now engaged in "systematic snooping" in employees' electronic communications. More than 40% of large companies read employee emails, but that's not all; they're also looking at your instant messages and Facebook pages. Delete! Delete!

Ah, the good old days of 1947: a simpler time, when titans sat astride the corporate world, and those titans had desks appropriate to men with superhuman prestige—desks that were acknowledgments of the widespread on-the-job alcoholism that was the style at the time. Modern Mechanix digs up a Popular Science story from '47 about an executive dream desk with everything a man could possibly desire: a 'work' side with a six-tube radio, Teletalk Intercommunication Master Unit, and electronic dictaphone; and a 'play' side with a wet bar and fridge. Oddly, the personal safe is also on the 'play' side, but the cigarette lighter is on the work side. A different culture. The cost of this masterwork? "Well into the four figures." Larger image of the story, after the jump.

Here's the recipe for Mcdonald's new Southern Chicken Sandwich: "a breaded chicken breast garnished with two pickles." Why hasn't anyone thought of this breakthrough item before? They have! This same sandwich has been Chik-fil-A's signature for years. But McD's is all like, "Uh, what? We totally don't know what you're talking about." Whatever, sandwich thieves!

Angelo Mozilo is the CEO of disastrous mortgage lender Countrywide, and one of the most overpaid, reviled, and villainous business executives in America today. He's drawn huge salaries even as his company led to the way for the subprime mortgage collapse. So you might expect the guy to be surrounded at all times by a team of highly-paid image consultants, ensuring that every word out of his mouth in some way helped to resurrect his shattered reputation. Wrong, bitches! With a classic "Hitting reply instead of forward" move, Mozilo inadvertently let a desperate homeowner (and the world) know what he thought of his plea for help: "Disgusting.":

Howard Schultz, the founder of Death Star coffee chain and religious icon Starbucks, built the company up from nothing with pure grit, energy, and a visionary outlook. Then he went too far, aiming to open 40-freaking-thousand stores (more than McDonald's), and the company's stock price cratered over the past year. Schultz brought himself back as CEO earlier this year, and the dynamic caffeine pusher has now revealed how he plans to revive his floundering company: by micromanaging the shit out of every god damn thing:

Business types are excited about the news today that General Electric is planning to sell off its appliance division in a $5 billion move. Normal types are excited because this proves that GE CEO Jeff Immelt is now making decisions for his $323 billion company based on how they would affect the characters of 30 Rock. After Alec Baldwin's character Jack Donaghy got relieved of his imaginary position running the microwave division of GE's NBC on the April 21 episode, it was only a matter of time before this sale happened. The loss of a leader of Alec Baldwin's caliber—and its ripple effects on Tina Fey—sends strong signals to Wall Street. Recap video of that fateful episode is below. If GE decides to finance Tracy Morgan's Fat Bitch 2 movie, we're rating its stock a strong buy.

BrandTags.net is a website with a deceptively simple idea: it shows you a brand's logo, and you enter the first word that comes to mind. Then it combines all the thousands of responses into a tag cloud, showing the overall consumer perception of each brand. Smart! So what great truths do these responses show, besides the fact that many people associate Adidas with "shoes?" They show that your brand is crap, stupid, and sucks! Corporate image gurus, take note:

When massive corporations decide to come up with a new slogan, they almost always end up with something short, trite, and massively expensive. Citigroup just unveiled its earth-shaking new slogan "Citi Never Sleeps," which is a reworking of its classic "The Citi Never Sleeps" tagline. But didn't they just spend $30 million last year launching a different slogan? Well yes, but that one didn't work out, because it sounded like it came straight from the mouth of bottom-rung redneck comedian Larry the Cable Guy. Derisive laughter is appropriate here:

"The Resistance," which describes itself as a "Christian Group" but, judging by its website, is more of a "Wacko Conspiracy Theory Group," has just launched a boycott of Starbucks. They object to the coffee chain's new retro-style logo, which features a mermaid who wantonly possesses boobies. They "might as well call themselves Slutbucks"! In the past, The Resistance has lobbied celebrities like Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise to change their "ridiculous" behavior. So their calls for action have clearly been huge failures thus far. The full, weird press release is below.

Denver Post columnist Al Lewis is on a crusade. A cranky Starbucks crusade! "How 'bout a slice of lemon to go with that $2.10 iced tea?" he asks, rhetorically. Because there is no lemon! Other places, they give you lemons. But fancy-schmancy Starbucks? No lemons. Don't blame Al Lewis. He's written (multiple) columns! He's sent his concerns all the way up the chain to the CEO! And now he knows why Starbucks' stock has lost half its value in a year: because they can't get Al Lewis a freakin' slice of lemon:

You like to play with the pretty horses? Step away, until you pony up some cash, ha. High profile horse racing has become an entirely corporate marketing-driven spectacle, where horses are sponsored by UPS and owned by hedge funds. The big sponsor of the Kentucky Derby is YUM Brands, owner of Taco Bell and KFC. Who could embody the noble spirit of galloping stallions better than the nation's leading purveyor of Mexican Pizzas? Anyhow, YUM's CEO, David Novak, found out the perils of sponsoring an event with live animals when a horse up and died on the track at the Derby last weekend. With no idea what was happening, Novak stepped up moments later and gave his little speech plugging his company, which has proven to the world that he hates dead ponies:

"Jack Flack" at Portfolio.com is one of a small handful of bloggers who writes things that are interesting and intelligent about corporate PR. One of his trademark constructions is "Parsing XYZ," where he takes some statement or speech or press release full of corporate doublespeak and decodes it. I identify him so closely with that stuff that I even gave him credit the last time I used the word "Parsing!" But not so for the Wall Street Journal, which ran a column last weekend with a premise virtually identical [see update also, below] to an earlier Jack Flack column:

American food, despite having devolved to the point that it is totally formulated by scientists, manufactured by machines, ergonomically packaged, and full of ingredients that do not occur in the natural world, is still a bit too challenging—and downright complicated—for many of our citizens. So Kraft, which makes many of your favorite brands of junk food, is dumbing down its packaging and product offerings so even the most simple among us can enjoy pudding, Cool Whip, and cheese slices. All together, even!

In an apparent response to a crazy, shrill right wing campaign by the "Parents Television Council" to get companies to pull their ads from hip hop TV shows like Rap City, Procter&Gamble—the world's biggest advertiser—has set up a hotline for consumers to call and weigh in on whether they're offended by seeing ads for Tide detergent on 106 & Park, or whatever [AllHipHop via MultiCultClassics]. This campaign goes to the heart of the controversial question: should corporate America give money to things associated with black people?

Are you the type of consumer who's always been interested in trying that "Starbucks" that you've heard so much about, but are intimidated by its mysterious ways? In other words, are you a half-bright mole person? Well the company has a new website just for you! "What the online experience does is mimic the experience [consumers] would have in the store, if they went to the barista and said, 'I want to try Starbucks, but I don't know where to start,'" says one exec [Ad Age]. With StarbucksCoffeeAtHome.com, all the frightening guesswork is taken out of the coffee-going experience. What's your "flavor profile?"

Despair is in order for those of you who balance out your vague sense of revulsion at visiting corporate Death Star and coffee shop Starbucks by telling yourself, "Well, at least I don't have to talk to anybody there." The company is now seriously considering promoting conversation in its stores. And the sunny, terrible people who frequent the Starbucks public suggestion factory, MyStarbucksIdea.com, think it's a "great idea!"