A Marketing Blunder

Once again corporate America fails to understand what the consumer want and need. The fatcats that run the majority of corporations in the United States have once more proven that they don't know what the heck their clients and customers want. This is a recession folks! We aren't looking for frills we're looking for bargains. And the best bargains come with that "added upon" bonus that the competition isn't giving.

Case in point. Read this news release from US Airways:

US Airways to charge $7 for pillows and blankets
source

TEMPE, Ariz. – If you want a pillow and blanket in coach on US Airways, it's going to cost you $7.
US Airways said Thursday it will begin charging for its "Power-Nap Sack" on Feb. 16. It's following the lead of JetBlue Airways, which announced a similar policy last summer.
Airlines are adding fees on checked luggage and now pillows and blankets to raise more money as they battle a downturn in travel caused by the recession. US Airways reported that January traffic fell 6.2 percent.
Kevin Jackson, a marketing official for Tempe-based US Airways, said selling the pillows and blankets "is a natural extension of our 'pay for what you choose and use' model we began rolling out last year."
Jackson said the sleep kit was an affordable way for passengers to increase their comfort while flying.
The kits include a 34-by-60-inch fleece blanket, a neck pillow, eye shades, foam ear plugs and a $10-off coupon for items in the SkyMall catalog. They come in a fleece drawstring bag embroidered with the airline's logo.
The airline said it will stop handing out free pillows and blankets in coach on domestic flights. Customers in first class and in Envoy and Economy class on trans-Atlantic flights will continue getting complimentary pillows and blankets.
The kits won't be available on US Airways Express.
For customers who can't wait until Feb. 16 for their own US Airways-embroidered nap kit, the company said they went on sale Thursday at the airline's Web site.

Okay, so will you be wanting to fly on US Airways after February 19th? of course not. Not if there is an airline available in the same price bracket that isn't charging for these "extras" on your flight. My suggestion? LOWER YOUR DANG PRICES! We consumers are looking to save money. If you want to increase ridership then bring back some low everyday fares and fill the plane! And throw in the pillow and blanket for free! Oh and get rid of the stupid fees for checked luggage! The airline that does that will be seeing every flight filled.. I promise!

God and America.. Inseparable?

Don't ever let it be said that the founding fathers did not want God to be part of this great country. Here are just a few quotes from statesmen, past and present, regarding the relationship between God and The United States of America.

George Washington:

"Almighty and eternal Lord God, the great Creator of heaven and earth, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; look down from heaven in pity and compassion upon me Thy servant, who humbly prostrate myself before Thee." - George Washington's prayer at Valley Forge

John Adams:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

James Madison:

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization not on the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

James Monroe:

"The liberty, prosperity, and the happiness of our country will always be the object of my most fervent prayers to the Supreme Author of All Good." - March 5, 1821 in his Second Inaugural Address

John Quincy Adams:

"It is no slight testimonial, both to the merit and worth of Christianity, that in all ages since its promulgation the great mass of those who have risen to eminence by their profound wisdom and integrity have recognized and reverenced Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God."

Abraham Lincoln:

"Whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord: "And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. "But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. "Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! "It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness... All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessing no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace." -Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, led our nation through the Civil War. On March 30, 1863 President Lincoln, in his Proclamation for a Day of Prayer and Fasting, called the nation to find spiritual strength through prayer.

Woodrow Wilson:

“America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scripture."

Dwight Eisenhower:

"Without God, there can be no American form of government, nor an American way of life."

Harry Truman:

"The fundamental basis of this nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teaching we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in the right for anybody except the state."

John F. Kennedy:

"For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God. " -Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 1961

Ronald Reagan:

"If America ever ceases to be a nation under God, we will simply become a nation gone under."

"Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom. What brought America back? The American people brought us back -- with quiet courage and common sense; with undying faith that in this nation under God the future will be ours, for the future belongs to the free." - State of the Union Address, February 4, 1986

George W. Bush:

"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."

"I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world."

"America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the unalienable right for life. This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government because it does not come from government, it comes from the Creator of life."

"Faith gives the assurance that our lives and our history have a moral design."

This Isn't Me

This certainly isn't me!

It's Just Not Me

This isn't me!

This ISN'T Me!

This REALLY ISN'T Me!

THIS ISN'T ME

This isn't me